The new president has been inaugurated and we are embarking on a new road toward a less energy intensive lifestyle. Next month we will celebrate the 200 hundredth anniversary of President Lincoln’s birth on February 12 1809 in Kentucky. Honest Abe was the first president to be born in a state outside of the original thirteen colonies. There are several parallels that can been drawn between Obama and Lincoln, however I will use the Gettysburg Address to tie in the Green Theme of Change that must happen if we are all to thrive in these United States.
The Last sentence of the Address given by Lincoln on November 19, 1863 is as follows: ”That this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Our nation needs a new birth of freedom by moving away from living in our carbon intensive past. Most of the environmental legacy of the period since Lincoln has been based on the combustion of wood, coal, oil, and natural gas. On May 10, 1869 the last spike on the transcontinental railroad was driven into the ground and since then, we have extracted BTUs from carbonaceous material to propel engine driven vehicles or devices at an ever increasing rate.We will not stop deriving BTUS from carbon hydrogen bonds, however we can moderate the pace at which we combust fuels. I have opined previously that is improbable that there will be significant hydrogen fuelled vehicles or power generation station in the next thirty years and that in the majority fuels for the generation of electricity and the propulsion of vehicles, trains and planes will remain carbon based. What is going to happen is that the people as well as the government of the people, by the people, and for the people will embark on a program of energy savings and efficiency improvement that will be massive.
For years the Department Of Energy – Energy Information Agency has forecast that by 2030 the US will be using 30 to 40% more energy than it presently does. The latest preliminary forecast from the agency is that they are now predicting only 13% more energy will be used in 2030 than in 2007. I have news from Gettysburg for the agency, we will be using 13% less energy in 2030 than in 2007. Already in 2008 we used 5.5% less oil than in 2007, albeit because of the recession. More than half the BTUs in our fuel ends up as waste heat in our engines, furnaces, and power generators. Much more than half the electricity we use for lighting ends up as waste heat. Much can and much will be done over the next couple of decades to remedy this waste. The laws of thermodynamics teach us that not all the wasted energy can be eliminated due to our old nemesis “Mr. Entropy”. However much like Gettysburg the efficiency enemy is ourselves and we must commit ourselves in the words of Lincoln that “It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us”
The Ford motor company should in honor of Abe’s 200 birthday and the billions of dollars we are likely to have to give them, reengineer the Lincoln brand of vehicles. It is not a fitting testimony to the sixteenth president that gas guzzlers are named in his honor. I pray that if in 100 years time a vehicle is named the “Obama” it will have better gas mileage than the Model T. There is not a single 2008 Lincoln vehicle that exceeds the gas mileage of the 1909 Model T.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Thank Gras
Happy New Year! The first episode of Green Machine for 2009 deals with the most common New Year’s resolution, that of losing weight. Gras is the French word for fat so it is fitting we honor Gras as the G word of the week now that we have all resolved to lose some weight. I have previously written that one requires an extra mile of blood vessels for each pound of fat cells in our bodies. Losing weight is also good for improving our fuel efficiency, as our vehicles require less power to move lighter bodies.
I read the grossest news clip on Boxing Day. Craig Alan Bittner, a plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills (Heavily Bills that is) was using the fat he liposuctioned from patients to produce bio-diesel for his girlfriend’s Lincoln Navigator SUV. This is illegal in California as we do have laws governing the disposal of human medical waste. Bittner boasted on his website that he invented “lipodiesel”. It is quite amazing that Bittner believed his green efforts advertised on his web site would promote business rather than incurring the long and fat arm of the law.
Another common New Year’s resolution is to quit smoking. As tobacco consumption has dropped so have the number of farms cultivating tobacco in the USA. The US Department of Agriculture reports that in 1954, 512,000 farms cultivated tobacco, in 2002 only 56,977 farms grew tobacco as their cash crop. In 1946 over two billion pounds of tobacco was grown in the USA. This had dropped to one billion pounds in 2002. An acre of land yields approximately one ton of tobacco per year, therefore the average size of farms has increased in the past fifty years as many small farmers simply gave up on growing tobacco. The US population has grown two and a half times since 1946, therefore on a per capita basis we are using about one fifth of the tobacco we used when smoking was a socially acceptable and an even encouraged pastime.
Kansas was the last of the states to end prohibition on smoking of tobacco back in 1927. The cost of a pack of twenty cigarettes was at parity with the cost of a gallon of gasoline for most of the twentieth century. Back in 1946 this cost was twenty cents. In the 1960s it was fifty cents. In the mid to 1980s the Feds, state, and local governments placed far heavier taxes on cigarettes because of the burden on healthcare costs that smoking was causing. If only these governments had the wisdom then to have taxed gasoline as heavily as cigarettes the Hummer would possibly have never seen the light of day. For a while in July 2008 the cost of a gallon of gasoline again reached parity with the cost of a pack of twenty cigarettes, but with the precipitous drop in oil prices gasoline is again far less expensive than a pack of cigarettes.
If wasting energy carries the same stigma as smoking, then the US will easily halve our energy consumption in the next twenty five years. I propose we have the position of “Engineering General Of The United States”. The Engineering General should be allowed to post in bold letters on any energy wasting vehicle: – “Warning The Engineering General has determined that operating this vehicle will cause damage to our collective health”. Did you all know we have an acting Surgeon General and his name is Rear Admiral Steven Galson MD? I hope that President Elect Obama appoints a full time rather than acting Surgeon General and that the post of Engineering General is soon created. Unfortunately the only general we have at present working on energy efficiency is General Motors, a half star general.
