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Science dishes out an answer on the old handwashing vs. dishwasher debate

In my family of origin, there’s a parent who prefers to put all the dishes in the dishwasher and a parent who prefers to do everything by hand. (It just so happens that the parent who likes doing dishes manually is the one who’s worse at cleaning and therefore leaves a light grease sheen on dishes, but that’s neither here nor there.) We all have our own method for getting through what is objectively one of the worst household chores. But which method is best for the environment?

A new study in the journal Environmental Research Communications sheds light on the most energy and water-efficient way to do the dishes. It’s worth noting up front that the study was partially funded by Whirlpool, an appliance manufacturer, and the research was conducted in a “Whirlpool lab” of 38 Whirlpool employees, who were asked to manually wash dishes and load a dishwasher. (It seems safe to assume these employees probably load a dishwasher better than the average American). But the analysis was carried out by independent researchers at the University of Michigan, who also tested the conclusions of previous studies that found dishwashers were more efficient than manual washing.

They found that team “just put it in the dishwasher” is mostly right. In a majority of cases, using a new-ish dishwasher is more efficient than traditional hand-washing techniques. The main problems with dishwashers, the study shows, are pre-rinsing and heated drying. Eliminating those two steps from your dish-washing routine decreases the appliance’s greenhouse gas emissions by 3 percent and 11 percent, respectively.

According to the study, team “just do them by hand” is mostly wrong and should probably start loading the dishwasher more often. Typical manual washing, the kind of washing where you mostly leave the water running as you clean (sound familiar?), produced 5,620 kilograms of greenhouse gases over a 10-year period of washing 32 place settings per week. (The greenhouse gases associated with hand-washing dishes primarily come from the energy it takes to heat the water.) A dishwasher emitted 2,090 kilograms of emissions over the same period with typical use — less than half as much.

When it comes to water use, the difference between manual and machine practices was even starker: Hand-washers used 34,200 gallons of water to a dishwasher’s 16,300 gallons over 10 years. In short, a dishwasher that’s being used correctly emits 63 percent fewer emissions in its entire lifecycle — including manufacturing and disposal — than a typical sink.

However, there’s a silver lining for resource-savvy hand-washers. If you happen to have a two-basin sink, filling one basin with hot water and the other with cool water, and then soaking and scrubbing your dishes in the first and rinsing them in the second — and then letting them air-dry — was the least energy-intensive method out of all the techniques the researchers tested. The two-basin method only produces 1,610 kilograms of emissions over 10 years. Adopting this technique leads to a 249 percent reduction in emissions for people who wash dishes manually.

Still, 1,610 kilograms isn’t that much lower than the 1,960 kilograms a dishwasher produces when it’s being used right (i.e., without pre-rinsing and heated drying). More importantly, 80 percent of Americans own a dishwasher but 20 percent of us report using these appliances less than once a week. Why go through all the trouble and expense of buying a dishwasher if you’re just going to hand-wash your dishes? Dad, are you reading this?

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Science dishes out an answer on the old handwashing vs. dishwasher debate

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Game Theory – Roger A McCain

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Game Theory

A Nontechnical Introduction to the Analysis of Strategy

Roger A McCain

Genre: Mathematics

Price: $41.99

Publish Date: August 2, 2010

Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company

Seller: Ingram DV LLC


This book serves as an introduction to game theory for students with no prior game theory knowledge, or with limited background in economics and mathematics. It is specifically designed to provide an intuitive and accessible interdisciplinary approach to game theory, while simultaneously exploring cooperative games, repeated play, correlated equilibrium, and a range of applications. The Instructor Manual is available upon request for all instructors who adopt this book as a course text. Please send your request to sales@wspc.com. Contents: FundamentalsTwo-Person GamesLarger Numbers and UncertaintyGames in Extensive Form and Repeated PlayCooperationBehavioral and Evolutionary Game TheorySelected Applications Readership: Undergraduates and graduates studying game theory or those interested in knowing more about game theory.

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Game Theory – Roger A McCain

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Is red meat bad for you? Climate change sure is.

Everyone knows that eating lots of red meat is bad for your health. Doctors and public health experts have been advising us to cut down on the hamburgers and steaks for years and years. And people listened: Red meat consumption in the United States has been on the decline for the better part of a decade. But the evidence behind that advice might not be as solid as we thought, according to a controversial analysis released on Monday.

