Annals of Wingnut Science
a groundbreaking experiment
on compact fluorescent bulbs
We have a treat for you SadlyNotzis today from Andrew Longman, the guy who was too crazy for Renewamerica, the website that truly is the nec plus ultra of right-wing lunacy. Longman, who invented a cell phone system to detect nuclear events1 and who describes himself as a Christian and applied scientist, which makes him perfectly suited to take on the pagan liberal-fascist shibboleth of compact fluorescent light bulbs, and he does so over at Wingnut Daily in a post intriguingly titled “Light bulb ban will increase CO2.”
So, you ask, how does that happen? And, if you are asking that, you are obviously completely ignorant of what real scientists call the “Easy Bake Oven Effect” or EBOE:
Let’s consider an American home at 1,700 square feet, using 10 watts per square foot over the course of a year for heating, and lit with 30 incandescent, 100-watt light bulbs. In such a normal home, 17 percent of the wattage needed for winter heating would be supplied by the electric lights, when the lights were turned on. If you replace those incandescents with compact fluorescents, only 3 percent of the average heat necessary to heat the house would now be available from the light bulbs. …
So, a regular natural gas home that would have been getting 83 percent of its heat from gas and 17 percent of its heat from electric light will now fall to 97 percent of its heat from gas and 3 percent of its heat from electricity. If NPR’s statistics are correct, that means a home using natural gas and incandescents would produce about 1,000 pounds more per year of CO2 by switching to compact fluorescent bulbs. Since most American homes are heated with natural gas, which costs less than electricity, it is an economic gain.
So, switching to compact fluorescents will save you money, raise the amount of hydrocarbons burned and make a mockery of the latest leftist utopian scheme.
Now, you’re probably distracted by all those details and, no doubt, chortling at the raft-load of ridiculous assumptions that Longman makes — like assuming that the average American home has 30 100-watt incandescent bulbs burning all the time and is more lit up than Britney Spears on a three-day methamphetamine and crack cocaine binge. Or his assumption that natural gas on average produces more carbon dioxide than electricity. (It doesn’t.)
If so, though, you may be missing Longman’s best assumption, one that outdoes even the neocon assumption that after the invasion of Iraq, the Iraqis would throw flowers at our feet, cast aside centuries of ethnic strife and division, and fashion a model democracy that would be the envy of the Western World. Longman’s implicit assumption is that in the summer the EBOE actually reverses itself, causing the incandescent bulbs to cool the house. That means that in the summer air conditioning systems will have to work harder if incandescent bulbs are replaced by compact fluorescents. He doesn’t say this, of course. Or maybe he’s forgotten about summer and warm regions and air conditioning altogether.
But he hasn’t forgotten to mention that liberals are worried about global warming because they think like women, unlike Longman who thinks like a manly engineer and realizes that more energy efficient systems produce more carbon dioxide. No, seriously:
American leftists, intent on hating the chemicals they are made from, work very hard to force other people to reduce the amount of CO2 emitted during existence. Being mostly liberal arts majors, and not engineers, these folks have quickly come to equate energy efficiency with lower CO2 emission. Based on those vague facts, and a strong sense of female social emotion, Congress recently passed a law yanking incandescent lights from production and replacing them all with compact fluorescents. … The net result, of course, will be more fossil fuels burned and more CO2 released.
And now a word from the members of the Sadly, No! legal team, who, after reviewing this post, have asked me to remind our readers that if reading reprinted material on this site causes you to throw things at, or otherwise damage, your computer or any other household or office item, Sadly, No! is not liable for the resulting damage and your only available avenue of relief is against the author or original publisher of the reprinted item in question.
1Longman’s invention is premised on his observation that if your cell phone melts into a gooey plastic glob in your hand, there was probably a nuclear explosion nearby. (Just kidding, Andrew!)
“Let’s consider an American home at 1,700 square feet, using 10 watts per square foot over the course of a year for heating, and lit with 30 incandescent, 100-watt light bulbs. In such a normal home, 17 percent of the wattage needed for winter heating would be supplied by the electric lights, when the lights were turned on. If you replace those incandescents with compact fluorescents, only 3 percent of the average heat necessary to heat the house would now be available from the light bulbs. …”
Translation: if we apply the absurd scenario I have invented in my head, along with the accompanying assumptions that are neither realistic, nor representative of the physical world in which most humans inhabit, purple monkey telephone, orange peel elephant ice skates, and mumble mumble – liberal fascists want to control your house!!
Lovely. This dim bulb (HA!) has 30 100 watt bulbs going in his house at all times?
I’m picturing a conversation in his home even now…
“Dad! I’m hot!”
“Shut up and get back under your heat lamp! We’re SAVING THE WORLD!”
17 percent of the wattage needed for winter heating would be supplied by the electric lights
Ah, I can remember the old days, when as a child I would come in from a day of playing in the snow and … warm myself next to a 100 watt bulb.
Let me tell you, it isn’t easy rubbing your hands briskly together next to the overhead lighting.
Wingnut Science. You’d think with all those lightbulbs above their heads…
Also, trees cause more pollution than cars, so if we cut down all the trees…
As much fun as I am having laughing at this guy, he kinda ruins it. Parody is dead. And Andrew Longman is holding the smoking shotgun.
Using reality math, I’ve discovered that I don’t have the average American home with a 100 watt light bulb in every 7.5277265270908099499068332865637 sq.ft. of space.
I need more fixtures, man!
I remember all my engineering professors telling me to question every assumption and verify every piece of data. What did this guy’s professors teach him? Where did he start work, that no senior engineer told him that he should never take anything for granted?
Of course, the fact that there’s such a thing as summer is an easy thing to forget in the heat of the moment, and is also probably central to his point.
Shit, that reminds me, I left 7 of my 30 100 w bulbs on before leaving the house this morning. It’s hard to get them all when one is rushing out the door. Well, on the bright side, my place will be .000592 degrees warmer when I get home – all without having to burn any fossil fules!
“Well, on the bright side…”
Hah
American leftists, intent on hating the chemicals they are made from,
This might be the funniest thing ever written.
“American leftists, intent on hating the chemicals they are made from,”
Oh, come on. Everyone hates their magnesium.
“American leftists, intent on hating the chemicals they are made from…”
Indeed, my favorite element is Bismuth. I hate everything below 19 on the periodic table, because I’m a fascist.
*Fossil “FUELS” rather. Evidently I need to turn on more 100 w bulbs in order to see my typing mistakes more clearly.
And the best part is that, across America, much of our electricity is generated in coal plants. Which are much more efficient and CO2 friendly than natural gas.
This is central to my point.
(zomfsm, I’ve wanted to say that for weeks!)
Jeebus on toast points, I know people say this as a joke sometimes but I think I actually lost brain cells reading that. I feel somewhat the way you would if you were asked to parse the meaning of randomly generated gibberish. I don’t know how you do it, sadly.
aimai
And did ya see Rush has a new sweetheart? http://www.worldnetdaily.com/
“female social emotion”
Since I don’t speak teh stoopid, can someone explain just what is meant by this?
Women like to cry in public? Men are not social?
But think of all the energy saved baking brownies.
.
“So, a regular natural gas home that would have been getting 83 percent of its heat from gas and 17 percent of its heat from electric light will now fall to 97 percent of its heat from gas and 3 percent of its heat from electricity.”
Where does Longman think electricity comes from? Here in the UK, most electricity comes from, um, burning natural gas.
“In such a normal home, 17 percent of the wattage needed for winter heating would be supplied by the electric lights…”
Energy is emitted from an incandescent bulb in the form of light and heat. For this statement to be correct, all incandescent bulbs would have to devote 100% of their energy to heat…thus be completely dark.
(And I have a liberal arts degree!)
So, a regular natural gas home that would have been getting 83 percent of its heat from gas and 17 percent of its heat from electric light will now fall to 97 percent of its heat from gas and 3 percent of its heat from electricity.
That’s quite a fall. Wait, what?
So, switching to compact fluorescents will save you money, raise the amount of hydrocarbons burned and make a mockery of the latest leftist utopian scheme.
So everybody wins! What the hell is the problem?
Energy is emitted from an incandescent bulb in the form of light and heat. For this statement to be correct, all incandescent bulbs would have to devote 100% of their energy to heat…thus be completely dark.
(And I have a liberal arts degree!)
What a female statement!
Since heating the ceiling is obviously the most efficient way to heat one’s home, so why are all my radiators on the floor?
“Jay B. said,
January 23, 2008 at 21:49
‘American leftists, intent on hating the chemicals they are made from,…’
This might be the funniest thing ever written.”
