All Roads Lead to Purdue, or, Adventures in Sock Puppetry

cfl_sock_puppet.jpg

Andrew L or Andrew Longman?
You be the judge.


It 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 twice.

In our original post we said that Andrew Longman, the author of the Wingnut Daily piece, had also invented a system to use cell phones to detect nuclear bombs. Several days later we got an email from someone named Andrew Longman who said that he is the inventor of the cell phone system, and that he is not the author of the Wingnut Daily article. That emailer then asked us to remove the entire post to avoid the confusion. Instead, we deleted references to the cell phone invention, since if indeed this inventor was a different Andrew Longman, it’s easy to understand his not wanting to be associated with the Wingnut Daily Andrew Longman. For reasons that will become obvious below, we’ve returned our reference to the cell phone system to the original post.

Not 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 Daily Andrew Longman in the third person and purports to be someone else defending Andrew Longman’s thesis. Yet “Andrew L” adopts many of the same arguments that the Wingnut Daily Andrew Longman made, including the bit about the feminine emotional thinking of squishy liberals and the manly logical thinking of real scientists. That is suspicious, of course, but not conclusive.


Gavin adds:

falkcolumbo.jpg
Above: Clif starts walking away, then turns around again


Except for one thing.

Both the email and the comment originated from the same Purdue University IP address. And Wingnut Daily Andrew Longman has posted a bio which says that he has two degrees from . . . you guessed it . . . Purdue.

Now, it is, after all, remotely possible that there are three different Andrew Longmans at Purdue (the inventor, the commenter, and the author) and that they all just happen to be using the same IP address. But if the inventor Andrew Longman isn’t the Wingnut Daily Andrew Longman, then why did the inventor want us to delete the entire post and not just the reference to his invention? And if commenter Andrew L and Wingnut Daily Andrew Longman are different folks at Purdue, there seems to be no reason why the commenter would feel compelled to post such a long comment defending a post by the, er, “other” Longman. Looks like we have a little Fumento-esque sock puppetry from Mr. Longman, who apparently is unaware that we can figure out his IP address. So let’s have some fun with Andrew Longman’s sock puppetry shall we?


Longman’s argument, which we ridiculed, was that heat from incandescent bulbs helps heat homes in winter and that CFL’s, which put off less heat, would require that home heating systems work harder. Since these systems predominantly use gas, and since Longman mistakenly assumes that gas produces more carbon dioxide than oil- and coal-based electricity used to light the incandescent bulbs, Longman then concludes that the CFL would lead to more carbon dioxide.

We mocked this by pointing out that he apparently neglected that the heat from light bulbs in the winter would have the opposite effect in the summer and would require more energy to cool homes. Longman’s sock puppet “Andrew L” responds in his comment that more energy is expended heating homes than cooling homes, and so the benefits of CFLs during the summer are outweighed by the disadvantages of them in the winter. Of course, this argument saves the day only if you buy Longman’s up-is-down assumption that burning natural gas produces more carbon dioxide than burning coal and oil.

If you don’t, then the asymmetry between heating and cooling of homes doesn’t save Longman’s argument. Not only do CFL bulbs shift the electricity-based heat from light bulbs to lower-carbon gas-based heat from furnaces in the winter, but also in summer the CFL bulbs reduce the higher-carbon electric load created both by the bulbs and the additional energy required for the air conditioner to overcome the heat load from the lights.

Longman goes on to explain why he didn’t talk about the impact of incandescent bulbs on cooling systems: it was a trap for unwary liberal bloggers!

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 [sic] into Longman’s trap – snap!

A trap that depends upon a mistaken assumption that gas heat produces more carbon dioxide than electrical power is, well, like being trapped in a 6-inch-deep wading pool with a pair of water wings. And, of course, the only way a liberal can wiggle out of such a vicious trap is by making up things:

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?