An international coalition of researchers assessed pretty much every single quality study and randomized trial that looked at connections between red meat, cancer, and death. The researchers used a stricter method for evaluating the evidence than is usually used for nutrition, a notoriously tricky topic to study. In the end, they weren’t convinced that reducing red meat consumption is beneficial to the individual, because the methodology behind the studies they assessed was so flawed it was impossible to come to a sound conclusion.

The analysis has prompted quite a bit of disagreement in the nutritional community, with other nutritionists and doctors calling it “perplexing” and “nutritional nihilism.” But you know what scientists agree is bad for your health? Climate change. Rising temperatures will lead to a spike in heat-related deaths and illnesses, like heat stroke and hyperthermia, and exacerbate chronic conditions like diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Changing weather patterns associated with warming affect pollutants like ground-level ozone, which can cause emphysema, a chronic lung disease that can be deadly.

In all the uproar over whether or not red meat is healthy for individuals, the big picture of what greenhouse gas emissions mean for all of us is getting overlooked. Agriculture is a big slice of America’s emissions pie, representing 9 percent of total emissions in 2017. Cows, unfortunately, are part of the problem, because they emit large amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Beef is 20 times more land- and greenhouse gas-intensive than beans, for example.

So if you do decide to fire up the grill and stack up on T-bones tonight to celebrate the new research, just know that you’re not getting a free pass. More beef means more methane. And a big ol’ spike in methane emissions from beef production is pretty much the last thing we need right now, seeing as we’re on track to warm the planet a crispy 3.5 degrees C above preindustrial levels by the end of the century.

But the good news is that cutting down on red meat can have big payoffs from an environmental standpoint. Between 2005 and 2014, a 19 percent decline in American beef consumption led to a 10 percent decrease in diet-related carbon emissions.

And as for the question of whether eating red meat is OK for your personal health, we’ll leave that one to the experts to duke out.

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Is red meat bad for you? Climate change sure is.

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‘Monumental step backwards’: The $1 billion gas pipeline project dividing New York

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This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

A battle is erupting over a proposed gas pipeline on the doorstep of New York City, with environmental groups claiming the project is unnecessary and would lock in planet-warming emissions for decades to come.

Energy company Williams, based in Oklahoma, plans to build a 23-mile-long underwater pipeline through New York’s lower bay to bring fracked gas from Pennsylvania to New York. The $1 billion project would link existing infrastructure in New Jersey to the Rockaways in the New York borough of Queens.

Pipeline proponents argue the project is needed to allow thousands more New Yorkers to switch from oil to gas for their heating, but environmental groups are marshaling a growing protest movement to pressure Andrew Cuomo, New York’s governor, to block the development.

“This pipeline would incentivize reliance on gas, which is way more carbon-intensive than renewables,” said Robert Wood, a campaigner at 350.org, a climate advocacy group. “It would be a nightmare happening, not in a rural area, but right here in New York City.”

A draft of a study commissioned by 350.org disputes many of the assertions made by Williams and National Grid, the utility that will be the sole customer for the gas. According to the analysis, New York is already well on its way to eliminating the dirtiest types of oil, a carbon-heavy fuel, for heating, and the state’s power operators are forecasting a drop in electricity use due to efficiency improvements.

Measures such as installing heat pumps, replacing old boilers, expansion of renewable energy, and planned improvements to building energy efficiency should be “ramped up before considering construction of costly and potentially risky infrastructure like a massive pipeline in the New York harbor,” concluded the analysis, conducted by Suzanne Mattei, a consultant and former regional director of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

Environmentalists also fret that the pipeline’s construction could stir up toxins from the harbor’s seabed and potentially harm vulnerable marine life such as humpback whales, which have made a comeback to the New York area in recent years.

Wood said a decision on the pipeline will be a “major test” of Cuomo’s green credentials. The Democratic governor previously banned fracking in New York and has set climate change goals that would cut emissions by 80 percent by 2050.

The building of the pipeline would be a “a monumental step backwards” in meeting this target, according to Scott Stringer, comptroller of New York City. Stringer, along with a host of other local elected officials and green groups, contends that while gas has a lower carbon content than oil or coal, methane leaks from gas drilling and transportation can make it a nefarious fossil fuel.

However, National Grid said it has experienced “significant growth” in the need for natural gas in New York City and Long Island, with demand expected to grow by more than 10 percent over the next decade as households make a city-mandated switch away from oil to gas for heating.