You mock, but I myself have switched to a no-salt diet, simply do to my smoldering, all-encompassing hatred and disgust for Chlorine and Sodium.
And don’t even get me STARTED on water and its Hydrogen-fondling, Oxygen whore ways!
I don’t think we have ANY 100-watt bulbs, and we live in suburbia! Not quite at McMansion level, but close.
And, seriously, 17% of your house-hold heat from light bulbs? Are all his fixtures stolen from McDonald’s fry stations? And what does he do to keep the house warm at night? Or does he wear a special mask to block the four 100-watt bulbs in his bedroom?
Check it out, Andrew! http://www.sears.com/shc/s/s_10153_12605_Clothing_Mens_Sweaters
ZERO EMISSIONS!! ZOMG! And it’s in a macho, macho, mens style for manly man’s men; exclusive to men and only men for men to wear around their man’s house while doing manly things with their man bodies.
Not to change the subject from idiotic right wing ranting, but the compact flourescents really suck up here in NY when I put my thermostat down to 65 degrees. They take at least 10 minutes to become fully lit.
Also, I petition the use of “Spaceballs” to be used on neo-con wing nut anti-enviornmentalists.
I wish I could comment but I can’t, since I recently replaced my room lights with 12 x 500 watt halogen flood lamps to cut down on my gas heating and now I just can’t focus on anything well.
This guy isn’t worth our time.
You know what is worth our time?
Signing the petition to begin impeachment proceedings.
Seriously, No!naughts. If you haven’t signed it, you are required to before you may enjoy any more snark.
SIGN IT!!!1!!
We’re getting into unprecedented levels of stupid here. Doesn’t this schmuck realize that any heat generated by an incandescant bulb is also powered by the same plant????? And that using a fucking heat pump with a high COP is way more efficient than heating your house with light bulbs?
If only there were a way to harness the energy in stupid fucking WND posts, that post alone could power New York City, Boston, and half of Pittsburgh with enough leftover to light an electronic dunce cap to put on this moron’s head.
After reading Mr Longman’s brilliant piece, I went to my local grow store and outfitted my house with 1000 watt High Pressure Sodium lighting fixtures.
I put one in each room, two in the living room and kitchen, and four in my bedroom (’cause I like it cozy).
That’s 15,000 watts of Earth-saving glory, bitches.
Oh and just so you know, Longman, the absolute worst part of going to engineering school in a red state was being surround by your ilk.
The brilyant man has convinsed me to buk up and go on the low carbon diet.
Understatement of the Year.
“That’s 15,000 watts of Earth-saving glory, bitches.”
And some damn good plants, I bet.
All we would have to do is stop using natural gas and heat our homes with 28,333 Magic Cymbal-Playing Monkeys…
http://store.twistedgrins.com/storefrontprofiles/DeluxeSFItemDetail.aspx?sid=1&sfid=105990&c=0&i=234706057&gclid=CJiO5PaVjZECFQMsFQodXioiFQ
Climate crisis solved.
I also started hooking the car exhaust up to the fresh air intake for the house to capture the heat from the engine exhaust and also trap the carbon output, but now I keep wanting to sleep a lot more but with these 6,000 watts of light I can’t sleep anymore.
Hating the chemicals we’re made of? People aren’t made of CO2; it’s a byproduct of the cellular respiration process – even this former liberal arts major (English and Philosophy with a Russian minor!) knows that.
But perhaps he meant to say that we hate the elements we’re made of, which would mean of course, that we should all be happy to have large amounts of potassium cyanide compounds in our food and water, since we’re partly composed of K, C, and N.
I await his piece on why solar energy is dangerous because it robs the sun of energy and hastens the day upon which the sun will become a white dwarf and end all life here on Earth. Stupid leftist sun-hoarders!
Pay no attention to Five of DIAMONDS above. We all know where his prejudices really lie. Someday he’ll be Sixty of Buckyballs.
Right with you, Cangrejero. Four years at Clemson…
American leftists, intent on hating the chemicals they are made from,
Like all good liberal fascists, I am filled with self-loathing, and all of it is directed at the .0032 percent of me that is Zinc. Fuck you, Zinc! Fuck you and all your isotopes!
[…] not really a scientist. The emo-chick planet-fondlers at Sadly, No explain it much better than I […]
It’s not so much my chemicals that piss me off, but the means in which some of them bond. Some have chosen to pair off with chemicals of the same type, and that’s just gay.
BTW, it looks like the “system” he “invented” is to put off-the-shelf radiation sensors (“Tiny solid-state radiation sensors are commercially available”) into off-the-shelf cellphones. Not a bad idea, but it doesn’t convince me he’s qualified to speak to the pros and cons of incandescent bulbs as home heat source.
Geez, Andy has a great argument… as long as you don’t consider potential carbon dioxide savings from areas of the country which don’t require that much heating or the savings in carbon dioxide generated from cooling in the summer and such like reality-based conditions…
I never realized I was supposed to heat my house with light bulbs. No wonder it’s so frickin’ cold up here !
Can someone esplain why the fuck he should even care about incandescents
vs compact fluorescents? IOW, *why* is changing over a Libbbrul Plot? ANY
saving of ANY fossil fuels and ANY conservation (such an odd term?) is
eeeevil anti-Merkin?
WTF?
And who can even speak of the disgusting triple bond between the carbo-sexuals and their little hydrogen hangers-on in acetylene?
Robert M, I salute you my fellow ACC brother. I doubt I had it so rough at NC State. I was recently down at Clemson for a conference and I thought to myself “it would be hard to walk past the Strom Thurmond center everyday without losing it.”
Let’s consider an American home at 1,700 square feet, using 10 watts per square foot over the course of a year for heating, and lit with 30 incandescent, 100-watt light bulbs. In such a normal home
Electrician: See, there’s yer problem right there…you got bulbs going in rooms you ain’t even in! Now why don’t you gather round th television in the living room and have a family night?
Maybe we should have two sets of bulbs in our houses. Incandescent for when the heater is on and fluorescent for when the air conditioner is on. That leaves candles for when the windows are open, but that probably won’t work too well when there’s a breeze. But, if it’s that nice out, we probably shouldn’t be inside.
Damn it. No wonder my house gets colder at night. I’ve been turning off the lights!
Hey, if you lined all your walls from floor to ceiling with plasma HDTV’s, they would put off a lot of heat too! Planet saved!!!
Bob Munck said,
January 23, 2008 at 21:50
“American leftists, intent on hating the chemicals they are made from,”
Oh, come on. Everyone hates their magnesium.
Potassium is the jew of the chemical world.
Dunno why he thinks it’s a libbbrul Plot, but I do know there are hundreds of wingnuts out there who now believe a 1700 sq.ft house with 30 100 watt incandescent lightbulbs is ‘normal’.
Can someone please identify who the “emo-chick planet-fondler” here is?
I fess up to being a chick-fondler, but not an emo planet.
The truth is, there is no such thing as man made global warming. It is just a global leftwing plan by George Soros and Algore dsigned to raise taxes, increase government regulation of private business and estabish a one world socialist government all with the sinister intention of destroying capitalism. The reality is however that it is the solar system that is warming not the earth. This has been proven by many scientists, however the un at the direction of George Homos has covered it up.
Oh, uh, that would be me.
???
*sigh*
Our last housemate (not to be confused with our last long term partner, this was strictly a homeless-and-unemployed thing, not a relationship) used to turn on five high wattage lamps in her tiny room all summer and leave them on when she left the room or even the house for hours at a time. And then because her room was hot, she had three fans going. She’s got her own place now, and our utility bills have decreased in ways you can’t begin to imagine. We can just about afford the sick cat now, actually.
So as one of those fascist liberals who goes around turning off lights because it’s, you know, daytime, and carefully explaining to morons that they’re killing fish (hydroelectric power) by leaving the lights on, I do understand completely the point of the CFL people.
But you are so fucking never going to get me to agree to a fucking incandescent *ban*. We do not use them, because they give me a migraine. You wouldn’t believe the migraine the damned things give me. Twenty minutes in a grocery store is good for a 150MG Imitrex migraine that doesn’t completely go away and comes back to full roar as soon as the pills wear off.
I’m not alone in this, either. My neurologist remodeled at great expense to ditch the fluorescents in her office. Ban incandescents? You might as well make strobe lights mandatory in my home.
I’m perfectly willing to have to pay more for incandescents, though not everybody can since chronic migraines tend to lead to disability and extremely limited incomes. But until they fix fluorescents, actually making incandescents illegal is just fucking cruel.
The truth is, there is no such thing as man made global warming.
