Save the Poudre, store it in the Glade

Posted by Bob Weber on Jul 5th, 2011 in Environment, Politics | 0 comments

The Colorado Front Range, where I live, is a semi-arid environment, which puts us one step above a desert. That means that the only way we can have cities here or have any kind of agriculture is by using dams to create reservoirs. Water rights are a BIG deal here, for years the Front Range has been struggling to provide adequate water to feed it’s growing population.

One of the most recent, ambitious projects is the Glade Reservoir. The proposal is to dam a valley north of Fort Collins and pump water from the Poudre into it.

There is, of course, a group of environmentalists fighting this project and their slogan has become “Save the Poudre”.

I was driving recently and I saw a sticker on a pickup truck (probably belonging to a farmer) that read like this:

Save the Poudre

Store it in the Glade

I laughed for 10 minutes

For more information on the project look at The Truth About Glade Reservoir and the Poudre River

Plastic Bags more Green than Cotton or Paper

Posted by Bob Weber on Feb 24th, 2011 in Environment | 1 comment

An article in The Independent discusses how one study shows Plastic Bags may be more ‘Green’ than paper or reusable cotton bags.

HDPE bags are, for each use, almost 200 times less damaging to the climate than cotton hold-alls favoured by environmentalists, and have less than one third of the Co2 emissions than paper bags which are given out by retailers such as Primark.

The findings suggest that, in order to balance out the tiny impact of each lightweight plastic bag, consumers would have to use the same cotton bag every working day for a year, or use paper bags at least thrice rather than sticking them in the bin or recycling.

The study also finds that most cotton bags are only used 51 times before being discarded. Personally I use almost every plastic bag I get twice, once for groceries and once for trash or other uses around the house. Interesting how ‘Green’ ideas aren’t always good for the environment…

Vikings were not ‘green’ – recycling was an economic necessity

Posted by Bob Weber on Jan 29th, 2010 in Economics, Environment | 0 comments

An article entitled Turning Swords into Battleaxes: Recycled Vikings! just came across the twitter feed. It’s premise, that Vikings ‘recycled’ because they took broken weapons to their local blacksmith and had them made into new ones. While this is a nice story, and it’s point is somewhat relevant, let’s not delude ourselves. The Vikings weren’t ‘green’. The Vikings weren’t reusing the metal in their weapons to get carbon credits and offset all the villages they burnt to the ground. The Vikings ‘recycled’ because they had to. Metal was hard to acquire and it was much more economically viable to use metal that they already had than it was to go mine more.

In fact, if the point of this article is to encourage modern man to recycle, it kind of misses the point. The steel industry has been recycling for 150 years. Since WWII the recycling rate for steel has exceeded 50%. Why is this? Again, economics. It is cheaper to recycle steel than it is to mine new iron and process it into steel. Raw materials are saved and 75% less energy is used annually by steel manufacturers, so of course they recycle.

There is one good point that the article illustrates, and that is that waste is a phenomenon of our modern wealthy society. Many primitive cultures are renowned for for their efficiency. I remember back in school hearing so many stories about how the Native Americans would use very part of a buffalo. Why? Because it was the only resource they had. They didn’t have cotton blankets, steel sewing needles or pleather jackets. They had to use the skin and bone of the animal as well as the meat. In our modern world resources are still plentiful and it’s more cost effective to use those resources than it is to be green, conserve and recycle. Until that changes I fear there is little hope to stop the rampant waste that our society is built upon.

Jeff Rubin – The Business of Climate Change

Posted by Bob Weber on Jan 22nd, 2010 in Economics, Environment | 0 comments

Too many environmentally minded people ignore the economic realities that impact our use of oil. In this video economist Jeff Rubin discusses the future of our economy and the impact rising oil prices will have on global markets. It’s an interesting perspective.

Compact Flourescent test results

Posted by Bob Weber on May 1st, 2008 in Environment, Our Changing World | 0 comments

Back in January I posted an article about CFL lights. I decided to run a test, replacing 6 of 7 light bulbs with cfls.

I’m happy to announce, the results are in. All 6 of the CFLs I installed are still burning brightly, but last week the lone incandescent burnt out. Obviously, this isn’t a perfect test, maybe I will run it again. I still have some incandescents, I think I will replace the burnt out bulb today with a new one and see if it lasts longer than the cfls.

The interesting thing would be to see if I can establish how long the bulbs last, and compare the costs with them. This CFL Savings Calculator, with it’s default settings, shows a savings of $0.44/month or $8.86/year for each CFL bulb. It would be interesting to see if my data supports that. If their numbers are accurate, and I have about 20 bulbs in my home, the total savings would be around $175/year. That’s not a huge amount of money, but worth doing.