I’m not sure what that last outburst from Andrew meant, but I think it meant something like this:

And. . . and . . . you can just paint yourself green and eat raw food with your snobby gay little nose in the air, you silly lefty, because the laws of thermodynamics have been censored from the Daily Kos website and those compact fluorescent bulbs only save energy if all the liberals eat them and POOF! die from mercury poisoning!

And, finally, Andrew pays a fond tribute to the prose stylings of Pastor J. Grant Swank, Jr:

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!

True, “nothing you can rhetoric about it” doesn’t top Pastor Swank’s “AIDS splash” or “Muslim murderers global” but it does at least deserve an honorable mention.

 

Comments: 191

 
 
 

manly logical thinking of real scientists

It must be the pipettes that make these guys more manly than the average Republican, without being threatening.

 
 

Personally, I’d go back and stick in the cell-phone nuke device, but that’s just me.

 
 

Hmm this is a thinly veiled purple-monkey-telephone-garble-mumble-I WIN!! argument. I’d recognize it anywhere.

 
 

CFLs, global warming, recycling, evolution; these are somehow vaguely “liberal”, and therefore must be opposed. It’s the only conclusion I can come up with.

 
 

Holy shit that guy is funny. Honest-to God Funny. Hilarious.

Comedy Gold, Jerry, Comedy Gold!

 
 

You fell square into Longman’s trap – snap!

Last time that happened, I had to get a shot in my ass.

 
 

One of the Longmans should be up for some sort of projection award for accusing us of not reasoning quantitatively while he shrieks and pummels strawmen.

Hilarious!

And I’m with Actor. Put the melting cell phone thingie back in!

 
 

Actually, residential cooling load is 160% of residential heating load.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/recs/recs2001/enduse2001/enduse2001.html

Not to mention that generating electricity for incandesent lighting puts 6 times the amount of mecury into the atmosphere than a CFL contains.

 
 

Oh, shit, I’m sensing another Beth moment.

 
 

Oh Allen,

You must not be a leftie!

 
 

He has a master’s degree. In science!

 
 

Don’t put words in my mouth!

 
Principal Blackman
 

I’d say Longman is some sort of Zapp Branigan knockoff, but I wouldn’t want to besmirch the name of such a hilarious character as The Zapper.

 
 

actor212 said,
January 30, 2008 at 22:02

Personally, I’d go back and stick in the cell-phone nuke device, but that’s just me.

I agree. Doing it now.

 
 

I am not the guy who this article is about, but I know him, and respect his academic, uh, smartitudes.

Therefore and henceforth BTU..snik…blat…Carbon Emissions…zip…cram…HA!

I rule the intert00bz!!!!

 
 

Does Mr. L have an vested interest in a certain type of energy production? FYI: Purdue sports teams are “The Boilermakers.” Make of that what you will.

 
 

incidentally, Daily Kos has several hard science Frontpagers who regularly inject detailed, throughly rational scientific content into the debate over there which often touches upon – surprise!- thermodynamics.

The idea that thermodynamics has a manly attribute is simply too precious.

Does it seem that Longman (heh!) protests too much? A little too much dwelling on the manly aspect?

I like this guy. A couple of columns from him, Swank, an episode of MST3K and a dime bag would set me up for a completely hilarious weekend.

 
 

What is this “who/is” you speak of?

 
 

And. . . and . . . you can just paint yourself green and eat raw food with your snobby gay little nose in the air, you silly lefty

A Monty Python french accent will increase the comic value of this quote by 55%

 
 

Allen, your use of data is far too emotional and feminine for the mysterious but logical “Mr. L.” to waste his time on.

 
Official Spokesbeth for the 33rd Annual Congress of All Beths
 

Which Beth Do You Think I Am? said,

January 30, 2008 at 22:11

Don’t put words in my mouth!

This beth is not a real beth.

 
 

If I ever step in shit here and someone named, I dunno, Narco comes to my defense, it’s totally not me. I let Narco use my computer a lot, from my home and office, so just remember. Totally not me.