It’s true. It’s all the fault of all the women and bonobo monkeys.
So we’re blaming you, shithead.
How can you be anti-that ?
one world socialist government
Oh yea! How is that “New World Order” Bush the Elder was always on about?
Uhhh….he said annals…hehe..he.hehehe
“Are you threatening me ? ..he..umm..he..he…”
uhhhh…shut up Beavis…I was about to score
The sad fact is that Beavis and Butt-Head have more cohesive arguements than Boogie-Woogie.
Booger said: “a one world socialist government.”
Wow, quiting Ministry lyrics, are ya?
Quick read-through, the nuclear-detection system proposed is workable, if not practical (you need electricity to run a radiation detector; that’s a whole lot of power being expended for really not much result).
Also resulting from quick read-through, Longman didn’t invent the system — he only “developed” it, meaning he did some of the scut work after other people had had the idea.
“Bunghole…we’re never gonna score..”
Another translation
Based on those vague facts, and a strong sense of female social emotion, Congress recently passed a law yanking incandescent lights from production and replacing them all with compact fluorescents.
“Female social emotion”?!? I bet Longman goes to the nearest elementary school at recess time so he can play cootie tag. He runs off triumphantly after giving girl cooties to another boy and runs home in shortpants down to his basement so he can write another piece that may not make much sense, but goddammit, it’s macho.
GOD HATES DIATOMIC MOLECULES AND DIATOMIC MOLECULE ENABLERS
The one that really made me ROFL was how he argues that incandescent bulbs somehow absorb heat in the summer, making things cooler. If that’s the case, then they must be producing their own electricity as well! I think I’ll call up the power company tomorrow and tell them that they should be paying me for putting power back onto the grid.
Oh, I’m with you–I wouldn’t ban incandescents, personally. I’d rather tax incandescents at about 100% of the sticker price, and use the revenue for grants to develop energy-efficient tech.
As far as the migraines, though, there’s some new stuff going on in the compact-fluorescent market. At least at my local Home Depot, GE makes CF bulbs in three different light “temperatures”, with one that’s much closer to the color of incandescent-bulb light than the traditional harsh-white ones that infest high-occupancy buildings. If you can afford $10 for a trial run, and if said trial won’t send you fumbling for the Imitrex, you might see if it makes a difference.
I’m with you Sidhe. I’m pretty damn granola – no car, no meat, hemp tote bag for my (mostly) locally grown produce – but i can’t deal with fluorescent lighting. I will switch to candles first.
not to be confused with our last long term partner
Ok, I’ll bite. Is that a royal “we” or do you have some sort of life partner +/- 1 other situation? Or is it a cat? I’ll be it’s a cat.
For all of our lives the Universe was doing just fine being primarily composed of hydrogen and helium, with a bit of oxygen, carbon, neon, iron, nitrogen, silicon, and others thrown in for good measure and a useful note of ethno-elemental diversity.
But now, now the affirmative-action crazed liberals have gone nuts about pushing up the proportions of the Universe made up of their beloved “dark matter” and “dark energy”.
The material relativists even want to break down our nice, neat, perfectly fine conception of time as a dimension along which we only travel in one, single, solitary, orderly direction into some sort of wacky expanding, slowing down phenomenon so that having failed to impose international liberal fascist communism, they can finally halt our glorious capitalist growth by stopping time.
Well, I’m semi responsible, at any rate. I have 100 watt CFL’s that I rarely use, no car, and I leave the computer on 24/7. Am I still DFH, or did I get back my American citizenship?
Sounds like you need to join the re-Discovery Institute.
My favorite law is the first law of thermodynamics. It’s the reason there is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine. Basically, no system is 100% efficient. It will be (eventually) responsible for the ultimate of destructions, the heat death of the universe.
chemical NRG -> electrical NRG -> thermal and light NRG
(powering a lightbulb)
chemical NRG -> thermal and light NRG
(burning natural gas in your home)
Which has fewer steps? There is no conceivable way that the first system produces more heat NRG at the end point of the system.
This does not even take into account the fact that burning natural gas produces more heat than light, whereas powering an incandescent lightbulb produces more light than heat.
I was recently down at Clemson for a conference and I thought to myself “it would be hard to walk past the Strom Thurmond center everyday without losing it.”
They have a Strom Thurmond Center?
What you don’t seem to understand, Noah, is that facts have a well known liberal bias.
Using them makes you fascist.
If you want the truth, you gotta make shit up.
Add me to the list of being anti-flourescents. They produce hideous light. I won’t have them in my house, office, whatever, and refuse to be in a room where they are burning. Having a lighting background, I live off of natural light, shadows and pockets of artificial lgiht, rather than the gross, even, institutional feel of flows.
They work just fine for porch / garage lights however. I just leave ’em on all the time. I’ve had the same 3 for about 18 months.
john@johnedwards.com
**************
Dear Mr. Edwards,
On April 19, 2004 in Hershey Pennsylvania, President Bush stated:
“Before September the 11th, investigators had better tools to fight organized crime than to fight international terrorism. That was the reality. For years, law enforcement used so-called roving wire taps to investigate organized crime. You see, what that meant is if you got a wire tap by court order — and, by the way, everything you hear about requires court order, requires there to be permission from a FISA court, for example.”
Since 2004, we have learned that Bush was lying, and that there has in fact been extensive surveillance of US citizens without either a court order or permission from a FISA court.
It’s bad enough that the president lied to us, but now we learn that there is a determined effort in Congress to obtain amnesty for corporations who illegally engaged in warrantless surveillance.
As a leading Democratic candidate, I hope that you will make this issue a priority. The very concept of “retroactive amnesty” reeks to high heaven. Is this really the kind of legal precedent we want our elected representatives to set?
The right wingers are big on the concept of ‘personal responsibility’. Well, how about a little ‘personal responsibility’ for the Bush administration criminals and the corporate criminals who engaged in illegal wiretapping?
To do otherwise leaves the door open for government surveillance on a Gestapo-type level.
Sincerely,
Name withheld
Well, this is a little off-putting:
Ouch!
The latest technology in lighting is the one watt LED lights. they are the most efficient light source so far devised and they are solid state so they never burn out, but you have to keep them fairly close to your
plantsreading material.The reality is however that it is the solar system that is warming not the earth. This has been proven by many scientists, …
Seriously. How fucking stupid are you? Has your lack of a working frontal lobe been measured? The solar system is warming the Earth? All the other planets have some connection to warming the Earth? You really gonna go with that?
And these scientists, can you name 3 who are not getting paid by oil companies?
Nah. Have some pie.
“[R]educe the amount of CO2 emitted during existence.”
I’m always working to reduce the amount of CO2 I emit. It’s embarrassing, especially in public, but even in private I try not to just let rip.
Saying “excuse me” after every exhale is annoying and exhausting, so my elegant solution is to spend every evening nonexistent.
If I don’t exist, I can’t emit CO2, you know? The only hard part is incorporating when my alarm clock goes off at 6 in the morning. I’ve been known to materialize just enough to hit the snooze button, but sometimes this leaves ectoplasm all over my dresser….
Yeah, that diminished my Merkin-love significantly.
Empirical evidence (something wingnuts can’t even conceive):
We switched 14 sockets out of 20 in our home from original bulbs to CFLs. Out electric bill dropped by 25%.
Of the remaing 6 sockets, they are special cases, like the laundry room that has a 150W bulb that was designed to last (unlike regular bulbs that are intended to be flimsy so they don’t last very long).
Another special case is the front porch bulb. I learned about cold temps affecting CFLs, but when it was 10 degrees out and I switched on the CFL, it was so dim I could barely even see the porch. I swapped that out quick for a 4000hr halogen par38!
So we have two rooms (4 sockets) that are cold enough to affect teh CFLs, so they take several minutes (usually no more than 2 min.) to warm up in winter, *so what*! Big deal! Why should I care about that?
But this is the REAL LIFE PROBLEM with CFLs.
Mercury poisoning.
Yes, the amount in one bulbs is miniscule, but add the wastestream of CFls together becomes a hazard. They are like rechargeable batteries, don’t put them in the garbage. That is a problem I have with CFL.
I bet Uranus is really hot by now, you masculine thang. Give me a call at the UN.
I dunno why everyone is whining about CFLs. Yeah, about ten years ago, they sucked ass. I remember that ugly pink glow everywhere. I bought a house last year, and the guy who owned it before me put CFLs in every socket, and honestly, I can’t tell a damned difference between them and incandescents.
DR: Get some compacts made in the last five years, not the ones older. Sheesh.
