Someone pointed me at this end of year article at get realist.  Quite sobering.  The general conclusion is that government, or cap-and-trade, or international agreements are not on track to succeed in the face of climate change, and that individuals need to take more personal responsibility in making change.  I agree.  As a friend of mine said “we are all trying to learn how to live the life we need everyone else to live”.  We need many innovations, some technical, most social.  We need to expand the people working on solving these problems to a group that includes everyone.  Every small business owner, every individual.

http://www.getreallist.com/investing-in-an-empire-of-illusion.html

Good magazine asked me to write something about Heirloom Products.  I must have said the words too many times publicly.  If you want to read the article at a fancy website with nice pictures and good design layout go here:

http://www.good.is/post/built-to-last/

Or, here are the words:

As an inventor, Saul Griffith has spent a lot of time thinking about how to make useful things. Griffith developed innovative designs for low-cost prescription glasses and energy-producing kites, founded the DIY website Instructables, and created a comprehensive carbon calculator called WattzOn. He was also awarded a MacArthur “genius” grant in 2007. Recently, onstage at high-profile conferences such as TED and PopTech, Griffith has been arguing that we need to stop buying things and then throwing them away so quickly. In short, we need more “heirloom design.”

GOOD: What do you mean by “heirloom design?”

SAUL GRIFFITH: An object with “heirloom design” is something that will not only last [...]

Inhabitat asked me to give my design predictions for 2010.

Here’s the link:

http://www.inhabitat.com/2010/01/04/green-design-predictions-for-2010/3/

Here’s my words, and yes, I was fairly depressed by Copenhagen result, and it might have tainted my writings:

Green Design 2010:

Given that no binding agreement was reached in Copenhagen, there will likely be no national or international pressure to do real green-house reductions, and hence it is very likely that 2010 green design will be an undertaking of those trying to greenwash their companies. Very likely we’ll see many people misusuing terminology and physical units to overmarket products that aren’t really going to cut the mustard. Remember that a climate friendly world means a reduction in carbon of 80%, that means 5 X less carbon that we produce today, by 2050 or probably even earlier. Given that, we’ll see lots of designs begging you to buy this or that thing because it’s twice as good, or 25% better than [...]

Peak Cars, or Just a Car Sales Trough? New vehicles vs. scrappage 1991-2009 http://bit.ly/6YKD79

Although with BYD and TATA doing their thing, this is probably only a local, (US) effect.

This Onion article wonderfully represents the sociological challenge to an heirloom product culture where we make things that last longer, such that we don’t use the extra energy every time we re-make them (or their replacements).

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/new_device_desirable_old_device

While some people claim victory in Copenhagen with an “accord” (as far as i can tell an agreement to agree about something we might agree upon at some time in the future) I’m pretty saddened by the Copenhagen result.  At times like these I turn to comfort foods.  In this case a beautiful photo series on a chinese bicycle factory.  Bicycles are still the highest technology in low emission vehicles.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cargocycling/911579868/in/set-72157601030739985/

I love this, and couldn’t resist posting it.  The future could be beautiful.

http://www.pinktentacle.com/2009/10/tezuka-wind-turbine/

This is really quite lovely.  Congratulations to Raymond T. Pierrehumbert for using reason, good logic, and real numbers to refute some of the insanity around regarding climate issues.  A lovely example of numbers in defense of sanity.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/10/an-open-letter-to-steve-levitt/

I think the solar power area numbers he uses might be a little optimistic, but only by a factor of 2 or so, and not that it would drastically change the conclusion of the article.

We fill our cars with gas regularly, but don’t even see the liquid go into the tank.  If we were to imagine that we had to fill a backpack with the fuels required for a day of our lives, what would we be filling our energy back-pack with each day?

Each day the average american sets out with:

OIL = 10.81    L/Person/day
COAL = 9.54    kg/person/day
NATURAL GAS = 5.88    m^3/person/day

Which roughly converted to those other units is around 22 Pints of oil per day (one per hour!), 22 pounds of coal (another per hour) and 180 cubic feet of natural gas.

I used the annual consumption of coal and natural gas, and the daily consumption of oil, and converted it to the daily average by dividing it out by the population of the US.

The data is here: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=tEXpAv8VzEvgO5lNqze0JNw&output=html

The president’s speech:

http://amps-web.mit.edu/public/amps/webcast/2009/obama-2009oct23/ondemand.html

And even better, my friend Alex Slocum’s post visit interview:

http://cleanskies.com/videos/mit-demonstrates-offshore-renewable-energy-systems

This cartoon pretty much sums it up.  Let’s plan on the stuff we know works, and invest in the research we know might lead somewhere.  Not hold out for alien finger’s crossed we don’t understand it technology.

I love a hot shower in the morning. While it’s not a human right just yet, occasionally it feels like one.  So how much energy does it take to have a hot shower?

The simple version looks like this:

First we establish the conversion units…

liters_in_gallon=3.78541178

H2O_heat_capacity=4.18   (J/g/K)

seconds_in_day = 60*60*24

density_water = 1 (g/cm^3)

Now assume 2 gallons per minute of shower from my low flow shower head and assume 5 minute hot showers at 40 degrees celsius (about 100F).

showers_per_day =1

gallons_per_minute =2

minutes_per_shower =5

liters_per_shower = liters_in_gallon * gallons_per_minute * minutes_per_shower

grams_per_shower = liters_per_shower * 1000 * density_water

shower_Temperature=40

ambient_Temperature=8

shower_heat_Joules=showers_per_day *(grams_per_shower * H2O_heat_capacity *(shower_Temperature-ambient_Temperature))

daily_shower_Watts = shower_heat_Joules/seconds_in_day

shower_heat_Joules = 5063400
daily_shower_Watts = 58.6038
Which is of course just the energy or power that my water heater consumes.  The above estimate is probably low because I assumed 100% efficient water heater, and no losses in the piping.  One might call each of those 10% losses (or 90% efficiencies) which would make it around 70 watts.  If [...]

I’ve cut and pasted in the chat room chat below from today’s webcast.  Blue is who.  Black is what they asked/said.  Red is answers and pointers from me.

from O’Reilly Media to All Participants:
Hi Everyone, thanks for joining us today. We’ll begin at 10 am PT. There will be silence or faint music until then.
from O’Reilly Media to All Participants:
Hi Everyone—thanks for joining us today. The presentation will begin at 10 am PT. There will be silence or faint music until then.
from Pat Walsh to All Participants:
for the streaming audio: should I be hearing background music of any sort or any other noise at this time?  or is silence correct at this point?
from O’Reilly Media to All Participants:

If you’re a twitter user, we’re using the hashtag #energyliteracy for this webcast
from Pat Walsh to All Participants:
thank you
from Raju Varghese to All Participants:
I can hear faint music. When I increase the volume the [...]

When we build, let us think that we build forever.
Let it not be for present delight nor for present use alone.
Let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for;
and let us think, as we lay stone on stone,
that a time is to come when those stones will be held
sacred because our hands have touched them,
and that men will say, as they look upon
the labor and wrought substance of them,
“See! This our father did for us.”

—John Ruskin

I love this quote.  It captures more comprehensively what I have been trying to say when I describe “Heirloom technologies”.   Amortising the embodied energy of the things we make and use over a much longer period, by making them robust and beautiful.