Dehydrator Question

[Hook686]

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Literally, the vision that runs through my head after reading your post is a child looking into a shoebox full of hay with a chicken egg sitting next to a CFL. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I guess I'll go stick my hand into the leads on the flyback transformer and huff some more mercury vapor and plastic fumes as I celebrate how green I am.

I understand. Perhaps everything is fine for we who grew up in the 20th century. Traffic, energy brown outs, cycling, costs are a lot higher today than in days gone by. With the factories and jobs now overseas, those folks are going through what we went through 75 years ago. Four day traffic jams in China ... just think of the gasoline consumption and pollution generated and nobody went anywhere. The USA will not be consuming 35% of the world's resources much longer, if even now. I think first costs are the lesser of the operating cost Vs first cost scenario. Focusing on first cost as the most important may have got this country in the economic mess it is currently in. Cheap good sell. The native Americans sold Manhattan to the white man for $24 worth of trinkets. They probably chuckled at the time, but have been making the white man pay for it ever since. It is one thing when there are 3 billion people, another when there are 6 billion, and I shudder to think of when there are 9 billion people demanding what we had 40-50 years ago.

 

[AMProducts]

The problem with quoting blind statistics such as "the USA consumes 35% of world resources" is kinda useless if it doesn't take into account what percentage of the world resources we produce. Sustainability is a function not of how much everyone else produces, but a matter of how much we consume compared to what we produce.

I can make a lighbulb from materials I can find in my immediate environment, I can mine sand and iron in my backyard, I can make graphite filliment from organic waste that otherwise gets thrown away. Literally all I need are heat inputs to accomplish this. Heat I can make by burning trees I also find in my yard, which will regrow. I cannot make a LED or CFL without traveling the world, that means massive energy inputs in transportation, those materials have to be mined, plus the places where many of these minerals are mined are in countries which face perpetual conflict so mining operations are non-industrial and are an experiment in human misery.

The law of unintended consequences is alive and well. We decide we need to burn less coal/natural gas/nuclear power and to do so, rather than looking at what the alternatives are, and trying to make a value judgement about them, instead the government passes sweeping mandates that mean we burn less coal and natural gas, yet require huge energy inputs elsewhere. Like it or not, being a coal miner in america might be a hard job that can be conducted from the air conditioned cab of a large mining machine. Being a slave tantalum miner in DR Congo means spending all day up to your waist in water that's hot/cold full of contaminants, disease and parasites. Oh and the mining operation is also contaminating the only water supply for the 5 closest villages.