I move the less reactive CFs (the old ones) to static uses, and use the new ones where I turn on and off the lights more often. Of course, since I’ve moved homes several times, it means I have a box of unused bulbs, but ohwell.
It’s not that the wingnut science doesn’t have a point – he does – but he just isn’t smart enough to explain it.
I wonder if he knows that making heat from electricity is less efficient than making heat from, say, burning a fuel?
LEDs are wonderful, but the only down side to them is they don’t flood worth a crap. Until that problem gets resolved, they pretty much can only be used for spot lighting.
I think his problem is from testing his radiation detecting phones.
I can tell you one thing, if my radiation detecting phone goes because of the guy next to me; don’t expect me to follow him around.
Back in the 1980s I used to be a pretty far-left teenager. After 25 years of Reaganism, my political view has NOT changed, but this nation has turned at least 4 points to the right and now I am a Radical Leftist. I am exactly who the right-wingers dream of slaughtering when Dvine President Huckabee says it’s OK.
As a Radical Leftist, let me say that I feel that the proposed ban on incandescent bulbs is STOOPID!
The latest technology in lighting is the one watt LED lights.
I haven’t seen those in use but I’ve found other white-light LEDs to be really blazing and painful. Are the new ones any better?
What has truly become clear is that global warming is not caused by industrial fossil-fuels. It is the result of heat being released at the bottom of the ocean floors by giant undetected hot spots from the center of the Earth. Regular scientists disagree but they have been proven wrong by independent (retired due to ‘mental pain’) mushroom evolutionist Gary Novak.
ya rly, the current generation of compact fluorescents is much better than the old pulsing bars, do try them if you haven’t. I’m just waiting for LEDs to get there though… mmm LEDs.
I love threads like this – they give me yet more opportunities to vbrag about living in Hawaii…
My house does not have any heaters.
My house does not have any cooling system, save opening the windows, and turning on some fans.
So what am I supposed to do with all these lightbulbs?
Oh wait- the grow lamps… got it.
Although again, in Hawaii, the good stuff grows wild in the forests. I see patches of it all the time when I go hiking, so again… what am I supposed to do with all these lightbulbs?
The reality is however that it is the solar system that is warming not the earth.
Sounds like you’ve been getting science lessons from this guy.
Errr.. this guy
Why are you Oregon Guy if you live in Hawaii? You’re blowing my mind.
“As a conservative, I switched to compact fluorescents years ago to make more money and emit more pollution. I would encourage conservatives and liberals everywhere comply with the new law so they can do the same.”
[I can’t do html tags unless the buttons are handily provided for me. I have the technology skills of Ted Stevens. Sorry. The above is a quote from the full text of the article. Not recommended, incidentally.]
Teh stoopid wraps all the way around to full circle again. I can’t figure out why “we’re doing so well in Iraq” won’t do the same thing and wrap back around to “so let’s leave the wonder that is Iraq” and keeps getting snagged on “so we must stay there”.
They have some issues with the LEDs, but if you array about 250 of them on a pulley system, they can do the work of a thousand watt bulb.
(Theoretically.)
As for lighting your living room, I imagine they would need some diffusers.
Military.
There is a point to be made about the heating propensities of certain light bulbs. You can point an open-faced 1000 w lamp at the ceiling and a fairly sizable room will heat up right quick. Problem is, most homes are wired to support 1k lamps everywhere. Also, you can’t read by them, and they are completely impractical as a means of simply lighting your home in a pleasing manner. They start fires; they are ugly; etc.
I imagine that a wingnut paradise would be a world where their houses are gleaming bright 24/7, paint peeling off the walls, burn marks on arms, and industrial cables strewn about the house to support a bunch of halogen lamps, while wearing Bermuda shorts in January. No thanks. I’ll just wear a sweater, keep the heat at a reasonable level, and sleep with a bunch of blankets at night.
High-brightness LEDs are improving all the time. While they have a long way to go for room lighting, they are excellent for things like surgical lights, traffic lights, and supermarket freezer case lights.
They have a Strom Thurmond Center?
Not only do they but it’s already 27 years old!
Guess where I live? Guess! Guess!
Hint: Not Indiana.
Myself, I’ve cut right to the chase with my loathing for Oxygen. Effing simple molecule; I hates ’em forever.
I refuse to voluntarily let them enter my body. every day, upon waking, I immediately stop breathing.
Then, when I come to, I stop breathing again. You shall not violate my bodily purity, Oxygen!
…. I don’t get much done in atypical day.
So what am I supposed to do with all these lightbulbs?
When the sun goes down do giant fireflies come and position themselves around your house? Otherwise it might be difficult to do any bedtime reading. What about the little bulb in the back of your refrigerator? *smacks forehead* I’m sorry, I forgot that you live in Hawaii, you probably just store your produce in the ice-cold crystal stream that runs past your back door.
Hoosier X said,
Guess where I live? Guess! Guess!
Hooville?
Okay, there, I’ve just taken out a $40,000 loan and placed an order for a good Xenon search light array with four x 5,000 watt lamps and a few extra bulbs.
Now, obviously the house should be good and toasty for the Georgia winter, but which room should I place it in? The living room or the master bedroom?
And does he have the strength of 10 Grinches plus 2??? Well?
I live in Lancaster, Calif. The biggest news day in the last 15 months was when Giuliani came in for a fundraiser.
Believe me, I would take Hooville over Lancaster in a heartbeat.
Lancaster is like Shelbyville, Springfield’s rival burg.
Hoosier X said,
Guess where I live? Guess! Guess!
I don’t know… but it looks like you haven’t been to Mecca yet.
Bastion Booger said,
January 23, 2008 at 22:41
The truth is, there is no such thing as man made global warming. It is just a global leftwing plan by George Soros and Algore dsigned to raise taxes, increase government regulation of private business and estabish a one world socialist government all with the sinister intention of destroying capitalism.
You know what’s really sad? I actually heard this, virtually word-for-word, come out of the mouth of a professor of business from the University of Nebraska who’d been drinking a bit too much wine with his dinner. I’d had just a little respect for the field of economics or b-school types before that.
O/T, but the last time I did this I got my very own post. Well, me-inspired post. If you weren’t fortunate enough to see Ron Paul’s blimp, do look out for this thing. And let me know if you can figure out how it turns.
http://ronpaullimo.com/
Same apology as to the html.
Since that runs on 230v, I say you put it near an appliance that already uses a 240v outlet, such as an electric stove or clothes dryer. That way, you don’t have to drop in a new circuit and outlet for it.
Yeah, Booger is just garden variety st00pid.
Yeah, you know what would be funny about that description of Global Warming as a left wing plot?
Yeah, it’ll be funny how the investments in the new technologies and industries and infrastructure are going to be paid for by you and me, but the profiteers will be Wall Street and Big Corporate, who currently are busy hiring right wing flacks to distract us from this by acting like anti-global-warming nimrods.
You bet more Wall Street billionaires would love to suffer next from such Al Gore socialist plots.
It’s articulated.
I want in on the Ron Paul Limo Love orgy.
Oh, wait, strike that!
The front part looks like a standard pickup truck with a hitch. I’m guessing that it wouldn’t be much harder to turn than an Airstream trailer.
Okay, okay, so it turns, but it’s enormous, isn’t it? It probably needs 30 lightbulbs or so.
Definitely 100w lightbulbs in there.
I’m almost certain the title to this post has an extra n.
The reality is however that it is the solar system that is warming not the earth.
Hahahahahahahahahahahah…..Hahahahahahahahahaheeheeheeheeheeeeee….whoooo.
Hahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
What a maroon.
Laugh if you like, but I was noticing the other night how much warmer it was near my table lamp (I keep my thermo pretty low, around 65) and I fleetingly wondered if it contributed to overall temperature in the room.
Of course I rejected the idea as being silly, except within close range of the lamp but even the most looney toons idea sometimes has a microkernel of truth to it.
There are two problems with compact fluos. One is the mercury content, so they have to be recycled – transportation, etc, although it’s hardly insurmountable.
The other is the awful colour of the light they cast. I wish they could tint the glass or something because a lot of us are fussy about light quality.
I don’t feel too bad about the two light bulbs I burn at night, incandescent or not.
Long time lurker here,
All you liberal fascists are missing a real trick here.
All you need for your room heating are : flourescent lights that don’t quite work (lots of flickering required), glass floorboards, and a steady supply of epileptic slaves (its nice to pick minorities for this) to keep under the floorboards.
Air of superiority; check,
Suppresion of minority groups; check,
Walking over poor people; check.
All your liberal fascist needs taken care of in one simple solution.
