| | | (Kati Szilágyi for The Washington Post) | | Welcome. This week, frog saunas and cutting "climate change" out of Florida's textbooks. But first, the right way to load dishes, save gas and be greener. |  | | A house divided cannot stand. Yet making eco-friendly choices at home can be divisive. Couples squabble over whether green cleaning products really work. Is it more efficient to roll down the car windows or turn on the air conditioning? And loading the dishwasher properly sparks endless debates. It's time to lay a few to rest. I set out to answer a few of these common threats to domestic tranquility with hard data. It might be the evidence you've been seeking or, be warned, the ammunition your spouse needs to say: "I told you so." Do green cleaning products work as well as conventional products? Many dismiss eco-friendly cleaning products as ineffective, and for many years, that was an accurate assessment, says Jason Marshall, who runs the laboratory of the Toxics Use Reduction Institute (TURI) at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. Today, based on the lab's head-to-head tests of green cleaning products against more toxic cleaners, Marshall argues there's no compromise. "Green products can and do perform as effectively as traditional cleaning products," he says. Even the toughest household jobs, such as sanitizing surfaces of E. coli, can be done as effectively without toxic chemicals. But this doesn't mean that all products labeled as good for the environment perform equally well. To guarantee that a product is as effective as its conventional counterpart, you'll need to look for independent certifications such as Green Seal, EPA Safer Choice and UL Ecologo. Search products from Green Seal and EPA Safer Choice here. Or TURI advises on how to make your own. Car windows down or AC? This debate has raged since air conditioning was first added to vehicles in 1940. Air conditioning lowers your car's fuel efficiency by as much as 25 percent — but keeping your windows down increases fuel consumption because the car is less aerodynamic. Which is better? Thanks to our friends at Tennessee's Oak Ridge National Lab, we have hard data. Researchers measured fuel consumption while driving a 2009 Toyota Corolla at speeds up to 80 mph with the windows up and the air conditioning running. They repeated the experiment with the windows down and the AC off. The bottom line: Rolling down the windows is usually more fuel efficient until you hit highway speeds, at least in a sedan. In the Corolla, driving with open windows used less fuel at speeds up to 60 mph. Above 60 mph, it became more efficient to run the air conditioner at half-capacity. Above 75 mph, it was more efficient to run the AC at full blast compared with having the wind blowing in your hair. But your mileage may vary, especially if like most Americans, you drive an SUV or a crossover. When the researchers repeated the experiment with a 2009 Ford Explorer, they found air conditioning — even at half-capacity — sucked up more fuel than leaving the windows down at speeds up to 80 mph. Running the AC at full blast was always less efficient |  | | Click on my column below to read whether it's better to use paper towels vs. cleaning rags, and how to properly load the dishwasher. What are you arguing out about? Write me at climatecoach@washpost.com. I read all your emails. Also, check out our new AI-powered tool that helps you find answers to your climate questions. It's called Climate Answers and it's based on our published reporting. |  | Field Sample On a rocky ridge perched above warehouses and ATV trails grows the Jurupa Oak, one of the oldest plants on Earth. Despite surviving an ice age and rapid global warming, the tree and its fate may now rest with the Planning Commission of Jurupa Valley, a city of 100,000 an hour east of Los Angeles. The commission is considering a 1.4-square-mile business and residential park. If approved, light-industry buildings would sit just a few hundred feet from the ancient tree, estimated to be at least 13,000 years old. The paving and construction from the project might finally kill the giant oak tree. It measures 90 feet long and 30 feet wide, and is mostly underground. The Jurupa Oak is a species of "clonal tree," a network of genetically identical shrubs connected through a shared root system. Over thousands of years, the tree has sprouted new, genetically identical shoots from burned stumps after a wildfire. Environmentalists say paving the nearby hills could cut off critical water supplies. Read more about its plight by The Post's Shannon Osaka. |  | | A project under consideration in Jurupa Valley, Calif., is threatening the Jurupa Oak, which is estimated to be at least 13,000 years old. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post) | Learning Curve Everyone complains about the weather forecast, but some people have more cause to grumble than others, write The Post's Niko Kommenda and Harry Stevens. In Miami, the temperature forecast is usually accurate a week into the future. But in Paonia, Colo., even the one-day temperature forecast is wrong by almost 6 degrees Fahrenheit on average. We mapped weather forecast accuracy across the United States. Look up your home. |  |  | Snapshot In the marshes south of New Orleans, construction crews are putting the final touches on a $21 billion liquefied natural gas plant, a maze of pipes, pumps and tanks powered by two 720-megawatt power plants. When complete, it will send fossil fuels around the globe to generate electricity. All of this sits slightly above or just below sea level, on sinking land expected to face fiercer floods and storms roaring off an ever-rising Gulf of Mexico. So the project's sponsor, Arlington, Va.-based Venture Global, is protecting it by building a modern fortress. The plant will be surrounded by a 26-foot-high steel sea wall, twice the size of Washington's National Mall, with pilings buried 220 feet underground and a foundation descending 60 feet under the sinking marsh. | | Venture Global's LNG export facility in Port Sulphur, La. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post) | | Even that might not be enough: Five environmental scientists interviewed by The Post said a large storm could submerge the facility and cut it off from the land. "Sure they may have massive flood walls, but the facility may evolve into becoming an island surrounded by open water," said Torbjörn E. Törnqvist, a professor at Tulane University's department of earth and environmental sciences. Read more about the rising fortress on a sinking land by The Post's Steven Mufson and Ricky Carioti, part of our series, The Drowning South. |  | The Second Degree I wrote about how the suburbs could become 15-minute cities. Jude Morris of Petaluma, Calif., says she grew up in the same streetcar suburb where her mother was born in 1926. "Our grocers, butchers, clothing stores -— everything we needed, including parks and recreation, were local and walkable," she says. "Even children were able to access the streetcar to reach the next suburb. The city of Pittsburgh was easily accessible by bus or streetcar." Although many cities gave up on this design, she sees new developments returning to the old model. "I love seeing the new developments that mimic the streetcar suburbs — homes built closer together with bike paths and parklets and shopping nearby, with opportunities for neighbors to gather," says Morris. "Front porches are making a comeback." But Diane said the structural issues that keep us in our cars demand collective, emergency action to change the culture: "Americans (at least in the West) are trained from babyhood that getting in a car is how you go everywhere." Finally, Kathy of Bend, Ore., says seeing "climate vandals" in the subject line of my last email, made her think of a different meaning for the term. "Having already forgotten about the Stonehenge incident, my mind wandered about what the term could mean," she writes. "I settled on thinking about those who, in their greed, are actively stealing the climate from our future. Visions of arresting them danced in my head." |  |  | | A black bear posed for this image, sent by a reader, sipping from a hummingbird feeder in North Bend, Wash. What's summer like in your neighborhood? Send photos and stories at climatecoach@washpost.com | | Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here to get The Climate Coach in your inbox every Tuesday. See you next Tuesday, Michael Coren, Climate Coach | | | | | |
Email
No comments:
Post a Comment