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However well-intentioned these articles are, I think it's intellectually dishonest to focus on such ridiculously irrelevant things as heating the water for your

However well-intentioned these articles are, I think it's intellectually dishonest to focus on such ridiculously irrelevant things as heating the water for your coffee when the fact is that it won't make any difference. If you want to reduce your energy footprint, buy insulation for your house and stop driving. Really, everything else is insignificant in comparison.

dazzawazza 17y ago
You're correct but since people do 'boast' about these tiny changes to their lives turning them green it's useful for 'authoritative' sources to slap them back down.
pbhjpbhj 17y ago
Really, everything else is insignificant in comparison. The problem with these sorts of statements is that nearly everything is insignificant compared to something else. The UK shouldn't bother about efficient energy use or renewable sources as China is a far greater consumer and anything we do will be insignificant. I shouldn't bother insulating my house because my neighbour owns a mansion and heats it to 25 degrees C all year and keeps the windows open. There's no point in fitting loft insulation as my car wastes more energy that that would save. There's no point turning the tap off when I brush my teeth because the tap at work drips all day and wastes just as much water ... you get the idea anyway. Millions of people doing small things in lots of instances creates a large(r) difference. It's a sort of bystander effect that prevents such things; no-one acts because someone else could do more - like #6, if everyone signs up for the renewable then they're not going to be able to meet the demand and will have to bring online more sources of renewable energy. The reusable nappies issue, #9, is that they assume the nappies are not reused. We bought most of ours 3rd hand on ebay (some 2nd hand) and also used moltex nappies that can be degraded completely by vermiculture within 1 year (though we simply composted them) - our second child is now using the reusables (4th hand) so that makes manufacturing cost just over a quarter (due to disposable paper liners) what they were considered to be in the study mentioned. If you use nappy liners then cleaning is easier. There are other benefits including end-of-life reuse (floor cloths) too.
- jerf 17y ago
  "The problem with these sorts of statements is that nearly everything is insignificant compared to something else." Yes. Yes it is. Welcome to reality, and engineering. The problem with your statement is that if you're burning a lot of time and mental energy on the insignificant things, then you are wasting your time. If you, personally, have already taken the time to secure your housing's heating situation, already have an energy-efficient car and minimize driving anyhow, then maybe for you worrying about your kid's diapers is the lowest hanging fruit. I mean that completely straight, not sarcastic at all. However, if you're sitting here encouraging others to worry about their diapers while their homes sit there blowing 75% of their heat out a leaky door, then you're just wasting time. It's the 80/20 principle, only when it comes to things like energy budgets it's more like the 95/5 principle; one or two things make up 95% of your energy budget and the rest is fiddling around the edges. Optimize the 95% first. Worry about the 5% later, if at all. (Fiddling around making optimizations smaller than the noise threshold is also a waste of time. "Noise threshold" may sound like a weird concept to apply here, but it does; making a small food optimization that, even if applied by a million people, is still less than the daily variation in the amount of food thrown out by restaurants daily would be a complete waste of time. This is an example, I have no specific optimization in mind. The temptation is to say "Well, these things add up", but in fact when you're dealing with these sorts of distributions, sometimes they don't! Even ten .001% optimizations don't add up to much, and for the effort of getting those you probably missed out on a 1% somewhere else. These distributions can be very counter-intuitive, we don't do well with such large order-of-magnitude ranges.)
  - run4yourlives 17y ago
    This is a brilliant comment. You should rework it into a blog post so that it can be shared with a broader audience. (That is, of course, if you don't consider it a waste of time!) Well done.
    - sp332 17y ago
      http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=964020 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=964020 Share away!
lsd5you 17y ago
Or elect to not have a child - something even more significant. Though arguably that is essentially 'freeing up' a permit for someone else. It conflicts with our view of family values and wholesomeness, but in general a wasteful consumeristic childless individual is going to be more ecological in the long run than pretty much anyone with several kids.
- ars 17y ago
  Not true. In every country where people might listen to this idea, population shrinkage is a bigger problem than population growth. The net value of a human to society is positive not negative. The problems of overpopulation is a myth.
  - lucumo 17y ago
    Value as defined in? I think you're talking about economical value—at least that's what most talk about population shrinkage seems to be about. GP on the other hand was talking about ecological value. I don't think the units compare. Did I interpret your comment correctly?
  - lsd5you 17y ago
    When you say 'not true', you mean you disagree, right? Population shrinkage is certainly not a problem for the environment and it was not implied that it was not a problem in other respects. The value of a human to society is a positive? Can you unequivocally state that a world with 3 billion people is worse off than one with 6 billion? It is an idealistic claim and only true in a personal sense, and even then may well be founded on an inconsistent set of values.
    - radu_floricica 17y ago
      Well, an average person manages to pay taxes, live a reasonable life and leave an inheritance. So I'd say, yes, he makes a positive input. An over-supply of labor is pretty good for the economy as a whole, bad as it is for the unemployed. We're not even close to the point where the over-supply is so big it causes real problems. There are still areas where there is a labor shortage, especially in skilled professions.
tome 17y ago
Exactly, and as I noted below, this book spells it out very clearly: http://www.withouthotair.com/ http://www.withouthotair.com/

dazzawazza 17y ago

You're correct but since people do 'boast' about these tiny changes to their lives turning them green it's useful for 'authoritative' sources to slap them back down.