The last trial run I did with a CFL was three years ago, and I barfed for two days before giving up and handing it off to the neighbor. I’m willing to try again, and probably will keep trying every few years until the damned things work for me. This isn’t a case of having tried a bar fluorescent in the garage twenty years ago and freaked out. The bars do still in public areas give me migraines, and the compact ones do as well based on a fairly recent trial.
I’m not unwilling to live with migraines, I do anyway. And I applaud people who can and do make the switch to CFLs. But I won’t have smokers in my home, I won’t allow certain colognes or foods or cleaning chemicals in my home, and I won’t have CFLs in my home. Because there’s one place on the planet where I can control, mostly, the variables that make the difference between a migraine 24/7 and a migraine three days every week. And that’s a big enough difference for me that I’m willing to be an asshole about it.
pedestrian, I do have two cats. I also have a relationship with my partner who I’ve been with for eighteen years. The “we” refers to my partner and me. And we had another partner who lived with us for some years. Since then, we’ve had the occasional non-live in temporary love interest either together or separately, and the occasional platonic otherwise-homeless housemate of convenience. So, yes, all of the above.
I should point out that the new bill does not mandate compact fluorescent light bulbs as the replacement for traditional incandescent, notwithstanding Longman’s claim that it does. The bill requires that bulbs be 20-30% more efficient by various dates in the future. CFLs will satisfy this requirement, but so will many other types of lighting, including many halogen lights and a new generation of energy-efficient lights being brought to market in the coming months.
The wingnutosphere and the phalanx of oil-funded global warming deniers have been spreading the canard that CFLs have been mandated by Congress because everyone hates CFLs, particularly the older ones. But, in truth, the legislation allows the industy to find (and it has found) solutions other than CFLs.
The latest technology in lighting is the one watt LED lights. they are the most efficient light source so far devised and they are solid state so they never burn out, but you have to keep them fairly close to your plants reading material.
Yes, but can they keep you warm? Answer me THAT, smarty pants!
At least one of his assumptions is probably not too far off: 30 100 watt bulbs for lighting the average 1700 sq ft home. The National Electrical Code specifies a lighting load of 3 watts times the square footage (51 100 watt bulbs) though some municipalities are tackling energy issues by dropping that down to 1 watt/sq ft (pretty much forcing the use of more energy efficient bulbs like CFLs). A quick survey of the lighting in my home generated about 3000 watts over 1600 sqft.
But, of course, the NEC is typically concerned with safety at maximal possible load not actual, typical usage load, which probably runs, at peak, 50% of maximum and for most of the day far, far, less. Still, the lighting load of a home is a good chunk of the electrical demand and more efficient lighting stands to generate much energy savings nationwide.
I would guess, though this is purely a guess, that heat from appliances and electronics such as computers and TVs probably provide more heat into the typical home (and more effectively based on location) than lighting does and I still believe that to be…not much.
And I guess Longman must cry himself to sleep each night about the foolish liberal short-sightedness that pushed the use of energy efficient fluorescent lighting in commercial buildings decades ago. Oh wait, that was the capitalistic demand for lower operating costs. Doh!
I’m always fascinated by these conservative “scientists” continually “discovering” some flaw in “liberal” scientific thinking. The fact is, real scientists are more than willing to consider all the intricacies of a problem and crunch ALL the numbers. Good scientists strive for accuracy above all else. Pretty clear that Longman is not anywhere close to being a good scientist.
“American leftists, intent on hating the chemicals they are made from, work very hard to force other people to reduce the amount of CO2 emitted during existence. Being mostly liberal arts majors, and not engineers, these folks have quickly come to equate energy efficiency with lower CO2 emission.”
Yeah right, all of the people who devote their entire careers to studying the Earth’s climate are just “liberal arts majors.” What a nitwit!
“nec plus ultra?”
Qu’est-ce c’est que, ca?
(Je m’en souviens pas faire le sedille sous le “c,” sans ma page des trucs HTML.)
Lancaster!!??!!
For fun, do you go to Firebaugh?
mikey
For fun, do you go to Firebaugh?
Come on. Fun is an attitude, a way of living, a mental atmosphere. For instance, last night I dreamed I was shopping for a used vacuum cleaner.
You know, I’m going to drop double what a typical gas furnace/AC package system would cost this fall when I switch over to a geo-thermal heat pump which uses up to 60% less energy for heating, cooling, and water heating in summer months. This will reduce my home’s carbon footprint by way more than switching out bulbs, and it’s going to cost a lot more on the front end, though I’ll recoup that within 5 years.
But I’ll be damned if I’ll use CFLs. I just hates them.
People in Lancaster go to Palmdale for fun, & vice versa.
For instance, last night I dreamed I was shopping for a used vacuum cleaner.
It is a point of pride with me (and one I must admit I mention far to often) that I have never purchased a vacuum cleaner. Almost every home has one or two or more still-functional vacuum cleaners stored in the garage or basement. I have always been able to score yet another second hand giveaway. Of course, the downside of this practice is they die on me with regularity, and the search for a replacement can take some weeks.
Two vacuum cleaners ago, I was vacuuming the living room when the vacuum burst into flames and began belching this dark, acrid smoke. But god dammit, I was like two thirds DONE. So undetered, I determined that I would finish the job with the flaming wreckage. There was some excitement as I got the area near the curtains, and it must be said that the vacuum began to make some truly unholy noises, but I did successfully finish vacuuming the living room, whereupon I picked up the now fully-engulfed cleaner and heaved it out into the middle of the garage (I never actually used the garage in that house, the great big spiders owned it and wouldn’t let me) where it burned to the ground.
Indeed. Point of Pride…
mikey
I like flourescent bulbs. I pretend I have a greenish sort of jaundice.
Palmdale is Springfield, without the charm.
Lancaster is Shelbyville.
(Thank god the sports bar is close by, and the bartendresses are smokin’ hot.)
(There is also a very good Thai restaurant just a block or so away.)
You know, there’s a branch of engineering which specifically studies matters such as this, whose students make careers out of studying and implementing what they have learned. So before we start free-form theorizing on the basis of half-remembered physics textbooks, why don’t we see what the professionals have to say?
My colleague at work, a fine professional architect with several decades of experience in industrial and commercial design, recently got LEED certification from the USGBC. He didn’t do this because he’s a hippie (for he’s not) but because architects with this certification are in high demand. I only withhold his and my company’s name in consideration of the fact that the S,N management did not intend their comments section to serve as free advertising. The point I’m trying to make is that my colleague is a trained, experienced and certified professional, whereas Mr.Longman is just a goofy and sadly misguided amateur.
The federal bill may not mandate CFLs, but assorted municipalities, and to my understanding at least one state, have proposed measures doing exactly that.
Part of being an asshole in the name of spending a couple days a week fewer than, you know, all of them, with a migraine involves reminding otherwise well-intentioned people that at present, outlawing incandescents is a way of fucking over at least some people with few solutions.
If I have to choose between CFLs and a patchwork of candles and flashlights (and I’m insomniac and up all night on a highly regular basis), you’re going to end up with a grumpy upstairs neighbor with more spent batteries in a baggie awaiting recycling, and open flames in a home with cats. So I hope you’ve got decent insurance on your place.
Unintended consequences, folks. I just want people to remember there will be some. There needs to be an alternative, and if I have to get a note from my doctor declaring I need incandescents and I have to order them from Canada or whatever, I will do so. But there has to be *some* kind of alternative, because laws do not always work the same for everybody.
“Nec plus ultra” and “ne plus ultra” are both Latin, not French, and both mean the same thing, roughly something that cannot be surpassed. There is documented usage of both in Latin. I originally wrote “ne plus ultra,” which is more common in English usage than “nec plus ultra,” but it was changed by an S,N! editor. And who am I to argue with an S,N! editor?
You can make the ç by typing ç, but we knew what you meant. 🙂
Did you have to drag poor Peter Cushing into this?
D., can you use halogens? I think they’re efficient enough to pass muster.
I hate my chemicals. I just hate them.
OneMan said, “And the best part is that, across America, much of our electricity is generated in coal plants.”
Ginger Yellow said, “Where does Longman think electricity comes from? Here in the UK, most electricity comes from, um, burning natural gas.”
OK, so THIS engineer really doesn’t have anything more to add….
Ne plus ultra for you, but it’s plus ultra for me all the way!
Well, of course, ANY liberal fascist would say that about your average right-wing LOON.
Speaking of …, did you hear that the Westboro Baptist Church will be protesting at Heath Ledger’s funeral because he once played a gay cowboy?
Skreeeee! doesn’t do them justice.
I prefer Bleargh!