I read the grossest news clip on Boxing Day. Craig Alan Bittner, a plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills (Heavily Bills that is) was using the fat he liposuctioned from patients to produce bio-diesel for his girlfriend’s Lincoln Navigator SUV. This is illegal in California as we do have laws governing the disposal of human medical waste. Bittner boasted on his website that he invented “lipodiesel”. It is quite amazing that Bittner believed his green efforts advertised on his web site would promote business rather than incurring the long and fat arm of the law.
Another common New Year’s resolution is to quit smoking. As tobacco consumption has dropped so have the number of farms cultivating tobacco in the USA. The US Department of Agriculture reports that in 1954, 512,000 farms cultivated tobacco, in 2002 only 56,977 farms grew tobacco as their cash crop. In 1946 over two billion pounds of tobacco was grown in the USA. This had dropped to one billion pounds in 2002. An acre of land yields approximately one ton of tobacco per year, therefore the average size of farms has increased in the past fifty years as many small farmers simply gave up on growing tobacco. The US population has grown two and a half times since 1946, therefore on a per capita basis we are using about one fifth of the tobacco we used when smoking was a socially acceptable and an even encouraged pastime.
Kansas was the last of the states to end prohibition on smoking of tobacco back in 1927. The cost of a pack of twenty cigarettes was at parity with the cost of a gallon of gasoline for most of the twentieth century. Back in 1946 this cost was twenty cents. In the 1960s it was fifty cents. In the mid to 1980s the Feds, state, and local governments placed far heavier taxes on cigarettes because of the burden on healthcare costs that smoking was causing. If only these governments had the wisdom then to have taxed gasoline as heavily as cigarettes the Hummer would possibly have never seen the light of day. For a while in July 2008 the cost of a gallon of gasoline again reached parity with the cost of a pack of twenty cigarettes, but with the precipitous drop in oil prices gasoline is again far less expensive than a pack of cigarettes.
If wasting energy carries the same stigma as smoking, then the US will easily halve our energy consumption in the next twenty five years. I propose we have the position of “Engineering General Of The United States”. The Engineering General should be allowed to post in bold letters on any energy wasting vehicle: – “Warning The Engineering General has determined that operating this vehicle will cause damage to our collective health”. Did you all know we have an acting Surgeon General and his name is Rear Admiral Steven Galson MD? I hope that President Elect Obama appoints a full time rather than acting Surgeon General and that the post of Engineering General is soon created. Unfortunately the only general we have at present working on energy efficiency is General Motors, a half star general.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Thank George
This episode of Green Machine is the final one for 2008. What a year it has been! Thank G it’s over. Gasoline prices peaked in the summer and are now down to the price they were five years ago. General Motors and Chrysler are on life support and President Bush had to step in where congress refused by offering a bridge loan to these two once mighty companies. The bridge loans will only provide sufficient liquidity until President Obama take office and more money will be needed in February. Time Magazine does a person of the year. Green Machine follows suit by nominating the G Person of The Year, and without a doubt the G Person for 2008 is President George W. Bush. George’s Dad was also President of the USA and had the full name George Herbert Walker Bush (GHWB). His son will be remembered as George Herbert Hoover Bush (GHHB).
Green Machine believes that young GHHB went off the rails by his nomination of two totally incompetent Energy Secretaries. His first Energy Secretary was Spencer Tracy Abraham who lasted the entire first term with zero accomplishment. Spencer had lost his senate seat in Michigan in 2000 so he was out of work when he was chosen by GHHB for Energy Secretary. Spencer was chosen Energy Secretary for the single reason of being of Lebanese decent and GHHB believed that Spencer would have great working relationships with the Movers and Shakers (I would spell this Sheikers) of the oil rich Middle East. Spencer had zero knowledge of thermodynamics and was of no consequence except for helping the US disregard the Kyoto Protocol on global warming gases. The Bush first term was almost entirely focused on the post 9-11 response and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the global war on terrorism. Spencer left office in February 2005 to become a consultant. I can only imagine how well his clients have done. Had we opted into Kyoto in 2001, GM and Chrysler would already have fuel efficient vehicles and would not need a bailout.
GHHB’s second energy secretary, Sam The Sham Bodman, has already won the Green Machine’s Gangrene Prize. What make me particularly mad about Bodman is he has a PhD in Chemical Engineering and unlike Spencer the Dispenser he had a full comprehension of the laws of thermodynamics and simply chose to ignore them for political gain. Now that I have lambasted the Energy Secretaries of the past eight years I will point to Harvard MBAs next. The three most incompetent MBAs from this prestigious school are GHHB, Hank Paulsen, and Rick Wagoner. All three of these HBS alumni have in large measure contributed to the current economic malaise. If I have to pick the least impressive one of these three, it is Rick Off The Wagon Wagoner. He is the magician of the year by making GM disappear.
There is great debate whether hell is exothermic or endothermic because we have the sayings “hotter than hell” and “when hell freezes over”. I will have to opine on this in a future episode of Green Machine now that our economy and environment is going to hell in a hand basket. I anticipate that 2009 will be a better year and there is no way possible that the next President, next Energy Secretary, and next Chief Executive Officer of GM will ignore science and the melting Arctic Ice Cap and believe the marketing of Hummers are good for the economy and environment. I wish all Green Machine enthusiasts a happy, healthy, prosperous, and low carbon footprint new year.
Green Machine believes that young GHHB went off the rails by his nomination of two totally incompetent Energy Secretaries. His first Energy Secretary was Spencer Tracy Abraham who lasted the entire first term with zero accomplishment. Spencer had lost his senate seat in Michigan in 2000 so he was out of work when he was chosen by GHHB for Energy Secretary. Spencer was chosen Energy Secretary for the single reason of being of Lebanese decent and GHHB believed that Spencer would have great working relationships with the Movers and Shakers (I would spell this Sheikers) of the oil rich Middle East. Spencer had zero knowledge of thermodynamics and was of no consequence except for helping the US disregard the Kyoto Protocol on global warming gases. The Bush first term was almost entirely focused on the post 9-11 response and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the global war on terrorism. Spencer left office in February 2005 to become a consultant. I can only imagine how well his clients have done. Had we opted into Kyoto in 2001, GM and Chrysler would already have fuel efficient vehicles and would not need a bailout.
