As it gets colder in the northern hemisphere, people are constantly trotting out the question of global warming. So let’s take a look at the idea. There are all sorts of statistics available for those of you who crave such things, so I am not going to bother citing any of them here. My issue on this question is more in the form of asking why people are so concerned about it when it is clear from geological evidence that the earth goes through cycles of warming and cooling. We also go through cycles of “good” weather and “bad” weather which are tied to sunspot cycles… None of these things have been mediated by humans.
But if we assume, for the sake of argument, that humans are
responsible for the current changes in climate, let us look at one of the main
culprits, in my own humble opinion: the
clothes dryer! To get wet clothes dry,
you need to add the heat of evaporation (or in winter, perhaps the heat of
sublimation) to the clothes. Clothes
dryers typically heat the clothes way more than is necessary just to take the
moisture out of them. That’s why things
are hot when they come out of the dryer and why you tend to burn yourself on
the rivets in your jeans. So clothes
dryers use more energy than is needed to get the job done, which is a waste.
Now, electrical transmission lines are notoriously lossy
systems. This means that about 10 times
the amount of energy needs to be generated just to get enough to you to do the
job. So on top of the extra energy that
the dryer uses, the distribution system is using/wasting a bunch, too. It’s pretty much the same thing with gas
dryers. The energy loss there is not in
the transmission so much as in the fact that it takes a lot of energy to get
the gas to a refinery, to refine it, and to get it to the individual consumer.
But consider the original solar- and wind-powered
dryer: a clothes line. The sun and wind provide very little more
energy to the clothes than is needed to dry them. The clothes might heat a little more than
necessary on a clothes line, but not enough to feel “hot.” The kinetic energy lost when the wind stops
blowing is probably negligible… In
addition, the use of the solar energy to evaporate or sublimate the moisture is
using energy that would otherwise go into making the earth hotter – i.e.,
global warming. So using a clothes line
would theoretically contribute to global cooling more than warming. So, if a person truly wanted to live a “green”
lifestyle, why would they use a gas or electric clothes dryer in place of the
original solar and wind-powered dryer: a
clothes line? (Aside from the question
of why pay to do something that you can get done for free.)
The only reason I can see is that we seem to be concerned
that if we hang our clothes out on a line, the neighbors will see our
underclothes which is embarrassing. Now,
people dried clothes outside for centuries with no one being embarrassed. We dried clothes on clothes lines when you
couldn’t show a bra on a human model unless it was worn outside the clothes – maybe
you are old enough to remember the original “cross your heart” bras that were
modeled by women wearing sweaters under the bras. We hung clothes out on lines when it was
considered unseemly for a bra strap or slip to show. (If you saw a woman’s slip, you took her aside
and quietly pointed it out to her in the same way you might tell a man that his
fly was open. She would then go to the
ladies room to fix the problem.)
Nowadays, however, showing a bra strap is “no big deal” and
may even be a fashion statement! In
fact, showing the whole bra on a body is no big deal. So why is it a big deal to show it on a
clothes line? I just don’t get it and
would love to hear your comments on the subject.
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