17 thoughts on “Happy Solstice, from Ford Motor Company, and Electric Car Owners”
I love this. I think it would be great if we could see a lot more of this sort of thing – showing people just how great life is, or could be, with renewables instead of fossil fuels.
Most people – perhaps especially environmentalists – suffer from a behavioral conditioning (if you will) about energy use. We have been taught for so long that energy is expensive, must be conserved, never used profligately. That it hurts the planet to use more energy than the bare minimum required.
That it is good to suffer. Keep your house so cold, for example in Northern winters, that you should always wear one or two sweaters. Take one minute showers. Minimize driving. Turn those lights off! Keep your air conditioning set to 80. Etc.
But that is the future we need as fossil fuels get more expensive. It is NOT the future we can have with renewables if we play this right. If we play this right, we will all have abundant energy at extremely low or zero price.
This commercial showed something very interesting. It showed free sunshine making free electricity that went into that car. And then that car peeled out much faster than it needed to. Snow was flying from the tires. And the people were smiling. And I say – bravo!
Those of us who see the need for renewables, might want to consider how we can illustrate the benefits of renewables.
How about a commercial showing a family happily turning on lights (LED, of course) all over the house – but it is OK! Because they have stored their own free electricity and they have tons to spare. Or taking hour long hot tub soaks? Or wearing t-shirts indoors in a toasty warm house instead of huddling inside a blanket on the couch? Doing all these things while watching a [CO2] gauge for the Earth drop steadily?
Because if a family can enjoy such abundance, why can not a nation?
You think having low-cost energy is a fantasy? You think that this is not something we should strive for? That having renewable energy be a commons project instead of a laissez-faire private profit-making enterprise is not worth even talking about?
Roger, there is so much ridiculously wrong with your comment, that it’s pretty pointless for me to respond to it with anything but satire. I see your comment as a shining example of why we’re truly screwed on this issue, because I know most people, even VERY well meaning people, think the same way.
I see others agree with you here, too, and that’s fine. I’d love it if I was completely wrong about this, and that the world was a magical place where a green fairy rubs pixie dust over everything and it’s all good with everyone in the world having their thermostat at 80 degrees in mid-winter with all their LED lights on and driving to work from the country in their EVs. Nothing in that belief jives with my understanding of energy, politics, environmental and resource problems, human behavior, and economics – but okey dokey. I’m just a bot trained by Standard Oil – beep, boop, beep.
My take on the Ford commercial is that it’s very targeted to a particular audience, which is wealthy (or at least materially comfortable, but don’t like to flaunt it), white, atheist/agnostic, and green-minded. Outside of that demographic, I think it’s more likely to push the wrong buttons with several groups. So, it’ll help sell a few EVs to a subgroup of Americans, but it’s far from reaching the masses in even the wealthiest country on planet Earth.
“That having renewable energy be a commons project instead of a laissez-faire private profit-making enterprise is not worth even talking about?”
Separate issue – not referred to be either the commercial (private panels on home) or your first comment. I’ve stated repeatedly I am for such a public project.
Happy Winter Solstice is very cool, but Fox News is going to blow a Gasket, because it’s a slow news day, like every other day, they need to find Trivia to Bitch About.
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“the world was a magical place where a green fairy rubs pixie dust over everything and it’s all good with everyone in the world having their thermostat at 80 degrees in mid-winter with all their LED lights on and driving to work from the country in their EVs. “
I don’t see why we can not have that world. We are awash in free harvestable energy. Why can we not bathe in it?
That world is available to us now, even with today’s technology. Building the system we need to harvest it will save the world, and also save us hundreds of trillions of dollars over a century’s time.
The only things which prevent us from living that life are:
1) almost no one talks about it as our rightful due
2) People have been trained about their energy use for years by our fossil fuel world, and in that world, energy use is expensive and destructive.
3) Cynicism, cynicism, cynicism. I think you may belong here, jimbills. Which truly sucks, because we need all the help we can get with (1)
In short researchers have discovered that a graphene blocks membrane only allows Hydrogen stripped of its electrons (i.e. Hydrogen protons) to pass through. Unlike other current fuel cell membranes the graphene one resists crossover poisoning that lowers the efficiency and lifetime of a fuel cell.
