Communicating with a non-statistical public about issues of variability is enormously difficult. I deal with this all the time with respect to weather. How much warmer (colder) is it today than “normal”? The Energy Information Agency’s “This Week in Petroleum” had a great discussion of the issue Thursday with respect to the prospect of $4 …
Michael Tobis does some nice number-crunching on the true costs of energy: A hundred dollars a barrel. A barrel! Energy is unbelievably cheap. That’s about six million BTUs. One point seven megawatt hours. With that $100 barrel you can power your laptop for two years. You can ship hundreds of pounds of bananas from Guatemala. …
A confession: I’m one of those people who delights as the gas price numbers at the Kwik-E-Mart around the corner from my house tick up higher and higher. I know, I know, I’m a bad person. There are folks for whom that price really hurts, who don’t have the disposable cash to buy 30-year old …
In which Simon Donner expands on the way ethanol production kills the ocean: The new US Energy Policy calls for 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels by the year 2022. Of that, 15 billion can be produced from corn starch. Our study found meeting those would cause a 10-34% increase in nitrogen loading to the …
At the risk of tarnishing whatever green cred I might possess, a confession: I have always wanted a riding mower. I sit in them when I’m in the garden department at Home Depot, making brrmm brrmm noises under my breath. I imagine myself king of my domain as I ride the mower this way and …
We’ve got our own version of Ed Begley Jr. here in Albuquerque. My colleague Troy Simpson has been doing a video series of energy saving tips from from Al Zelicoff. This month’s: vampires.
My modest attempts to understand energy economics have left me unprepared for today’s hundred-dollar-a-barrel milestone. With the U.S. economy teetering on the brink of recession, future demand is expected to be low, which the smarty-pants economists tell me should mean lower oil prices. Yet… Thankfully for my ego, the folks at the Daily Diary of …
Michael Tobis had a post today about Lance Armstrong’s plans for an 18,000-square-foot bike shop in Austin that seems, at least in part, to be marketed at the bike commuter: “This city is exploding downtown. Are all these people in high rises going to drive everywhere? We have to promote (bike) commuting…” The thing is, …
John Mashey, in the bowels of an old thread, had this to say on the incentives and disincentives to rational transit economics: Think about the logical effects of local statutes that a certain amount of parking spaces be provided per resident, worker, or customer. In effect, parking spaces are required, thus spreading buildings further apart, …
An interesting post from last month on those hidden costs and benefits of higher gas prices. Turns out, according to some smarty-pants economists, that if the price of gasoline goes up (if, for example, we impose a gas tax), people carpool and ride the bus more, resulting in less congestion and therefore net time savings …