GHHB’s second energy secretary, Sam The Sham Bodman, has already won the Green Machine’s Gangrene Prize. What make me particularly mad about Bodman is he has a PhD in Chemical Engineering and unlike Spencer the Dispenser he had a full comprehension of the laws of thermodynamics and simply chose to ignore them for political gain. Now that I have lambasted the Energy Secretaries of the past eight years I will point to Harvard MBAs next. The three most incompetent MBAs from this prestigious school are GHHB, Hank Paulsen, and Rick Wagoner. All three of these HBS alumni have in large measure contributed to the current economic malaise. If I have to pick the least impressive one of these three, it is Rick Off The Wagon Wagoner. He is the magician of the year by making GM disappear.
There is great debate whether hell is exothermic or endothermic because we have the sayings “hotter than hell” and “when hell freezes over”. I will have to opine on this in a future episode of Green Machine now that our economy and environment is going to hell in a hand basket. I anticipate that 2009 will be a better year and there is no way possible that the next President, next Energy Secretary, and next Chief Executive Officer of GM will ignore science and the melting Arctic Ice Cap and believe the marketing of Hummers are good for the economy and environment. I wish all Green Machine enthusiasts a happy, healthy, prosperous, and low carbon footprint new year.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Thank Generals
Today we thank the once biggest general of them all, General Motors, for our episode of Green Machine. Yes GM is the biggest of the once big three. This motor company has managed to loose more than seventy billion dollars since 2004. Not bad, they sold about thirty five million vehicles during this period and only lost two thousand dollars on each vehicle in their effort for us to “see the USA in our Chevrolet”. While GM lost the seventy big boys the global economic crisis has wiped out more than twenty trillion in the collective global wealth. I was thinking about twenty trillion and realized this is a very large number. The second nearest star other than our sun is less than twenty trillion miles away from earth. The big question for the big three is whether they will become the little two. Stars also go through expansion and contraction and may end up as black holes. The good news about all of this is that it will be billions of years before our sun gives out its last rays. Solar energy is still our major hope for using renewable energy to power the planet. The solar stocks have also been hit by the plunge on Wall Street but their collective future is still brighter than auto stocks, but not by much unlessl the cost of solar cells is reduced by eighty percent. Solar cells now cost approximately $8,000 per kilowatt of installed capacity and only generate energy a quarter of the time when the sun is shining. When and if the installed cost of solar cells drops to around $1,500 per kilowatt this method for abundant electric power generation will really take hold.
There are rumors that the CEO of GM, Rick Wagoner, wants to meet with Toyota in Tokyo. Maybe he read my recent Green Machine article where I postulated the “Toyota Inside” model for affordable, efficient, and high performing future vehicles. Bob Lutz the Vice Chairman of General Motors who often appears on CNBC is still betting on his Chev Volt, the plug in hybrid that will rely on Lithium batteries and is scheduled for commercial launch in 2010. The problem for Lutz is whether GM can survive until then. The US government may well become the largest shareholder in each and every of the three US auto companies long before the Volt draws any juice from the power grid.
Perhaps GM with Washington calling the shots will then have a CEO named Klutz and a car named the Revolt.On an upbeat note, we have a new President with yesterday’s election. As I write the Green Machine articles a week in advance I cannot answer who the new president is, but there is no doubt the new president will have to deal with energy as one of the primary policy issues facing our country in the future. Housing and transportation account for over half of our energy use and both of these sectors require significant funds and attention. I did a quick back of the envelope calculation that transportation including the cost of owning and operating vehicles, maintaining roads and bridges, policing the roads, etc. accounts for approximately twenty per cent of our gross domestic product. I have not performed the calculation on housing but it must be more than thirty percent of GDP.
Maybe I should offer my services to the next administration and show them and the US public, how by being Green Machines we can move the economy forward based on conservation and saving rather than by massive and unsustainable consumption. While it will be painful for the former Big Three stars of the US economy to shrink, they can still have a bright future producing efficient smaller vehicles that could be branded as “white dwarfs” rather than “Super Novas”.
There are rumors that the CEO of GM, Rick Wagoner, wants to meet with Toyota in Tokyo. Maybe he read my recent Green Machine article where I postulated the “Toyota Inside” model for affordable, efficient, and high performing future vehicles. Bob Lutz the Vice Chairman of General Motors who often appears on CNBC is still betting on his Chev Volt, the plug in hybrid that will rely on Lithium batteries and is scheduled for commercial launch in 2010. The problem for Lutz is whether GM can survive until then. The US government may well become the largest shareholder in each and every of the three US auto companies long before the Volt draws any juice from the power grid.
Perhaps GM with Washington calling the shots will then have a CEO named Klutz and a car named the Revolt.On an upbeat note, we have a new President with yesterday’s election. As I write the Green Machine articles a week in advance I cannot answer who the new president is, but there is no doubt the new president will have to deal with energy as one of the primary policy issues facing our country in the future. Housing and transportation account for over half of our energy use and both of these sectors require significant funds and attention. I did a quick back of the envelope calculation that transportation including the cost of owning and operating vehicles, maintaining roads and bridges, policing the roads, etc. accounts for approximately twenty per cent of our gross domestic product. I have not performed the calculation on housing but it must be more than thirty percent of GDP.
