A future of poisoned oceans, withered crops, and irate polar bears is nobody's idea of a good time. It's clear to anyone who is paying attention that our civilization is due for an upgrade. Bright Green covers the news, ideas, opinions, and trends littering the road to an environmentally sustainable future.
Discussion of the hacked e-mails of climate scientists has reached around the world via Internet. They've probably even heard the news on Unawatuna Beach, Sri Lanka. (NEWSCOM)
Storm continues to swirl around Climategate, as multiple investigations get under way
When e-mails of climate scientists hacked from a British University were published online, the reverberations were heard around the world.
Skeptics of human-caused climate change were elated: Several of the e-mails could be read to indicate that data was inaccurate or fudged, and some seemed to imply collusion about who and what was posted about global warming in peer-reviewed journals.
A couple of weeks later, the controversy continues to swirl like a tornado. Even Jon Stewart has weighed in on it.
Among the latest news, the University of East Anglia announced an independent reviewer of the e-mails and outlined exactly what he would investigate.
What Sir Muir Russell, until recently vice-chancellor at the University of Glasgow, will look at includes many of the serious questions that have been raised.
According to MSNBC, the university said Sir Muir would also review:
CRU’s policies and practices for acquiring, assembling, subjecting to peer review and disseminating data and research findings, and their compliance or otherwise with best scientific practice.
CRU’s compliance or otherwise with the University’s policies and practices regarding requests under the Freedom of Information Act (‘the FOIA’) and the Environmental Information Regulations (‘the EIR’) for the release of data.
Review and make recommendations as to the appropriate management, governance and security structures for CRU and the security, integrity and release of the data it holds.
Also, Penn State University has announced an investigation of one of its professors, Michael Mann, whose e-mails were part of those stolen and made public.
And Republican members of Congress have asked the Environmental Protection Agency to cease climate-change measures until the controversy is settled, says the Los Angeles Times:
In a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency, the lawmakers requested that a pending move to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act be halted, along with plans to limit emissions from vehicles, power plants and other sources, "until the agency can demonstrate the science underlying these regulatory decisions has not been compromised."
It's unlikely that any of these investigations will be speedy. A PSU spokesman says that its look into Mann's e-mails could take "quite some time." And the English report isn't expected until spring.
Will the continuing controversy affect legislation on climate change or UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen? Opinion varies.
At the Freakonomics blog, Stephen Dubner says, "it’s far too early to say," adding that he "senses that there are many other shoes to still be dropped."
Meanwhile, the Obama administration "pushes back on climate change e-mail controversy," reports ABC News.
Editor’s note: For articles about the environment, see the Monitor’s main environment page, which offers information on many topics. Also, check out our Bright Green blog archive and our RSS feed.
You can also follow Judy on Twitter.
The slats in the walls of the farmhouse suggest how drafty this building must have been during cold New England winters.Salvaged doors and wood are being saved for the new construction. Now the renovation decision is: What type of insulation to choose? (Joanne Ciccarello/Staff/The Christian Science Monitor)
Is spray foam insulation the best choice for an old house?
Want to get confused? Listen to several contractors tell you the best way to insulate your drafty old house.
That’s exactly what I did last week. And after puzzling over how people could come to such widely varying conclusions, I have now emerged from the experience better versed on spray foam technology than I ever thought possible – and am almost, but not quite, ready to make a decision.
Early on I opted against traditional fiberglass batting (pink or yellow) because, from my earliest research, I thought that it was clearly not the best choice for us, even though it’s the least expensive in the short term. ( Continue… )
Decorative solar lights are growing in popularity, especially at Christmastime. (NEWSCOM)
Solar-powered Christmas lights – a festive way to go green
There are those who love huge outdoor displays of Christmas lights -- life-size reindeer up on the roof and all the trees in the yard covered with glowing bulbs -- and those who groan at the sight of a weather-proof extension cord.
If you're in the latter group, this post isn't for you. But if you decorate with outdoor lights, you might be interested to find that you can now buy solar-powered decorative outdoor lights.
You may have to hunt for them locally, but there's a wide variety available online. Some are rather pricey, and solar-powered lights may not shine as brightly as the ones you're used to, but they save electricity (and fossil fuels that are burned to make that electricity) and lower your power bill.
There are several types of solar Christmas lights, notes Homily Magazine:
There are the rope lights that have a row of LEDs contained in a transparent plastic tube, these look delightful when hanging from a door frame or window. The other option is string lights; these are better suited for trees and walls.
