5 ms·

Scott Adams: How I (Almost) Saved the Earth

122 points by flybrand 16y ago

nowarninglabel 16y ago
Just as a counter-point, I recently visited a friend in Prague who is both earth-loving like Mr. Adams and an architect. She and her husband recently rebuilt their home, and it looks fairly nice for the area despite being quirky for the energy savings. They have a grass roof which I was told was actually low maintenance once they had it in. That said, they weren't 'idiots' and didn't buy into photovoltaics. Your mileage may vary depending on if your wife is an architect.
- Symmetry 16y ago
  Solar hot water heating is probably a much better deal than photovoltaics.
- Ras_ 16y ago
  Grass roof... they have a slightly bigger one at Ford Rouge River: "The roof of the 1.1 million square foot (100,000 m²) Dearborn truck assembly plant was covered with more than 10 acres (40,000 m²) of sedum, a low-growing groundcover. The sedum retains and cleanses rainwater and moderates the internal temperature of the building, saving energy. The roof is part of an $18 million rainwater treatment system designed to clean 20 billion gallons (76,000,000 m³) of rainwater annually, sparing Ford from a $50 million mechanical treatment facility." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW0G6zNStTE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW0G6zNStTE
erik 16y ago
There is a short and entertaining TED talk on this topic. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/catherine_mohr_builds_green.html http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/catherine_mohr_builds_gree...
HNer 16y ago
"As a rule, the greener the home, the uglier it will be. I went into the process thinking that green homes were ugly because hippies have bad taste. That turns out to be nothing but a coincidence." :)
lotharbot 16y ago
Houses in the developed world simply aren't designed to be "green". Painting your roof, reducing the number of windows, and adding insulation are all band-aid solutions to a much deeper issue. All the common "green" solutions might cut your energy consumption in half, but half of a large amount of energy is still a large amount of energy. I've seen some extremely green homes, and they're far more bizarre looking than the example given in this article. Homes designed around sunlight, earth (for insulation and heat regulation), and airflow turn out looking VERY different from homes that have had energy-saving features tacked on.
- m_eiman 16y ago
  Depending on the climate, they don't have to look too futuristic. Here are a bunch of "passive houses" in Sweden (houses without a dedicated source of heat, instead surplus heat from cooking, showering, people etc provide enough heat due to good insulation): http://www.google.se/images?um=1&hl=sv&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Asv-SE%3Aofficial&tbs=isch%3A1&sa=1&q=passivhus+site%3A.se&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai= http://www.google.se/images?um=1&hl=sv&safe=off&...
- whyenot 16y ago
  Many of the more futuristic looking ones are not just designed to be "green" but also to demonstrate new construction techniques. My personally favorite is the FabLab House http://www.fablabhouse.com/en/ http://www.fablabhouse.com/en/ which is very "green" (passive cooling, good roof designed for efficient use of solar, etc) but also demonstrates building houses from wood shaped with CNC machines.
- anamax 16y ago
  > Painting your roof, Which color? If you want heat, you should paint it black. If you want cool, you should paint it white. Are you going to repaint it twice a year?
ghshephard 16y ago
Alternatively you can move to a location with a decent year round climate (Redwood City, CA) and move into an apartment. My PG&E Bill for 29 Days ending 4/21/2010: $5.00 - 40 Kwh @$0.11877. Easily the most massive energy consumer was the refrigerator - I would have cut that energy use by 2/3 if I could have figured out how (conveniently) to do without a fridge. My Hot water came from the building, but, at 97 degrees, and northern california water pressure, I know I was probably in the lower 5% of consumers in that space as well. Just hitting the breaker to all your wall warts / WiFi when you leave to work has a very significant impact on energy consumption. Scott Adams touches on one very, very good point - Having Northern exposure (in an apartment not on the top floor) means (in Redwood City) that from about April through late September you will never be uncomfortable. Apartments have awesome insulation - though I guess it's possible I was leaching heat during the winter from five of my neighbors and the hallway. I never bothered turning on (or even figured out how to) the central heat. It's amazing how much a difference your apartment orientation can make to your quality of life.
- timcederman 16y ago
  I'm about 5 minutes north in San Carlos and I'm spending $50/month. My apartment is poorly built (gets up to 80 F when it's only 60 F outside, no idea what's up with that), however I try to avoid running the A/C and it's still that high. My Mac Mini and a couple of external hard drives are always running but otherwise I'm surprised at the energy usage.
- notauser 16y ago
  I lived in an apartment in Northern England one winter. In about January I found out that I hadn't understood the thermostat and the central heating had never turned on. I went through the whole of December oblivious (and warm) thanks to the surrounding apartments providing heat through the walls, floor and ceiling.
  - colomon 16y ago
    I once made it a month into the cold season here in Michigan before realizing that my house's only heating was coming from my computers...
vl 16y ago
One house item which shows no progress on the green side is the refrigerator. Obviously it should be a split system: fridge is inside and heat exchange outside the house. If it's hot outside, I don't want fridge to heat up air inside the house so then my AC has to cool it (an you know, my house has quite limited AC capacity). If it's cold outside, I don't want fridge to consume energy - just dump excessive heat outside. It puzzles me for years why with all this green movement I haven't seen a single split fridge yet.
- davidxa 16y ago
  The problem with this is that it isn't as flexible as a normal frige, it basically has to be built into the house. Also, if you don't have it next to a exterior wall, you have to pipe the coolant through the walls or floors. It's a great idea, but it requires a major redesign of the refrigerator, and means you can't easily get a new one if it breaks or you want it bigger or smaller.
  - vl 16y ago
    Yep, it's not easy, but this problem is already solved with split ACs. While they do require drilling the wall, some people still prefer them to the in-window units.
