cost analysis
Rates Can be Deceiving
Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008This article recently brought up an excellent point on how some rates can be deceiving, and even reduce the likelihood that we will make the right decision. The example involved comparing impressions of fuel efficiency in miles per gallon versus gallons per mile, or gallons per ten thousand miles. While identifying the better of two […]
Review - Kill-A-Watt Electricity Usage Monitor
Friday, May 16th, 2008With energy costs increasing faster than inflation and much faster than income in the United States, many have a desire to conserve. But, without information, our conservation may be more expensive than it is worth and hardly as effective as it could have been. The kill-a-watt electricity usage monitor provides a useful way to be […]
CAFE Standards and Speed Limits, Round 2
Thursday, May 15th, 2008In this earlier article on the new CAFE standards, I found that depending on the assumptions made for the number of future miles driven, restricting the speed limit to 55 miles per hour would be a more cost effective and more energy efficient solution than changing the CAFE standard. That analysis only considered the total […]
Landfills as an Energy Source
Tuesday, May 13th, 2008As landfills which hold municipal solid waste are closed the emissions from decay of the material in the landfill becomes a pollutant. That pollutant can either contribute to smog and the increase in greenhouse gases, or it can be used as an energy source. A free, environmentally friendly fuel, potentially harmful if released, is not […]
Hidden Technology Subsidies and System Design Bias
Wednesday, April 30th, 2008When Subsidies are Hard to See
When we think of our governments subsidizing a particular industry we usually envision a nice big check sent to them every year to the tune of millions of dollars from tax revenues. Sometimes, instead, it is that industry that is free from a particular tax that most others have […]
Review - IRCMS (Integrated Reliability Centered Maintenance System) by NAVAIR
Monday, April 28th, 2008This review refers to version 6.3 of IRCMS by NAVAIR (Naval Air Systems Command).
IRCMS 6.3 provides users with an aid to perform Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) analysis. RCM is a process by which the life cycle costs of performing maintenance on a system are compared to the consequences of not performing maintenance as well […]
A Way Out of the Politics of Climate Change, Part 4
Friday, April 25th, 2008Evaluating Solution Effectiveness and Translating Analysis into Policy
This is the fourth article in a five part series.
To date in this series, we’ve looked at objective measures of how to frame a problem, how to determine the causes of that problem, and consider implementing a robust solution to the problem. In the last article, we […]
Green Production versus Conservation
Thursday, April 24th, 2008In honor of Earth Day on 4/22 (a little late, I know), let’s consider the relationship between “green” production and conservation.
Our question is does conservation or “green” production result a greater positive impact regarding our use of resources. I am going to take the case of paper, as it is relatively simple product to […]
A Way Out of the Politics of Climate Change, Part 3
Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008Evaluating Likelihood and Addressing Uncertainty when Applying Solutions
This is the third article in a five part series.
In the first two articles in this series we looked at identifying a problem and a functional understanding of that problem and then at determining all the causes of that problem. Now, we are going to […]
CAFE Vehicle Standards Compared to Speed Limits
Monday, April 14th, 2008What would more effectively reduce pollution from small vehicles?
Recently, there was a significant political argument in the United States about the costs and benefits of increasing the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. Increased efficiency, the argument went, would reduce the consumption of fuel, and therefore help restrain fuel prices, also reducing pollution from vehicles […]
Landfills, Mines of the Future ?
Friday, April 11th, 2008So, how long will it be before our trash is more valuable than existing iron mines?
The municipal waste collection system in the United States is very efficient at removing whatever materials we place in our trash bag. So much so, that we normally find it difficult to imagine the scale of the operation, and especially […]