“A clean energy transition is good for our customers and the economy, and the right thing to do,” said a statement from National Grid that estimated the so-called Northeast Supply Enhancement Project (NESE) would displace 900,000 barrels of oil a year, the equivalent of removing 500,000 cars from the road.

New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has been holding public hearings into the pipeline in the wake of its approval by the federal regulator. Williams has said it could start construction within a year.

The battle over the pipeline is a microcosm of the struggles within the Democratic party over whether to follow a more incremental approach to climate change or heed the warnings of scientists and conduct a rapid shift away from fossil fuels.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a congresswoman from New York, has spearheaded the more energetic approach as outlined by the Green New Deal, while Cuomo is seen as more of a moderate on the issue.

While environmental groups are planning a series of protests to sway Cuomo, labor unions, another key part of the governor’s base, have said they support the Williams project because of the promise of thousands of construction jobs.

Meanwhile, it emerged last year that Cuomo hired a Williams lobbyist to run his re-election campaign.

Comment was sought from the offices of Cuomo and Bill de Blasio, mayor of New York City, but neither would answer whether they supported the Williams project.

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‘Monumental step backwards’: The $1 billion gas pipeline project dividing New York

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Bitcoin: Are we really going to burn up the world for libertarian nerdbucks?

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The continued growth of power-hungry Bitcoin could lock in catastrophic climate change, according to a new study.

The cryptocurrency’s growth, should it follow the adoption path of other widely used technologies (like credit cards and air conditioning), would alone be enough to push the planet to 2-degree C warming, the red line value the world agreed to in the 2015 Paris climate accord.

Bitcoin essentially converts electricity into cash, via incredibly complex math problems designed to eliminate the need for government-sponsored currencies. It’s made a lot of bros rich over the past few years, but it’s also raised some significant concerns about the ethics of sucking up excess energy on a finite planet.

The libertarian nerdbucks account for only a tiny fraction (0.033 percent) of global transactions right now, but its rapid growth and already sizable energy usage are worrisome. This latest study, from researchers at the University of Hawaii-Manoa, adds to the pile of evidence that Bitcoin needs to cut down dramatically on energy use — or risk taking down our chances for a clean energy future with it.

The Hawaii researchers looked at every single Bitcoin that was “mined” in 2017 and the mix of fuel used to create the electricity that powered the huge computer farms that produced each of them. Unlike past calculations, they put a stronger emphasis on the types of computer processing equipment, factoring in older, less-efficient models still in routine use by Bitcoin miners. Through this analysis, they found that Bitcoin is likely already producing more than double the greenhouse gases of previous best estimates. That means that despite its infinitesimal reach, the global Bitcoin network already uses a lot of electricity — about as much as the entire country of Austria.

“Currently, the emissions from transportation, housing and food are considered the main contributors to ongoing climate change,” said Katie Taladay, one of the paper’s authors, in a statement. “This research illustrates that Bitcoin should be added to this list.”

Earlier this month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its starkest warning yet about what a world that’s 1.5 or 2 degrees warmer than pre-industrial levels would be like, saying that civilization itself is at stake if the world fails to reduce emissions by half before 2030.

The entire world has somewhere between 250 and 750 billion tons of remaining carbon that can enter the atmosphere before a 2-degree world becomes inevitable. This includes everything: Every factory, every airplane, every tractor delivering hay to cattle on every ranch, every light in every building everywhere in the world.

The Hawaii study found that Bitcoin alone could use that entire budget in 22 years if it grows at the slowest rate of widely used technologies. And it could use it up in just 11 years — by 2029 — if it grows at a rate equal to the fastest-uptake technologies.

Or, Gaia willing!, Bitcoin could crash and burn or remake itself to use vastly less energy, according to the Hawaii team. The authors are clear that they’re not predicting exactly what will happen, only imagining the stakes of the worst-case scenario — with Bitcoin as ubiquitous as microwave ovens, with no significant changes to its algorithm to get more energy efficient.

There are glimmers of hope that have emerged in 2018 that Bitcoin could be heading for that first crash and burn scenario. After rising in value more than 300 percent in a little over a month late last year, Bitcoin has given up all those gains and stagnated for most of 2018. Lower prices for Bitcoin have given its proponents less of an incentive to invest in expanding the network.