 
 

Andrew Longman:
darn glen woman

Who’s the pussy tree-hugger now, Mr. L?

 
Your Uncle Bastard
 

Correction to above screed should read thusly:

But you, as a rightard, 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 conservative assholism only has consequences for other people because you, chameleon that you are, can merely change your view point and POOF! Another untruth becomes meme-of-the-day.

This guy’s name is Longman. But somehow, I don’t think he is.

 
 

Message to MrLongman regarding his original comments posts: People stopped having to hit the “Return” key at the end of each line when the typewriter went out of style. Good thing your “specialism” is science, not technology.

Please accept this as good-faith advice – you wouldn’t want the presentation of your posts to undercut the totally accurate and super-significant points you make by making you look like, I dunno, a fucking moron who can’t work a computer.

 
 

Every good (male) scientist knows that deliberately leaving gaping holes in your research to lure your critics into a trap is a key step in the scientific method. Snap! This obviously enhances his standing as a logical male scientist man-male. The fact that he was apparently wrong about 1.) everything in the first place, and 2.) the air conditioning info he used to spring his lamewad “trap” only serves to strengthen his point.

 
 

Official Spokesbeth for the 33rd Annual Congress of All Beths

May I compliment you on your dedication to your Internet performance art.

Regrettably due to budget cuts, the NEA is unable to fulfill your grant request at this time. Please, however, feel free to file again in the next fiscal year, which begins in October.

Thank you, and we wish you well.

 
 

“It must be the pipettes that make these guys more manly.. ”

“Pipettes”…so….THAT’s what they’re calling ’em, these days…

 
 

the air conditioning info he used to spring his lamewad “trap” only serves to strengthen his point

Indeed, it is central to his point!

What? SOMEbody was going to say it!

 
 

The Annual Congress of Beths was discredited years ago by Bethany Elzabeth Queen, Jr.

Only the Congress of Beths, Reformed knows the truth about the Real Beth. And they ain’t her.

 
 

Hey Mr. Liberal Man, notice any holes? Any big gaping soft spots in my… logic? Don’t be shy I’m a real manly man scientiest. I’ll bet you’d like to poke holes in my theories with your hard penetrating facts. Huh? Mmm? Ehhh? Go on, it’s not a trap….

 
 

…your failure to apply quantitative understanding to the concept, and your predictable assumption of absolute equivalence, absolute symmetry, total parity in all things…

That is some wonderful gibberish. I wonder if he’ll mind if I borrow it for my dissertation?

 
 

we get an email from someone named Andrew Longman who says that…he is not the author of the Wingnut Daily article….Both the email and the comment originated from the same Purdue University IP address. And Wingnut Daily Andrew Longman has posted a bio which says that he has two degrees from . . . . . . Purdue.

It is so very rich that Andrew Longman doesn’t want to be associated with himself.

 
 

“that more energy is expended heating homes than cooling homes,”

*blink* …nooo? Why do you think electric bills and the drain on the power grid spikes during the summer? During the winter, you have both the sun’s solar energy (plus, apparently, Andrew’s 10 tanning beds on “Jamaica”) working WITH your heating system to help warm your house. In the summer, your AC unit has to work against the sun plus your half dozen fry lamps to keep your house cool.

“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.”

Using polysyllabic language does not make you smart. It DOES make you boring, which is why they teach you in English 101 to avoid it when possible.

 
Andrew Longman's Littleman
 

Nice try Allen, but that DOE study was authored by a Ms. Eileen O’Brian, a woman. At least try to find some numbers that don’t reek of play-doe and bacon.

