2012-02-21 Solar Heating Reduces our Vulnerability

Last week I considered solar heating as a way of heating our homes applying the usual economic grid. Solar heating makes sense economically, but its economic viability is affected by projected energy prices, the ability to add extra heat on the coldest, shortest days of the year, and perhaps a willingness to modify lifestyle, that is, to demand our hot water when the sun shines. Economics may be one reason to choose solar.

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2012-02-14 Does Solar Thermal Make Sense Economically?

Anybody who has used a black garden hose in summer knows that solar energy will heat water. But that same garden hose in winter will be useless. This has been the problem with harnessing solar energy to heat our water or our homes.

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Lights Out...

Although it was only 8:30 p.m. on February 9^th, the temperature outside had slipped to minus 25 Celsius. John and Mary were enjoying a quiet evening in their home on First Street in Steinbach when the lights went out.

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2012-01-31 Electricity & Resilience

I have been thinking recently about how reliable our electrical power supply really is.
It started while reading the Kindle Book, “Farming 101: Transitions.” In this short novel, Gary Martens of the University of Manitoba is making a case for Natural Systems Agriculture.

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2012-01-24 The Keystone XL Pipeline is Rejected: So?

So President Obama has rejected the Keystone XL Pipeline. I think the President must feel good since he has finally lived up to the spirit of his election promises, environmentalists in the US are celebrating a victory, the Republicans seem to think they have an issue to take to the fall election, and Canadians, by and large, don’t know what to think.

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