On Feb 4, 1:16*am, "Chris.B" wrote:
Air
conditioning is horribly inefficient via a heat pump and is an
increased demand on energy production which did not exist before.

Lack of air conditioning is enervating; and, in any case, if energy is
produced by nuclear power instead of by burning coal, the amount of
energy consumed is irrelevant to carbon production.

Hybrid cars improve on nothing which electric cars, charged overnight
by wind power, can manage with one hand behind their back.

Hybrid cars at least only require a reasonable amount of battery
power, given current technology - if it is a given that new cars must
be able, for safety reasons, to compete in mass and acceleration with
existing gasoline-powered cars. Fossil fuels store energy much more
efficiently and cheaply than batteries.

If we reduce the amount of energy required for personal transportation
by letting electric cars use the bicycle lanes, in effect, though,
then all-electric cars could use lead-acid batteries and have enough
mileage for trips out of the city. That will be more difficult to
achieve politically, however.

Removing the energy
consumed globally in fighting terrorism/wars would save building quite
a few nuclear power stations or close polluting coal fired examples.

Buying less oil won't automatically achieve this immediately.

The irony is that insulating the present housing stock would massively
reduce energy demand and offer levels of human comfort completely
unheard of historically.

Better insulation is a good idea; I know that in Canada our government
did provide tax incentives for homeowners to insulate better.
Unfortunately, this resulted in many putting in forms of insulation
that turned out to emit toxic gases. Then there's the radon problem.

Energy usage shackles "workers" to utterly pointless, wasteful *jobs
to be able to afford their quarterly energy bills and fuel bills for
commuting. Just imagine the constructive things they could do (like
insulating buildings) instead of just moving money around the global
system, using an inefficient, energy guzzling computer keyboard as a
paddle.

Construction workers who insulate buildings do not have better, more
fulfilling, and better paying jobs than stockbrokers. Nor do computer
keyboards use great amounts of energy.

John Savard