 
 

…your failure to apply quantitative understanding to the concept, and your predictable assumption of absolute equivalence, absolute symmetry, total parity in all things…

Gibberish, indeed. This sort of departs from “subpar corporate-funded wingnut scientist” into “ranting cab driver who regales you with a 15-minute story about how he has George Bush and Bill Gates trapped in a force field in his basement.” And yes, the latter literally happened to me. The cab driver regaling me, not the trapping George Bush and Bill Gates in my basement. I mean, I had them down there, and the force field was working, but Gates used Vista to crash the whole system…but anyway, yeah, seriously, my point is that I once was in a cab where the driver told me this. He was also drawing me diagrams while driving and bragging about his mastery of “mathematical psychology.” What were we talking about again?

 
 

Some would point out that American homes are heated by a variety of devices and not just natural gas furnaces. These would include electric heat pumps, oil furnaces, and space heaters which run off of kerosene, wood, or electric power. They would try to argue that, even if it were the case that natural gas was more carbon rich than coal or oil*, that the prevalence of heat sources that draw power from the same source as lightbulbs diminishes any disadvantage from shifting heating sources without having any effect on the advantages produced by reducing cooling needs. But this does not affect my argument; indeed, it is central to my point.

*wtf? I mean really, wtf?

 
 

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.

I think I’ve seen an essay on the postfeminist socioeconomic impact of a Hegelian interpretation of Camus make more sense than that sentence. Did you use the dada engine to come up with that?

 
Your Uncle Bastard
 

Using polysyllabic language does not make you smart. It DOES make you boring…

Which, indeed, is central to his point! He’d better get a hat to cover it.

 
 

I’m still boggled at the notion that he signed his comment “Andrew L”

 
 

“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.”

I know this quote has been over-pressed, but I have a little more juice to squeeze. Am I correct in assuming that he was the one who inserted the “amen” and the paranthetical sentence that follows? So… is that his first voice again or a third voice come to support himself as he supports himself? Or is it inventor Andrew Longman who just happened to stop by in the middle of the paragraph?

Are we sure this guy isn’t just a schizophrenic bum making use of the free computers in the Perdue library?

 
 

Sadly, I too have two degrees from that fine institution, Purdue, otherwise known as where red bricks go to die. In my day, when dinosaurs ruled the earth, all of us engineers were sure the physics dweebs were nuts, I thank Mr. Longman for providing empirical proof of our heuristic.

 
 

Are we sure this guy isn’t just a schizophrenic bum making use of the free computers in the Perdue Purdue library?

Whoops, typo! Or was it

 
 

Oh.. it ate my link. I was trying to go here:

http://www.perdue.com/

cuz you know.. well, it was never really funny.

 
 

DrewL said something that I think slipped a little when it came out of his projection engine:
because you, chameleon that you are, can merely change your view point identity and POOF! No more unpleasant BTU realities internet mockery.

I think I fixed it.

 
 

“Are we sure this guy isn’t just a schizophrenic bum making use of the free computers in the Perdue library?”

Since we’re talking about A. Longman, or Andy L., or Andrew Longman – how could we tell the difference?

 
 

…because you, chameleon that you are, can merely change your view point and POOF! No more unpleasant BTU realities.

Meanwhile, I’m stuck over here with this wrong viewpoint! Thanks a lot, asshole!

 
 

Certainly making up science because of blinding hatred of leftys is girlie emotional thinking.

Perhaps he should write a book on how Jesus rode dinosaurs?

 
Tim (the other one)
 

Why do these guys’ retorts always read like “evil villain” retorts ? It’s as if Ming the Merciless and The Joker suddenly became mad inventors at Purdue !

 
 

Perhaps he should write a book on how Jesus rode dinosaurs?

JC, the ORIGINAL Dino-Rider!

 
 

Five of Diamonds said,

January 30, 2008 at 23:05

Certainly making up science because of blinding hatred of leftys is girlie emotional thinking.

Perhaps he should write a book on how Jesus rode dinosaurs?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/scalzi/1969216237/in/set-72157603091357751/

 
 

It is so very rich that Andrew Longman doesn’t want to be associated with himself.

