Interesting...

[tamakun]

I'm a fan of Bob McDonald. I have been ever since I watched Wonderstruck when I was a kid. I still have a book that he wrote a long time ago, signed by him. The signature reads "To the one with all the answers, have fun with those puzzles!" - I guess I was pretty well-informed for a tyke :)

In any case, Mr. McDonald's still producing "Quirks and Quarks", and he also has a weekly online article. This week's article is a surprising little note on how Canada is pretty bad when it comes to being environmentally-friendly compared to Germany. I know that the States has a lot of dependance on oil and it's most likely the reason behind their war right now, but I wasn't aware that we're also quite dependant on oil outselves.

(...wait, yes, I was. Alberta's jobs are expanding like mad due to the oil sands project...)

If I could do anything about it, I would have a hybrid car (which I'm thinking about, even while I'm still paying the first year of my new car), or solar panels. But I'm fairly certain that I'm not permitted to install solar panels on the balcony, nor am I allowed to "feed the grid" in a condo. I wonder if the condo itself could get solar panels, though...

Comments

[woekitten.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Canada's pretty terrible when it comes to the environment. I think some of it has to do with the oil sands project, but there's also just the fact that we're such a huge country with such a tiny population; we feel like there's no possible way we can foul things up because we have so much space.

Countries in Europe and some Asian countries like Japan have always had to make do with limited space. They can afford far less to crap where they eat.

I also can't say that I faith Alberta's economy will remain stable. I'm hearing from friends about insane rents and insane inflation. I know someone who has to pay nearly 1200 a month for a bachelor apartment in Calgary. I know someone else whose rent increased by $100 a month, because there's no rent control.

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

Well, at some point, there will definitely be a lack of oil... I mean, the Oil Sands project is due to the fact they can't drill, but they can filter the oil out of the sand, right? It sounds kinda like soaking up Pepsi out of a carpet with a sponge, and kinda sounds almost desperate, if that's the right term for it.

When the oil finally disappears into the ether, oil prices will skyrocket and all of a sudden, probably both Canada and the US will have an economic downturn. And when that happens, whenever it does, it will be scary to think of what's going to happen. I can't imagine what's going to happen to Alberta's economics (and population) when the oil dries up.

[kats-kradle.livejournal.com]

But but but!!! clearly oil is never-ending thing of...thingy...or something...

But yheah, Canada and the U.S. have pretty much the same culture of consumerism so the idea that Canada isn't so hot doesn't surprise me (also, I've been following this whole oil flailing about at work and pretty much every country on the planet has been given some sort of score and the 1st world generally has a score of School-Dunce)

As for the Alberta oil sands, well the companies are apparently waggling eyebrows about the oil shale out in the Rockies which is a lot harder to squeeze oil out of so...yheah, they're getting pretty desperate all the time.

[bassbeast.livejournal.com]

Hybrid cars are a nice idea in theory. And if you've got the $5000+ every two years to replace the battery in them, then by all means, buy one.

...

Oh yeah, they don't tell you about that in the love-in that is the hybrid advertising. And where do you think those dead batteries go?

The best things you can do are to be smart about your waste and power use:
- avoid buying aluminum can products (the smelting process isn't that green-friendly)
- recycle, compost
- take public transit/walk/bike/rollerblade
- turn off the lights, change the ones you have to either CF or LED
- buy local produce and meats from local farmers instead of importers

These kinds of initiatives mean a lot more than just turning off the lights for an hour or stop-gap technologies.

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

By the way, it's been a few years since you told me about the 2-year battery thing - things have changed a lot recently, almost to the point that hybrid batteries last the life of the car (almost 250,000km) (http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/06/should_we_be_wo_1.php). (I think I drove 75,000km over 5 years in Amaterasu.) Plus, there are hybrid cars that use the braking power to recharge the battery, too. Since I do a lot of in-town driving, it would be almost exclusively battery-driven rather than using gas.

(Thing is, GM is behind in terms of hybrids. I may have to find another company if I really want to go hybrid.)