Maybe I should offer my services to the next administration and show them and the US public, how by being Green Machines we can move the economy forward based on conservation and saving rather than by massive and unsustainable consumption. While it will be painful for the former Big Three stars of the US economy to shrink, they can still have a bright future producing efficient smaller vehicles that could be branded as “white dwarfs” rather than “Super Novas”.
Thank Grande
We are not talking about the Rio Grande but the mid-size coffee serving at Starbucks. Yes Starbucks has Short, Tall, Grande and Venti sizes for their coffee and lattes. The Grande is a 16 fluid ounce size. I was recently in the Strawberry Starbucks when I overheard the patron in front of me ask for a 140 degree latte. Being a thermodynamics and green expert I of course had to ask the Barista what this meant. The Barista replied that the milk in the 140 degree is warmed less than the normal 160 degrees. Of course my mind started doing mental arithmetic as to how much energy Starbucks could save if all patrons became green and asked for the 140 degree Grande non fat latte with one Splenda and no foam single cupped.
Yes there are over 15,000 Starbucks stores and Starbucks has yearly revenues of nearly ten billion dollars. Soon there will be fewer stores as Strabucks has hit hard times with the terrible global economic downturn. I estimate they must sell something like 3 billion Grande equivalent drinks a year. Twenty degrees difference on a drink that weighs a pound and using a specific heat of 1.0 means 60 billion BTUs could be saved each year by Starbucks moving to the 140 degree latte. Each of the Starbuck espresso machines is powered by electricity. There are 3412 BTUs in a kilowatt hour. The added warmth of the drinks therefore equals 19.096 million kilowatt hours. The average heat rate of a coal fired power plant, the most common form of power plant in the world is about 10,000 BTU per kilowatt hour. This means about 1.25 pounds of coal needs to be burned to generate a kilowatt hour, therefore the 19 million kilowatt hours required 23.870 million pounds of coal. Coal is composed of approximately 50% carbon, the remainder is ash and moisture with a little hydrogen. Therefore 11,935,000 pounds of carbon are emitted each year to increase the temperature of the Grande cups of Starbucks from 140 degrees to 160 degrees. This is almost 6,000 tons of carbon. Expressed as carbon dioxide we have to multiply the amount of carbon by 3.67. Now that I have bored you all with tedious math, we have that Starbucks is emitting and additional 21,881 tons a year of carbon dioxide simple because the average patron did not request their 140 degree Grande non fat latte with one Splenda and no foam in a single cupped option. This is about the same amount of carbon dioxide that 4,000 cars emit in a year. Of course just driving to Starbucks to get the 140 degree Grande non fat latte with one Splenda and no foam single cupped drink causes an untold amount of carbon emissions.
Starbucks will be able to claim a lesser environmental foot print now that their business is stalled and they are closing stores. As for me I have to say I like my non foam Venti soy latte at 150 degrees. The cost of this drink is about half the price of Starbucks stock that now trades at $9.29 a share. Maybe soon Starbucks will give out warrants for their shares instead of coupons and they will change their name to Star with not so many Bucks.
Yes there are over 15,000 Starbucks stores and Starbucks has yearly revenues of nearly ten billion dollars. Soon there will be fewer stores as Strabucks has hit hard times with the terrible global economic downturn. I estimate they must sell something like 3 billion Grande equivalent drinks a year. Twenty degrees difference on a drink that weighs a pound and using a specific heat of 1.0 means 60 billion BTUs could be saved each year by Starbucks moving to the 140 degree latte. Each of the Starbuck espresso machines is powered by electricity. There are 3412 BTUs in a kilowatt hour. The added warmth of the drinks therefore equals 19.096 million kilowatt hours. The average heat rate of a coal fired power plant, the most common form of power plant in the world is about 10,000 BTU per kilowatt hour. This means about 1.25 pounds of coal needs to be burned to generate a kilowatt hour, therefore the 19 million kilowatt hours required 23.870 million pounds of coal. Coal is composed of approximately 50% carbon, the remainder is ash and moisture with a little hydrogen. Therefore 11,935,000 pounds of carbon are emitted each year to increase the temperature of the Grande cups of Starbucks from 140 degrees to 160 degrees. This is almost 6,000 tons of carbon. Expressed as carbon dioxide we have to multiply the amount of carbon by 3.67. Now that I have bored you all with tedious math, we have that Starbucks is emitting and additional 21,881 tons a year of carbon dioxide simple because the average patron did not request their 140 degree Grande non fat latte with one Splenda and no foam in a single cupped option. This is about the same amount of carbon dioxide that 4,000 cars emit in a year. Of course just driving to Starbucks to get the 140 degree Grande non fat latte with one Splenda and no foam single cupped drink causes an untold amount of carbon emissions.
Starbucks will be able to claim a lesser environmental foot print now that their business is stalled and they are closing stores. As for me I have to say I like my non foam Venti soy latte at 150 degrees. The cost of this drink is about half the price of Starbucks stock that now trades at $9.29 a share. Maybe soon Starbucks will give out warrants for their shares instead of coupons and they will change their name to Star with not so many Bucks.
Thank Gravy
Yeah Thanksgiving is here and it is certainly my favorite holiday as it is All American and full of turkey. Folks get to eat well and then sleep well after eating a huge amount of calories. Legend has it that it is this certain protein called tryptophan in the turkey that causes the sleepiness. Tryptophan is a standard and essential amino acid in the diet. It is not true that turkey has more tryptophan than other foods, in fact on a per unit mass basis dried egg whites have four times as much tryptophan than turkey if you eat the same mass of the two foods. Parmesan and cheddar cheese are also richer in tryptophan. My advice is if you really want to sleep well after your Thanksgiving meal sprinkle your turkey with parmesan and have meringues for dessert rather than pumpkin pie. Actually all who eat over 1,000 calories will sleep well no matter what is on the menu.The Japanese company Showa Denko attempted to produce synthetic tryptophan as a food supplement in 1989. Unfortunately their quality control was terrible and they produced the dimer (two molecules connected) of tryptophan, a poisonous chemical that caused thirty seven deaths and permanent disability to over 1,500 people. Their manufacturing motto must have been kill two birds with one stone.
