Dimwits: Why 'green' lightbulbs aren't the answer to global warming

The Daily Mail ^ | 13th March 2007 | CHRISTOPHER BOOKER

[patton]

Plagerist, did you give me credit for writing that? Nooooo.....

You also forgot the rest of the poem.

[GonzoGOP]

"Me either. I have a 12' high ceiling fan I got tired of changing light bulbs in."

They solved the opposite problem in my case. When I finished my basement I had to use recessed can fixtures in order to have enough ceiling height. Unfortunately due to heat buildup I couldn't put anything bigger than a 60 watt bulb in the fixtures, and even with spotlights the basement always had a very dim glow. I replaced the spots with CFLs that put out a pure white light equivalent to a 100 what bulb and it made the space much more livable, and actually runs cooler than the 60w spots. And as an Irony the 100w CFLs cost less that the 60w spots, and you can only tell the difference if you look straight up into the can.

I also use smaller CFLs in closets and enclosed fixtures, again not because of saving money, but because they are cooler for a given level of light.

I also have them outside too, since I keep those light on for 10 hours at a time in the winter. The conventional bulbs had an irritating tendency to burn out when you The only weird thing was that on a day when we went to ten below, the outside lights came on orange for about 10 minutes.

I probably have more than 30 CFL in my house and not one bought for the purpose of saving the planet. And there is no way I'm going to give up the dimming lights in my family room, bedrooms and dining room. The fact that I'm saving some cash is just sauce for the goose. But the choice to put them in or not was mine and not some Washington or Springfield bureaucrats.

[ModelBreaker]

This is Socialism folks. Learn to hate it, despise it, spit upon it if you don't already.

Quoted for TRUTH.

[xcamel]

FReepmail me to get on or off

Click pn POGW graphic for full GW rundown

Ping me if you find one I've missed.

---

[leda]

yeesh!

ok, note to my previous post...

written by patton

better now? :)

[patton]

No, post the rest of the damn thing.

Then I will feel better. Pbbbblllllt.

[ModelBreaker]

A few years ago I became interested in a different way to save energy which was very doable and survivalist friendly. That is using straw bale construction for house building. Although vehicle energy uses about 25% of our energy. House and building demolition, construction and heating and cooling use something like 50% of our energy. The British estimate that house heating and cooling uses about 28% of their energy. Thus saving energy with the right housing is more efficient than saving vehicle energy.

All true. In large parts of the country, building codes requiring simple passive solar-heating (window placement, eaves) and insulation in new homes would make an enormous difference over a 30-50 year time frame. Also, requiring a geothermal tap in the back yard for heating and cooling would make a huge difference.

If we were really serious about bankrupting the muslims and hugo, we would take a small portion of money we will waste every year on medicaid and retrofit all existing homes with a geothermal tap. Home heating and cooling costs down about 50%.

But we aren't serious. Instead, we are going to spend an incredible amount of money producing ethanol, which will have almost no net energy effect, except to make our cars run less efficiently. But it will buy a lot of votes for D's and R's alike as farmers lap up the subsidies.

[edsheppa]

Kneejerk contrarians always overstate their case. It can't be only that CFLs ought not be mandated, oh no, instead they must be the devil's spawn, utterly evil and irretrievably bad and inferior in every way.

[leda]

sigh, if you insist :)


Where the warm cuddles are
The light travels slower
As it shifts down to yellow

the roaring fire and embers glow,
the yellow burns to a golden red.
comfort of being home, together.

Dog on a rooftop
Snake in the glass
Wanting Relief
Rat in a cage

this is sounding more like a zoo,
than home. oh yeah, we live at the zoo.

kids in the choir
statuary hall
doors begin to open

the quiet girl on the stairs
watches the menagerie
passing by like a parade

dark brown eyes
a soul glowing through
it was always you, babe

[GnL]

I do care about global warming. I hope the globe stays warm.

Me too! It's been friggin cold up here the last several weeks. Makes me want to shove Leonardo diCaprio's head into the nearest snow bank.

[VOA]

"Dimwits: Why 'green' lightbulbs aren't the answer to global warming"

I love our allies in the UK.
But maybe they can't access this from their Internet connections:

http://www.ccrane.com/lights/led-light-bulbs/index.aspx

Or maybe they just didn't know how to scroll down to the factoid at
the bottom of that webpage.

