Monday, February 12, 2007

Go green

People in Europe have always been a little greener than us Yanks. But now that George Bush has admitted that global warming exists, hopefully some people are getting inspired to use less energy and be less wasteful.

Our parish priest has been advocating this Web site in recent sermons. (Disclaimer: He is personally involved in this effort AND the Web site is a Christian one.) But you don't have to love Jesus as much as W to make some of the changes advocated: Play less on the computer. Watch less telly. Turn off lights in rooms you're not using. Turn down your heat one degree. (The last one doesn't apply to our readers in the American Southwest.)

For my part I've turned into a light nazi, and (I think) I've convinced Smitty to have a telly-free day once a week. As they say at Tesco, every little helps.

5 Comments:

Blogger Middle Kid said...

Do you have Compact Flourescent Lightbulbs (CFL) in the UK? That's a big thing here. There's also a website, www.treehugger.com, that has a lot of articles about global warming. Many of the articles come from England.

4:36 PM  
Blogger Smitty Werbenmanjensen said...

In virtually all of our lights. If the energy savings doesn't get you, the fact that compact fluorescents burn out once a decade or so ought to motivate you to switch from incandescents.

I was changing a lightbulb a week with these cheap UK incadescents before I made the switch through attrition. What's worse: Every time a lightbulb goes, a breaker trips.

6:06 PM  
Blogger Middle Kid said...

It's all about weather with you, isn't it Schmutz? See Smitty, Schmutz is the one who always does this.

3:37 AM  
Blogger oldest kid said...

Ok. I'll bring it back to conservation. We've been using the CFL's at home for a while now, although they look a little weird in our bathroom fixtures. And, the heat doesn't work in my office at work, so I guess I'm saving some energy there, although I have to wear a coat all day and take breaks in other people's offices to warm up.

3:42 AM  
Blogger Smitty Werbenmanjensen said...

Yes, of course, global warming doesn't mean it's going to necessarily get warmer everywhere. There are those climatologists who postulate, for example, that the British Isles could actually become colder because a shrinkage of the polar ice caps would slow the ocean currents coming from the tropics that moderate our gentle weather here. The currents are like a giant heat exchange (warm water from the tropics are pushed to the poles and cold water from the poles are pushed to the tropics). We're on a latitude with Labrador, and yet winter temperatures below freezing are the exception, rather than the rule.

8:55 AM  

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