I made one of these in high school out of some black paint, sand, cardboard and some tinfoil. The water in the can reached almost 180 degrees Fahrenheit in just a few minutes. Pretty cool, and easy too.
Not all, but most can be used to reduce energy consumption and thus greenhouse gas emissions. Some are simple, actually all are simple, it's a good thing… check it out.
100 Ways to Save the Environment [SEQL.org]
The folks at Slate Magazine are doing an 8 week long "carbon diet" tutorial on their site. It's already week 6 so there are plenty of ideas already in place. They cover the basics such as saving energy while traveling by car or plane as well as how to save on home heating costs.
They also have some good suggestions such as eating less meat. They're right about it too because of the old rule of 10. Anyway, it's a good read and you just might learn something unexpected.
Here's part II of my previous article on why vegetarianism can help save the world. I ended the last article just as I was about to explain what the power of 10 rule has to do with global warming. So here it is:
Large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions are produced by our food industry. I've heard estimates that up to 17% of our fossil fuel use goes towards food production in the US. Vegetable production is no exception, you need all sorts of mostly gas powered vehicles to plow, sow, harvest, and distribute much of the plants we eat.
CO2 is released during the production of crops, although some if not all of it is offset by the plants themselves which remove CO2 from the atmosphere during their growth. Though we still need to transport the fresh plant matter to processing plants or distribution facilities which then create greenhouse gas emissions themselves. Then we can either transport the plants to supermarkets, or we can feed the stuff to animals which will go on to produce our meat in addition to Methane gas among other things which contribute to global warming. Then the animals need to be processed and the food transported yet again to our supermarkets, which we probably drove to in a gas guzzling car. Finally we need to cook the meat which will take even more energy and most likely result in even more greenhouse gas emissions.
Although it's not perfectly accurate, there's a concept out there that helps to illustrate how a vegetarian diet can help save the world. I'm not talking about health issues here because that's not the point of this blog. I'll also mention that I'm not a vegetarian myself, although I would love to be. My girlfriend on the other hand is, and maybe one day I'll join her among the ranks of the ultra efficient energy eaters. That being said, if I start to sound preachy I'm not trying to be, I'm just passing the hard truth onto you.
So here's my attempt at an explanation of the power of 10 rule:
Basically, the rule roughly estimates that as you climb the food chain, you only preserve 1/10th of the original energy input. The main energy source on our planet is the sun and some of the sun's energy goes towards growing plants. Some animals eat the plants and some animals eat other animals. The most efficient use of the solar energy, or energy in general, is to eat the sunlight, but hey that's what the plants do. The second most efficient option for us as walking talking creatures is to eat the plants.
Though when we eat the plants, we are unable to make use of 100% of the energy the plant absorbed itself. Some of that energy went towards the plant growing, reproducing, other biological processes, as well as heat emission. Plus our digestive systems are not 100% efficient, thus some of the energy is lost there as well. In the first stage, it is estimated that the plants only make use of 10% of the energy they absorb. Then when we eat the plants, we only make use of 1% of the original energy. Now let's say you get eaten by a crazed carnivorous animal, sucks for you. The creature who was so lucky to have had such a tasty vegetarian for dinner will only make use of .1% of the original energy input from the sun. The energy transfer starts at 100%, plants get 10%, vegetarians get 1%, and carnivores get a measly .1%.
On and on it goes up the food chain of energy loss. So, let's now put it into a context that's really easy to understand. You can either eat 10 pounds of grain yourself, or you can feed that 10 pounds of grain to a vegetarian creature and net yourself about 1 pound of meat. Which do you think would feed the most people?
It's a grossly simplified analogy and again the math isn't 100% accurate, but the loss is real and significant, and it's good to be conscious of the energy footprint your next meal will have on the world. I won't even go into how many more people our planet could feed if we stopped feeding perfectly edible people food to animals just so we can harvest their meat.
What does this have to do with global warming? Check out part II of this article and I'll explain, I promise.
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