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Tag Archives: energy
Domestic oil drilling: A reality check
Driving vs. Flying
See Hypermilers, The key number is MPGPP (miles per gallon per person). The article looks at cross-country (New York-LA) travel. I would like to see the figures for Minneapolis-Chicago (trust CNN to ignore “flyover country”) and to include Megabus in the comparison.
Gas prices and greenhouse gas
Bicycle and bus
I rode my bicycle to and from the Rosedale park-and-ride (about three miles each way) both Monday and Tuesday. From there I took an express bus to work in downtown Minneapolis as I usually do. I gave my knees a break yesterday and drove to Rosedale, but I was back on the bike this morning. I hope to manage 3-4 carless commutes each week through the summer and early fall.
Long ago I read an article arguing that per passenger mile the bicycle was the most energy-efficient form of transportation known, not only to homo sapiens, but throughout the animal kingdom. It was in a reputable scientific publication, Physics Today IIRC, with plenty of numbers, equations, and graphs. I wonder if I could track down a copy of it.
The weekend
Clann Tartan at Charles City
Conservation of Energy: Not just a good idea, it is the law.
Awareness of the problem with biofuels is spreading, but Sean Carroll speaks more to this geek than Paul Krugman or the editors of Time:
Funny thing about energy: it’s conserved! …. We bring you this reminder because a knowledge of basic physics can occasionally be helpful when formulating public policy.
In particular, biofuels (such as ethanol) and hydrogen are not actually sources of energy — given the vagaries of thermodynamics, it costs more energy to create them than we can get by actually using them, as there will inevitably be some waste heat and entropy produced.
Coming to your home….
California Seeks Thermostat Control
Next year in California, state regulators are likely to have the emergency power to control individual thermostats, sending temperatures up or down through a radio-controlled device that will be required in new or substantially modified houses and buildings to manage electricity shortages.
via Slashdot.
The Morning After
As mia_mcdavid wrote, we are OK.
The bus I take to work had not been using the 35W Bridge across the Mississippi, so I was able to ride it to work downtown as I have been doing. It was slower than it had been: There was a lot more traffic on Central Avenue and the 3rd Ave. bridge than before, as you might expect with one of the other major bridges gone. Looking out the bus window I could see the cars were bumper-to-bumper. I could only see one with more than a single occupant. Sigh….
A few yards away from my cubicle here I can look out the window and see the broken bridge in the distance.
From Hilbert Space to Dilbert Space, and beyond 