Essay by Eric Worrall
Clearly we haven’t plumbed the bottom of the well of climate absurdity.
Why you should embrace using cold water, almost all the time
Heating water gobbles energy, leading to higher utility bills and more planet-warming emissions.
By Allyson Chiu
May 12, 2024 at 6:30 a.m. EDTYou may not be giving a second thought to setting your washing machine on the hot cycle, cranking your showers to a steamy temperature or scrubbing your dirty dishes under a stream of scalding water.
If you did, you’d find that you probably don’t need to use so much hot water — and that you could be saving energy and cutting your utility bills. Water heating is responsible for more than 10 percent of both annual residential energy use and consumer utility costs, the biggest share after air conditioning and heating, according to the Energy Department. An American household uses an average of 64 gallons of hot water a day — close to the amount needed to fill an average bathtub— by doing laundry, showering, washing the dishes and running kitchen and bathroom faucets.
While there are home improvements that can help you cut back on the energy it takes to heat water, including installing a heat pump water heater, one easy solution is to switch to cold water.
…
“If you’re wasting cold water to get your hot water, then you’re really wasting both water and the energy resources,” she said. “Those energy resources still come largely from fossil fuels, and so they’re adding to emissions in the environment at a time when we really need to be doing everything we can to reduce carbon emissions.”
…
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2024/05/11/cold-water-laundry-shower-dishes/#
The real question in my mind, how is the climate movement going to top this absurdity? Self flagellation every time you are tempted by machine age transport? Drinking your own pee to save water? Comment suggestions welcome, but please keep them family friendly.
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I bet a million dollars she is guilty of the things she wants others not to do. HYPOCRITE!
Not just a hypocrite, ignorant about how hot water home energy savings work. Explained in new comment just now posted.
Her report is stuffed with the usual weasel words: “could”, “probably”, “largely”… Typical greenie assumuptions about “renewable” power being cheaper (when it never can be). She’s got no credibility at all.
Why have individual dwellings when we could all save the world by group living in dormitories.
Yikes! I’ve done that several times in my 8 decades long life. Never liked it at all.
When authoritarian Leftists arranged for group showers at Auschwitz, I heard that they didn’t use a single drop of hot water.
The current crop of authoritarians seem to have much of the same mindset.
Those who are engaged on campus in the latest pleading for such showers should watch Tattooist of Auschwitz. Slap in the face reality. The same mentality as those calling for arrests of public deniers. Absolutists to their core.
Or under the stars
Dont encourage the idiots!
Yuh, man, hippie communes! 🙂
Just never bathe.
That will result in green gasses—just not greenhouse gases.
Why stop at hot water showers? Turn thermostats down to 50F and air conditioners up to 90F. Of course, perhaps Chiu should first justify her statment “Heating water gobbles energy, leading to higher utility bills and more planet-warming emissions.”
Gobbles? Sounds very technical and sciency!
So what if she enjoys a gobble !!
Why go this far? Just fill a dish pan with the cold water and take a sponge bath. Then remember to re-use the water on your organic garden.
Drinking your own bath water is a characteristic of narcissists like Trudeau, Kerry, Obama, Pelosi et al.
Unsurprisingly, they are all cagw zealots who, if you listen to them, hold the magic wands to “saving the planet”.
Chunky style peppermint tea will give that warm all over feeling.
They had plenty of stuff like this in the USSR.
You could have hot water, cold water, but never both at the same time.
I just read BBC cretin Mcgrath today who states reading tree rings proves 2023 was the hottest summer in 2000 years.
Not much difference between going back to the USSR now and UK today -except the BBC had no problems with Jimmy Savile heating up little girls, and so recently “Huw Edwards .. resigned from the BBC on “medical advice”, the corporation has said. …he paid a young person for sexually explicit images.
The credibility of mass media
R-R-R-ROCK BOTTOM (pun intended)
I lived in China 3 weeks, no thermostat, just whatever hot water comes thru the radiator is what you get, I had an electric blanket which helped. I had my clothes laid out the night before so I could get in them real fast upon rising.
The hottest Summer in a 2.6 million ice age isn’t saying much.
About 90 percent of the world’s freshwater is still locked up in ice caps and 200,000 glaciers.
The ice age won’t end until all natural ice melts.
https://www.britannica.com/science/Quaternary
If everyone took cold showers that would also reduce the population.
You mean shrink the population….
Ever noticed that both male and female streakers have just jumped out of a cold shower?
A little advise for Allyson, don’t tell me what to do.
The desperation of the leftists is becoming more apparent with each dire prediction. None of the past prophecies have come to fruition, so its time to really ramp up the BS via the various nonsense ex-spurts and their crazy channels. What’s next?
Can’t wait for this scam to be truly outed and debunked in a major way. Trump being elected will be a major step in that direction.
The right is planning on making trillions in profits, so they are complaining very much. They even passed the “climate change” bill titled the Inflation Reduction Act here in the US
Sure, corruption is common everywhere and in all political parties. When there is a mountain of money to grab, lots of happy participants- but who is leading the charge? The far left!
She is proof that Einstein was right again. ‘There are only two things that are apparently infinite: human stupidity, and the universe. I’m not certain about the universe.’
In my households we keep the hot water heater real hot, at maximum safe ‘no scald’ temp ~140F, even tho most will go to 150 or even 160F. Stupid EPA rec is 120F ‘to save energy’—wrong. This way there is more ‘less hot’ water when some cold is added at point of use to get desired end (say shower) temperature. Plus don’t need to select supplemental dishwasher water heating/drying electricity, usually an extra sterility option. So the water heaters don’t have to refill with cold as much. Saves net energy if you have high quality well insulated hot water heaters.
