Archive for the ‘energy’ Category

How long will it last?

Most of us know that natural resources are finite. Due to those pesky laws of physics, there’s only so much stuff on this little planet of ours. New Scientist poses (and then answers) an interesting question: How much do we have left? And how long will it take to deplete these resources at present rates?

Not surprisingly, we don’t have a lot of years left with many of our favorite natural resources given current consumption rates. The chart presents both the rate of consumption for the U.S. (we’re #1! in a bad way) and for the world, based on an assumption that global consumption goes up to half that of the U.S. (with developing nations striving to match our standard of living, it’s not a bad assumption).

The takeaway here is not that we’re going to all of a sudden run out of Indium and stop making LCD monitors. Instead, this should remind us all that we need to drastically change the way we interact with natural resources over the next century if we want to maintain anything close to our current standard of living.

At the risk of politicizing an otherwise apolitical post, I’ll also add this: When you hear politicians tell you that we can’t do anything to change the way we produce energy or to increase the efficiency of everyday processes because it costs too much, ask yourself this: what’s the cost of doing nothing?

Filed under energy, environment, technology : Comments (0) : Apr 24th, 2009

Rail and the 500 mile flight

The White House is adding some details to the plan for high speed rail in America. As I’ve written before, I’m a big fan of rail transportation. Sadly, our national transportation rail is extremely outdated and woefully inadequate. (Anyone who has traveled in Europe can attest to the efficacy of a good rail system.)

Looking at the map, I detected a subtle pattern. To flesh out my hypothesis, I drew a series of circles with a 500 mile radius. 5 of these circles fit nicely over the proposed high-speed rail corridors.

The 500 mile radius is not arbitrary. This is the distance where air travel is more time efficient than ground based transportation. For airlines, flights less than 500 miles are generally unprofitable.

To understand why, let’s compare two alternatives for travel between Minneapolis and Chicago :

Air travel:

Drive from your home to the airport. [Time : 30 minutes]

Check-in and navigate through security [Time : 30 minutes]

Wait at the gate [Time : 30 minutes]

Board plane and taxi to runway [Time : 20 minutes]

Fly to destination [Time : 90 minutes]

Land, taxi, and deplane [Time : 20 minutes]

Claim baggage and exit airport [Time : 20 minutes]

Drive to destination [Time : 30 minutes]

Total travel time : 4 hours 30 minutes

The above analysis is a best-case. Any delays in flights, traffic, baggage, etc. would add to the time.

High Speed Rail travel:

Taxicab to train station. [Time : 15 minutes]

Board train and wait for departure [Time : 15 minutes]

Travel to destination [Time : 3 hours 20 minutes]

Depart train and taxicab to destination [Time : 15 minutes]

Total travel time : 4 hours 5 minutes

How is it possible that rail travel is actually faster than flying? It’s all about the downtime. Air travel requires many steps along the way that don’t contribute to the primary goal of getting you to your destination.

Driving to the airport – by necessity, airports are far from the city center.
Check-in/security – standing in line @ 0 mph
Waiting at the gate
Taxiing
All-too-ubiquitous delays

By contrast, a high-speed rail system takes you directly from city-center to city-center and minimizes wait time. Plus it’s cheaper and more energy efficient. Neat!

Filed under energy, technology : Comments (4) : Apr 19th, 2009

Pedal Powered Grocery Getter

I’m a big fan of bicycles. In most civilized countries, the bicycle is an integral part of the transportation network. Here in the U.S., it’s a relatively small part of the mix. I think this is set to change as more people realize the benefits of bicycling and cities deploy bicycle-friendly infrastructure.

One of the common reasons people like personal automobiles (and especially SUVs) is the convenience of transporting stuff like groceries. Today was a warm day in Milwaukee so I decided to make a trip to the store with only my bike. Just how much could a bicycle with two medium panniers carry? Let’s find out:

Here’s my ride all loaded down. It handles surprisingly well with a full load.

Here’s a view to give some depth to the panniers.

And here’s the haul I was able to carry. Not bad if I do say so myself!

Filed under energy, frugal : Comments (3) : Apr 15th, 2009

Brain Hack : Gallons per 100

When we describe the relative efficiency of an automobile, we almost always use the measurement of miles per gallon. It’s easy to describe, it’s easy to calculate, it’s familiar. But is it the appropriate measurement for comparison?

Mathematically, it’s perfectly reasonable. Using the measure of MPG, I can tell you exactly how many miles I can drive on a tank of gas, or how many gallons I’ll burn driving a certain number of miles. Unfortunately, the human brain isn’t a perfect computer and we often take shortcuts in calculations.

Consider the following graph:

miles_per_gallon

This simple chart shows the relative MPG for four sample cars. Each car in the series gets 10 MPG better than the previous. Looking at this chart, you might conclude that the difference between Car A and Car B is equivalent to that of Cars C & D.

Surprisingly, you would be wrong.

Here is the same data but represented in Gallons per 100 Miles:

gallons_per_100_miles

Looking at this graph, it’s immediately obvious that the difference between Cars A & B is far greater than Cars C & D. After driving 100 miles, Car A burns 2.6 gallons more than Car B; Car C burns only 0.6 gallons more than Car D.

So why is this important?

As high fuel prices and increasing environmental awareness push consumers towards more efficient automobiles, it’s important that we have an accurate comparison. If you drive a car that gets 20 MPG or less, upgrading to a car that gets 25-30MPG will have a significant impact on your fuel consumption. Far more, in fact, than upgrading a modestly efficient car to a super-efficient model.

Hack your brain–next time you’re comparing cars, don’t look at MPGs. Convert to Gallons per 100 Miles (GP100) instead and make your comparison much easier.

GP100 = 100 ÷ MPG

Filed under energy, hack : Comments (2) : Mar 17th, 2009

How could 100 Million drivers be wrong?

Some statistics about our automobile culture to ponder:

American adults average 72 minutes a day behind the wheel of a car, according to the WorldWatch Institute.
That’s more than twice as much time as the average American father spends with their kids, according to the United States Department of Labor.
It’s the equivalent, if you do the math, of just over one eight-hour workday a week or just under 11 40-hour work-weeks a year.
According the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 17 percent of the average American’s income goes on the costs of owning and running a car.
That means, in other words, that we spend eight weeks of every year working to pay for our cars.
Putting it all together, we Americans spend the equivalent of nearly five work-months a year either driving our cars or working to pay for them.
And a lot of the time, reports the Texas Transportation Institute, we aren’t even getting anywhere, since we annually spend the equivalent of 105 million weeks of vacation sitting in traffic jams.
Every ten minutes we spend commuting, according to Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone, means 10 percent less connection with our friends and communities.
Even if you don’t own a car, research also shows that the more traffic on our city street the fewer friends we have, because the traffic causes to spend less time hanging out in our neighborhood.
You don’t need to own a car either to breathe the 70 to 80 percent of air pollution that automobiles and trucks contribute in New York, Los Angeles, and Dallas, according to the Environmental Defense Fund
Meanwhile, studies show that the more a nation’s citizens commute by walking, biking and public transportation, the less obese they are.
To top it all off, people who ride bikes or walk to work are 24 percent more likely to be happy with their commute than those who drive their cars.