Kimberly Sharpe adds solar-powered net lights:
These are amazing nets that you can drape over trees and shrubs with ease. The net design allows you to put up Christmas lights in a matter of minutes instead of hours. With the nets you can rest assured that each light will be well spaced and look fantastic. The only thing that is necessary is to make sure that the solar panel receives light.
The LED lights last longer than incandescents and stay cooler. But there are disadvantages, says the Solar Christmas Lights site.
Here's how they work, explains Solar Lights Site:
Instead of ending in an electrical cord, these strings end in a solar panel. Solar Christmas light panels usually have around four solar cells and a rechargeable battery. There are a few manufacturers making polycrystalline and multicrystalline solar cells. These will charge the batteries to near full, even on a rainy day!
Pretty much every solar light has a rechargeable battery. With Solar Christmas lights the battery is usually in the panel assembly. The most common batteries are NiCad, but a few are actually being made with lithium batteries.
Here's one man's experience shopping for solar Christmas lights. And six tips for decorating with solar Christmas lights. Plus a year's worth of experience with this type of lights.
Happy solar holidays!
Editor’s note: For articles about the environment, see the Monitor’s main environment page, which offers information on many topics. Also, check out our Bright Green blog archive and our RSS feed.
You can also follow Judy on Twitter.
A rickshaw driver pushed his passenger through floodwaters in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka in July. Low-lying and impoverished Asian coastal cities such as Dhaka are vulnerable to damage from climate change, environmentalists say. (NEWSCOM)
Putting a human face on climate change
Last week, the White House announced target emissions cuts in advance of the upcoming climate conference in Copenhagen: a 17 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions relative to 2005 levels by 2020. The president's longer-term goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 83 percent by 2050.
Meanwhile, as the waves made by climate scientists' hacked and publicly released e-mails continued to reverberate, observations of glaciers melting faster than anticipated and other signs of warming also kept rolling in.
Among other findings, the so-called Copenhagen Diagnosis, a recently released compendium of 200 studies, points out that ice at both poles is melting faster than climate models projected, and that sea level rise from thermal expansion is – so far – about 40 percent greater than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2007 report predicted.
Amid this inundation of observational data and percentage points — not to mention a considerable amount of political drama around those purloined e-mails — it's easy to forget what all those numbers are really about.
Climate change is ultimately about people's lives. And the consensus is that, on balance, human-induced climate change will generally make life harder for people (not to mention for many other life forms on Earth).
On this often overlooked facet of climate change — the part that, in many respects, matters most — there are some engrossing, first-person accounts floating about the Web these days.
In anticipation of the Copenhagen meeting, The New York Times had four contributors from around the world file dispatches on changing weather where they lived.
In Denmark, one contributor explains that where breezes once dominated, storms now seem to rage more frequently.
Another recounts how, in Cape Town, South Africa, weather patterns have become increasingly fickle, and wildfires more ferocious. The fires are now threatening a unique, flower-filled ecosystem.
A contributor from Brazil tells of the day he witnessed an exhausted penguin wash up on Ipanema Beach near Rio de Janeiro, far north of its customary habitat. Had changing ocean currents and shifting prey abundance brought the penguin a thousand miles north of its comfort zone?
And in Tokyo, one contributor recalls that, in the 1960s, snow used to fall in the city during winter. But is the cause climate change, or just more asphalt?
The Guardian, meanwhile, has a video on what it's calling "climate migration." Low-lying Bangladesh has for years been a case study for those worried about sea level rise — 160 million people living on a flood-prone river delta with nowhere to go.
The video tells the story of two families that, as they struggle against cyclones of growing strength and the floodwaters they bring, consider leaving their villages and moving to the city.
Together, these stories offer a mosaic of climate change at the personal level — how it affects individual lives. As we contemplate the charts and graphics that will likely abound in coming weeks, it's worth remembering that behind these abstract representations of data hide many stories like these.
Editor’s note: For articles about the environment, see the Monitor’s main environment page, which offers information on many topics. Also, check out our Bright Green blog archive and our RSS feed.
Two researchers from the Norwegian Polar institute measure ice thickness at the Fram Straits in Greenland. As the world climate summit closes in, scientists monitoring the impact of global warming in the icy far north have grown frustrated by public apathy and disbelief about the extent of the problem. (AFP PHOTO/Norwegian Polar Institute/NEWSCOM)
Global warming: 72 percent of Americans say it's real, poll finds
Amid all the controversy about the hacked e-mails of climate scientists comes an ABC-Washington Post poll that says a majority of Americans believe that global warming is happening and that a cap on greenhouse gases should be imposed nationally.