[…] No! Did a fine job of lampooning this but I just can’t let it go. Light bulb ban will increase […]
The truth is, Heath Ledger was a leftwing hollywierd homo scumbag!
“The other is the awful colour of the light they cast. I wish they could tint the glass or something because a lot of us are fussy about light quality.”
People, people, CFLs have come a long way in just the last five years.
If you don’t buy your bulbs at Wal-Mart and go online, you can order CFL in a range of color temperatures, from 2700K (near standard incandescent bulbs), 3000K, 4500K and 5500K.
We have a mix, some rooms have 5500K and the house looks like there’s daylight inside. We also have the 2700K, and it’s hideously muddy.
My favorite is 4500K. It’s bright and crisp (but not hard edged since it’s a soft-light source), with daylight tendencies (for those of you with SAD), but not TOO blue, like the 5500K are.
Seriously, CFLs are great bulbs. I highly recommend the 4500K CFL bulbs.
D.Sidhe,
As a professional lighting guy, I wanted to ask you something,
Do other 60Hz flcker sources also give you migraines? Like gymnasium lights, or street lamps? These lamps also have a not-normally-perceptable 60Hz flicker.
For that matter, do you watch TV? CRTs are also 60 Hz strobe lights.
Motion pictures are still at 24fps, so that’s an even slower strobe, can you see movies in the theater?
What about desktop video projectors
I am curious as to what does trigger the migraines and what does not.
Bastion Booger,
You are the best parody of a willfully uneducated right-wing extremist I have ever come across. The deadpan nature with which you rattle off those logically flawed non-sequiters … most people don’t get it right, they are usually over the top, like this:
George Soros dreams of forcing you to gay marry your dog and lesbianize your wife!
But you do it so well. It’s obvious that no one actually believes what you write, it’s obviously a parody, I certainly laugh at the nonsense you write, it’s hilarious. I see you’ve tricked a few posters here into actually believing your shtick. But I know better, I think your comedy act is great.
Where do you perform this Conservative Curmudgeon act?
I am a True Blue Red Blooded Conservative Patriot. There is absolutely no parody here my misguided liberal friend. I am not intending to be funny, what I say is the truth and I believe every word of it I assure you. If I didn’t believe it I wouldn’t say it.
“If I didn’t believe it, I wouldn’t say it.”
Yep. That tears it right there. Somebody yankin’ our chain.
Good on ya, Booger! Best parody I’ve ever seen. If you posted on wingnut sites, they wouldn’t know that you’re putting them on.
Yeah, but the Fred Phelps impersonation at 4:17 prompts me to say that booger needs to fuck off right now.
TV’s fine, more or less, in a well-lit room. In a dark room, I’m screwed. Streetlamps I dunno about since I don’t go out after dark too much. The fluorescent light bars in stores and everywhere else gets me every time, I haven’t been in a gym in a long time but I assume it’s the same sort of thing. Movies absolutely do give me a migraine, but it’s hard to tell what’s doing it since the smell of popcorn gets me every time, as does sitting near someone who has been smoking or drinking wine.
Since I switched to a flat panel monitor, I’m doing better with the computer, and I’ve been told that’s not uncommon. Really, none of this is at all uncommon. And I know a number of people on disability and fixed incomes with the same problems I have, whose lives would be essentially unbearable if they had to switch to compact fluorescents, and who haven’t got the money to solve it by any means other than literally candles, and even that would probably trigger a few migraines for at least one of them. Someone has to at least remember these people exist, and I tend to think it falls to liberals. After all, the conservatives don’t even give a fuck if people can’t afford heating bills and end up burning down their–and their neighbors’–homes every winter trying to stay warm with ancient space heaters. So while it all seems like a good idea, and while Andrew is clearly batshit and wrong, there are good reasons to avoid outright bans. And finding myself even peripherally on the same general sort of side as this moron annoys me greatly.
I didn’t know halogens were more energy efficient, I’ll have to look into that. I actually had the opposite impression somehow. We don’t really have the lights on much at all, since I don’t like to waste electricity, but I’d love to cut down on it even more. I feel guilty as hell for not being able to make compact fluorescents work for me. Plus our house gets incredibly hot in summer anyway and the fewer lights on the better, even at night.
“Bastion Booger said,
January 24, 2008 at 4:39
I am a True Blue Red Blooded Conservative Patriot. There is absolutely no parody here my misguided liberal friend. I am not intending to be funny, what I say is the truth and I believe every word of it I assure you. If I didn’t believe it I wouldn’t say it.”
Haw! See?! You are the master of deadpan delivery while spouting the most incredibly unbelievable wig-bubbles of patently and blatantly false folderol and balderdash.
Why your far better than Jonah Goldberg’s ‘Nazis ate vegetables therefore Liberals are also fascist’ banality. I bet you could write a book-length wing-nut parody screed and make it plausible enough to actually sell it to some gullible propagandists, like Regeneraty – oops, I mean Regnery.
Dude, how do you keep your imagination within the limits of believability? The stuff you make up almost sounds plausible. Your material only reveals the genius of your comedic writing when it’s actually scrutinized.
Is that the secret of how the GOP leadership tricks all those incredulous followers into believing that crazy stuff? Like “Deregulation lowers prices!” or “When you give rich people massive tax cuts, they spend it”. How can those ‘conservatives’ actually believ that when the historical record proves that the entire GOP leadership agenda is total hogwash? Is that how the GOP cons their flock of sheep, by keeping their lies just plausible enough and trusting that no one will apply the sanity test to the lies?
Here let me try, “Michael Moore funds the creation of crop circles which are secret witch meetings to help the Islamofascists invade America and install George Soros as Anti-Christ!” See, I’m just not as good as you are in making up absolute nonsense and making it sound as if it were real.
Sidhe,
Ah, there is a consistency to the flicker/migraine connection. And it certainly makes sense that TV in a bright room washes out most of the contrast ratio of the flicker.
I am capable of empathy, unlike conservatives, so I fully understand that there are quite a number of people out there that have debilitating situations. I have no problem paying a single tax to cover lots of things including assisting or even providing all of someone else’s income if they are incapable of holding a job of their own. While you are not in that category, your sensitivities make life difficult for sure.
I would never, as a Liberal, demand that you use CFLs due to the migraines they cause.
Halogen lamps are more efficient in this way:
the envelope contains a gas that extends the life of the bulb, and the halogen tungsten emits more lumens per watt of drawn power. However usually we see these bulbs at 300 watts in a torchier lamp. Obviously having that lamp is not going to save you any money. The little glass projector bulbs that you see at hip places are also halogen bulbs.
What I don’t understand about ‘conservatives’ is they don’t want to conserve anything other than their personal fortune and power.
I use CFLs for one reason, to save money. Not to save the world. Same reason I have low flow toilets. I turn of my car every time if I’m going to idle for more than 30 seconds. Not because I want to limit the carbon from my car (and I do), but gas is expensive – in case you haven’t noticed.
Mikey,
“It is a point of pride with me (and one I must admit I mention far to often) that I have never purchased a vacuum cleaner”
Me neither. I’ve also never bought a TV, VCR, telephone, DVD player, much furniture or a lot of other things.
Somebody always upgrades!
“American leftists, intent on hating the chemicals they are made from,”
Another case of wingnut projection. If I did my math (and the assumptions behind it) like I was raised immediately downwind of a lead smelter, I’d loathe the chemicals in my body too.
But, being a liberal fascist, I’d forget to intend to hate them first. Hatred requires careful planning and execution. It’s not like writing a 400+ page book or anything.
But this is the REAL LIFE PROBLEM with CFLs.
Mercury poisoning.
Yes, the amount in one bulbs is miniscule, but add the wastestream of CFls together becomes a hazard. They are like rechargeable batteries, don’t put them in the garbage. That is a problem I have with CFL.
In this, I am incredibly lucky, since one of my best friends runs a shop that makes neon signs. If I want to dispose of a CFL, I just give it to him.
When I first saw a Ron Paul Re[LOVE]ution banner on Cape Cod this summer, I had no idea what that was all about. I figured Ron had picked Doctress Neutopia to be his running mate and to balance the ticket, her being from North Carolina but a semi-permanent resident of UMass. But I don’t think she’d be a fan of CFLs.
Sidhe, I wasn’t trying to be a cobag–just didn’t know if it was the light spectrum or the strobe effect that bothered you. I’ve met people with both problems.
As far as efficiency is concerned, practically everything is better than incandescent bulbs; halogens are about halfway between incandescents and fluorescents. Environmentally it’s not necessarily a great trade-off, though, because most of the materials in halogens are most decidedly NOT green.