The local produce idea is also a smart one which I really need to stand behind. I can go without oranges for a few months out of the year. ;)

[bassbeast.livejournal.com]

Wow, colour me surprised and I happily sit corrected. I'm glad that recycling programs are now in place. Thank you for the links. I started to do a little more research now.

GM is very much behind the times in terms of hybrid technology. Toyota seems to be right in the lead, with Honda not too far behind.

A note on Hybrid vehicles

[http:/// (from livejournal.com)]

My research suggests that the only hybrid that's really worth bothering with is the Prius. It's been doing regenerative braking from the outset, and the technology has become quite stable... steer clear of 'redesigned' or 'reconceived' vehicles, because that means they haven't had a chance to work out the bugs yet.

Also, battery life will vary dramatically with the kind of use you put them through... 'shallow cycle' usage, i.e. a lot of low-level draw followed by 'topping up' with the charger, is the hardest on a battery, which unfortunately is exactly what hybrids do. Although batteries have definitely been getting pretty good at dealing with this lately, the stats that I've heard still put the hybrid's expected battery lifetime at around 5 years. Although that's not too far out from when you might expect to have to rebuild your gas engine, so perhaps that's a reasonable expense.

Another aspect of hybrids is how they use the electric motor. There's three different configurations that I'm aware of; indirect-drive, where the wheels are driven strictly from the battery, and the gas motor is just used to charge the battery; dual "synergy" or whatever, where the electric and gas motors feed into a universal gearset and trade off who drives the wheels when to optimise fuel usage, and "booster mode" (for wont of a better term), where both motors feed into a universal gearset and the electric motor supplies extra torque.

Most hybrids fall into the last category, allowing you essentially to drive a 4-cylinder car with 6-cylinder acceleration; from an environmental standpoint, this is a bit of a cop-out, because you could get the same mileage with a 4-cylinder engine. The first category is still experimental, I think, but if one happens to be out there, it would probably be the best available model for gas mileage/environment, because it means that the gas motor would only ever run at peak efficiency. The middle category as far as I know only comprises the Prius, and has the effect of pushing inner-city mileage up to meet highway mileage, as well as giving you extra torque when you need it. This is also why the Prius is a bit more expensive than the other hybrid options.

BTW, getting good mileage out of a hybrid depends heavily on your skill at driving efficiently. A friend of mine who owns a Prius says that it took him quite awhile to start seeing gas savings... you need to accelerate very gently, and decelerate even more gently, to give the regenerative braking the best opportunity to reclaim kinetic energy. Also, as I understand it the efficiency of a battery charger is down around 10% of input current, so your regenerative braking has to work very well to reclaim an appreciable amount of energy. However, I *think* you might be able to 'plug in' some hybrids to the main line and recharge the battery overnight. This would save a huge amount in gas.

[hopping-v.livejournal.com]

You could add reducing the amount of meat in your diet to the other ways people have listed to help the environment. Very very rough explanation of why: it takes a lot of grain to feed a cow, pig etc. and the amount of calories going in vastly out weighs the amount produced in the 'end product'. All that grain needs space, fossil fuel based fertilizers, and transportation. Plus in many cases the pollution created by the animals themselves. I adds up to a lot of waste and even a small reduction in everyones diet would help a lot.

[kinnonyee.livejournal.com]

http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9956965-1.html

http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/435083

[(Anonymous)]

I'd be a bit careful with that turbine. 1.2 KW is less than 1 electric baseboard heater's worth of power, and less than a quarter of what your stove uses. Even at Nova Scotia rates, you'd save around $240 a year, and you'd need to buy an inverter and either batteries or the net-billing meter to go with your $5000 turbine. You'd be very unlikely to break even before you needed to replace the thing, and from an environmental standpoint it's a tad tricky to work out the consequences, because they used a lot of power purchased at a low rate to build the thing, and steel is a messy metal to make...

Still, it's awesome that someone's working towards a feasible small wind turbine. If they could get the price down to about 1/10th of that, it would start to be a good idea... economy of scale and 'space age materials' should be able to provide that.