There are approximately 100 million households in the USA and some 30 million turkeys will be cooked for Thanksgiving dinners. The average mass of a turkey is about 16 pounds. Therefore some 500 million pounds of turkey will be cooked. The amount of gas and electricity needed to roast these birds is not that enormous. If one assumes that the birds take four hours to roast and that the oven uses about .4 kilowatt hours for each hour of cooking, the sum total of energy used in roasting turkeys is 48 million kilowatt hours. The Hoover Dam can produce 48 million kilowatt hours each day so we use one day’s of electric generation of the Hoover Dam to make the majority of citizens in the country very content once a year.
All this talk of fowl makes me sad. We recently had to put our dog Jason down. Jason was thirteen and a half years old and had a wonderful life. He was allergic to many foods and the vets at Alto Tiburon gave us the recommendation of a special diet when Jason was a small pup. His diet consisted of roasted chicken, rice, and fat free cottage cheese. Jason consumed one and a half chickens a week or about seventy five chickens a year. Therefore Jason accounted for the demise of some one thousand chickens during the course of his remarkable life. Only Colonel Saunders did in more of these fine feathered fowl. Jason loved all and was perhaps the easiest going dog on the peninsular. This thanksgiving we are going to miss Jason as he was always happy to substitute turkey for chicken and Thanksgiving was his favorite holiday except for perhaps the Jewish New year when he was given a special treat of chopped chicken liver. Our friend Faye who is Iranian coined the name “shikamoo” for Jason. This Persian word can roughly be translated as glutton. Jason was no glutton for punishment. He was a wonderful dog that my daughter Alexis chose for the family many years ago. We should all give thanks for the Jason’s of this world.
There are approximately 100 million households in the USA and some 30 million turkeys will be cooked for Thanksgiving dinners. The average mass of a turkey is about 16 pounds. Therefore some 500 million pounds of turkey will be cooked. The amount of gas and electricity needed to roast these birds is not that enormous. If one assumes that the birds take four hours to roast and that the oven uses about .4 kilowatt hours for each hour of cooking, the sum total of energy used in roasting turkeys is 48 million kilowatt hours. The Hoover Dam can produce 48 million kilowatt hours each day so we use one day’s of electric generation of the Hoover Dam to make the majority of citizens in the country very content once a year.
All this talk of fowl makes me sad. We recently had to put our dog Jason down. Jason was thirteen and a half years old and had a wonderful life. He was allergic to many foods and the vets at Alto Tiburon gave us the recommendation of a special diet when Jason was a small pup. His diet consisted of roasted chicken, rice, and fat free cottage cheese. Jason consumed one and a half chickens a week or about seventy five chickens a year. Therefore Jason accounted for the demise of some one thousand chickens during the course of his remarkable life. Only Colonel Saunders did in more of these fine feathered fowl. Jason loved all and was perhaps the easiest going dog on the peninsular. This thanksgiving we are going to miss Jason as he was always happy to substitute turkey for chicken and Thanksgiving was his favorite holiday except for perhaps the Jewish New year when he was given a special treat of chopped chicken liver. Our friend Faye who is Iranian coined the name “shikamoo” for Jason. This Persian word can roughly be translated as glutton. Jason was no glutton for punishment. He was a wonderful dog that my daughter Alexis chose for the family many years ago. We should all give thanks for the Jason’s of this world.
Thank Georgia
So what does the Peachtree State have to do with being green? Atlanta's Hartsfield Jackson Airport remains the busiest airport in the country for the number of domestic passengers that arrived or departed on a flight in the month of August 2008. The United States Bureau of Transportation Statistics reports that some 3.5 million domestic passengers used this airport during the month. There were a total of 58.8 million domestic passengers in the entire United States during August 2008. This figure seems large till one compare the data with the corresponding month a year ago of August 2007. In August 2008 there were 6.1% fewer domestic passengers than in August 2007. There were however 2.0% more international passengers in August 2008 than in 2007.
There were 820,100 domestic flights in August 2008 some 6.0% fewer flights than the corresponding month in 2007.Now that I have bored you all to death with flight statistics for the United States, I will tie in what this has to do with being green. Air Transportation is very energy intensive as the airplanes are heavier than air and need massive thrust from their engines to stay aloft. All this thrust comes from kerosene jet fuel that is refined from crude oil. Therefore the fewer flights we have the less jet fuel we consume. The US Energy Information Agency has reported that for the four weeks ending November 15 2008 some 20.3% less jet fuel was delivered Airlines than in the same period last year. The airlines still took delivery of 1,291,000 barrels a day on average of jet fuel during the past four weeks. No doubt the number of total flights in the USA for the month of November 2008 will be well down from the number in August 2008 and also November 2007.
While I am the Green Machine these statistics are frightening as the energy saved was not through conservation but rather due to a precipitous decline in economic activity. The reduced demand for Jet Fuel, Residual Oil, Gasoline and Diesel has significantly lowered the price of oil and hence these refined products. The reduced revenue the oil exporters receive is not my concern. I don't care if it is "Goodbye to Dubai". My concern is that we don't go back to sleep on the energy conservation front. Global warming is continuing irrespective of this small decline in energy consumption. Airlines are trying to conserve fuel by lightening the load. Some planes are never painted as it makes no sense to spend fuel to keep paint aloft. Now that they serve less food and charge for checked in bags the payload of each flight is also decreasing. Also with fewer flight there is far less circling of airports waiting for a slot to land and a space to park at the jetway.
