Man, who peed in your cheerios this morning???
:D
Me:
But then I am as reverse-PC as you can get.
Good enough answer?
Seriously though, my first thought was pretty much the same.... How much energy is going into the hydrogen extraction....
Me:
Well, even trucking the stuff around the country to a processsing point is getting pretty expensive.
When they say something "saves (or produces) thus-and-so-many ergs (kWh, BTU, tons-of-carbon-emissions)," I always want to know how much it costs. That "cost" in energy, including
everything like the raw materials to build the processing plant, petroleum products used in making all the little plastic goodies required to build the plant, the paint on the walls, machining the dies to produce the plastic parts, the heat to melt the plastic and inject it into the molds, etc., etc.
I had to laugh when they installed motion detectors around our building to turn lights on when you entered a room and off when nobody was around. What did it "cost" to build even one of those detectors, plus the extra wiring and so forth? How long would it take to amortize out the true cost ?
So much of this conservation stuff is like a kid's party balloon. You push in here, it comes out there.
Terry, 230RN
(I'm po'ed a little about those automatic light switch things in particular because several times I've had the lights go off in the john whilst I was sitting on the pot. Gotta wave your arm or something above the stall walls to tell it, "Hey, you! I'm still here, dammit!")