pbhjpbhj 17y ago

Really, everything else is insignificant in comparison. The problem with these sorts of statements is that nearly everything is insignificant compared to something else. The UK shouldn't bother about efficient energy use or renewable sources as China is a far greater consumer and anything we do will be insignificant. I shouldn't bother insulating my house because my neighbour owns a mansion and heats it to 25 degrees C all year and keeps the windows open. There's no point in fitting loft insulation as my car wastes more energy that that would save. There's no point turning the tap off when I brush my teeth because the tap at work drips all day and wastes just as much water ... you get the idea anyway. Millions of people doing small things in lots of instances creates a large(r) difference. It's a sort of bystander effect that prevents such things; no-one acts because someone else could do more - like #6, if everyone signs up for the renewable then they're not going to be able to meet the demand and will have to bring online more sources of renewable energy. The reusable nappies issue, #9, is that they assume the nappies are not reused. We bought most of ours 3rd hand on ebay (some 2nd hand) and also used moltex nappies that can be degraded completely by vermiculture within 1 year (though we simply composted them) - our second child is now using the reusables (4th hand) so that makes manufacturing cost just over a quarter (due to disposable paper liners) what they were considered to be in the study mentioned. If you use nappy liners then cleaning is easier. There are other benefits including end-of-life reuse (floor cloths) too.

jerf 17y ago
"The problem with these sorts of statements is that nearly everything is insignificant compared to something else." Yes. Yes it is. Welcome to reality, and engineering. The problem with your statement is that if you're burning a lot of time and mental energy on the insignificant things, then you are wasting your time. If you, personally, have already taken the time to secure your housing's heating situation, already have an energy-efficient car and minimize driving anyhow, then maybe for you worrying about your kid's diapers is the lowest hanging fruit. I mean that completely straight, not sarcastic at all. However, if you're sitting here encouraging others to worry about their diapers while their homes sit there blowing 75% of their heat out a leaky door, then you're just wasting time. It's the 80/20 principle, only when it comes to things like energy budgets it's more like the 95/5 principle; one or two things make up 95% of your energy budget and the rest is fiddling around the edges. Optimize the 95% first. Worry about the 5% later, if at all. (Fiddling around making optimizations smaller than the noise threshold is also a waste of time. "Noise threshold" may sound like a weird concept to apply here, but it does; making a small food optimization that, even if applied by a million people, is still less than the daily variation in the amount of food thrown out by restaurants daily would be a complete waste of time. This is an example, I have no specific optimization in mind. The temptation is to say "Well, these things add up", but in fact when you're dealing with these sorts of distributions, sometimes they don't! Even ten .001% optimizations don't add up to much, and for the effort of getting those you probably missed out on a 1% somewhere else. These distributions can be very counter-intuitive, we don't do well with such large order-of-magnitude ranges.)
- run4yourlives 17y ago
  This is a brilliant comment. You should rework it into a blog post so that it can be shared with a broader audience. (That is, of course, if you don't consider it a waste of time!) Well done.
  - sp332 17y ago
    http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=964020 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=964020 Share away!

lsd5you 17y ago

Or elect to not have a child - something even more significant. Though arguably that is essentially 'freeing up' a permit for someone else. It conflicts with our view of family values and wholesomeness, but in general a wasteful consumeristic childless individual is going to be more ecological in the long run than pretty much anyone with several kids.

ars 17y ago
Not true. In every country where people might listen to this idea, population shrinkage is a bigger problem than population growth. The net value of a human to society is positive not negative. The problems of overpopulation is a myth.
- lucumo 17y ago
  Value as defined in? I think you're talking about economical value—at least that's what most talk about population shrinkage seems to be about. GP on the other hand was talking about ecological value. I don't think the units compare. Did I interpret your comment correctly?
- lsd5you 17y ago
  When you say 'not true', you mean you disagree, right? Population shrinkage is certainly not a problem for the environment and it was not implied that it was not a problem in other respects. The value of a human to society is a positive? Can you unequivocally state that a world with 3 billion people is worse off than one with 6 billion? It is an idealistic claim and only true in a personal sense, and even then may well be founded on an inconsistent set of values.
  - radu_floricica 17y ago
    Well, an average person manages to pay taxes, live a reasonable life and leave an inheritance. So I'd say, yes, he makes a positive input. An over-supply of labor is pretty good for the economy as a whole, bad as it is for the unemployed. We're not even close to the point where the over-supply is so big it causes real problems. There are still areas where there is a labor shortage, especially in skilled professions.

tome 17y ago

Exactly, and as I noted below, this book spells it out very clearly: http://www.withouthotair.com/ http://www.withouthotair.com/