Can you really blame him?

I mean, how many of us have done something really, incredibly, stupid, and woke up the next morning and wished we could chew our arm off and slip out of the bedroom quietly?

 
 

Very entertaining, but I think that you’ve missed some important bits of idiocy from the mysterious “Andrew L.” For starters, he makes the ridiculous claim that an air conditioner works by simply “helping the heat go out the door.” Really? I want one of those air conditioners! That certainly would be a lot more efficient that the system I have now, which works by using a mysterious substance called “Puron,” a heavy duty compressor combined with a heat-sink, a variable speed electric fan, and a series of very thin metal fins. My system uses a buttload of a magic thing that I like to call “electricity.” Hopefully, “Mr. L” will start selling his scientific cooling system on the market very soon, so that I can stop paying about $400 a month during the summer to use my magical system.

He also makes a wonderful reference to heat pumps, which is ironic since anyone who has ever had a heat pump system will immediately know that it disproves his premise about cooling being a more efficient process than heating. I’ve lived in apartments that use heat pumps for both heating and cooling, and I can testify that cooling during the summer takes significantly more electricity that hearing during the winter.

Perhaps the most glaring problems with his argument is that he seems to have no comprehension of how real life works. First of all, he claims that “most of America” heat their homes more days during the year than they cool them. While that may be true geographically, I’m not sure that it’s true numerically. Some fairly populous states don’t do much heating at all (Texas, California, and Florida being the most obvious examples).

Even stranger, however, is his argument about heating taking more energy because of the temperature differential of having to take a house from 0 degrees celsius to 21 degrees celsius during the winter in comparison to taking it from 28 degrees celsius to 21 degrees celsius during the summer. Well, I’m not sure what type of house “Mr. L” lives in, but it is apparently located near one of the poles.

You see, even if it is 0 degrees celsius outside, most modern homes are not going to start at 0 degrees because they: (1) are more or less airtight; (2) are filled with people who are engaged in various heat-generating activities such as cooking, digesting food, heating water for baths, watching television, using computers, etc. and (3) ARE BEING BOMBARDED WITH LIGHT ENERGY FROM THE SUN! You see, if I were to take an airtight box and put in outside in 0 degree weather for a couple of hours and then I opened the box, it would be fairly warm inside because the sun will have heated it.

Conversely, if I put the same box outside during the summer, it will get significantly hotter inside for the exact same reason. In fact, we do this all the time. We call these boxes “cars,” and most of us reenact this experiment at least once a day. How significant is this difference? Well, if its 32 degrees fahrenheit outside, but my car has been sitting in the sun for a couple of hours, the interior will probably be about 55 degrees (this is my non-scientific estimate only). So I have to heat my car about an addition 15 degrees to be comfortable. On the other hand, if its 100 degrees outside and I let my car sit in the sun for a couple of hours, the interior temperature can exceed 150 degrees.

Of course, I’m not a scientist, so everything that I’ve said is probably wrong

 
 

OK. Actually I’m not sure the carbon study says that heating co2 emissions from natural gas are greater than from electricity, all I saw was for total emissions by type of fuel.

However, the easiest refutation of Longman’s premise comes from the NPR study he cites.”In a cold state like Minnesota, the numbers jump to 8,000 pounds of CO2 for natural gas and 9,900 pounds for electric heat.”

This suggests that where use is equal, electricity produces more co2 per btu. The numbers favoring electriicty that Longman cites are for houses overall. Electric heaters are likely popular only in warm-weather climates where they get used less (otherwise it makes economic sense to go with FF).

Maybe I should get me one of them there engineerin’ degress from Purdue. It can’t be that hard.

 
 

Oh, Lee Siegel, you’re too clever for us blogofascists.

 
 

Ha Ha, Charade you are.

 
 

Also it seems reasonable to assume that central electric heating is more efficient than a lightbulb in generating heat, So the co2 and $$ difference between gas and easy bake home heating would be even greater than suggested by the NPR study.