Oh, and just in case anyone’s still paying attention to this thread, there is indeed a Strom Thurmond Center at Clemson. It’s not exactly on the edge of the campus, but it is out of the way; I could go weeks without having to walk near it. It does kind of have some cool architecture, though–built into a short bluff, so you can come on it from behind, walk down some concrete steps that form part of the facade, and suddenly be surrounded by building.
The conservative , rational fight to combat global warming has let me to several conflicts with my leftist neighbors. I have learned that, for instance, cows are actually the main cause of global warming methane gases, NOT (as liberals would have you believe) garbage dumps, factories, and automobiles ( which are actually very benign, even beneficial to the environment, and, compared to cows, actually pollute very little). This realization has led me to attempt to remedy the problem, at least on a local basis, by trying to prevent the further leakage of methane gas from the cows in my neighborhood. So far, my methods have consisted of attempting to manually pump the gasses back into the cows and then plugging the leaking orifice with caulk, or a rubber stopper (siliconized fast-drying caulk works best). My liberal unscientific neighbors have been very upset with me and my methane fighting methods; something having to do with their cows exploding, or something, but I simply chalk that up to them being lost in their ignorant, liberal ways, and not current in the ways of sound science.
Bastion Booger said,
January 24, 2008 at 4:39
I am a True Blue Red Blooded Conservative Patriot.
Patriotism: the last refuge of the scoundrel.
In other words, Boogsie, you’re a fucking criminal.
IDIOTS YOU ALL!!
Read that: a house “using 10 watts per square foot over the course of a year for heating”
Boys and girls, in a given moment you use power, which is measured in watts. Over time, you consume energy, which is measured in jules or in this contect, kWh (1000 watts times 1 hour = 3.6 MJ = 1 kWh).
While it makes no sense, one could ponder — what is the guy had in mind? Suppose that he means that the power consumption for heating over the year is equivalent to 10 watts per square foot over the entire year. South of Canadian border it is hard to imagine. Perhaps with no insulation whatsoever, say, numerous open windows… But otherwise, what does it mean “energy use over the year in watts”?
I think any serious derision should start from that, and thus I proclaim you, once more, IDIOTS!!!
Overall, many good comments, but I would observe that natural gas heating is not the most efficient one, so if we switch the house to fluorescent light, we could also spend 10k to convert the heating to geo-pump that is purely electric but uses several times less energy (so they say, and it works as air-conditioning too). The pay-back should be rather short because the prices of natural gas are rather proportional to oil (ca. 50% for the same amount of energy). Natural gas is a very convenient fuel, and in the case of trucks and buses it can easily substitute for gasoline (they have no problem with bulky tanks and they can have their own depo).
Confusing I proclaim you in turn?
The truth is, Heath Ledger was a leftwing hollywierd homo scumbag!
Funny. I never saw him at any of the meetings…
Overall, many good comments, but I would observe that natural gas heating is not the most efficient one, so if we switch the house to fluorescent light, we could also spend 10k to convert the heating to geo-pump that is purely electric but uses several times less energy
Yea, except that there’s the whole “must be 400 feet apart” dealie in the down- and uplines in order to generate the electricity, an amount of space most Americans don’t have on their lots.
But nice try.
Clif said:
Well, this is even more central to his point than what happens at times of year when you don’t need heating, or require cooling. Longman bases all his figures on the NPR quote – which, in full is
Doesn’t that strike you as a bit strange? That an average US home would produce less CO2 if heated with electricity – but one in Minnesota would produce less if heated with gas? I can’t see where that figure comes from – perhaps it’s a typo?
I can’t see a figure for how much CO2 gas or electric home heating produce in that link that Clif gives to the EIA – sorry. But I can get some figures from a British government site:
That’s the CO2 for a heat pump – so the CO2 for plain electric heating would be 30000/8570 * 3.7 = 13.0tCO2/year – just over twice the CO2 of natural gas heating. And British electricity uses about the same amount of nuclear generation as American, but a bit more gas compared with coal (coal produces about 50% of US electricity, but 35% of UK) so the carbon dioxide for American heating will be slightly worse. So, heating a room through the heat output of anything electric – a bulb, a radiator, whatever – is roughly twice as inefficient, in CO2 terms, as by natural gas.
So, in reality, rather than Longman’s fantasy, when you’re heating the home with gas, you’ll produce less CO2 by switching to CFLs. When you’re not heating at all, you’ll save even more. And if you’re cooling the house, you’ll save more still.
I’m convinced its a typo: it should be 7,400 lbs instead of 4,700 lbs. I tried to find the source for the NPR figures at the EIA, which they claim to be citing, but couldn’t. But the EIA did confirm the obvious, that burning gas produces less carbon dioxide than burning coal.
The problem here, of course, is that the carbon footprint from electricity varies by region depending upon how electricity is produced. Vermont has a high mix of nuclear power, meaning that electricity bought there produces less CO2. But overall, and on a national level, use of natural gas in a home furnace will produce less carbon dioxide than heat produced by electricity.
Usually, when reading the Sadly No! posts , I am prevented from commenting because I can’t type around my head that is slumped there (I’ve found that keeping head very low and very still stops the grey innerds bits leaking out the earholes. However, this time I tied a pillowcase around my aluminium foil rapture detector and so am able to post that this Longman cove and this mentalist piece of wingnut “science” must be on a wind-up. Tell me – is there a really a readership, a market so insanely gullible and that America rightwig types really do included a segment whose beliefs and thought processes match those who otherwise wait for space chariots at the fag-end of comets? Which GOP candidate will serve this interest group best then? Yours, gobsmacked of SW UK
Regular scientists disagree but they have been proven wrong by independent (retired due to ‘mental pain’) mushroom evolutionist Gary Novak.
Wasn’t that the guy who says Bill Clinton was going to ignite Jupiter?
I am a True Blue Red Blooded Conservative Patriot.
Oxy moron. True blue red blooded?
Pick a side, mother fucker, we’re at war.
Tell me – is there a really a readership, a market so insanely gullible and that America rightwing types really do included a segment whose beliefs and thought processes match those who otherwise wait for space chariots at the fag-end of comets? Which GOP candidate will serve this interest group best then?
Tom Cruise?
Mercury poisoning – my understanding is that the amount of mercury in a CFL is less than the mercury released burning coal to provide the energy for a comparable incandescent. More difficult for the consumer to dispose of, but overall, less mercury.
Tell me – is there a really a readership, a market so insanely gullible and that America rightwig types really do included a segment whose beliefs and thought processes match those who otherwise wait for space chariots at the fag-end of comets?
NASCAR dads.
Oh, same crowd. Nevermind.
Robert M, no, I know. If I sounded defensive, it’s because I know how much of an asshole I am about this sort of thing. It’s a very small portion of the population, and I can’t quite shake the feeling that we should just take one for the planet, but it really would make life unlivable for at least some people.
It’s just a rant trigger, much like voter ID requirements and helmet and baby seat laws and all the rest of the otherwise well-meaning things for which we forget to include some kind of alternative for people who can’t make them work without help. It’s got nothing to do with the people I rant at, it’s just me being obnoxious. I also half suspect this is the kind of thing that makes Jonah Goldberg yell about liberal fascism, and while it’s bullshit not least because they are rules a democratic society places on everybody, it’s still persuasive to a large proportion of an admittedly inattentive population. If we can remember that the only time they pay attention is when they feel we’re fucking them over with laws that don’t seem to help anything but do make life harder for them, we might be able to get some of them on our side.
And I will be giving halogens a try. If they don’t give me migraines, we’ll switch. I really hate wasting electricity.
So all those GroLux tubes in the attic are not energy-efficient, and I also need to install a heater to keep the plants warm. Bugger.
actor said >i?Yea, except that there’s the whole “must be 400 feet apart” dealie in the down- and uplines in order to generate the electricity, an amount of space most Americans don’t have on their lots.
umm, not to be disagreeable or anything, but he’s talking about geo-thermal heat pump source heating, not electricity generating.
Geo therm heating uses several vertically drilled holes to circulate a coolant fluid – the holes only have to be 10 or fifteen feet apart or so, depending on the system needs and depth you drill. The system operates like a refrigerator from then on: when you need heat, you draw heat from the ground and when you need cooling you pump heat into the ground, Nature’s wonderful Thermal Mass. The electricity to run the pumps you pay for; but there’s no fuel cost for combustion.
I’ve been using 1,000 3-Watt night-lights in my home for years now. It was a little pricey replacing all of the drywall with electrical outlets, but I love the nice even heating!
Crissa,
I did. Sheesh.
