Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Steve Milloy; The New York Times is praising the efforts of low carbon pioneers who reject personal hygiene to save the planet from Covid-19 and Climate Change.
See Fewer People. Take Fewer Showers.
Some people said they started bathing less during the pandemic. As long as no one complains, they say they plan to keep the new habit.
By Maria Cramer
May 6, 2021
Robin Harper, an administrative assistant at a preschool on Martha’s Vineyard, grew up showering every day.
“It’s what you did,” she said. But when the coronavirus pandemic forced her indoors and away from the general public, she started showering once a week.
The new practice felt environmentally virtuous, practical and freeing. And it has stuck.
“Don’t get me wrong,” said Ms. Harper, 43, who has returned to work. “I like showers. But it’s one thing off my plate. I’m a mom. I work full-time, and it’s one less thing I have to do.”
…
Parents have complained that their teenage children are forgoing daily showers. After the British media reported on a YouGov survey that showed 17 percent of Britons had abandoned daily showers during the pandemic, many people on Twitter said they had done the same.
…
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/06/health/shower-bathing-pandemic.html
Of course, if you give up washing for the sake of the planet, you need to examine other carbon intensive aspects of your life.
Stop Using Toilet Paper
Why are we hoarding it when experts agree that rinsing with water is more sanitary and environmentally sound?
April 3, 2020
By Kate MurphyMs. Murphy is the author of “You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters.”
While the coronavirus pandemic is affecting us all differently depending on where we live, our financial situation and our basic health, one universal is the difficulty finding toilet paper.
Panic buying of toilet paper has spread around the globe as rapidly as the virus, even though there have been no disruptions in supply and the symptoms of Covid-19 are primarily respiratory, not gastrointestinal. In many stores, you can still readily find food, but nothing to wipe yourself once it’s fully digested.
This is all the more puzzling when you consider that toilet paper is an antiquated technology that infectious disease and colorectal specialists say is neither efficient nor hygienic. Indeed, it dates back at least as far as the sixth century, when a Chinese scholar wrote that he “dared not” use paper from certain classical texts for “toilet purposes.”
…
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/03/opinion/toilet-paper-hoarding-bidets.html
Obviously if you rinse every time you use the toilet, you kind of violate the first precept about not washing. So better keep rinsing down to say once per day, or less.
But what is the point of sacrificing your personal hygiene, if your air conditioner is obliterating your carbon savings with a blast of fossil fuel powered home cooling or heating?
Thankfully President Biden is helping the truly committed give up their air conditioners.
E.P.A. to Sharply Limit Powerful Greenhouse Gases
The Biden administration is moving quickly to limit hydrofluorocarbons, the Earth-warming chemicals used in air-conditioning and refrigeration.
By Lisa Friedman
Published May 3, 2021
Updated May 5, 2021WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency moved on Monday to sharply reduce the use and production of powerful greenhouse gases central to refrigeration and air-conditioning, part of the Biden administration’s larger strategy of trying to slow the pace of global warming.
The agency proposed to regulate hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, a class of man-made chemicals that are thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide at warming the planet. The proposal is the first significant step the E.P.A. has taken under President Biden to curb climate change.
The move is also the first time the federal government has set national limits on HFCs, which were used to replace ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons in the 1980s but have turned out to be a significant driver of global warming. More than a dozen states have either banned HFCs or are formulating some restrictions.
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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/03/climate/EPA-HFCs-hydrofluorocarbons.html
My only question – does the personal stench lower the reproductive success rate for people who follow NYT’s advice? Or do they use the smell to identify fellow believers and mate with each other?
Whatever the answer, lets just say I have no plans to board a rush hour New York subway in the foreseeable future.
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For the first time since they’ve kept records California decreased in population in 2020. Turns out people (and businesses/jobs) don’t like blackouts while paying sky-high rates for electricity.
It is really more a function of how physically active you are, which determines whether you both need and want a shower. After doing heavy work like landscaping, carpentry, or other, and also after exercise, whether indoor or outdoor, you are going to want a shower, and immediately. Even after sweat dries, it leaves a clammy layer on the skin which feels uncomfortable, never mind how it smells.
Prelude to the Morlocks… the diverse clumps from the Twilight Fringe. Abort the Eloi, cannibalize their profitable parts, and sequester their carbon pollutants.
Next up, dumpster-diving for food and other stuff people throw out. So what if you smell like garbage? Can’t be any worse, and besides, you are saving the planet. Win-win!
Ridicule is a potent weapon against Green nonsense. More, please.
I take exception to to the phrase “personal stench”. I have my own “personal musk” that has certain peaty overtones, thank you very much. 😉
If you say so.
So, we’ll have a return of ‘the stench of piety’ of the Middle Ages. This time for the Green Religion.
Eric
Doesn’t look like the old UK “APC” got a mention –
Wash “armpits and crutch”
Several years ago an actress suggested only using one sheet of toilet paper (about 5 inches square) to wipe one’s anus after using the toilet. After several years of such a practice, what would she smell like? Has she ever suffered from diarrhea? All the Charmin bears will be holding their noses!
Back in February 1980, I moved from New Jersey to Houston, TX, and when summer came, I would set the air-conditioning to 70 degrees, but later set it to 77 degrees after seeing unaffordable electric bills. At 77 degrees, the A/C would run most of the day, but turn off at night, cutting the electric bill by about half.
Why not let the free market determine how much air conditioning we should use?