- cool-RR 16y ago
  I thought about this too. It would be really nice if there was a central compressor that will pump that cold gas into ACs and refrigerators of multiple homes. I think that will be a lot greener than the other stuff suggested by Scott Adams.
  - Kliment 16y ago
    Finland is now doing that for industry and warehouse refrigeration, and for some large retailers too. It might eventually find its way into homes too.
    - Ras_ 16y ago
kleiba 16y ago
Interesting article. However, there's one aspect that I find a bit puzzling. I currently live in Germany and Adams' summary of tips how to build a greener house is pretty much a description of how houses have been built here for ages. I mean - the regular houses, not the ones considered particularly green. The general topic seems to be very big in this country, and apparently caters to a huge market. Almost everybody building a new house these days, not only the Earth savers, is trying to implement as many energy efficient measures as possible - that's because Germany, unlike California, is not a very warm place and to save on heating costs means to save big time. I don't actually know what it means, but the term "zero energy house" is a marketing term you see a lot here. Solar energy in private homes is heavily subsidized, too. And Germans don't move as much as Americans, they tend to build their houses to settle and grow old in them, so sustainability is a logical value.
- jvdh 16y ago
  It seems that the art of building efficient houses is contained only in Europe. The houses in the US all seem to be made of wood, without much insulation. "Problems" that that causes are all dealt with using "efficient" heating or air conditioning systems. From what I've seen the same is true of Australia and New Zealand though. There you see a whole lot of portable electric heaters being used for the winter, which are probably the most inefficient way to generate heat. The way typical Americans treat "energy conservation" is also an affront to people from Europe. Nobody in the US seems to think about conserving water in any way. Just look at the toilets, they flush a massive amount of water compared to the ones in Europe. Or the amount of ice that is used in drinks, the amount of water that is served and thrown away in restaurants. It's all the little things that make a huge difference, and there seems to be a huge gap in the way these things are treated in Europe and in the US.
  - sasmith 16y ago
    I really would like to write a more articulate reply, but it's late and I'm tired, so I'll leave you with: I don't believe you. Portable electric heaters can be incredibly efficient, since they only heat the room in question. I don't know much about building materials, but the article suggested that most heat loss is through windows, so worrying about wood building seems unnecessary. Water conservation discussion need to be very localized. Lots of places in the US have very low population densities and plenty of water. Conservation is silly in this case. Whether your toilet uses a lot of water or a little, the same amount of poop and same amount of water are going to end up back in the river. Besides all this, toilet flushing and ice in drinks is peanuts compared to agricultural usage. They are little things and do not make a huge difference. Please site your sources. Here are some of mine: http://greenliving.lovetoknow.com/Energy_Efficient_Space_Heaters http://greenliving.lovetoknow.com/Energy_Efficient_Space_Hea... http://www.toiletabcs.com/toilet-water-conservation.html http://www.toiletabcs.com/toilet-water-conservation.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_resources http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_resources
ugh 16y ago
“Don't brag to me about riding your bicycle to work; a lot of energy went into building that bicycle. Stop being a hypocrite like me.” That doesn’t make any sense, does it? Making something will always require energy, what matters is whether something needs more or less energy than the alternative. (Making a bike needs less energy than making a car, riding a bike needs less energy than driving a car.) Scott Adams’ writings always seem very shallow to me. He says something that sounds sorta good if you don’t pay too much attention.
- jerf 16y ago
  "what matters is whether something needs more or less energy than the alternative" Does it? Does Mother Earth care whether your pollution came from a car or bicycle? You're just another polluter, you big bad polluter you. More seriously, I think the reference here is to the idea that you can somehow objectively measure your negative impact and that anything above zero is bad. Since I pretty comprehensively disagree with that statement (impact to something as dynamic as the ecosystem can not be measure concretely, most people's metric of "impact" are incoherent when you really examine them, zero impact isn't a useful metric in light of these things, and I have at least as much "right" to exist and impact an environment as a beaver), I tend to agree with you. My point here is that it depends on your point of view and there are common points of view that disagree with you, and the piece was very clearly invoking this "radical" green point of view very often.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- mcn 16y ago
  The previous sentence was: >Better yet, live in the forest and eat whatever the squirrels don't want. I think he was building on his joke.
  - ugh 16y ago
    Yeah, you are right. I retract my comment. Shame on me and my nine upvoters :) – edit: no irony
alecco 16y ago
Smaller houses consume less resources and are more efficient. (In most cases.)
Symmetry 16y ago
Solar cells are expensive now, but production of them has been going up at something likely 20-30% a year for a decade. You got to figure that a lot of the price of a cell is going to the rapid ramp-up in manufacturing capacity, and that at some point the supply will have increased enough that the price will drop.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
WiseWeasel 16y ago
Scott Adams, 2012! For a better America.
stcredzero 16y ago
Arrgh. Scott sometimes mistakes his ignorance for wit. He could've outfitted his home with heat-pipe solar thermal collectors, like the Thermomax ones. These things work well, even in the winter, even in cloudy, chilly old England, where they were designed. I suspect they'd do a pretty bang-up job in California. Connecting those up to the hot water heating the floors would've taken a big chunk out of his carbon footprint, even if he couldn't heat his home completely with them. They're worth it just for the hot-water preheat. http://www.thermomax.com/ http://www.thermomax.com/

