November 20, 2004

• Where do you live? For example I think if you were in Iceland electric would win hands-down.
• ah, good point. I live in Italy - hence the gas kettle: electric ones are difficult to find.
• Natural gas burns mostly to relatively little CO2 and water, which is a relatively environmentally clean process. Electric, you don't know if it comes from spinning wind turbines or burning coal, oil or uranium, unless you live in certain parts of the world where you know exactly what process is used to generate the electricity. On preview: what rolypolyman said.
• I don't give two shits about impact. I am part of the environment. I use a god damn microwave. I fill a cup with H20, stick it in, 2.5 mins, boil the fucker, then add generic instant coffee.. sugar.. milk.. drink the bastard. Tea.. different story. I do that properly. Ecologic impact? Fuck, mate, we are extensions of mother nature. Live your life true, & you aint do nothing wrong. Grok me?
• I can't say which would be less environmentally damaging, but I'd just like to point out that my degree is being funded by the genius who invented the automatic electric kettle switch (thank you Thompson Foundation!). So buy another electric kettle. Heck, buy ten and give them to your friends!
• Nostrildamus = CONSUMER OF THE YEAR!!! ignorance is bliss - eh?
• Does natural gas need electricity to light it? I don't know about natural gas, but an automatic kettle already uses less electricity and is more efficient with energy than boiling water on a electric stove. So in choice between electric stove and electric kettle, the choice is clear. I like coffee best out of a French Press (which are apparently Scandinavian, not French), which allows me to just use the same kettle I do for tea, rather than having a maker, which I imagine must use more energy. But what is a "gas hob"? I have never heard of this.
• Does the production of natural gas, or the collection i suppose, cause any problems? My first instinct is to say that natural gas would be better for the environment unless you live somewhere that the power is generated by wind...
• jb is onto it!Bodum or French Press is the only way to go! Boiling water - all you need.
• Does natural gas need electricity to light it? Well... yes and no. The older way of making gas stoves is to have a pilot light always burning, and then this ignites the burner. Newer stoves have an electric starter. But I doubt it uses much power, you could probably run the thing off a pair of AA batteries (the rest of the electronics they put on modern stoves is another matter though).
• Go with an electric kettle. If you end up doing cooking, it'll also keep liquids warm for adding into recipes, plus if you get one with a wide enough opening, you can boil eggs in them easily. They are super handy.
• Electricity is inefficient to transport. Something like 40% of electricity generated is lost to line resistance getting to its destination (i.e. under your kettle). This is much higher than for fossil fuels. But electricity is often more efficient to use. Nostrildamus' microwave is efficient because nothing is heated except the water in the cup (although why not just eat instant coffee out of the jar? It'd be simpler and wouldn't taste significanly worse). Similarly, an electric kettle doesn't warm its surroundings very much, while range tops generate a lot of heat that doesn't end up in your cup. However, that heat isn't really wasted if you're heating your house anyway, so it depends on where you live and what time of year it is. Short answer: I dunno.
• Short answer: I dunno. Market economies should be able to figure this out, if it weren't for the fact that utilities are monopolies, often state owned, and collude with governments to fix prices (cf. the Enron/Duke cabal and the Bush administration ripping off California).
• Electric depends. Electric generated from hydro, for example, tends to have a one-off environmental impact (creating a hydro lake) and is thereafter a perfectly renewable, low-impact form. Coal power stations are at the other end of the spectrum. And natural gas may burn relatively cleanly - apart from the problems cause by CO2 and any impurities, of course - but it is fundamentally a non-renweable resource in most parts of the world. Getting at it is as much of an exercise as getting at oil, and supply is finite unless you start tapping landfills and the like. Worse, some gas systems are supplied by coal gas - mining coal and breaking it down to gas. That used to be the case with Dunedin's gas system. Of course, gas does cook quicker.
• Collect rainwater and get it to your cup using a gravity-fed system. Add hand-ground coffee beans that have been roasted in a solar oven (and make sure you grow your own coffee, so that no fossil fuels are burned getting it to your house). Heat the water to boiling using a giant magnifying glass to focus the sun's rays on the cup. In other words...what Nostril said.
• Having read Nostrildamus's post, I just checked my kitchen equipment. The 650W microwave actually takes 1150W to produce that 650W of useful output (the rest, predictably, is heat, but is vented and doesn't serve to heat the contents). The electric kettle is 2200W, but is probably more efficient as all the energy is converted into useful heat, and little is lost (it's plastic and still safe to touch even when boiling). I haven't measured the time taken to boil a mugful in each, but in terms of efficiency, I estimate that the kettle is slightly more efficient. However, there is another very good reason not to use a microwave to make your hot drinks. A liquid heated in a smooth container in a microwave can become superheated (more than 100 degrees C, depending on altitude), but doesn't boil because there is no nucleation point - nothing to catalyse the formation of a bubble. When you put something into the superheated liquid (a spoon, or instant -yuck!- coffee), it can provide the nucleation point and trigger the superheated water to boil. It expands rapidly, rather like an explosion. In other words, heating water in a microwave can be dangerous. There's video on this page.
• Timefactor points out my quandary. I'm pretty sure that the electric kettle would be more efficient than the stove top one - the gas heats too much of the surrounding air, for example - but I'm wondering if the total amount of energy spent in producing the electricity, getting it to the kettle, and then boiling the water is perhaps more than the amount spent in drilling for the gas and getting to my kitchen. It's not just the amount of energy you consume at home, but the total audit that counts. Rather like making a special trip in the car to the recycling plant, I have a feeling this is actually a very very involved question.
• My response is similar to rodgerds. Gas will one day run out, but electricity is forever. It's better to go with the option that at least has the possibility of being renewable, rather then the one you know is not. But for cool factor, and quantity of water, get a samovar.
• Correction to ThreeDayMonk's post: Actually, in order for the liquid to become superheated with catalyst for a bubble it must be pure, perfect water. In other words, unless you're putting brita twice-filtered water (or better) into the microwave, you'll have no problem. This is because with all tap water there is a high enough level of impurities to prevent superheating, as the bubbles will just form around the impurities. But yeah, I've done it before (blew up a mug), it was pretty sweet.
• s/with catalyst/with no catalyst
• Electricity or gas? Feh! I'd be much more worried about the vast swathes of rainforest that are cut down every year to create coffee plantations...
• If you're worried about contributing to deforestation, you can always buy shade-grown coffee. In the mid-elevations of Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and Colombia, most of the forests still standing are in traditional coffee plantations.
• Plus, it's tasty!
• Correction to ThreeDayMonk's post: Actually, in order for the liquid to become superheated with catalyst for a bubble it must be pure, perfect water. In other words, unless you're putting brita twice-filtered water (or better) into the microwave, you'll have no problem. This is because with all tap water there is a high enough level of impurities to prevent superheating, as the bubbles will just form around the impurities. Not true - any liquid can become superheated, if there are no nucleation sites for the bubbles to form around. Heck, I've seen my dad do it with cold coffee from the coffeepot. jb: gas hob = gas ring = gas burner (on a stove)
• Gas is the least enviromental impact. The problem, here in the US, is that our coffee makers make the coffee and then a heater element, the biggest user of energy(heating), keeps the pot hot. Microwaving water is the least expensive way to heat it. So I`m with the Damus.
• MonkeyFilter: Why not just eat instant coffee out of the jar?
• /me wonders just how in the heck this thread came back after (counts on fingers) five months??