This post really belongs at my husband's blog, but until he starts putting 'em up I'm gonna do it. Sorry, this is sort of choppy; I'll probably refine it over the coming days.
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"There is nothing wrong with your thermostat. Do not attempt to adjust the temperature. We are controlling your power consumption. If we wish to make it hotter, we will turn off your air conditioner. If we wish to make it cooler, we will turn off your heater. For the next millennium, sit quietly and we will control your home temperature. We repeat, there is nothing wrong with your thermostat."
California is considering a measure that would require, on new homes and any renovations of the heating/cooling system in existing houses, a thermostat with an FM receiver so that the state could override the programming during peak hours or emergencies to save energy.
California, the home of rolling blackouts, and brownouts; every summer that I lived there I remember the power going out at least once. Not because lightning hit a transformer, the common cause here, but because "California's population growth and its affluence have strained the state's electric and natural gas resources. Famously, rolling blackouts have occurred due to shortages of electrical generation during peak periods." But instead of building new energy plants,
"In other words, the temperature of your home will no longer be yours to control. Your desires and needs can and will be overridden by the state of California through its public and private utility organizations. All this is for the common good, of course."One can easily see a way around this; room air conditioners and portable heaters could make up any deficit when your power's zapped off, but then, they're back where they started; more energy is being used to make up their attempts to control it.
Sounds kind of like certain light bulbs previously mentioned.
4 comments:
Great, another technological wonder. Radio-controlled thermostats. Sort of like the arguments that daylight saving time saves energy. I had thought we had daylight saving time to mess up my schedule. I mean, to help farmers have more light during their spring/summer/fall growing season, back before we all worked in the dark and lit up our farms.
Wait, I don't have a farm.
Anyway, how about GPS-devices in cars to prevent speeding? Another great mis-use of technology.
How about this: EDUCATE AMERICA! Why don't we spend some time really getting the word out on why it's important, for instance, for Californians to be sensible with their electricity usage? And how if they'll play nice, they won't have to endure the rolling blackouts. Or actually put some more nuclear plants out there (nuclear really isn't that bad a power source; I don't know why we don't just periodically launch the nuclear waste into space, on a trajectory out of the solar system - oh, I know, the chance that something'll go wrong and we'll end up spreading the waste all over the place... well, if we encapsulate it in a whole bunch of lead, we don't have to worry so much about that huge chunk of lead, with some nuclear waste inside of it, crashing down into the ocean, which is where we'd line it up to happen if something went wrong on the launch vehicle...).
Ah, well, I'm rambling now, I think... better go find some caffeine and get my thoughts in order before I post any more...
Not just technology, either. In Britain they were questioning whether parents of fat kids were "unfit" (I'll have to dig that one up and write about it), and now they're saying Santa needs to slim down 'cause he's a bad influence. If he were, why wasn't everyone in the 50's fat?
I noticed when I was in Japan, about a year ago, my acid reflux wasn't quite as bad as it usually is here in the states. I guess it's due to fried/fast food here in the states vs., um, whatever it was I was eating over there (raw things, stir-fried and boiled food, etc.). I suggested to my wife that we move there, but she was highly not in agreement!
I think the growth of fast food in America has led to the growth of excess growth here (pun intended). That combined with the lack of physical activities - we drive more, walk less, and do less physical activity. Or something like that. I haven't any hard research to back up my opinion here, just a theory or hypothesis or whatever.
That has much to do with it, no doubt, but a lot of it has to do with the low-fat craze that started a few years back, when people started eating much more sugar and white flour, which we now know cause large insulin surges which in turn cause weight gain. I learned that the hard way.
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