Quote:
Avoiding using an energy intensive dryer for the clothes is certainly helpful but believing that drying clothes on a line somehow has an effect of cooling the Earth is a bit absurd.
I'm skeptical that there is any such thing as a dryer for clothes that is not "energy intensive." Unfortunately many people buy the marketing that says buying the latest green device is good for the environment. Somehow people are happy to give corporations money for "energy star" dryers instead of buying a clothes line. Similarly, people say "there is nothing individuals can do," in order to avoid simple things like hanging their clothes on the line. But anything that the government mandates will eventually be done by the people.
One simple government solution towards solving the climate crisis would be to outlaw clothes dryers. But if the government mandated drying clothes on a line, then many of the corporate donors to both political parties would lose the money that they make selling dryers and electrical power. Not going to happen. Thus, the climate crisis will only be solved by making corporations and their owners richer.
Maybe some of the engineers and scientist types can do some calculations on the subject of drying clothes on the line. My rough calculations on the cooling effect are below:
Today I put out about two dozen garments to dry. I weighed one t-shirt after it came out of washer (warm cycle -- never use hot) and again after it dried outside: 103 grams less mass. Call it 100 grams of water evaporated. It takes about 2250 joules to vaporize one gram of water (that's at 100 degrees C, so some ChE can fine tune this calculation at 75 degrees and 40 percent relative humidity). But roughly, drying one t-shirt on a line is about 225 KJ of energy removed from the atmosphere.
Does one t-shirt dryed on a line represent a significant amount of energy? 225KJ is 0.25MJ, and I've read that a Tesla model Y averages about 1 MJ per mile. So one t-shirt will get you about a quarter mile in a Tesla. I'm guessing that my small load of laundry today was the equivalent of about 20 t-shirts, so the heat energy I removed from the atmosphere would drive a Tesla Y a distance of 5 miles.
Please correct my math and thermodynamics. Also please tell me how much energy it takes for you to dry about 20 t-shirts and the source of your energy.
Also what is more straightforward and simple a solution to reduce energy and carbon use than drying clothes on a line? Nearly 100 percent of Americans use clothes dryers. Maybe 10% of the rest of the planet uses clothes dryers. So is putting clothes on a line too much work for rich Americans? No wonder US is leader per capita in carbon emissions.
No way will government solve this problem if people in America are so selfish and lazy.
________
It doesn't really matter what Phil is saying, the music of his voice is the appropriate soundtrack for a bicycle race. HTupolev