Better still if you live in an area with a moist atmosphere a separate use of this technology is to pull hydrogen directly from the atmosphere.
The Manchester group also demonstrated that their one-atom-thick membranes can be used to extract hydrogen from a humid atmosphere. They hypothesise that such harvesting can be combined together with fuel cells to create a mobile electric generator that is fuelled simply by hydrogen present in air.
Marcelo Lozada-Hidalgo, a PhD student and corresponding author of this paper, said: “When you know how it should work, it is a very simple setup. You put a hydrogen-containing gas on one side, apply small electric current and collect pure hydrogen on the other side. This hydrogen can then be burned in a fuel cell.
“We worked with small membranes, and the achieved flow of hydrogen is of course tiny so far. But this is the initial stage of discovery, and the paper is to make experts aware of the existing prospects. To build up and test hydrogen harvesters will require much further effort.”
I partly agree with you in order to motivate people who think going green energy means only to conserve and live less. But a part of me also feels the rat race life we live, even the need for personal transport is already wrong. If we had some way of organizing society to one with less treks needed, that would be a ton of energy saved just there. I generally agree with Winnie the Pooh, a bit of both is needed. 😉
Other than that I agree that if you kit your house with lots of LED lights the total energy use is rather dramatically lower than what we used to have. In in the dead night of winter in the northern hemisphere it can help a lot on the psyche to have a lot of lights on in at least the rooms you normally are in.
Still compared to the average person on the planet, we live extraordinary lives in the western world – and the lifestyle is really only possible with high energy consumption. It might not be compatible with resource usage on general if we plan to keep this planet in some habitable state for centuries still. In order to have any real intelligent discussion we need to wipe the cards of the table and start with a new deck to figure out how far we can stretch consumption to have it sustainable. I think its important to defines what is “enough” in relation to what we got. Atm, the western world is really totally out of sync with this idea.
I’ve never said efficiencies or energy alternatives are to be avoided or that ONLY conservation can help us. It should be obvious that a combination of all three should be the goal on energy.
For the record, I happen to have gone all LED in my home over a year ago. Total electricity has NOT lowered dramatically as a result, simply because lighting composes a smallish percentage of total energy. Most of it goes towards heating (largest source), cooling, and water heating. Averages in U.S.: http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=99&t=3
But, I did it and don’t regret it for a second. Over time, after the initial cost has been absorbed, my total cost will be less, I won’t have to worry about changing them for years, and it’s a pleasant and consistent light. Combined WITH making sure I turn them off when I leave a room, I know that my footprint on the electrical grid is lower than it would be otherwise.
Still, I have the sense to realize my consumption levels are way out of line with what is really sustainable globally. Your comment “the western world is really totally out of sync with this idea” is an understatement, and it’s sad and horrifying that most in the Western world don’t realize it (or do and don’t care, or don’t want to).
Personally, I’m working hard on increasing efficiencies and conservation measures. It’s the right thing to do on an individual level, while understanding on the group level we are far more likely to see a manifestation of Jevons Paradox, and subsequently a continually high demand on all sources of energy and resources, as GB illustrated in his first comment.
Actually, I’m with gingerbaker on this one. I’m really, really, Really annoyed at having moved to a smaller, more “economical” house now that our kids have left home. And for the first time in 25 years I have to wash in cold water. I used hot water sometimes during the first few months we were here, then I saw the gas bill. Urk!!!
Having nearly limitless hot water from our previous solar system meant that I used to sneer at all my greenie friends who insisted the only way to live was to have a washing machine that used _tiny_ amounts of _cold_ water. I freely used my free hot water as needed and every single drop of water used in doing laundry in a conventional washing machine was piped to lawn/ trees/ garden – because it was sufficiently dilute not to worry the plants. Free heat and double use of a measured quantity of water, what’s not to like?
I don’t think we can envisage renewables driven flying cars like The Jetsons, whose lifestyle seemed to be predicated on the too-cheap-to-meter fantasy of the nuclear proponents of the time. But I do think it’s important to show middle class people – in Australia they’d have a household income that allows them to compare the relative merits of spending some savings on a swimming pool versus an overseas holiday v. a new bathroom or kitchen – that renewable power doesn’t necessarily mean a decrease in living standards nor a weird, mysterious, change to eating or travel habits.