Trains are far more fuel efficient than Airplanes for the simple reason they do not have to have thrust to keep them buoyant. Had the 58.8 million domestic passengers that flew in August 2008 traveled by train, more than half the fuel used by the planes would have been saved. Of course long distance flights will always be needed but hopefully more people will hop on the train or bus for a trip of a few hundred miles. The average domestic flight in the US consumes 2,050 gallons of jet fuel and carries 71 passengers. Don't believe the saying that "the only way to travel is to fly".
There were 820,100 domestic flights in August 2008 some 6.0% fewer flights than the corresponding month in 2007.Now that I have bored you all to death with flight statistics for the United States, I will tie in what this has to do with being green. Air Transportation is very energy intensive as the airplanes are heavier than air and need massive thrust from their engines to stay aloft. All this thrust comes from kerosene jet fuel that is refined from crude oil. Therefore the fewer flights we have the less jet fuel we consume. The US Energy Information Agency has reported that for the four weeks ending November 15 2008 some 20.3% less jet fuel was delivered Airlines than in the same period last year. The airlines still took delivery of 1,291,000 barrels a day on average of jet fuel during the past four weeks. No doubt the number of total flights in the USA for the month of November 2008 will be well down from the number in August 2008 and also November 2007.
While I am the Green Machine these statistics are frightening as the energy saved was not through conservation but rather due to a precipitous decline in economic activity. The reduced demand for Jet Fuel, Residual Oil, Gasoline and Diesel has significantly lowered the price of oil and hence these refined products. The reduced revenue the oil exporters receive is not my concern. I don't care if it is "Goodbye to Dubai". My concern is that we don't go back to sleep on the energy conservation front. Global warming is continuing irrespective of this small decline in energy consumption. Airlines are trying to conserve fuel by lightening the load. Some planes are never painted as it makes no sense to spend fuel to keep paint aloft. Now that they serve less food and charge for checked in bags the payload of each flight is also decreasing. Also with fewer flight there is far less circling of airports waiting for a slot to land and a space to park at the jetway.
Trains are far more fuel efficient than Airplanes for the simple reason they do not have to have thrust to keep them buoyant. Had the 58.8 million domestic passengers that flew in August 2008 traveled by train, more than half the fuel used by the planes would have been saved. Of course long distance flights will always be needed but hopefully more people will hop on the train or bus for a trip of a few hundred miles. The average domestic flight in the US consumes 2,050 gallons of jet fuel and carries 71 passengers. Don't believe the saying that "the only way to travel is to fly".
Thank Gems
Diamonds are a girl's best friend. Diamonds are also pure carbon. I hear old Alfalfa and the venture capitalists he joined in Silicon Valley are working on a technology to sequester carbon in diamonds. Only joking, the sum total of diamonds sold a year is only one hundred and sixty million carats. A carat is equal to one fifth of a gram, therefore the yearly sales of diamonds only equals thirty two million grams or about thirty five US tons. Fifteen cars emit approximately thirty five tons a year of carbon, so please don't rush out to the local jewellers and buy diamonds thinking you are helping reduce global warming by sequestering carbon. It is interesting that a rough uncut diamond is only worth $100 per carat or $500 per gram. This is less expensive than the new monoclonal antibodies that biotech drug companies have developed.
The GEMs I was thinking about are the street legal electric cars that were first introduced ten years ago. These cars can zip around at 25 MPH and have a range of thirty miles before they need recharging. GEM stands for Global Electric Motorcars. They are produced in a factory in Fargo North Dakota. I guess they chose this town as they thought Fargo would increase the range of the vehicle. GEM is now owned by Chrysler. A 2001 GEM E2 (2 seats) sells on ebay for around $4,500. This is equal to the original price that the vehicle sold for some eight years ago. Chrysler's other vehicles do not have similar resale value. Kelly Blue Books lists a 2001 Chrysler Sebring in excellent condition as having a private party value of $3,100. Anyone who bought a Sebring back in 2001 should rather have bought a real gem rather than a cubic chrysloneum.
I am a very happy vanpooler these days. I just received $300 worth of gas cards from 511 dot org. This money was given to me as I organized a vanpool from Manzanita to Genentech in South San Francisco where I work. We will receiver another $600 over the next six months from 511 dot org if we continue the vanpool. The gas cards are usable at ARCO stations. I filled up the behemoth van at the ARCO station near Goodmans on the Redwood Highway for the paltry price of $1.93 a gallon. I just hope we have learned our green lessons well and don't go back to wasting energy now that gas prices are less than half they were just four months ago.
While I was typing this episode of Green Machine we had a power outage. This is the third power outage to my home in less than a month. There was no storm or inclement weather that caused the outage. I believe it may be that PG and E now stands for Please Go-out and Eat. They may be trying to help the restaurants in this poor economy by cutting power every so often to the homes on the Tiburon Peninsular. I am lucky that Microsoft Word stores a back-up file of the document I was working on when the computer has a sudden shut-down, else I would have had to start this article again from scratch. Microsoft will introduce a new product in 2010 codenamed GEM. The codename GEM stands for Gates Enjoys Money
The GEMs I was thinking about are the street legal electric cars that were first introduced ten years ago. These cars can zip around at 25 MPH and have a range of thirty miles before they need recharging. GEM stands for Global Electric Motorcars. They are produced in a factory in Fargo North Dakota. I guess they chose this town as they thought Fargo would increase the range of the vehicle. GEM is now owned by Chrysler. A 2001 GEM E2 (2 seats) sells on ebay for around $4,500. This is equal to the original price that the vehicle sold for some eight years ago. Chrysler's other vehicles do not have similar resale value. Kelly Blue Books lists a 2001 Chrysler Sebring in excellent condition as having a private party value of $3,100. Anyone who bought a Sebring back in 2001 should rather have bought a real gem rather than a cubic chrysloneum.