And the Hawaii team pointed to tweaks to the overall system that could reduce energy usage. One of those modifications, building a Bitcoin mining system based on trust rather than continuing to escalate a computational arms race, has already been championed by some of the more ethical cryptocurrency activists. Bottom line: This is a solvable problem. And our future depends on us solving it.

What’s absolutely clear in a world like this is that we can’t afford to waste our precious time and energy on things (like Bitcoin) that aren’t directly related to decarbonizing the global economy as quickly as possible.

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Bitcoin: Are we really going to burn up the world for libertarian nerdbucks?

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Is climate change a “ratings killer,” or is something wrong with for-profit media?

MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes retweeted Grist writer Eric Holthaus’ tweet about the deadly wildfires in Greece on Tuesday. After freelance writer Elon Green commented that news networks often fail to highlight the connection between climate change and extreme weather, Hayes wrote a reply that sent Twitter into a frenzy.

Climate change, he said, is a “palpable ratings killer” for news shows.

Environmental journalists came out in full force to set him straight. The reason that newsrooms are failing to bring up climate change has a lot to do with the way major news outlets are structured (profits first, content second), they said, and less to do with people’s interest in climate change.

Hayes has a pretty good track record when it comes to reporting on climate, compared to his competitors across other channels. He even did an “All In with Chris Hayes” special climate series in 2016.

But the point stands that the current for-profit media structure doesn’t jive well with compelling reporting on the environment. Take Holthaus’ response, for example.

Emily Atkin, staff writer at The New Republic, thinks it’s all about the way you present the piece.

Erin Biba, who writes for the likes of BBC and Wired, agrees with Atkin.

And Huffington Post’s Alexander Kaufman threw Hayes a bone for bringing the subject up in the first place.

It’s actually pretty unusual for a cable news host to go anywhere near the topic of climate change. An analysis from Media Matters for America shows that, of 127 TV broadcast segments on NBC, CBS, and ABC about the recent heat wave, only one mentioned climate change. It’s not like sweltering temperatures caused all those hosts to develop climate amnesia. The failure to link climate change to heat waves and downpours is a trend: Those same networks all but ignored the issue in their 2017 coverage of extreme weather events, another Media Matters report found.

Is 2018 the year that editors, producers, and talk show hosts finally figure out how to talk about climate change? For-profit newsrooms better start taking notes from environmental reporters soon; hurricane season is upon us once again.

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Is climate change a “ratings killer,” or is something wrong with for-profit media?

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The Caribbean relies on your vacation — but suffers from its carbon footprint

Some of our favorite travel destinations are in a bind. Small island nations, like Saint Lucia and Barbados in the Caribbean, are extremely vulnerable to a warming climate, yet many rely on an industry that’s a big driver of  global carbon emissions.

A study published in the journal Nature Climate Change this week revealed that tourism accounts for 8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. That’s nearly four times more carbon than previously thought.

The news comes as evidence piles up that suggests the type of hurricanes that tore through the Caribbean last summer are supercharged by a warming climate.

“The hurricanes in the Caribbean last summer were a wakeup call,” says Martha Honey, executive director of the Center for Responsible Travel, an organization that advocates for sustainable tourism. Resorts need to rebuild to be both more sustainable and more resilient to the effects of a changing climate, she says.

“We need to go back to the drawing board,” she says, after resorts and popular tourist spots were damaged or destroyed by hurricanes Maria and Irma last year.

Why are we just figuring this out now? Previous estimates didn’t take into account the carbon footprint of the goods and services related to tourism. So aside from offsetting the emissions from your flight, you might also want to rethink that collection of cheesy shot glasses.

“Our analysis is a world-first look at the true cost of tourism – including consumables such as food from eating out and souvenirs – it’s a complete life-cycle assessment of global tourism, ensuring we don’t miss any impacts,” lead author Arunima Malik of the University of Sydney said in a statement.

The study reinforces the Ugly American stereotype. Researchers looked at 160 countries and measured tourists’ carbon footprints two ways: by residence and by destination. When it comes to which country sends out its residents to go forth and pollute the most, the United States comes in first. And when it comes to which popular destinations have the largest carbon footprints, it’s America for the gold again. China takes second, followed by Germany, and India.

“We found the per-capita carbon footprint increases strongly with increased affluence and does not appear to satiate as incomes grow,” lead researcher Manfred Lenzen said in a statement. That means that tourism will likely play a bigger role in global warming as travel becomes more accessible to more people.