122 points by flybrand 16y ago

Just as a counter-point, I recently visited a friend in Prague who is both earth-loving like Mr. Adams and an architect. She and her husband recently rebuilt their home, and it looks fairly nice for the area despite being quirky for the energy savings. They have a grass roof which I was told was actually low maintenance once they had it in. That said, they weren't 'idiots' and didn't buy into photovoltaics. Your mileage may vary depending on if your wife is an architect.

Symmetry 16y ago
Solar hot water heating is probably a much better deal than photovoltaics.
Ras_ 16y ago
Grass roof... they have a slightly bigger one at Ford Rouge River: "The roof of the 1.1 million square foot (100,000 m²) Dearborn truck assembly plant was covered with more than 10 acres (40,000 m²) of sedum, a low-growing groundcover. The sedum retains and cleanses rainwater and moderates the internal temperature of the building, saving energy. The roof is part of an $18 million rainwater treatment system designed to clean 20 billion gallons (76,000,000 m³) of rainwater annually, sparing Ford from a $50 million mechanical treatment facility." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW0G6zNStTE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW0G6zNStTE

erik 16y ago

There is a short and entertaining TED talk on this topic. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/catherine_mohr_builds_green.html http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/catherine_mohr_builds_gree...

HNer 16y ago

"As a rule, the greener the home, the uglier it will be. I went into the process thinking that green homes were ugly because hippies have bad taste. That turns out to be nothing but a coincidence." :)

lotharbot 16y ago

Houses in the developed world simply aren't designed to be "green". Painting your roof, reducing the number of windows, and adding insulation are all band-aid solutions to a much deeper issue. All the common "green" solutions might cut your energy consumption in half, but half of a large amount of energy is still a large amount of energy. I've seen some extremely green homes, and they're far more bizarre looking than the example given in this article. Homes designed around sunlight, earth (for insulation and heat regulation), and airflow turn out looking VERY different from homes that have had energy-saving features tacked on.