I am a very happy vanpooler these days. I just received $300 worth of gas cards from 511 dot org. This money was given to me as I organized a vanpool from Manzanita to Genentech in South San Francisco where I work. We will receiver another $600 over the next six months from 511 dot org if we continue the vanpool. The gas cards are usable at ARCO stations. I filled up the behemoth van at the ARCO station near Goodmans on the Redwood Highway for the paltry price of $1.93 a gallon. I just hope we have learned our green lessons well and don't go back to wasting energy now that gas prices are less than half they were just four months ago.
While I was typing this episode of Green Machine we had a power outage. This is the third power outage to my home in less than a month. There was no storm or inclement weather that caused the outage. I believe it may be that PG and E now stands for Please Go-out and Eat. They may be trying to help the restaurants in this poor economy by cutting power every so often to the homes on the Tiburon Peninsular. I am lucky that Microsoft Word stores a back-up file of the document I was working on when the computer has a sudden shut-down, else I would have had to start this article again from scratch. Microsoft will introduce a new product in 2010 codenamed GEM. The codename GEM stands for Gates Enjoys Money
Thank Glitter
The Holiday Season is upon us and lights will glitter all over the land to celebrate the holidays. Christmas Trees and Hanukah Menorahs are symbols that have lights for decoration. The story of Hanukah is about the miracle of the lamp oil in the temple in Jerusalem lasting for eight days instead of the expected one day. This meant that the lamp increased its efficiency eight fold. Well we too have new lamp technology that is similarly more efficient than the old incandescent bulbs that adorned our Christmas Trees or our homes. This wonderful technology is that of Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs).
I believe I have written previously that LEDs use one tenth the energy of incandescent light bulbs and are long lived and can operate for as long as twelve years. Perhaps we are also witnessing a miracle now that we have replaced the old and inefficient strings of red, green, white or blue incandescent holiday lights. We also will not have to bother with searching which bulb has blown and needs replacement so that the whole string of lights shines once more. The Tiburon Fire Department can also rest easier as LED's do not burn hot and are not a fire hazard.
The National Christmas Tree in Washington DC as well as the Christmas Tree at Rockefeller Center in New York City are lit with LEDs. The tree at the Rockefeller center this year is a seventy two foot Norway Spruce. It will be decorated with 30,000 LED lights that are connected with just over five miles of wire. These lights will consume 1,297 kilowatt hours of electricity each night the tree is lit. Using LEDs saved 2,223 kilowatt hours each night compared with the old string of lights that were replaced. This amount of energy saved each night will power the average Tiburon home for two months. Additionally, the brightness (lumens) of the string of LED lights is also three times as bright as the replaced lights.
It would be interesting to find out if one of our spy satellites is capable of photographing this tree from outer space with the resolution of being able to see the individual lights. Sorry even the Green Machine does not have the answer to this as it is classified.What does one do with a seventy two foot Christmas Tree after the Holiday Season has passed and it is time to pay the bills? The folks at Rockefeller Center will have it recycled for use as smaller toys for the animals in the Brox Zoo as well as having part of it mulched for hiking trails in and around New York City.
Many people ask me if they should use a live tree or a plastic tree for their Christmas Tree at home. Over the whole lifecycle of a decade the plastic tree has a lower carbon footprint than buying a live tree each year. The largest contribution to the carbon footprint over the decade is from the gasoline used to drive the SUV or Station Wagon to and from the tree lot or the tree farm if you fell your own tree. Many folks also like to light their tree until February or March. In this case plastic trees have far lower danger of catching alight. Form a green point of view whether you choose plastic or living trees, please use LED lights to decorate the tree. Of course the colors of the lights must be varied as green lights will be camouflaged by the tree. Happy Green Holidays to all of you.
I believe I have written previously that LEDs use one tenth the energy of incandescent light bulbs and are long lived and can operate for as long as twelve years. Perhaps we are also witnessing a miracle now that we have replaced the old and inefficient strings of red, green, white or blue incandescent holiday lights. We also will not have to bother with searching which bulb has blown and needs replacement so that the whole string of lights shines once more. The Tiburon Fire Department can also rest easier as LED's do not burn hot and are not a fire hazard.
The National Christmas Tree in Washington DC as well as the Christmas Tree at Rockefeller Center in New York City are lit with LEDs. The tree at the Rockefeller center this year is a seventy two foot Norway Spruce. It will be decorated with 30,000 LED lights that are connected with just over five miles of wire. These lights will consume 1,297 kilowatt hours of electricity each night the tree is lit. Using LEDs saved 2,223 kilowatt hours each night compared with the old string of lights that were replaced. This amount of energy saved each night will power the average Tiburon home for two months. Additionally, the brightness (lumens) of the string of LED lights is also three times as bright as the replaced lights.
It would be interesting to find out if one of our spy satellites is capable of photographing this tree from outer space with the resolution of being able to see the individual lights. Sorry even the Green Machine does not have the answer to this as it is classified.What does one do with a seventy two foot Christmas Tree after the Holiday Season has passed and it is time to pay the bills? The folks at Rockefeller Center will have it recycled for use as smaller toys for the animals in the Brox Zoo as well as having part of it mulched for hiking trails in and around New York City.
