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Consumers are stingy about buying new energy-efficient appliances

We've been meaning to replace our furnace -- an old oil heater that was converted to gas back in the '70s -- for years. It's big, it's ugly, and worst of all, it's inefficient. So we pay much more for heat than we'd like, even in Seattle's relatively mild winters.

But new furnaces don't come cheap. In fact, some back-of-the envelope calculations a few years back convinced me that it could take nearly a decade before the savings on our gas bills paid for the up-front costs of a new furnace.

In theory, of course, that's still a pretty good investment. After 10 years, we'd stop paying for the furnace, and it would start paying us.

But in practice, we never seemed to be able to save up the cash. Maybe it's my upbringing (my dad was hilariously stingy), but I hated the thought of going into debt, and paying interest and financing costs, just to buy an appliance.

On reflection, though, the fact that we waited to buy a high-efficiency furnace proves one thing: I'm a dolt. You see, if I had financed the furnace -- i.e., bought it on credit, or taken out a homeowners loan to pay for it -- the amount that we saved on utility bills each year would have just about equaled our annual payments. Which means that I could have had a nifty, high-efficiency furnace years ago, without paying a bit more for heat (utilities + financing costs) than I did with our old clunker. Less climate-warming emissions, no extra costs.

A new Pardoner’s Tale?

David objects to calling offsets indulgences.

In contrast, the actual offset purchasers I've met -- via the internet or in the "real world" -- tend to be environmentally concerned and engaged. They view offsets as something they can do in addition to other things they do to lighten their footprint.

This is disingenuous on two levels.

First the indulgence metaphor is primarily aimed at CDM and JT under the Kyoto treaty, where offsets are legally permissions to emit. An offset that is less than 100 percent perfect in that context is very like indulgences at their worst; net emissions are higher than they would be without the offset.

Offsets under Kyoto are imperfect indeed. About 20 percent of CDM credits under Kyoto consist of F5 gas reductions -- which would be fine, except that a lot of poor nation factories increased their production of those gases in order to then reduce their production and sell the credits. And F5 gases are not the only problematic CDMs that have been sold. Incidentally, as Kyoto ceilings are lowered, CDM is being increased. A great deal of lobbying is taking place to lower CDM standards. Certainly I don't see any signs they will be made stricter.

All you need for summer seafood splendor

As you might imagine, people often ask me what species of fish are the best to eat in terms of environmental and health concerns. I usually respond by saying, “OK, how much free time do you have? Are you sitting down? Do you have access to the internet? Do you have a cold compress for […]

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A guest essay

A week or so back, climate scientist James Hansen passed this essay along to a few folks. It’s about the need to rein in coal, and the puzzling lack of involvement from young people on the issue. I thought I’d pass it along. —– Scientific data reveal that the Earth is close to dangerous climate […]

He proposes a carbon tax, assuming it will fail

Last Sunday, Rep. John Dingell appeared on the C-SPAN show Newsmakers for a 30-min. interview (transcript here; video accessible via the website), and caused an enormous ruckus with this: SWAIN: Mr. Chairman, I want to go back to your statement that the American people want action [on climate change]. Does that also correlate with the […]

Videos for your viewing pleasure, if that’s the word for it

Film director Robert Greenwald has been producing a series of videos exposing Fox News as a propaganda arm of the far right wing (is "exposing" the right word when everyone already knows it?), under the rubric Fox Attacks. The latest in the series is Fox Attacks: The Environment, which is about Fox’s hackery on the […]

A new study puts the old canard to rest

One of the most common arguments against organic farming is that it can't possibly provide enough food to feed the planet's burgeoning population. Low yields and lack of organically acceptable nitrogen sources, it's been said, will always confine its production scale to the realms of specialty groceries and farmer's markets. Now researchers at the University of Michigan have decided to examine these claims with some scientific scrutiny. Their findings?

"Organic farming can yield up to three times as much food as conventional farming on the same amount of land."

If this is surprising, the authors say it's because many people in developing countries can't afford to buy the fertilizers that hybrid seeds require in order to produce top yields. So they're better off bypassing the biotech system altogether, instead using traditional seeds and so-called "green manures." These manures are cover crops planted in-between harvests and then plowed back into the soil. The authors found that this method provided sufficient nitrogen to farm without using any synthetic fertilizers.

Said one of the study's lead authors, "Corporate interest in agriculture and the way agriculture research has been conducted in land grant institutions, with a lot of influence by the chemical companies and pesticide companies as well as fertilizer companies -- all have been playing an important role in convincing the public that you need to have these inputs to produce food."

A guest essay from Greenpeace scientists

A while back, after some criticisms of his company on this site, I ran an essay by Russ George, CEO of Planktos, defending his work. What follows is a response to that essay from the UK-based Greenpeace Science Unit. —– Russ George, CEO of self-professed ‘ecorestoration’ company Planktos, seems increasingly convinced that opposition to his […]

A guest essay from Geoffrey Holland

This is a guest essay by Geoffrey Holland, co-author (with James Provenzano) of The Hydrogen Age: Empowering a Clean Energy Future, which will be out in the fall. I know there are many hydrogen skeptics in the audience, so remember: keep it civil and substantive. —– Of the vexing challenges humanity faces — and there […]