And never forget the attractions of something new and different to people who are addicted to gadgetry of all kinds. Some of those gadgets won’t survive competition with later introductions. Anyone remember those huge discs for a strange turntable that briefly appeared as an alternative to video before DVDs came on the scene? I only ever knew one family who had one, they spent a minor prince’s ransom on the thing, but that’s the way things go. Within a couple of years they were off the market, but that family was also first in the queue to spend up big on newer forms of media as they became available.
Renewables, like other technologies, rely on early users to drive acceptance of the technology itself and to start the downward pressure on price. I distinctly remember those gigantic bricks that builders and doctors used to brandish as the latest technology – a mobile phone. Mobile!!! Only cost me $4000. Beat that! I couldn’t even hold one, let alone pay for it. The only way those people could afford them was that the costs were tax deductible as a business expense.
Landlords and public housing will never step up to things like solar until they’re already well established generally.
We did get solar panels as soon as we moved in – which might just be the best investment we’ve ever made. My last power bill was a credit, again, and the next one will be too unless we get a couple of nasty heatwaves. We’ve got a few other projects lined up for spending, and replacing a working water heater doesn’t trump any of them just yet.
(We also had to realign all those priorities when the mister had his 3 months in hospital, 3 months rehab event last year. Although that didn’t cost much in money terms, it does mean he’s now unable to do any of those things on a DIY basis, so everything will now cost more than we originally planned.)
Nay-sayers are forecasting DOOM for the electric car, and especially for Tesla, now that oil has fallen spectacularly in price.
My own opinion is that this may just be a price volatility that will persist (a boom-and-bust cycle for fracking) so that anyone building a power generation facility will look at renewables where the prices will be predictable, costs increasingly low and supply is also predictable (as we know from some of the excellent videos Peter posted).
Electric cars may also be popular in that scenario – low prices at the gas pumps is no joy if the price is going to rocket back up in a few months.
But what is the general thinking on that? Peter, have you any experts who can explain what is happening with oil prices?
I love this. I think it would be great if we could see a lot more of this sort of thing – showing people just how great life is, or could be, with renewables instead of fossil fuels.
Most people – perhaps especially environmentalists – suffer from a behavioral conditioning (if you will) about energy use. We have been taught for so long that energy is expensive, must be conserved, never used profligately. That it hurts the planet to use more energy than the bare minimum required.
That it is good to suffer. Keep your house so cold, for example in Northern winters, that you should always wear one or two sweaters. Take one minute showers. Minimize driving. Turn those lights off! Keep your air conditioning set to 80. Etc.
But that is the future we need as fossil fuels get more expensive. It is NOT the future we can have with renewables if we play this right. If we play this right, we will all have abundant energy at extremely low or zero price.
This commercial showed something very interesting. It showed free sunshine making free electricity that went into that car. And then that car peeled out much faster than it needed to. Snow was flying from the tires. And the people were smiling. And I say – bravo!
Those of us who see the need for renewables, might want to consider how we can illustrate the benefits of renewables.
How about a commercial showing a family happily turning on lights (LED, of course) all over the house – but it is OK! Because they have stored their own free electricity and they have tons to spare. Or taking hour long hot tub soaks? Or wearing t-shirts indoors in a toasty warm house instead of huddling inside a blanket on the couch? Doing all these things while watching a [CO2] gauge for the Earth drop steadily?
Because if a family can enjoy such abundance, why can not a nation?
You think having low-cost energy is a fantasy? You think that this is not something we should strive for? That having renewable energy be a commons project instead of a laissez-faire private profit-making enterprise is not worth even talking about?
Exxon Mobil has trained you well.
Unbelievable. 🙁
Roger, there is so much ridiculously wrong with your comment, that it’s pretty pointless for me to respond to it with anything but satire. I see your comment as a shining example of why we’re truly screwed on this issue, because I know most people, even VERY well meaning people, think the same way.