m_eiman 16y ago
Depending on the climate, they don't have to look too futuristic. Here are a bunch of "passive houses" in Sweden (houses without a dedicated source of heat, instead surplus heat from cooking, showering, people etc provide enough heat due to good insulation): http://www.google.se/images?um=1&hl=sv&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Asv-SE%3Aofficial&tbs=isch%3A1&sa=1&q=passivhus+site%3A.se&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai= http://www.google.se/images?um=1&hl=sv&safe=off&...
whyenot 16y ago
Many of the more futuristic looking ones are not just designed to be "green" but also to demonstrate new construction techniques. My personally favorite is the FabLab House http://www.fablabhouse.com/en/ http://www.fablabhouse.com/en/ which is very "green" (passive cooling, good roof designed for efficient use of solar, etc) but also demonstrates building houses from wood shaped with CNC machines.
anamax 16y ago
> Painting your roof, Which color? If you want heat, you should paint it black. If you want cool, you should paint it white. Are you going to repaint it twice a year?

ghshephard 16y ago

Alternatively you can move to a location with a decent year round climate (Redwood City, CA) and move into an apartment. My PG&E Bill for 29 Days ending 4/21/2010: $5.00 - 40 Kwh @$0.11877. Easily the most massive energy consumer was the refrigerator - I would have cut that energy use by 2/3 if I could have figured out how (conveniently) to do without a fridge. My Hot water came from the building, but, at 97 degrees, and northern california water pressure, I know I was probably in the lower 5% of consumers in that space as well. Just hitting the breaker to all your wall warts / WiFi when you leave to work has a very significant impact on energy consumption. Scott Adams touches on one very, very good point - Having Northern exposure (in an apartment not on the top floor) means (in Redwood City) that from about April through late September you will never be uncomfortable. Apartments have awesome insulation - though I guess it's possible I was leaching heat during the winter from five of my neighbors and the hallway. I never bothered turning on (or even figured out how to) the central heat. It's amazing how much a difference your apartment orientation can make to your quality of life.

timcederman 16y ago
I'm about 5 minutes north in San Carlos and I'm spending $50/month. My apartment is poorly built (gets up to 80 F when it's only 60 F outside, no idea what's up with that), however I try to avoid running the A/C and it's still that high. My Mac Mini and a couple of external hard drives are always running but otherwise I'm surprised at the energy usage.
notauser 16y ago
I lived in an apartment in Northern England one winter. In about January I found out that I hadn't understood the thermostat and the central heating had never turned on. I went through the whole of December oblivious (and warm) thanks to the surrounding apartments providing heat through the walls, floor and ceiling.
- colomon 16y ago
  I once made it a month into the cold season here in Michigan before realizing that my house's only heating was coming from my computers...

vl 16y ago

One house item which shows no progress on the green side is the refrigerator. Obviously it should be a split system: fridge is inside and heat exchange outside the house. If it's hot outside, I don't want fridge to heat up air inside the house so then my AC has to cool it (an you know, my house has quite limited AC capacity). If it's cold outside, I don't want fridge to consume energy - just dump excessive heat outside. It puzzles me for years why with all this green movement I haven't seen a single split fridge yet.

davidxa 16y ago
The problem with this is that it isn't as flexible as a normal frige, it basically has to be built into the house. Also, if you don't have it next to a exterior wall, you have to pipe the coolant through the walls or floors. It's a great idea, but it requires a major redesign of the refrigerator, and means you can't easily get a new one if it breaks or you want it bigger or smaller.
- vl 16y ago
  Yep, it's not easy, but this problem is already solved with split ACs. While they do require drilling the wall, some people still prefer them to the in-window units.
cool-RR 16y ago
I thought about this too. It would be really nice if there was a central compressor that will pump that cold gas into ACs and refrigerators of multiple homes. I think that will be a lot greener than the other stuff suggested by Scott Adams.
- Kliment 16y ago
  Finland is now doing that for industry and warehouse refrigeration, and for some large retailers too. It might eventually find its way into homes too.
  - Ras_ 16y ago

kleiba 16y ago

Interesting article. However, there's one aspect that I find a bit puzzling. I currently live in Germany and Adams' summary of tips how to build a greener house is pretty much a description of how houses have been built here for ages. I mean - the regular houses, not the ones considered particularly green. The general topic seems to be very big in this country, and apparently caters to a huge market. Almost everybody building a new house these days, not only the Earth savers, is trying to implement as many energy efficient measures as possible - that's because Germany, unlike California, is not a very warm place and to save on heating costs means to save big time. I don't actually know what it means, but the term "zero energy house" is a marketing term you see a lot here. Solar energy in private homes is heavily subsidized, too. And Germans don't move as much as Americans, they tend to build their houses to settle and grow old in them, so sustainability is a logical value.

