Category Archives: Climate

Climate Ride: Toward Energy Sustainability

Climate, Energy Sustainability

 

DSC06735 Credit for this photo goes to Climate Ride.  This is a photograph of the beginning of one of the Climate Ride events in 2011 from my computer screen.

It was described on Climate Ride, “Pedal Your Bike, Power the Movement”, as “Riders leaving Manhattan at the start of NYC-CD 2011”, one of their several climate rides in that year.  Climate Ride sponsors several bicycle riding and hiking events around the country, with the purpose “… to inspire and empower citizens to work toward  a new energy future …”

This is an organization that I like to highlight, because it aims to help us move toward energy sustainability in a fun way.

Science And the Public

Climate, Infection, Science, ,

DSC03838 Hilarious! But deeper down, there are a couple of reasons behind this.

  1. Ebola, if you catch it, is much more immediate than climate change, although the latter is already detectably going on.
  2. Ebola sounds so individually horrible,  whereas climate change is out there, and does not seem to personally hurt us.

Of course, altogether, climate change is affecting everybody on earth right now, and could even conceivably be aggravating the ebola, by way of increasing stress of change on plant, animal, and human immune systems.

Climate change is already affecting us because we see a lot of drought, more fires, bigger storms, even earthquakes caused by fracking to access the natural gas, which we need to supplement the energy provided by oil and coal burning.

 

Saving Energy at Home

Climate, Energy, ,

energysaver_energyuse This graph from Energy.gov shows where the average home energy use goes.    The largest combined item is heating and cooling the home.

tips_airsealing  This image from Energy.gov shows where air leaks can be stopped to reduce the home’s heating and cooling costs.  We are working on these  to noticeably reduce our yearly energy budget, and to reduce our carbon footprint.   Here in the south we spend the reverse proportions on cooling and heating.