Comments on: My laziness gets me in trouble

By: Will

Will — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:31:45 +0000

That’s a good point, Kirsten. My grandparents live in the mountains of New Mexico and they get at least as much snow as we do here in Indiana, which implies to me that they’d probably use as much heating as we do.

And, on the other side, I bet there are some places in New England that need cooling in the summer.

It’s a complicated subject!

By: Kirsten

Kirsten — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:24:26 +0000

Also, people do not realize it but much of the southwest has heating days in winter, so factored over a year, including the heat for the winter the numbers might be a lot closer.

By: Wil

Wil — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 22:15:46 +0000

It’s a lot harder to measure the impact of wood, since all of its carbon is biogenic (a part of the natural carbon cycle). However, if you want to cut carbon emissions overall (perhaps to offset other people burning non-biogenic carbon), wood produces about 195 lbs of CO2 per million BTU. If you’re like the typical New Englander, you produce 65.1 million BTUs in a season. That’s 12,695 lbs of CO2 (not far off from Wired’s original assumption!).

That’s a lot, but as I mentioned, that’s biogenic carbon, so most of it would be released into the atmosphere anyway, through (forest) fires or decomposition, so I find it hard to say that burning wood is worse than burning natural gas.

Also, people who heat with wood tend to be better about heating just a portion of their house (because it’s easier), so my guess is that wood-burners actually produce a lot fewer BTUs than the average person.

By: Emily

Emily — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 19:42:21 +0000

Wow! Thanks for the impressive math.

Do you have any good figures for heating with wood?

By: Will

Will — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 19:14:49 +0000

I do enjoy Wired’s longer articles, but since everything is online (with supporting links!), I’m seriously considering cancelling our subscription.

That’s great! Not having to heat or cool is huge. I’m pretty sure that we heat and cool quite a bit more than we would if I didn’t work at home. On the other hand, I think we make up for that with reduced transportation needs, so it’s probably a wash.

I do find myself sleeping later and staying up later now that it’s gotten warmer. I have a hard time falling asleep when it’s too hot, but if I wait until it’s late enough, we get a cool breeze and I don’t have to turn on the AC!

By: arduous

arduous — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 17:13:15 +0000

Thanks for running the numbers correctly, Will. I did think Wired’s basic point (that it cost less to cool 20-30 degrees than it cost to heat 40-50 degrees) made sense, but I had also noticed that they were comparing a house to a room. Dumb.

One of the nice things about living in LA, is I realize I don’t really need either the heat or the a/c. It really never gets cold. It does get pretty hot, but since I work outside the home, I don’t need to turn on the a/c in my apartment. Once it hits night, it’s cool enough that just an open window will do.