That's a drop of 8 percentage points (thanks, Don!) compared with those believed in global warming a year ago (and a drop of 12 percentage points over the past three years). Juliet Eilperin of The Post explains the change in numbers this way:
The increase in climate skepticism is driven largely by a shift within the GOP. Since its peak 3 1/2 years ago, belief that climate change is happening is down sharply among Republicans -- 76 to 54 percent -- and independents -- 86 to 71 percent. It dipped more modestly among Democrats, from 92 to 86 percent. A majority of respondents still support legislation to cap emissions and trade pollution allowances, by 53 to 42 percent.
Among Democrats, 86 percent believe the world has been getting warmer (down 6 percentage points from 2006). Among Independents, believers number 71 percent (15 percentage points less than three years ago). A scant majority of Republicans also believe: 54 percent (22 percentage points less than in 2006).
Seventy-five percent of respondents 18 to 29 think that global warming is happening; along with 72 percent of those 30 to 64, and 68 percent of those over 65.
College grads were more likely to be believers that non-grads, 77 to 70 percent.
You can read the all the other questions that were asked and see the graphics about the poll answers here.
There was a Pew Research poll last month that had fewer people believing in climate change and more skeptics.
Will these changing attitudes have any effect on what happens at the upcoming climate-change conference in Copenhagen?
President Obama plans to go to Copenhagen next week to attend the early rounds of a U.N. climate summit, which is drawing delegations from 192 countries. Fifty-five percent of Americans believe that the U.S. should act on global warming even if other countries do less; 21 percent say the U.S. should take action only if other countries do; and 22 percent say the U.S. should not take action at all, according to the Post/ABC poll.
Editor’s note: For articles about the environment, see the Monitor’s main environment page, which offers information on many topics. Also, check out our Bright Green blog archive and our RSS feed.
You can also follow Judy on Twitter.
Understanding home insulation, from fiberglass to foam
During the next two days I’ll be getting estimates from three different insulation contractors as well as a crash course on air infiltration and R-values. Those are two key elements to understand when looking at insulating a home.
Air infiltration refers essentially to how drafty a house is – how much air seeps in and out of its cracks and corners. The R-value refers to how much thermal resistance a particular type of insulation provides.
My goal is to find the best way to button up Sheep Dog Hollow – very clearly a drafty, old house – in a green but also economic manner. From what I’ve learned so far, it may not be that much of a challenge. ( Continue… )
Americans generated 3.01 million tons of electronic waste, or e-waste, in 2007, but only 13.6 percent of it was recycled. (NEWSCOM)
E-waste recycling – are solutions near?
Last week, US Rep. Mike Thompson (D) of California introduced a resolution calling on Congress to better manage disposal of old electronics, or e-waste.
The resolution, now in the Committee on House Administration, proposes that the legislative branch recycle its obsolete computers, monitors, cellphones, and other electronic equipment exclusively with recyclers certified by the new e-Stewards Standard.
E-waste poses a large and growing problem around the world. Americans generated 3.01 million tons of the stuff in 2007, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. But only 13.6 percent of it was recycled. The rest went into incinerators and dumps.
Although small in absolute terms, compared to other waste streams, e-waste is the fastest growing portion of the municipal waste stream in the US. Between 2005 and 2006, the amount of trash produced overall increased by 1.2 percent. E-waste, however, increased by 8.6 percent.
Worldwide, e-waste now accounts for more than 5 percent of everything thrown out in cities. (For more e-waste facts and figures, see the Electronics TakeBack Coalition's fact sheet [PDF].)
As e-waste recycling is subject to almost no oversight, some 50 to 80 percent of e-waste is, in fact, exported to developing countries, according to watchdog organizations. There, people often extract scrap metal, circuit boards, and other resalable materials without adequate protective material. In doing so, they're potentially exposed hazardous materials — lead, mercury, and cadmium, among them.
(Here's a recent PBS Frontline World piece on e-waste dumps in Ghana, West Africa. There, amid smoldering heaps of electronics from the US and elsewhere, children extract valuable metal from electronics with fire. They burn the plastic off old monitors and other electronics using styrofoam as a fire-starter.)
Many companies have pledged to recycle their electronics products in a way that's more friendly to both people and the environment — the so-called e-Stewards Pledge. But, although well-meaning, the pledge remains little more than an unverified promise to behave responsibly.
