[Greenbuilding] ENERGY STAR Clothes Dryers Program Launch

[Corwyn]

On 7/29/2012 11:14 PM, Reuben Deumling wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 29, 2012 at 4:36 AM, nick pine <nick at early.com
> <mailto:nick at early.com>> wrote:
>
>     Reuben Deumling <9watts at gmail.com <mailto:9watts at gmail.com>> writes:
>
>         The fact is that in the 1930s and 40s many of our (US) household
>         appliances were very efficient: water heaters, refrigerators,
>         kitchen stoves, toilets, etc.
>
>
>     A lot of appliances are more efficient today.
>
>
> O.K. I'll bite.
> Name one or two or three.
>
>     I lived with an old sidearm water heater with NO insulation.
>
>
> I have one too, and you're right about the no-insulation part, but the
> heat transfer efficiency is what - 4x better? 8x? Efficiency isn't
> usefully measured or compared without context. A side arm water heater
> could (have) easily been used in a manner (I'm thinking of the Ingalls'
> family's practice of bathing on Saturday evening) where the
> (considerably more efficient) heat transfer efficiency more than made up
> for the lack of insulation. Just as an example.

I think you are losing the definition of efficient here.

However, the point is NOT to be as efficient as possible.  The point is 
that we need to live within our means.  For energy, that means that if 
we aren't using it sustainably, it doesn't matter how efficiently we are 
using the energy.  If it is not sustainable, we will run out, and doom 
our descendants to be without.

Efficiency often makes things worse.  Case studies have shown that 
increasing efficiency of some machine sometimes INCREASES the total 
energy used by the aggregate of all of those machines.


Thank You Kindly,

Corwyn

-- 
Topher Belknap
Green Fret Consulting
Kermit didn't know the half of it...
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topher at greenfret.com
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