And while the affluent are the biggest polluters, developing island countries — some of which rely on tourism to shore up their economies — are paying the higher price when it comes to climate change.

“The Caribbean as a whole has been a minor contributor to climate change overall, but a tremendous victim of it,” Honey says. And the Caribbean is the most tourism-dependent region in the world. Every year more than 40 million (mostly American) cruise passengers and resort tourists vacation there. Tourism accounts for 14 percent of the region’s gross domestic product.

For Honey, the way forward is to educate and engage travelers in reshaping the way the tourism industry works. What can travelers do on their end? There’s always the option of offsetting the emissions from your travel by donating to projects aimed at reducing greenhouse gases. Carbon offsetting, Honey says, is good — but not enough. “It’s not really addressing the problem that airplanes are big polluters and greenhouse gas emitters. We need the traveling public to be more engaged in lobbying for the greening of the airline industry.”

“There’s nothing like feeling like you’re part of the solution.”

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The Caribbean relies on your vacation — but suffers from its carbon footprint

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Hurricane Irma wiped out half of Florida’s citrus crop.

There’s been a long decline in the nutrition of our crops, often attributed to people breeding plants for higher yields rather than health benefits. But, as is often the case, climate change is making it worse.

An altered atmosphere means altered food, because plants suck up CO2 from the air and turn it into sugars, Helena Bottemiller Evich points out in a new piece for Politico. That means we’re getting more sugar per bite, and less protein, iron, and zinc. The global phenomenon puts hundreds of millions of people at risk for nutrient deficiencies.

It’s not just a problem for humans. Analysis of pollen samples going back to 1842 shows that protein concentration declined dramatically as atmospheric CO2 rose. That makes yet another suspect in the great bee-murder mystery.

“To say that it’s little known that key crops are getting less nutritious due to rising CO2 is an understatement,” Evich writes for Politico. “It is simply not discussed in the agriculture, public health, or nutrition communities. At all.”

The world is changing in so many ways that it’s nearly impossible to track them all — even when those changes happen right at the ends of our forks.

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Hurricane Irma wiped out half of Florida’s citrus crop.

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Hookworms are back! Is America great again or what?

There’s been a long decline in the nutrition of our crops, often attributed to people breeding plants for higher yields rather than health benefits. But, as is often the case, climate change is making it worse.

An altered atmosphere means altered food, because plants suck up CO2 from the air and turn it into sugars, Helena Bottemiller Evich points out in a new piece for Politico. That means we’re getting more sugar per bite, and less protein, iron, and zinc. The global phenomenon puts hundreds of millions of people at risk for nutrient deficiencies.

It’s not just a problem for humans. Analysis of pollen samples going back to 1842 shows that protein concentration declined dramatically as atmospheric CO2 rose. That makes yet another suspect in the great bee-murder mystery.

“To say that it’s little known that key crops are getting less nutritious due to rising CO2 is an understatement,” Evich writes for Politico. “It is simply not discussed in the agriculture, public health, or nutrition communities. At all.”

The world is changing in so many ways that it’s nearly impossible to track them all — even when those changes happen right at the ends of our forks.

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Hookworms are back! Is America great again or what?

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The coal industry is still declining, so Trump is considering a bailout.

According to a new study from the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project, the current presidential administration has collected fewer civil penalties and filed fewer environmental enforcement suits against polluting companies than the Obama, Clinton, and George W. Bush administrations did at the same point in office.

The analysis assesses agreements made in the Environmental Protection Agency’s civil enforcement cases. For abuses under laws like the Clean Air Act, the Trump administration has collected just $12 million in civil penalties, a drop of 60 percent from the average of the other administrations. Trump’s EPA has lodged 26 environmental lawsuits compared to 31, 34, and 45 by Bush, Obama, and Clinton, respectively.

The marked decrease in enforcement likely has to do with the EPA’s deregulatory agenda. Since confirmed, administrator Scott Pruitt has systematically tried to knock out key environmental regulations, especially those created during Obama’s tenure.

The Project notes that its assessment is only of a six-month period, so future enforcement could catch Trump up to his predecessors. Or he’ll continue to look the other way.

“I’ve seen the pendulum swing,” said Bruce Buckheit, who worked in EPA enforcement under Clinton and then Bush, “but never as far as what appears to be going on today.”

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The coal industry is still declining, so Trump is considering a bailout.

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