Soon, however, the e-Stewards Pledge will become the e-Stewards Certification, an accredited, third-party certification program for e-waste recycling. That's slated to begin in March 2010.
Among other things, the new standard will prohibit the the export of e-waste from developed to developing countries. This is the standard referenced in Representative Thompson's resolution.
Proposals similar to Thompson's have become law at the city and state level around the country, indicating support for such measures among lawmakers. But in some cases, the electronics industry has resisted e-waste regulation.
In 2008, New York City passed a law requiring electronics companies to establish door-to-door electronics collection programs for their products in the city, and to responsibly recycle them.
Already, 20 other states have passed similar laws — most recently, Wisconsin [pdf]. In October, Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle signed an e-waste recycling bill into law.
But in July, the Consumer Electronics Association and the Information Technology Industry Council filed a lawsuit against New York City, calling the new e-waste recycling law "onerous," unconstitutional, and costly.
The plaintiffs estimated that the costs of a door-to-door collection program would run upward of $200 million annually. The trucks used to collect the old electronics would also increase traffic congestion and air pollution in the city.
Then, earlier this month, parties in favor of e-waste recycling laws — city and state governments from around the country — countered with an amicus brief [pdf] to the New York court where the lawsuit was filed. They supported New York City's e-waste recycling law and challenged the industry groups' claims.
In a letter [PDF] sent directly to the plaintiffs that urged them to drop the case, they wrote:
"... your actions are a direct challenge to state and local government efforts to protect public health and the environment. Governments can little afford to cover the recycling or disposal costs of each product brought to market. In bringing forth this lawsuit, we believe the industry is not meeting its fiscal responsibility and shifting it to taxpayers/ratepayers."
How it all plays out remains to be seen.
For more info, see a list of recyclers deemed responsible by the Electronics TakeBack Coalition, and visit the Basel Action Network's website for more about where e-waste ends up.
Editor’s note: For articles about the environment, see the Monitor’s main environment page, which offers information on many topics. Also, check out our Bright Green blog archive and our RSS feed.
Copenhagen is set to host world leaders at the UN Climate Change Conference in December. Will it be affected by the global warming e-mails that were hacked and released? (FRANCIS JOSEPH DEAN/DEAN PICTURES/NEWSCOM)
Hacked global warming e-mails – what's new?
When the news broke that "more than 169 megabytes worth of global-warming emails and related files were either hacked and/or leaked from computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Center in Britain and released to the world via the Internet," as the Monitor's Pete Spotts wrote, some reactions were to be expected: Skeptics of global warming were jubilant because they say the e-mails prove that human-caused global warming is false, a fraud perpetrated by scientists.
Supporters countered that statements from the e-mails were taken out of context.
The Los Angeles Times predicts that after healthcare, Afghanistan, and financial regulatory reform, global warming will be the next partisan divide in the US. Anyone who tries to read some of the thousands of impassioned blog posts on this topic would say that it has already happened.
The New York Times zeroes in on the arrogance shown in the scientists' e-mails.
And in Britain, the Telegraph points out that "Climate change sceptics have been forced to change their own graph showing a decrease in global temperatures after admitting that they got it wrong."
Also in the news about climate change as well as concerned with the e-mails:
-- A trio of climate scientists calls the furor over the hacked e-mails "a smear campaign":
"We're facing an effort by special interests who are trying to confuse the public," said Richard Somerville, Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and a lead author of the UN IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, reports SolveClimate, vai Reuters.
-- Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., had earlier announced an investigation into the e-mails. (See below.) Now, "The U.S. Senate's leading global warming skeptic has sent letters to several climate change scientists and to the inspectors general of various federal agencies notifying them to retain breached documents and e-mails that he says prove researchers are manipulating data to make the case for global warming," says FOX News.
– The president will attend the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen after all.
– Obama to Offer Firm Pledge on Emissions Cuts in Copenhagen, reports The New York Times:
Carol Browner, the president’s senior adviser for energy and climate change, said the president hoped that the announcement of the American target would spur other countries to show their cards.
“Obviously we hope other major economies will put forth ambitious action plans of their own,” she said at a White House briefing Wednesday morning
– In an article titled "Global warming accelerates; Climategate rumbles on," Reuters notes that "skeptics are "using a flood of leaked e-mails from a British University — dubbed 'Climategate' – to question the findings" of the Copenhagen Diagnosis. (For more details, see "Amid charges of global warming hoax, new warning on climate change.")
– Sen. Inhofe announced that he would probe whether the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) "cooked the science to make this thing look as if the science was settled, when all the time of course we knew it was not."