Works on our electric here in South Florida, our propane at the Georgia mountain cabin, and our natgas at the golf course townhome in Chicagoland. The trick isn’t the energy source. It’s not needing to heat up as much water refill volume, plus never needing to use supplemental dishwasher heating.
Plus, keeping the storage tank at 140F destroys the legionella bacterium. That is what is done in commercial applications.
There was a craze to lower the temperature on hot water tanks.
A coworker got Legionnaires disease because of that.
From the CDC:
https://www.cdc.gov/legionella/wmp/control-toolkit/potable-water-systems.html
Ty both. I did not know that. Will up nominal hot water temps to 145F, as Chicagoland and north Georgia are not frequently occupied. And will then flush hot water taps much more before using. Cold water year round is not a problem even in summer in the Appalachians and Chicago. Run for 10 minutes, is real cold. Real Cold water in Fort Lauderdale, we only wish for and can only produce in the refrig. Why we use a frig drinking water filter (Brita) always. Removes any residual ‘alligator piss’—joke, sort of, since our Everglades sourced city tap water has a very faint yellowish tinge that Brita cleans up to match Georgia and Chicagoland. The Fort Lauderdale tap water is of course perfectly safe otherwise.
Rud> Agree that water heater should be set at 140F or so to prevent legionella. My wife however complained that the water was too hot at the kitchen sink and didn’t like having to constantly adjust while using it. I installed a tempering valve on the water heater outlet set at 115F and that works well. But I also connected the dishwasher line to the water heater outlet ahead of the tempering valve so it gets the 140 water to make sure dishes are sanitized without extra heating as you’ve described.
Not sure why the yellowish tinge. Could be tannins or iron or something else. Your supplier may be able to tell you. (We used to test for “color” that was not caused by turbidity back when I started the job I retired from 2 years ago but stopped running for color since we never had a problem.)
But in general, it’s a good idea to flush the cold water before drinking it first thing in the morning. Lead service lines, lead solder used on copper lines, take time to leach any lead (or copper or whatever) into the water. After sitting overnight, the water will likely contain the highest concentration of whatever may have leached from the water lines, if anything leached at all.
Run the cold until it gets as could as it will get. Or at least dump the first cup or two before drinking it.
Hey, we could use paper plates and plastic utensils and cups! Think of all the hot water we’ll save by not washing dishes. Yeah, that’s the ticket!
Future headline: “Experts Stunned as Birth Rates Plummet 9 Months after Cold Shower Mandate!”
Dear Allyson:
No. I don’t need kids to tell me what I should do. In fact, I’m going to relax in my hot tub in just a few minutes to rest my weary bones. Please feel free to sit in ice water if you’d like to however.
“Allyson Chiu is a reporter focusing on climate solutions for The Washington Post. She previously covered wellness and worked overnight on The Post’s Morning Mix team. She has also contributed to the South China Morning Post and the Pacific Daily News. Allyson graduated from Northwestern University in 2018 where she studied journalism and integrated marketing communications.”
I wonder if she has had any of the introductory Earth Science classes?
Highly unlikely.
Save energy, shower with a friend.
Save more energy … don’t wash or shower
& you won’t have any friends.
(don’t ask how I know (:-(( )
I almost died from the legionnaires decease in 2008 after the shower temperature was lowered at the local pool. Some idiot thought that would be good for the planet.
You’ve already given them two too many ideas. I shall refrain…
“Why you should embrace using cold water, almost all the time”
To prepare yourself for when Progressivism succeeds in sending us all back to the 19th century.
Remember to always eat your bugs while in the cold shower.
I think this is an excellent idea for all climate catastrophists. It may cool their over-heated brains.
I doubt the WP author is old enough to remember back in the 70’s when
solar hot water heaters were the rage. I always wanted one but never
got around to getting one, they seemed to fade after a few years, haven’t seen
one on a roof in years.
Wood fired boilers have been very popular in my area for quite a while.
We have a 260gal side arm heater on ours. Get the boiler up to temp,
top off with some well spilt wood and enjoy a “Hollywood” shower.
Never run out of hot water, turns the bathroom into a steam room.
There’s a guy in the area uses a wood boiler to melt the snow
from his driveway and to heat a hottub on his deck. They keep a large tank
of cold water to finish off with. Come in from skiing, fire up the boiler and
hit the hottub.. Climate change indeed..buy firewood by the semi load and
hire a processor to cut spit and stack dirt cheap.
We could also drink warm beer. Not favored in the USA.
Why? None of their nonsense if family friendly.
Saving water? Get this. Brought my wife to our local medical clinic for an evaluation. While waiting the half hour for the doc to show up – she wanted to get a drink of water in the sink – you know the kind of sink that you have to wave your hands to get it to work for about 5 seconds? It wouldn’t work. A secretary told us we weren’t waving our hands correctly so she tried and it wouldn’t work. She then brought in the maintenance guy who said “the batteries need changing”. The batteries in the sink? Yuh, he said- the sink has a sensor to know when you’re waving your hands- and the batteries have died. Imagine- a sink in a medical facility! Is that nuts or what? I really hate these sinks. As for saving water, thanks to the “climate emergency” we’ve had lots of rain this year and all lakes and reservoirs are full- even the Quabbin Reservoir in central MA which sends its water to Boston, which has not been filled in decades. This is all sooooo annoying. Gotta save the water for what? So more of it will drain to the sea? I’d think that with all the rain, they’d want to lower the water in the streams to minimize potential flooding. But nooooo- gotta have sinks that only work for 5 sinks if the batteries are working! Also, in this woke clinic (managed by the state) all the staff have to list their pronouns after their names in all their documents! If anyone asks me what my pronoun is, I’m gonna express my bad Italian temper- not violently of course, but verbally, and I’m pretty good at that! Fangool!