 
 

The entire country of Ireland is full of whiny, girlie, lefty, gay, fascists who don’t understand quantumitascious mechanics…they’ve banned incandescent bulbs.

http://www.eetimes.com/rss/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=204702457&cid=RSSfeed_eetimes_newsRSS

 
 

agc said, “easy bake home heating”

HAHAH! Comment of the day.

 
 

I’m back to the High Intensity Discharge bulbs again.

If you suspended enough of them above your house, it would always be like summer inside. And, vio’la! No need to heat the house.

I’ll take my degree now, Perdue Purdue.

 
 

Dammit, I left my straw-women hanging out again.

 
Willem van Oranje
 

Doesn’t Andrew L’s use of words like “POOF” and “Oops!” reek like ‘feminine emotional thinking´?

 
 

If you hop over to the long and ridiculous reply Longman wrote on the original post, his third sentence is:

“You right this”

Which makes him stupider than you think even after taking into account that he “rights” for WND and so he’s going to be stupider than you think.

What do you think, people? Am I write or am I write?

 
 

B-But he used words with, like, four syllables in them! He must be right!

 
 

Okay, I was going to be incredibly clever and post under some Longmanesque pseudonym, but if you’re even 5 minutes late to the party around here, about twenty other commentors will beat you to it.

Signed, Bandrew Blongman

 
 

I mean, how many of us have done something really, incredibly, stupid, and woke up the next morning and wished we could chew our arm off and slip out of the bedroom quietly?

No… but I keep waking up next to severed arms… Oh God!!!

 
 

His keen analytical mind reminds me of another from that far off place, librul neoconism. Could he be the separated at birth bro of Doughy?

 
Saul "Booger" Ruppert
 

Ha!

You Liberal Fascist bastards fell into Jonah Goldberg’s square-pants-trap!

Snap!

 
 

You see, if I were to take an airtight box and put in outside in 0 degree weather for a couple of hours and then I opened the box, it would be fairly warm inside because the sun will have heated it.

Wait…so you’re saying that the sun would *heat* such a closed system, other examples being, say, an atmosphere, and if there was no means for the heat to escape, it woudl get really really hot in there?

So THAT’S what happened to Mittens when I left my Corolla sitting in the parking lot in Mission Viejo! And here I was looking for the guy that poisoned her thru a closed window!

 
White Male, Jew of Liberal Fascism
 

Well, I have to admit that us libs have had our own wacko “scientists” as well.

Anybody else remember Buckminster Fuller’s plans to construct geodesic domes of such huge size that they would defy gravity and spontaneously float all by themselves?

 
 

The people defending incandescent lightbulbs are getting more and more incoherent. As someone who has been using CF for over 10 years, I have a ready answer to all of the silly objections people give. But this fool? What were his degrees in? Interpretive dance and Mongolian literature?

My CF lamps cost as little as 50 pence each ($1 USD) and they come in a variety of colours, including some which are whiter than a typical incandescent bulb. I even have quick warm up ones in the bathroom, which reach their full brightness as fast as an incandescent lamp. They are even good as work lights, since they are diffused enough to not need shades.

This mans attempts to pretend his nonsense is science, reminds me a lot of the “intelligent design” nutjobs. Make no mistake. Bad science is an attack on all good science.

By the way.. is anybody willing and able to do a little digging into this mans qualifications? It could be… ahem. Illuminating.

 
 

Longman’s argument, which we ridiculed, was that heat from incandescent bulbs helps heat homes in winter and that CFL’s, which put off less heat, would require that home heating systems work harder.

Oh, THAT idiot. Nuff said.

 
 

That was far fetched, but he did yeoman’s work on the whole geodesic dome thing.

 
 

justbrent said:
“Of course, I’m not a scientist, so everything that I’ve said is probably wrong.”