I see others agree with you here, too, and that’s fine. I’d love it if I was completely wrong about this, and that the world was a magical place where a green fairy rubs pixie dust over everything and it’s all good with everyone in the world having their thermostat at 80 degrees in mid-winter with all their LED lights on and driving to work from the country in their EVs. Nothing in that belief jives with my understanding of energy, politics, environmental and resource problems, human behavior, and economics – but okey dokey. I’m just a bot trained by Standard Oil – beep, boop, beep.
My take on the Ford commercial is that it’s very targeted to a particular audience, which is wealthy (or at least materially comfortable, but don’t like to flaunt it), white, atheist/agnostic, and green-minded. Outside of that demographic, I think it’s more likely to push the wrong buttons with several groups. So, it’ll help sell a few EVs to a subgroup of Americans, but it’s far from reaching the masses in even the wealthiest country on planet Earth.
“That having renewable energy be a commons project instead of a laissez-faire private profit-making enterprise is not worth even talking about?”
Separate issue – not referred to be either the commercial (private panels on home) or your first comment. I’ve stated repeatedly I am for such a public project.
Happy Winter Solstice is very cool, but Fox News is going to blow a Gasket, because it’s a slow news day, like every other day, they need to find Trivia to Bitch About.
“the world was a magical place where a green fairy rubs pixie dust over everything and it’s all good with everyone in the world having their thermostat at 80 degrees in mid-winter with all their LED lights on and driving to work from the country in their EVs. “
I don’t see why we can not have that world. We are awash in free harvestable energy. Why can we not bathe in it?
That world is available to us now, even with today’s technology. Building the system we need to harvest it will save the world, and also save us hundreds of trillions of dollars over a century’s time.
The only things which prevent us from living that life are:
1) almost no one talks about it as our rightful due
2) People have been trained about their energy use for years by our fossil fuel world, and in that world, energy use is expensive and destructive.
3) Cynicism, cynicism, cynicism. I think you may belong here, jimbills. Which truly sucks, because we need all the help we can get with (1)
Very low cost off the grid energy may be right at our doorsteps shortly if this reseachscales well – http://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/article/?id=13372
In short researchers have discovered that a graphene blocks membrane only allows Hydrogen stripped of its electrons (i.e. Hydrogen protons) to pass through. Unlike other current fuel cell membranes the graphene one resists crossover poisoning that lowers the efficiency and lifetime of a fuel cell.
Better still if you live in an area with a moist atmosphere a separate use of this technology is to pull hydrogen directly from the atmosphere.
I partly agree with you in order to motivate people who think going green energy means only to conserve and live less. But a part of me also feels the rat race life we live, even the need for personal transport is already wrong. If we had some way of organizing society to one with less treks needed, that would be a ton of energy saved just there. I generally agree with Winnie the Pooh, a bit of both is needed. 😉
Other than that I agree that if you kit your house with lots of LED lights the total energy use is rather dramatically lower than what we used to have. In in the dead night of winter in the northern hemisphere it can help a lot on the psyche to have a lot of lights on in at least the rooms you normally are in.
Still compared to the average person on the planet, we live extraordinary lives in the western world – and the lifestyle is really only possible with high energy consumption. It might not be compatible with resource usage on general if we plan to keep this planet in some habitable state for centuries still. In order to have any real intelligent discussion we need to wipe the cards of the table and start with a new deck to figure out how far we can stretch consumption to have it sustainable. I think its important to defines what is “enough” in relation to what we got. Atm, the western world is really totally out of sync with this idea.
Thanks for the sensible comment.
I’ve never said efficiencies or energy alternatives are to be avoided or that ONLY conservation can help us. It should be obvious that a combination of all three should be the goal on energy.
For the record, I happen to have gone all LED in my home over a year ago. Total electricity has NOT lowered dramatically as a result, simply because lighting composes a smallish percentage of total energy. Most of it goes towards heating (largest source), cooling, and water heating. Averages in U.S.:
http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=99&t=3
But, I did it and don’t regret it for a second. Over time, after the initial cost has been absorbed, my total cost will be less, I won’t have to worry about changing them for years, and it’s a pleasant and consistent light. Combined WITH making sure I turn them off when I leave a room, I know that my footprint on the electrical grid is lower than it would be otherwise.