Many people ask me if they should use a live tree or a plastic tree for their Christmas Tree at home. Over the whole lifecycle of a decade the plastic tree has a lower carbon footprint than buying a live tree each year. The largest contribution to the carbon footprint over the decade is from the gasoline used to drive the SUV or Station Wagon to and from the tree lot or the tree farm if you fell your own tree. Many folks also like to light their tree until February or March. In this case plastic trees have far lower danger of catching alight. Form a green point of view whether you choose plastic or living trees, please use LED lights to decorate the tree. Of course the colors of the lights must be varied as green lights will be camouflaged by the tree. Happy Green Holidays to all of you.
Thank Giants
Today we thank the Jolly Green Giant for our episode of Green Machine. Is this the Giant on the small screen that ate pees became green and grew into a giant? Actually I was thinking of our Governator who is the new Jolly Green Giant. Just in time for Christmas, Arnie and his Air Resources Board have proposed the Scoping Plan to cut California's greenhouse gas emissions back to 1990 levels by 2020. Developing this Scoping Plan was part of the law that Arnie signed into law in September 2006. The problem is that back in September 2006 housing prices were high and GM still was a company with a stock price of thirty three dollars a share.
The same fools at the Air Resources Board who brought us MTBE are now scoping the future and planning for us to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by thirty seven percent between now and 2020. This will primarily be accomplished by the wished for low carbon fuel the Air Resources Board is yet to invent. Also proposed is a "Feebate" for a Cap-and-Trade program to lower greenhouse gas emissions. I read this as a Tax and an increase in the cost of fuel, automobiles, doing business in the Golden State, or simply living here. Instead of coining marketing terms like Feebates these guys should concentrate on improving the quality of life for all in California.
These imbeciles coined the term "Reformulated Gasoline" for the MTBE laden poisonous gasoline that was mandated twenty years ago to clean the air. This was stupidity of the greatest measure as all gasoline vehicles started to deploy catalytic converters and the MTBE served no purpose other than to line the oil companies' pockets with additional profits. Some elite group will make money out of Cap-and-Trade while our greenhouse gas emissions will not decline by 37% by 2020. The only hope for reduction of greenhouse gases in any large measure is to improve vehicle efficiency and provide incentives for folks to carpool and take public transportation. Instead of Feebates (Taxes) we should have rebates (incentives) to those who adjust the driving habits, turn down their home thermostats, get rid of their lawns and SUVs, and live a greener life.
Thank goodness Obama did not take the Kennedy family's advice and appoint the Jolly Green Giant as the Secretary of Energy. Instead he will appoint a Nobel Prize winning physicist Steven Chu as Energy Secretary. Chu won his Nobel Prize in 1997 for understanding the behaviour of gases at very low temperatures. Chu and his co-winner Claude Cohen-Tanoudji, developed a method to use multiple lasers focused on gas atoms that slowed down their velocity of motion to less than one kilometre per hour thereby reducing their temperature to almost absolute zero. Chu was quoted in 1997 when he won the Nobel Prize that he and Cohen had slowed down the velocity of gases to a rate that an ant might walk. I kind of like it that an ant tamer was chosen over Jolly Green Giant for Energy Secretary. Remember that the suddenly green Governor was the celebrity that popularized Hummers and owned a bunch of them at the time Chu and Cohen were trying to think small and slow things down. I think Dr Chu will be a good Energy Secretary, I only wish that the California Air Resources Board had a collective IQ close to his. As tomorrow is Christmas I will use the words of the original Jolly Green Giant and sign off by saying Ho Ho Ho.
The same fools at the Air Resources Board who brought us MTBE are now scoping the future and planning for us to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by thirty seven percent between now and 2020. This will primarily be accomplished by the wished for low carbon fuel the Air Resources Board is yet to invent. Also proposed is a "Feebate" for a Cap-and-Trade program to lower greenhouse gas emissions. I read this as a Tax and an increase in the cost of fuel, automobiles, doing business in the Golden State, or simply living here. Instead of coining marketing terms like Feebates these guys should concentrate on improving the quality of life for all in California.
These imbeciles coined the term "Reformulated Gasoline" for the MTBE laden poisonous gasoline that was mandated twenty years ago to clean the air. This was stupidity of the greatest measure as all gasoline vehicles started to deploy catalytic converters and the MTBE served no purpose other than to line the oil companies' pockets with additional profits. Some elite group will make money out of Cap-and-Trade while our greenhouse gas emissions will not decline by 37% by 2020. The only hope for reduction of greenhouse gases in any large measure is to improve vehicle efficiency and provide incentives for folks to carpool and take public transportation. Instead of Feebates (Taxes) we should have rebates (incentives) to those who adjust the driving habits, turn down their home thermostats, get rid of their lawns and SUVs, and live a greener life.
Thank goodness Obama did not take the Kennedy family's advice and appoint the Jolly Green Giant as the Secretary of Energy. Instead he will appoint a Nobel Prize winning physicist Steven Chu as Energy Secretary. Chu won his Nobel Prize in 1997 for understanding the behaviour of gases at very low temperatures. Chu and his co-winner Claude Cohen-Tanoudji, developed a method to use multiple lasers focused on gas atoms that slowed down their velocity of motion to less than one kilometre per hour thereby reducing their temperature to almost absolute zero. Chu was quoted in 1997 when he won the Nobel Prize that he and Cohen had slowed down the velocity of gases to a rate that an ant might walk. I kind of like it that an ant tamer was chosen over Jolly Green Giant for Energy Secretary. Remember that the suddenly green Governor was the celebrity that popularized Hummers and owned a bunch of them at the time Chu and Cohen were trying to think small and slow things down. I think Dr Chu will be a good Energy Secretary, I only wish that the California Air Resources Board had a collective IQ close to his. As tomorrow is Christmas I will use the words of the original Jolly Green Giant and sign off by saying Ho Ho Ho.
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