Also, the hydrofluorocarbons used today have less effect on the ozone layer than the chlorofluorocarbons which were banned in the 1980’s. The average air conditioner only has a few pounds of refrigerant which circulates through the compressor, cooler, JT valve, and chiller (which re-evaporates the refrigerant) in a closed loop. A well-maintained air conditioner with only tiny leaks usually needs a refrigerant refill once a year or less, so will not emit much HFC’s. Most of the HFC emissions are due to leaky, poorly-maintained air conditioners or refrigerators.
Even if HFC’s have higher IR adsorption coefficients than CO2, their concentrations in the atmosphere are much lower, since emissions from leaky air conditioners (on a national scale) are likely measured in thousands of tons per year, as compared to billions of tons per year for CO2. The effect of HFC’s on the climate is much LESS than that of CO2, which itself is not much.
Hermetic refrigeration equipment should never need additional refrigerant for the life of the equipment. As a retired refrigeration service engineer I state this with authority. The heatpump I installed in my current home 10 yrs ago is still tight and problem free.
(probably goes toes up now that I bragged on it)
G’Day Mark, how’s your memory?
Going back a few years, a GE refrigerator with the motor and compressor mounted in a ball on top of the body. Ammonia for a working fluid. Now when that developed a leak, the family knew all about it.
(Dad, “Don’t call it a ‘Frig’, that’s that other mob.” He worked for Australian General Electric.)
I think you are remembering sulfur dioxide as the working fluid. Very efficient. Yes you knew when it leaked LOL
G’Day Mark,
It was ammonia. Dad worked as a frig tech till he got his degree in ’48. It was a non-working “trade-in”. He repaired it in his spare time and got it for free – no more daily ice deliveries. (At least the iceman had a motor vehicle, our bread deliveries were with a horse drawn cart, rubber tires.)
That was in 1947. One failure in the mid 50’s. It was still working in ’74 when the house was sold. They don’t make them like that any more.
This is not surprising. The Old Gray Lady died years ago and has been stinking ever since.
The older I get the more I have come to realize there is something to be said for a bidet.
A bidet is one of those things Americans don’t get until tried. Then you find out there is a better way than scraping your rear end with a piece of wood. Bidet on a sailboat makes maintaining the head a lot less difficult.
This sounds like a problem with its own solution. The only thing bad about it is that it’ll take a whole generation for them to go extinct.
I have Amish friends and they aren’t going extinct.
SHUN ICKY
pierced, unwashed, tattooed, cursed of Ham and Cain, stupid,
Hey, Karl Marx had poor hygiene and look how successful he was!
Wait a minute…
Hey, he started one of the biggest religious movements ever known! Just because he never worked a real job, it doesn’t mean he was out of touch with the working class! I understand he got very close to the hired help; like Ahnold!
In fairness, daily bathing/showering is a uniquely American obsession – and not necessarily entirely good for your health. Our predecessors bathed much less frequently and yet mostly failed to die from it.
Giving up on toilet paper, though… Yeah, there are some health and sanitation arguments in favor of bidets but I’ve never learned to like those. And, of course, bidets are dependent on both water and power where toilet paper can be used in an unpowered outhouse.
Nah. It’s the same in Australia and much more than it was 30 years ago in the UK these days.
If you get a chance, find a copy of “The specialist” by Charles Sale 1929. His specialty – outhouses.
I wasn’t sure of the chaps last name – and blow me down – it’s available as a pdf:
https://www.toiletrevolution.com/wp-content/uploads/The-Specialist-by-Charles-Sale.pdf
Enjoy…..
“Not dying” isn’t the standard. I don’t think there are many people who think that not showering will kill you… but does make you stink much more rapidly than people think.
Me, I’m glad for this “uniquely American obsession.” But it’s not even that. There are quite a few countries where people shower daily.
The stench of piety. Yet another manifestation proving this is just another false religion.
How can you spot a NYT reader? By the toilet paper hanging out to dry.
For some odd reason many leftists have convinced themselves that everything about modernity is negative, thus they want everyone to revert to the 17th Century. I really would prefer to not have a life expectancy that is half of what we have today. If the entire staff of the NYT wants to stink, that’s fine with me. I will stay upwind of them.
My son is one of those who will often have more than one shower a day, we don’t live in a tropical or humid country nor does he do physical work. But he does empty a 400litre tank of hot water each and every time.
It would cost an absolute fortune if we didn’t have the solar panels, as it is the weather here is often crap so many times the hot water is costly!
Make him pay the bills.
Where I grew it was not uncommon to use the newspaper as toilet paper. This could prove an excellent – and probably only – use for the NYT.
That’s ok when the toilet is not flushed into a sewer pipeline.
Newspaper and others apart from toilet paper must not be flushed down.
But it’s already covered in crap.
“But what is the point of sacrificing your personal hygiene, if your air conditioner is obliterating your carbon savings” The real solution is to ignore the carbon footprint. It doesn’t matter. Live your life and don’t be paranoid about how much carbon you might be responsible for.
You are the carbon they want to reduce.
Our country is going insane. Thanks, NY Times. We owe it all to you.
Greg Gutfeld takes on the subject in question in his monolog.
Greg Gutfeld: As New York Times editors claim not to take baths, the paper actually is | Fox News
You mean New York hasn’t mastered the use of the three sea shells yet?
In the old days we had a bath once a week, bath night. Get the zinc bath out, boil the water, the whole family bathed in turns, in the same water.
But anyway, who needs to shower more than twice a week in winter anyway? It isnt as if you sweat.
Yeah, I’m really glad we don’t do that anymore. Nostalgia isn’t always a good thing.
And most people should shower more often than they think they need to.