– In Britain, former chancellor Lord Lawson, a global warming skeptic, called for an inquiry into data "manipulation" about global warming, as a result of the e-mails. (See here for an interview with Lawson.)
– Climate scientist geochemist Thomas Crowley, a professor of geosciences and director of the Scottish Alliance for Geosciences and the Environment at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, criticizes skeptics and the press in an e-mail interview with The Washington Post's Andrew Freedman.
– Professor Phil Jones Director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, says that charges of conspiracy over climate change are "rubbish," reports the Guardian.
– Security experts say the hack could lead to future attacks, reports ChannelWeb, which adds that there could be "... more malicious attacks down the road, as hackers use cybercrime to further political agenda." Also, the individuals whose e-mails were exposed now have some of their private information in the public domain and could be subject to phishing or worse.
– The University of East Anglia. which had been criticized for its tepid response to the extensive e-mail theft, announced that plans to launch a review of the incident.
– In an analysis of the impact the e-mails might have on the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen and on a possible US climate bill, Reuters says they aren't the game-changer that skeptics hope.
– But many think that the credibility of climate scientists and climate science have been damaged.
In any case, the issue doesn't seem likely to disappear quickly. And we'll keep following it.
Editor’s note: For articles about the environment, see the Monitor’s main environment page, which offers information on many topics. Also, check out our Bright Green blog archive and our RSS feed.
You can also follow Judy on Twitter.
A woman reads a newspaper as a ship is seen spraying sand and gravel off the coast near Petten, Netherlands. The Dutch government is spending billions of euros annually to prepare for the expected impact of global warming, including rising seas. (AP/FILE)
Hacked climate emails: conspiracy or tempest in a teapot?
For all its gee-whiz discoveries and its influence on public policy, science can be a messy, sometimes ugly enterprise.
When the science is paleontology, astronomy, or geophysics, internal politics, thinly or not-so-thinly veiled personal attacks, and water-cooler discussions among influential scientists about whose research is junk and not worth publishing draw a collective yawn from anyone outside the relatively small circle of researchers involved.
When the topic is global warming, however, look out.
This week, more than 169 megabytes worth of global-warming emails and related files were either hacked and/or leaked from computers at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Center in Britain and released to the world via the Internet.
(If you're interested in poring through some 169 megabytes of emails and files, you can download 26-megabyte FOI2009.zip from here, then unpack it. You'll need to set up a free account, then you can download the file.)
The package includes a number of innocuous discussions among the 1,073 emails that span a period from March 1996 to this month. But others treat with disdain colleagues who don't share the views of the majority or who challenge the way data are analyzed. Some emails give the appearance of fudging data. Others show the authors concerned about the ways their methods or data could be (mis)interpreted by global-warming skeptics.
In yet another email, one researcher influential in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) process vows to keep two sets of results from being included in the group's widely cited reports "somehow -- even if if we have to redefine what the peer review literature is."
The appearance of these emails and files comes at a time when the US Senate has punted action on a climate and energy bill into next year, and with a major climate summit coming up next month in Copenhagen. Over the past three months -- if not longer -- it's become increasingly clear that the meeting will not yield a legally binding climate treaty, as negotiators hoped at a similar meeting in Bali in December 2007.
This confluence of postponements led US Sen. James Inhofe (R) of Oklahoma, a prominent political skeptic of global warming, to announce on the Senate floor last Wednesday: "I proudly declare 2009 as the Year of the Skeptic, the year in which scientists who question the so-called global warming consensus are being heard."
For researchers directly involved in the email exchanges, such emails really present a picture of the lengths scientists go to ensure the high quality of the science. The exchanges are shocking to some of the rest of us only because they open a window on an enterprise alien to most people. The debates are public in the sense that they crop up in scientific journals. But most people don't keep science journals handy as reading material for the commute to and from work.
Over at Realclimate.org, several of whose climate-scientist contributors were involved in the pilfered email-exchanges, the "group" explains the collection this way:
...There is a peek into how scientists actually interact and the conflicts show that the community is a far cry from the monolith that is sometimes imagined. People working constructively to improve joint publications; scientists who are friendly and agree on many of the big picture issues, disagreeing at times about details and engaging in ‘robust’ discussions; Scientists expressing frustration at the misrepresentation of their work in politicized arenas and complaining when media reports get it wrong; Scientists resenting the time they have to take out of their research to deal with over-hyped nonsense. None of this should be shocking.