jvdh 16y ago
It seems that the art of building efficient houses is contained only in Europe. The houses in the US all seem to be made of wood, without much insulation. "Problems" that that causes are all dealt with using "efficient" heating or air conditioning systems. From what I've seen the same is true of Australia and New Zealand though. There you see a whole lot of portable electric heaters being used for the winter, which are probably the most inefficient way to generate heat. The way typical Americans treat "energy conservation" is also an affront to people from Europe. Nobody in the US seems to think about conserving water in any way. Just look at the toilets, they flush a massive amount of water compared to the ones in Europe. Or the amount of ice that is used in drinks, the amount of water that is served and thrown away in restaurants. It's all the little things that make a huge difference, and there seems to be a huge gap in the way these things are treated in Europe and in the US.
- sasmith 16y ago
  I really would like to write a more articulate reply, but it's late and I'm tired, so I'll leave you with: I don't believe you. Portable electric heaters can be incredibly efficient, since they only heat the room in question. I don't know much about building materials, but the article suggested that most heat loss is through windows, so worrying about wood building seems unnecessary. Water conservation discussion need to be very localized. Lots of places in the US have very low population densities and plenty of water. Conservation is silly in this case. Whether your toilet uses a lot of water or a little, the same amount of poop and same amount of water are going to end up back in the river. Besides all this, toilet flushing and ice in drinks is peanuts compared to agricultural usage. They are little things and do not make a huge difference. Please site your sources. Here are some of mine: http://greenliving.lovetoknow.com/Energy_Efficient_Space_Heaters http://greenliving.lovetoknow.com/Energy_Efficient_Space_Hea... http://www.toiletabcs.com/toilet-water-conservation.html http://www.toiletabcs.com/toilet-water-conservation.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_resources http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_resources

ugh 16y ago

“Don't brag to me about riding your bicycle to work; a lot of energy went into building that bicycle. Stop being a hypocrite like me.” That doesn’t make any sense, does it? Making something will always require energy, what matters is whether something needs more or less energy than the alternative. (Making a bike needs less energy than making a car, riding a bike needs less energy than driving a car.) Scott Adams’ writings always seem very shallow to me. He says something that sounds sorta good if you don’t pay too much attention.

jerf 16y ago
"what matters is whether something needs more or less energy than the alternative" Does it? Does Mother Earth care whether your pollution came from a car or bicycle? You're just another polluter, you big bad polluter you. More seriously, I think the reference here is to the idea that you can somehow objectively measure your negative impact and that anything above zero is bad. Since I pretty comprehensively disagree with that statement (impact to something as dynamic as the ecosystem can not be measure concretely, most people's metric of "impact" are incoherent when you really examine them, zero impact isn't a useful metric in light of these things, and I have at least as much "right" to exist and impact an environment as a beaver), I tend to agree with you. My point here is that it depends on your point of view and there are common points of view that disagree with you, and the piece was very clearly invoking this "radical" green point of view very often.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
mcn 16y ago
The previous sentence was: >Better yet, live in the forest and eat whatever the squirrels don't want. I think he was building on his joke.
- ugh 16y ago
  Yeah, you are right. I retract my comment. Shame on me and my nine upvoters :) – edit: no irony

alecco 16y ago

Smaller houses consume less resources and are more efficient. (In most cases.)

Symmetry 16y ago

Solar cells are expensive now, but production of them has been going up at something likely 20-30% a year for a decade. You got to figure that a lot of the price of a cell is going to the rapid ramp-up in manufacturing capacity, and that at some point the supply will have increased enough that the price will drop.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

WiseWeasel 16y ago

Scott Adams, 2012! For a better America.

stcredzero 16y ago

Arrgh. Scott sometimes mistakes his ignorance for wit. He could've outfitted his home with heat-pipe solar thermal collectors, like the Thermomax ones. These things work well, even in the winter, even in cloudy, chilly old England, where they were designed. I suspect they'd do a pretty bang-up job in California. Connecting those up to the hot water heating the floors would've taken a big chunk out of his carbon footprint, even if he couldn't heat his home completely with them. They're worth it just for the hot-water preheat. http://www.thermomax.com/ http://www.thermomax.com/