:: Thursday, May 29, 2008 ::

Ignore laundry-talk

Enough of that nonsense. Thinking about it more, the problem presented wasn't too complicated. Once you introduce the fact that adding clothes changes the heat to drying ratio in an somewhat exponential faction, the problem then does become harder but I'm sure that can be easily determined. And once matched with a graph of cost of time per quarter and then mixed in with a little multiplication due to the numerous dryers involved, it's easily solved.

Heck, even while I was typing that I realized it was all garble to take up space and make me look (attempt) smart. Fortunately (or un maybe) this is what I just sat through for two hours. Add in a few repeating acronyms and a few random ones, and you have a panel discussion. (Ok, add in a few more ramblers also. I don't think one rambler constitutes a panel.)

Amongst all the ramble, I did manage to learn quite a few things about New York City and state. Apparently studies have been done to determine that 60% of all green house gases are from municipal buildings. Big surprise. So NYC has set forth to reduce civil green house gas emissions by 30% in 2017. Big goal there. Other facts like that followed, but I'm sure MY audience doesn't care.

Other nifty things was a project by a Bronx courthouse to eliminate the need for artificial lighting in courtrooms during the day. Using lots of windows and mirrors, they are able to turn off the lights in courtrooms without loss of visibility. They also don't lose or gain heat this way. Pretty impressive. Another technology in use there is demand side venting. Using CO2 sensors, the building, automatically, can detect which rooms have more people and thus redirect air conditioning and such to those rooms. Now that is impressive.

These were just a few things. New York has also decided to throw loads of money at the problem of global warming by creating huge incentives to new construction projects that use green technology. If a project can reach preset energy use levels and carbon emissions (preset by the government), they reap huge incentives. I don't know if this is good or bad. Going green is costly and, to me, only huge corporations can afford it so the government is putting money back into already wealthy pockets.

To me the standards seem unreachable for the little guys. And since there aren't penalties for not following the green law (local law 86) regular construction continues and the problem is only curbed slightly compared to its potential.

Of course, higher incentives are paid through tax dollars and so the other option (because people hate paying taxes) is to lower the standard which of course, makes the whole thing pointless. As standards lower, incentives lower and soon its not worth it. Penalties will encourage change, but no one wants to slow growth in a volatile economy.

What are we left with? Right where we started. Go figure.

Dinner time for me.

God is good. All the time.
Peace
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

:: Ben 8:10 PM [+] ::
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Comments:

Using sunlight ... for light ... THAT IS GENIUS!!!!!!!!!

# posted by  Anonymous : 4:45 PM

 

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