[sgtbono2002]

I bought a Fluorescent drop light to work on my car with. I ended up cutting the wire off it and putting a plug on it. Biggest Piece of crap I ever bought. Couldnt see a damned thing with it.

[amchugh]

I read something the other day about a two or fourfold increase in incandescent efficiency being in the research pipeline. With any luck it will become production capable right when they are banned.

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

CFLs cannot be used with dimmer switches

There is a 5 1/2" CFL which can be dimmed.



There are several different style and size of dimmable CFL bulbs -- I have some. However, they do not dim as much as incandescents (which can be dimmed to less than a candle power) -- I checked with a light meter, and the best is about 1/4 of full brightness. Also, the light remains harsh white -- CFL bulbs are useless for mood lighting in the dining room, for instance.

The article left out one other thing -- nothing you do with your indoor lights will save you any energy, during the heating season in cold climates. (Warm or hot climates are quite another thing.) In northern latitudes, the heating season corresponds to the dark season, when you need both light and heat. Incandescent bulbs are very efficient radiant space heaters. If you heat with electricity (as many Canadians do), switching to CFL bulbs (or LEDs or just turning off the lights) won't save you a penny on your electric bill for at least 6 months of the year.

Like GonzoGOP, I use CFL bulbs in old fixtures that only handle low watt bulbs; so that I can put in a much brighter bulb.

[gleeaikin]

"Building codes."

They have been a barrier to more straw bale construction, however several southwestern states now have established codes which are being accepted in other parts of the country.

My brother from Colorado who is a strawbale enthusiast, interested my other brother an architect in building a fully permitted home in Montgomery Co., MD about 8 years ago. It was 2,600 sq. ft, cost about 20% less to build, and is probably 3 or 4 times as energy effecient. It looks like an Italian villa.

Last spring I traveled around the country looking at straw bale structures. A simple one bedroom near Pensacola, FL would cost about $25,000 to $30,000 to build today. It survived Hurricane Hugo with no damage although large trees blew down very nearby. Some people complain that these houses look too primitive. I next went to the Burritt Mansion/Museum in Huntsville, AL. It is a large impressively elegant structure built in 1938. There is no way it looks as though it was built using 2,200 straw bales. If anyone is interested I can email some of the photos I took. Just private message me and leave an email address.

[meyer]

The article makes a lot of sense in terms of government-mandated banning of incandescent lights. That is not the role of government, and I believe that most of us agree on that. But, there are several misnomers in the article. I'll point a few out....

After all, these 'compact fluorescent bulbs' (or CFLs), to which they want us all to switch, use supposedly only a fifth of the energy needed by the familiar tungsten-filament bulbs now to be made illegal.

This is generally true - the 20 watt CFL produces a light equivalent to the typical 75 or 100 watt incandescent.

The result will provide a quality of lighting which in many ways will be markedly less efficient. Even Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor who put forward the proposal, admitted that, because the energy-saving bulbs she uses in her flat take some time to warm up, she often has 'a bit of a problem' when she is looking for something she has 'dropped on the carpet'.

This is somewhat true - they come on quickly enough, but don't reach full output for a couple of minutes. Depending on use, this can be a problem.

But even more significantly, because they must be kept on so much longer to run efficiently, the actual amount of energy saved by these bulbs has been vastly exaggerated.

I don't have any data on this, but certainly, they'd be more useful in lights that are going to be used somewhat continuously rather than intermittently.

So what are the disadvantages of CFLs over the traditional bulbs we will no longer be allowed to buy? Quite apart from the fact that the CFLs are larger, much heavier and mostly much uglier than familiar bulbs - and up to 20 times more expensive - the vast majority of them give off a harsher, less pleasant light.

This has changed - more recent CF bulbs come closer to mimicing the light output of incandescent lighting, although they still have a different overall color temperature. The use of different flourescent coatings gives better light color than in the past.

Pricewise, even the good ones (GE, Phillips, etc.) can be had in 3-packs for under $8.00 at WalMart. Still not cheap, but less than 20X a decent soft-white incandescent.

