[Greenbuilding] Perceptions of Nature & Reality

[Norbert Senf]

At 11:35 AM 5/28/2013 -0400, Alan Abrams wrote:
>but still we need a vocabulary that bridges or 
>penetrates the fear, or laziness, or just plain 
>hardheadedness of the majority of our clients 
>whose minds--even those that have earned JD's 
>and PhD's--switch off like a light when when you 
>start talking to them about kWh's and 
>Btu's.  particularly those who begin the 
>conversation with:  "We want to be as green as possible..."
>
>if anyone figures this out, call me collect...

yes, big problem. For everyone, because the 
simple answer is "then stop flying and staying in hotels"
The climate impact of hopping on a plane is 
disproportionate to anything else we do, because 
there is a 2.3 multiplier on the carbon, from the 
water vapor emitted into the upper atmosphere, according to George Monbiot.

So you can basically drive a Hummer and idle it 
at the Tim Horton's drive through all you want, 
and still cause less global warming than the 
guy/gal who hops on a plane to go to conferences, 
Cancun, whatever. A single person flying to 
Cancun and a single person driving a Hummer there 
are roughly equivalent. Put two people in the Hummer, and it is "greener".

This is facilitated by our ignorance of physical 
units for energy and what they mean. Not to mention our increasing innumeracy.
A barrel of oil, for example, equals about 10,000 
hours of human labor in energy equivalence.
An average car and an average house are roughly 
equivalent in annual carbon output.

Norbert


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Norbert Senf---------- mheat(at)heatkit.com
Masonry Stove Builders
25 Brouse Rd.
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