Yet some of the targets of the emails' ire understandably see things differently. One target, climate researcher John Christy at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, finds the emails reflect a disturbing level of what he terms "group think." In an email exchange (a polite one), he writes:
These people act in concert to diminish, reject, and otherwise denigrate findings with which they do not agree -- and they are able to do so because of their "establishment" positions. This is the preservation of "group think" at its most serious level.... The group represented by the bulk of these emails does indeed have a message to defend. Those of us who see problems with that message are aware of how the data are manufactured and interpreted to support that message -- and worse, how these establishment scientists act as gatekeepers for the "consensus" reports to suppress alternative findings.
Another target of email ire, Roger Pielke Sr. at Colorado State University, makes much the same argument. You can read his latest blog post on the subject here.
Neither rejects the notion of a human role in global warming. But they consistently object to the disaster scenarios that permeate the political discussions about global warming. And in Dr. Pielke's case, the human role extends beyond carbon dioxide to include "forcings" such as land-use change or the production of black-carbon soot from biomass burning.
Nothing in the package appears to overturn the general idea -- arrived at via many lines of evidence -- that the CO2 humans have been pumping into the atmosphere is warming the planet, nor does anything bolster the notion some put forward of a hoax on the part of climate scientists.
It remains to be seen how the release of the emails and files plays out beyond the circle of people who follow the issue closely and who hold strong views on either side of the issue. It could turn out to be a tempest in a teapot or a PR gotcha for US climate scientists. At the least, it reinforces the maxim: Don't put into an email information you don't want to see on the front page of someone's newspaper (Oops, old medium) web site.
The irony: Since the international community first took up the climate issue in a serious way in 1992, the focus of attention has been on the atmospheric effects of pumping long-sequestered carbon into the atmosphere through burning fossil fuels. But that CO2 also is working its way into the oceans, making them more acidic -- something that raises its own set of serious challenges.
Editor’s note: For more articles about the environment, see the Monitor’s main environment page, which offers information on many environment topics. Also, check out our Bright Green blog archive and our RSS feed.
Doug Pongrazc checks out a large screen television while shopping at a Best Buy store in Elk Grove, Calif. The state has imposed a first-in-the nation mandate on TV energy use, intended to lower electricity demand. (Rich Pedroncelli/AP Photo)
How will California's new TV energy standards affect you?
On Wednesday, the California Energy Commission approved new energy-efficiency standards to regulate how much electricity television sets sold in the state can consume.
When do the standards take effect? Jan. 1, 2011, with more stringent rules kicking in two years later.
Do they apply to the TV sets I currently own? No. They also don't apply to any television set you buy next year. And you can keep using your TVs as long as they last.
What television sets will be regulated? All that measure 58 inches (1,400 square inches) or smaller.
How will future TVs be affected? By 2011, television sets sold in California stories must use a third less power than they do now. That goes up to a 49 percent power savings by 2013.
Why did the commission impose regulations on TV sets? Because flat-screen TVs use a great deal of energy. The LA Times explains:
Since the sale of flat-panel televisions began to rocket at the beginning of the decade, TV-related power usage more than tripled to 10 billion kilowatt-hours per year, accounting for nearly 10 percent of residential electricity consumption, said Commissioner Arthur Rosenfeld, a nuclear physicist and University of California, Berkeley professor.
The commission's website adds:
In California, televisions (along with DVRs, DVD players, and cable boxes) now consume 10 percent of a home's electricity. Increasing sales of flat screen televisions, larger screen sizes, the growing number of TVs per household, and increased daily use of televisions all contribute to greater electricity consumption.
You can already buy television sets that meet the new standards, says the commission, which provides a PDF list of them.
Will TV sets that meet the new standards cost more? That's unclear at the moment. The commission says they shouldn't. A TV manufacturer says they won't cost too much more.
How much energy will you save because of the new regulations? From $18 to $30 per TV per year, the commission estimates. That could add up to $8 billion statewide by 2021, according to one calculation.
By 2013, the savings will be enough to "power 864,000 single-family homes for an entire year," the commission says. "That's enough electricity to power the cities of Anaheim, Burbank, Glendale, and Palo Alto combined."
Do other states regulate energy consumption of TVs? No, California is first. But others are considering it.
Industry groups are not happy with the mandate, saying that it "will endanger jobs, innovation and consumer choice."
Editor’s note: For more articles about the environment, see the Monitor’s main environment page, which offers information on many environment topics. Also, check out our Bright Green blog archive and our RSS feed.
You can also follow Judy on Twitter.
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