Because they do not produce light in a steady stream, like an incandescent bulb, but flicker 50 times a second, some who use them for reading eventually find their eyes beginning to swim - and they can make fast-moving machine parts look stationary, posing a serious safety problem.

This issue has also been dealt with - the newer CF bulbs have electronic ballasts that operate at a much higher frequency than ordinary line voltage, so you don't see the flicker.

Fluorescent CFLs cannot be used with dimmer switches or electronically-triggered security lights, so these will become a thing of the past. They cannot be used in microwaves, ovens or freezers, because these are either too hot or too cold for them to function (at any temperature above 60C degrees or lower than -20C they don't work),

There is some modest dimming capability with CF lights, and there may be some that are made for dimming, but ordinarily, they aren't capable of being dimmed down the way incandescents are. As for low temperatures, it depends on the type of bulb. I used a Philips CF bulb in my outside lamp in northeast Ohio with no problems. Yes, when it was very cold, the light took a few minutes to warm up, but it was fully functional after that.

More seriously, because CFLs need much more ventilation than a standard bulb, they cannot be used in any enclosed light fitting which is not open at both bottom and top - the implications of which for homeowners are horrendous.

I've never had a problem with a CF bulb in an enclosed fixture, provided that the bulb fit. They don't always fit, but they run so much cooler than incandescent that I can't see a tight enclosure being a problem.

In addition to this, lowenergy bulbs are much more complex to make than standard bulbs, requiring up to ten times as much energy to manufacture. Unlike standard bulbs, they use toxic materials, including mercury vapour, which the EU itself last year banned from landfill sites - which means that recycling the bulbs will itself create an enormously expensive problem.

They are more complex to manufacture, and probably require more energy for production. But I doubt that any compact flourescent uses mercury vapor - that is reserved for outdoor streetlighting and such.

Perhaps most significantly of all, however, to run CFLs economically they must be kept on more or less continuously. The more they are turned on and off, the shorter becomes their life, creating a fundamental paradox, as is explained by an Australian electrical expert Rod Elliott (whose Elliott Sound Products website provides as good a technical analysis of the disadvantages of CFLs as any on the internet).

No, they don't need to be kept on continuously. Yes, they are best used in locations where their on-time is longer, but they aren't so fragile that turning them on and off occasionally is a significant problem.

I have several CF lights in certain locations. Of course, those hard-to-get bulbs in high fixtures get them, along with the 8 bare light fixtures in the basement. And a few lamps that get long-time duty. But I also have places where I use incandescent lighting. Lights that get frequent on/off duty, decorative fixtures where the bulb is exposed, and lights where CF bulbs don't fit are among those places.

[patton]

I love you, wife. ;)

[sphinx]

More seriously, because CFLs need much more ventilation than a standard bulb, they cannot be used in any enclosed light fitting which is not open at both bottom and top - the implications of which for homeowners are horrendous.

Is this true? I have a couple of ceiling dome lamps -- metallic base with a heavy glass bowl enclosing the bulbs. Changing the bulbs is a nuisance so I thought I might switch to CFLs the next time around. I thought they were a lot cooler than incandescents so heat buildup shouldn't be a problem.

[CharacterCounts]

But I doubt that any compact flourescent uses mercury vapor

I amot 100% certain, but I think all flourescent lights require minute amounts of mercury to operate.

[ridesthemiles]

Has anyone here priced the automotive LED bulbs?

They are definately seen better from a longer distance, but they cost waaaaayyy tooooo much!!
Price has to come down for me before I can change to them-just in my car. Will not change in my house.
I am trying to figure how many I will need for the rest of my lifetme, then going tp stock up. I already knew the new bulbs would not work in the refrigerator nor in the oven. Garage will be a problem, also, as most garages are NOT heated.
I need my security lights, here in rural America. They are motion triggered, not on all the time dusk to dawn. Without these lights, rural America is a sitting duck for criminals. Then the environazis will want all our guns and ammo and we will all be sitting ducks, not just rural USA.
I have had personal experience with the bulbs they are trying to foist on us. They cost way too much for the life of the bulb. They do NOT last 8000 hours. I have had them last barely 4 months in an office setting only. Not even on more than 9 hours a day. At the cost of replacement- $8/ea, this is no savings. Next will be a surcharge for disposing of them, like the batteries in the Prius.