Still, I have the sense to realize my consumption levels are way out of line with what is really sustainable globally. Your comment “the western world is really totally out of sync with this idea” is an understatement, and it’s sad and horrifying that most in the Western world don’t realize it (or do and don’t care, or don’t want to).
Personally, I’m working hard on increasing efficiencies and conservation measures. It’s the right thing to do on an individual level, while understanding on the group level we are far more likely to see a manifestation of Jevons Paradox, and subsequently a continually high demand on all sources of energy and resources, as GB illustrated in his first comment.
Actually, I’m with gingerbaker on this one. I’m really, really, Really annoyed at having moved to a smaller, more “economical” house now that our kids have left home. And for the first time in 25 years I have to wash in cold water. I used hot water sometimes during the first few months we were here, then I saw the gas bill. Urk!!!
Having nearly limitless hot water from our previous solar system meant that I used to sneer at all my greenie friends who insisted the only way to live was to have a washing machine that used _tiny_ amounts of _cold_ water. I freely used my free hot water as needed and every single drop of water used in doing laundry in a conventional washing machine was piped to lawn/ trees/ garden – because it was sufficiently dilute not to worry the plants. Free heat and double use of a measured quantity of water, what’s not to like?
I don’t think we can envisage renewables driven flying cars like The Jetsons, whose lifestyle seemed to be predicated on the too-cheap-to-meter fantasy of the nuclear proponents of the time. But I do think it’s important to show middle class people – in Australia they’d have a household income that allows them to compare the relative merits of spending some savings on a swimming pool versus an overseas holiday v. a new bathroom or kitchen – that renewable power doesn’t necessarily mean a decrease in living standards nor a weird, mysterious, change to eating or travel habits.
And never forget the attractions of something new and different to people who are addicted to gadgetry of all kinds. Some of those gadgets won’t survive competition with later introductions. Anyone remember those huge discs for a strange turntable that briefly appeared as an alternative to video before DVDs came on the scene? I only ever knew one family who had one, they spent a minor prince’s ransom on the thing, but that’s the way things go. Within a couple of years they were off the market, but that family was also first in the queue to spend up big on newer forms of media as they became available.
Renewables, like other technologies, rely on early users to drive acceptance of the technology itself and to start the downward pressure on price. I distinctly remember those gigantic bricks that builders and doctors used to brandish as the latest technology – a mobile phone. Mobile!!! Only cost me $4000. Beat that! I couldn’t even hold one, let alone pay for it. The only way those people could afford them was that the costs were tax deductible as a business expense.
Landlords and public housing will never step up to things like solar until they’re already well established generally.
Get a solar heater at your new place. If it’s cheap or free, as GB is suggesting, what’s stopping you?
We did get solar panels as soon as we moved in – which might just be the best investment we’ve ever made. My last power bill was a credit, again, and the next one will be too unless we get a couple of nasty heatwaves. We’ve got a few other projects lined up for spending, and replacing a working water heater doesn’t trump any of them just yet.
(We also had to realign all those priorities when the mister had his 3 months in hospital, 3 months rehab event last year. Although that didn’t cost much in money terms, it does mean he’s now unable to do any of those things on a DIY basis, so everything will now cost more than we originally planned.)
Nay-sayers are forecasting DOOM for the electric car, and especially for Tesla, now that oil has fallen spectacularly in price.
My own opinion is that this may just be a price volatility that will persist (a boom-and-bust cycle for fracking) so that anyone building a power generation facility will look at renewables where the prices will be predictable, costs increasingly low and supply is also predictable (as we know from some of the excellent videos Peter posted).
Electric cars may also be popular in that scenario – low prices at the gas pumps is no joy if the price is going to rocket back up in a few months.
But what is the general thinking on that? Peter, have you any experts who can explain what is happening with oil prices?
http://climatecrocks.com/2014/11/29/the-weekend-wonk-with-coal-on-the-ropes-is-this-the-beginning-of-the-end-of-oil/
I’d hope that people will use the money they save on fossil fuels to invest in renewables.
Certainly what I would do in that position.
Happy x-mas all !
Wish you all the best for the new year.
And that includes you also omno. 🙂