NASCAR!? I do love listenin’ to the NASCAR on the radio . . . he’s turnin’ left . . . he’s turnin’ left . . . he’s turnin left . . . oh yeah . . .
Oh I see. I watched teh gay yuro Formula 1, me. I wonder if Andrew Longman can scrounge me a bit of McLaren aerofoil section and invent some meld-mix that’ll have it brewing us morning tea and washing socks all day else? Come on, Andy Pandies, the enslaved hoards of Eurabia – and my comrade victims of this socialist maritime climate in particular – need your alchemy on our tubs and precipitation levels stat. Drowning your sorry mentalist arse therein may prove irresistible because we are also fascists and murderous pagans but at least your posthumous glories are assured.
umm, not to be disagreeable or anything, but he’s talking about geo-thermal heat pump source heating, not electricity generating.
I don’t think you saw this bit, BP.
Now, where do you get the electricity for the geo-thermal heating, which might not work so well in places like the Northeast where the soil is pretty rocky and can snap downpipes in a heartbeat during a hard freeze?
Dear Folks,
A moderate education in science for you.
You right this:
“Longman’s implicit assumption is that in the summer the EBOE actually reverses itself, causing the incandescent bulbs to cool the house. That means that in the summer air conditioning systems will have to work harder if incandescent bulbs are replaced by compact fluorescents. He doesn’t say this, of course.”
Sadly, no.
He said it right here:
“Heating a home is far more energy consumptive than cooling it.”
In order to put 10 watts of heat into a house in winter, you have to supply just
about 10 watts of heat. But to remove 10 watts of heat in summer, the air conditioner doesn’t have to expend that much. That is because an air
conditioner use a trickly little deal called “thermodynamics”. Because heat
wants to naturally flow from hotter to colder, the air conditioner just kind of
helps the heat on its way out the door, and doesn’t have to expend the
full 10 watts to move the 10 watts from your hot apartment to breezy outdoors.
But I’m sure you knew all this because you are “pro-science” and Longman, as a ‘Christian’, couldn’t possibly know more science or be more analytical than you. No, you are not an emotional thinker who ignores details and hard facts. No, that is what evangelicals are. But you, who believe in evolution, are in every way a more careful thinker. Am I right?
Being clever, I am sure you will think about turning that air conditioner around and running it in reverse to gain this unequal! efficiency I am talking about. Unfortunately, someone has thought of that and it’s called a heat pump, and they are great for north Georgia winters where you will find them in abundance. Why not pass a law mandating them everywhere? (caution
clever trick may be afoot like the last one that snared your feelings-science)
The second point is that heating in winter is typically over a far greater
degree range than in summer cooling. Heating a house from, say, 0 degrees C to 21 degrees C is a much larger energy change than cooling it from 28 down to 21. So the energy change demands of a home in winter hugely
outstrip the energy change (cooling) needs in summer.
Continuing, more of the United States is cold than it is hot. More people
need to heat more days of the year and more powerfully than they need to cool. So hot lights taken from the house leaves a heating (wattage) deficit greater than the cooling bonus supplied to the air conditioning. Take over Key West and mandate them THERE?
Last, summer nights are cool, winter nights are cold. Need for air conditioning drops on summer nights (no cool bulb benefit), need for winter heat goes up for winter nights (still hot bulb benefit). Hence, hot-bulb wattage is desireable/efficient, again, far more often than cool-bulb air-conditioning bonus.
It’s like, some things are, like, so asymmetric?
So while you cleverly notice that “air conditioners will have to work harder” in the summer for incandescents, your failure to apply quantitative understanding to the concept, and your predictable assumption of absolute equivalence, absolute symmetry, total parity in all things (amen!) (which drives emotional thinkers, but is the anathema of logical thinkers) leads you to the factually wrong conclusion, which we can absolutely expect.
You fell square into Longman’s trap – snap!
But you, as a lefty, will try very hard to protest that you have your reasons,
and that objective and quantitative reality doesn’t apply to you. You will
try very hard to sound superior and insist that energy conservation only
has consequences for other people because you, chameleon that you are,
can merely change your view point and POOF! No more unpleasant BTU
realities. You can save the meaning of compact fluorescents just
by…by…attending Live 8?
Sadly, the conservation of energy has defeated you and there is nothing
you can rhetoric about it that will impress it, or me, or Longman.
Oops!
[…] seems we’ve lured Andrew Longman over here after we ridiculed his lunatic post in Wingnut Daily on CFL bulbs. And he dropped by not once, but […]
Heating a house from, say, 0 degrees C to 21 degrees C i
Um, if there is ever a time when the interior of your house is 0 C and you need to heat it to 21 C, you’re actually better off just burning it down and building a house with some frigging insulation in it. Christ, just tacking newspaper on the walls would provide a high enough R value to keep it above 0 C.
(For those of you not up on metric, that’s heating your house from 32 F to about 72 F. If you ever need to heat your house 40 degrees, please move. Immediately.)
Who the hell do you know whose house is ever 0 C inside in the United States? Cripes, my 60-year-old house, in Cleveland, on a day with a wind chill of -5 F, is still, like 55 F inside with the heat off. I keep it at 67 F on the thermostat. A whole whopping 12 degrees, about a third of your proposed 40 degree heating up there.
Last, summer nights are cool, winter nights are cold. Need for air conditioning drops on summer nights
Do me a favor? Spend an August evening in Northeast Ohio, with temperatures of 28 C and humidity around 90%, and let me know how that whole “no air conditioning” thing works out for you.
PS: “Right” and “write” do not mean the same thing, and if the rampant grammatical and spelling errors in your comment above are indicative of what Perdue is teaching in the English department these days, I suggest you request a refund.
“In order to put 10 watts of heat into a house in winter, you have to supply just
about 10 watts of heat. But to remove 10 watts of heat in summer, the air conditioner doesn’t have to expend that much. That is because an air
conditioner use a trickly little deal called “thermodynamics”. Because heat
wants to naturally flow from hotter to colder, the air conditioner just kind of
helps the heat on its way out the door, and doesn’t have to expend the
full 10 watts to move the 10 watts from your hot apartment to breezy outdoors.”
When it’s 72F outside, most people just open a window. Cooling is used when it’s considerably hotter outside than what you want inside. Therefore, thermodynamics isn’t such a help. Similarly, a heat pump doesn’t just help the cold out the door.
If you think running current through a filament is such an efficient way to heat your home, I recommend running your heater on Emergency Heat exclusively for a month. Then check back with us.
It’s really too bad what happened to Purdue. At least their Chemistry department is still world-class.
“Because heat wants to naturally flow from hotter to colder, the air conditioner just kind of helps the heat on its way out the door”
HAHAHA
Well at least he can be folksy when he’s totally fucking wrong.
So in the middle of summer my air conditioner is just “helping” the heat inside the 74° F house to “naturally flow” out to the 95° F outdoor temperature, right? From “hotter to colder”? See ya later Mr. Heat! Nice knowin’ ya!
In keeping with Longman’s enthusiasm for using electrical devices for something which they’re neither designed nor practical, I crank down the temperature in the refrigerator so that its cooling system works harder, thereby heating my home and giving my furnace (and the polar ice caps) a much needed break. Occasionally, when I’m feeling like the guilty liberal environmentalist that I am, I’ll use the toaster oven’s thermal discharge to heat my bathwater, thus saving the hot water heater from burning too much gas and raising the Earth’s sea level. Sure, its risky, but Longman has impressed upon me his virtues of being a complete fucking moron.
Its difficult to decide which is funnier, his original screed against CFL bulbs or his ham-fisted defense against and clandestine suppression of the hilarious ass-tearing he got for his trouble. He’s thinking too much with the female part of his brain, obviously, and its getting him into trouble.
Anyway, I’ve got to go. The 30-bulb chandelier I light (and heat) my home office with is making me sweat, so I’m going to turn on the air conditioner so it can kind of help Mr. Heat out the door, from hotter to colder.
Yeah, heat pumps. They work so well!! That’s why my sister and her husband, liberal fascists that they are, pulled out their heat pump and replaced it with natural gas. (Yeah! my B-I-L teaches at Purdue, but he tries not to “right” stuff that isn’t just pulled from his behind. Speaking of asses: he knows the dude in question and laughs his off regularly about him.)
t I turn my heat DOWN at night, to um, you know, conserve energy? And, and, um save money?
That’s also the reason why I use CFL’s. In the 4 years I’ve been using them, I haven’t had one burn out yet.
[…] long afterwards, an “Andrew L” posts a long, and ridiculous, reply in the comments section to the CFL bulb post. The Andrew L in the comments refers to the Wingnut […]