2017-01-22. See the 1,000-Year-Old Windmills Still in Use Today
National Geographic.
2011 April 17. When It Comes to Carbon Footprints, Location and Lifestyle Matter. Excerpt:
A new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley,
suggests that who you are and where you live make a big difference in
which activities have the largest impact.
Carbon
footprints are a measure of the greenhouse gases released during the
production, use and disposal of products and services. The production
phase includes all processes between the time raw materials are
extracted from Earth until they reach consumers as finished products in
stores. The study considers the carbon footprint of all household
economic activity, including transportation, energy, food, goods,
services, water and waste.
As an example, the report highlights the
carbon footprints of two fictitious households: an upper-income couple
living in San Francisco with no children, and a middle-income family
with three children living in St. Louis, Mo. Each of these households
contributes to the atmosphere about the same amount of greenhouse gases
per year, but the sources of those emissions are very different, the
study found.
2010 March 25. Audit Finds Vulnerability of EnergyStar Program. BY Matthew L. Wald, NY Times. Excerpt:
WASHINGTON — Does a “gasoline-powered alarm clock” qualify for the
EnergyStar label, the government stamp of approval for an energy-saving
product?
Like more than a dozen other bogus products
submitted for approval since last June by Congressional auditors posing
as companies, it easily secured the label, according to a Congressional
report to be issued Friday. So did an “air purifier” that was
essentially an electric space heater with a feather duster pasted on
top, the Government Accountability Office said.
In a nine-month study, four fictitious
companies invented by the accountability office also sought EnergyStar
status for some conventional devices like dehumidifiers and heat pump
models that existed only on paper. The fake companies submitted data
indicating that the models consumed 20 percent less energy than even the
most efficient ones on the market. Yet those applications were mostly
approved without a challenge or even questions, the report said.
Auditors concluded that the EnergyStar program was highly vulnerable to fraud....
Previous reports have suggested that the
EnergyStar label is not always a complete or useful guide to the best
consumer choices. Last October, for example, the inspector general of
the E.P.A. said that 100 percent of the computer monitors that carried
the EnergyStar logo had indeed met requirements. But so did 80 percent
of the monitors that did not have the logo; the manufacturers had
apparently not sought approval. For computer printers, 95 percent of the
ones with the logo qualified, but so did 60 percent of the ones that
did not have the logo.
And some consumer products lacking EnergyStar
approval consumed less energy than those that had it, the audit
found....
2005.
Historical
Perspectives of Energy Consumption Excerpt:
Throughout history, man has developed
ways to expand his ability to
harvest energy. The primitive
man found in East Africa 1,000,000
years ago, who had yet to discover
fire, had access only to the food
he ate so his daily energy consumption
has been estimated at 2,000 Kcal
or 2,000 dietary calories. Energy
consumption of the hunting man
found in Europe about 100,000
years ago was about 2.5 times
that of the primitive man because
he had better methods of acquiring
food and also burned wood for
both heating and cooking. Energy
consumption increased again by
almost 2.5 times as man evolved
into the primitive agricultural
man of about 5,000 years ago
who harnessed draft animals to
aid in growing crops. The advanced
agricultural man of 1400 A.D.
northwestern Europe again doubled
the amount of energy consumption
as he began inventing devices
to tap the power of wind and water,
began to utilize small amounts
of coal for heating and harnessed
animals to provide transportation.
The dawn of the age of industrialization, ushered
in by the invention of the steam engine, caused a
3-fold increase in energy consumption by 1875. Among
other things, the steam engine allowed man to unlock
the Earth's vast concentrated storage deposits of
solar energy - coal, gas and oil so he no longer was
limited to natural energy flows. Whereas increases
in energy consumption had been gradual throughout
history, once industrialization occurred, the rate
of consumption increased dramatically over a period
of just a few generations. The technological man of
1970 in the U.S. consumed approximately 230,000 Kcal
of energy per day (~115 times that of primitive man)
with about 26% of that amount being electrical energy....
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This page has articles from 2005–present
Non-chronological links:
300 Years of FOSSIL FUELS in 300 Seconds Short animation showing the history of fossil fuel use.
The Users Guide to Energy (videos from The Atlantic) http://www.theatlantic.com/special-report/users-guide-energy
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