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[quote user="Paul Milenkovic"] [quote]There is a huge disconnect between the sacrifice of nearly eliminating CO2 output, and the little knickknack remedies such as changing light bulbs and keeping your tires properly inflated. Saying over and over, "We just need to do a lot of little things" does not make it true. [/quote]Tire inflation is perhaps a percent or two difference in your car gas consumption, and if you are using electricity for a main source of heat, such as domestic hot water or space heating, whether through resistance or heat pump, there is not much you can do in a cold climate unless you want to risk freezing to death (hypothermia, and this will be a real concern for those having trouble this coming winter paying for $4+/gallon home heating oil and may be dialing thermostats way down because they lack the money).But there is enormous potential for cutting way back on home electricity consumption by the combined influence of "knickknack remedies such as changing light bulbs."Our local power company Madison Gas and Electric has a Web site where you can find the electric and gas usage of anyone in their service area if you know the street address.  I compiled my own list of monthly electric usage of members of the faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, leaving off some newly hired assistant professors living in apartments or with unlisted home addresses -- the entries on my list are all for stand-alone houses.The low was 236 kWHr/month, the median 729 kWHr/month.  The high of 3789 kWHr a month was for the outgoing UW Chancelor, who happens to be a faculty member of ECE.  You can excuse the Chancelor living in the Chancelor's residence because it is this massive old structure, and I suppose the Chancelor has to leave lights on a lot because numerous official receptions and other hostings of university visitors takes place in that residence.  But it may say something about the UW, being at the forefront of the IPCC and the climate debate but being an electricity scofflaw with its own buildings.The low of 236 kWHr/month, by the way, is for a suburban stand-alone house as mentioned in a Northern climate where heat and hot water comes from natural gas, but this household has an electric range and oven, electric clothes dryer, the house is air conditioned with the basement dehumidified all summer, and it has forced-air heat requiring an electric blower to distribute the heated air.  The collection of "knicknack remedies" include 1) extensive use of motion detector lights and fluorescent lights, 2) not leaving lights on all of the time and using low wattage fluorescent of night lights for lights that must be left on, 3) use of the clothes dryer in timed mode -- the automatic setting runs and runs and often dries clothes more than needed, 4) control of the AC and dehumidifiers and switching to open windows by monitoring humidity gauges, 5) an EnergyStar refrigerator and high efficiency (13 SEER) central air, 6) a variable-speed DC-motor furnace blower (Carrier Infinity) along with some homeowner programming of the settings following instructions in the owners manual to restrict the unit to the 56,000 BTU/hr low heat mode, to operate at only 600 CFMs in the continuous blower mode, and to operate at 1000 CFMs matched to the 30,000 BTUs of air conditioner capacity.The 246 kWHr/month electric usage has the carbon impact of driving 4700 miles/year.  The median electric usage of 729 kWHr/month is the equivalent of driving 14500 miles/year.  The electric use of the chancelor's residence is the equivalent of driving 76000 miles/year.  The next-highest electric usage in the department is 1907 kWHr/month, the equivalent of driving 38000 miles/year.When a low energy use, achieved by taking some common sense steps, is one third the median use, that suggests that there is potential more than shaving a couple percent in electric use savings in the residential application.  Perhaps the most labor intensive part is adjusting airconditioner and dehumidifer settings based on humidity gauges (it really is the humidity and not the heat that affects comfort).  All that can be automated -- Carrier now has residential HVAC systems that switch from A/C to outside air automatically.I still count myself in the camp of those supporting the construction of more electric transmission lines and coal as well as nuclear power plants.  I concur that continued exponential growth in the use of coal and other fossil fuels will result in large amounts of CO2 that threaten multi-degree C increases in global temperature and serious problems, but the .5 to 1 degree C in global temperature of the 20th century is not inconvertible evidence that this process is already happening on account of the natural background of variations.  That I believe the computer models that there will be serious problems following unrestricted growth in coal usage is not saying that I believe the hype that the current "climate signal" is unmistakable.  A lot of the hype is for public consumption outside the scientific community where it is believed that the public cannot understand the hedges, qualifiers, and probabilities expressed in the dry scientific discourse, essentially the difference in language from the body of IPCC and the Executive Summary statement that gets all of the press, and this hyped version is doing the scientific community a grave disservice.I also believe, as I mentioned above, that there is enormous potential to use electricity more efficiently and to conserve without reducing our comfort.  But we are facing a near-term crisis of people not being able to stay warm in their homes at current oil prices, and there is not much conservation can do there apart from massive home rebuilding, and the ability to substitute electric heat for oil would provide much economic relief to people and help stabilize oil prices.[/quote]Paul, My reference to knickknack remedies had nothing to do with valid measures to reduce energy consumption for either economic or environmental reasons.  I have got 24" of fiberglass insulation in my walls, so I am all for reducing energy consumption.  However the small energy conservation measures (often called tips on being green) are indeed knickknack remedies when compared to the size of the goal, which the proponents of manmade global warming insist must be realized within ten years if we are to prevent runaway climate change that will shortly destroy the planet.  I am speaking of the goal declared by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to reduce CO2 emissions by 80% worldwide within ten years, and their stipulation that the most developed manufacturing countries may have to reduce their CO2 by 100% in order to meet the 80% objective worldwide because China and India will probably not make the 80% objective.  And that stated ten-year period to accomplish this goal is probably about eight years by now.
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