Actually all we need to know is whether you are manly. If you aren’t, you are, of course, wrong. If you are manly, congratulations on always being right!

 
 

Didn’t read all the comments so someone may have already said this, but how could you not shoot down the bit in his comment about thermodynamics? What he said is exactly the opposite of true. It’s much more energy intensive to cool things because you have to move heat from a system of equal heat to the surrounds, which is at equilibrium. You are actually moving heat from cooler to hotter when you air condition.

 
 

Hey, White Male, first of all, Bucky was an Architect, not a scientist. we’d like to keep our crazies, thankyewverrymuch.

second, the floating dome was in a novel by John Brunner, the floating part wasn’t Bucky’s idea.

Bucky was a plenty whack-ass crazy dude, but let’s not give him credit for ALL the looniness.

 
 

Slightly off-topic but on-topic question–I have a pet turtle who, unlike human beings outside of Longaman’s fantasies, actually DOES rely on an incandescent bulb for heat. He spends a good portion of his day basking under one on his fake rock, being cold-blooded. What do I do when the gummint takes his incandescant bulb away?

Reptilian pets are truly the gypsies of liberal fascism.

 
 

Well, it’s awfully cold here in California this week, so I’m pretty glad that we are all able to huddle around the ceiling lamp, warming ourselves.

 
 

Jake-

Use a hair dryer.

 
 

Maybe a hair dryer is the Luger of Liberal Fascism?

 
 

Anybody else remember Buckminster Fuller’s plans to construct geodesic domes of such huge size that they would defy gravity and spontaneously float all by themselves?

No.

 
 

Jake H —

IIRC, the ban does not apply to bulbs for which there is no CF replacement – oven lights, for instance. I’d imagine that ‘heat lamps’ of various types will still be produced, provided that they are marketed as such, and not marketed as being for illumination purposes…

 
 

Ireland is the Berlin (circa 1937) of Liberal Fascism.

 
 

Buckminster Fuller is the Albert Speer of Liberal Fascism.

 
 

Hey Doug!

Andrew Longman was just talking about you! Watts, get it?

Oh, never mind.

 
 

You fell square into Longman’s trap – snap!

Chew, bitch, chew! That leg is meaningless compared to what’ll happen if old man Longman gets ya!

 
White Male, Jew of Liberal Fascism
 

Oh, yes, Doug and Billy, he really did.

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:3H6M0OzRmkMJ:www.goodmagazine.com/section/Guide/good_guide_r_buckminster_fuller_3_of_6

Based on the premise that the weight of the enclosed air in a geodesic dome is 1,000 times greater than the weight of its structure, Fuller set forth the following hypothesis: “If the volume of air was heated only one degree, the sphere would begin to float.” Cloud Nines were to be floating geodesic spheres as large as one mile in diameter. These would house thousands of people, with passengers moving from “cloud” to “cloud” or from “cloud” to ground, as the “clouds’’ floated around the Earth or were anchored to mountaintops.

 
 

How many Andrew Longman’s at Perdue? Go HERE and see for yourself.

 
 

Purdue, whatever.

 
 

I stand corrected.

Well played, White Male. Bucky must have gotten a particularly potent prescription that day.

 
 

Umm, not to second guess Buckminster, but while a sphere itself might float, that wouldn’t necessarily go for it’s contents, would it?

Sounds like a bit of Longman Arithmetic is involved.

 
 

CFLs increasing global warming is the liberal fascism of science.

Which makes Andrew Longman the Jonah Goldberg of science.

Which means that his pantload is both doughy and not-doughy at the same time until observed.

tool.

 
Arky - Chuthuhlusexual
 

All I can say is the Tighty Righties fear of losing their bulbs makes me wonder if Freud had a point.

 
 

tools are useful.

why do you hate tools, cangrejero?

 
 

tools are the ….ummm, ….tools… of Liberal Fascism!

 
 

purdue.edu … search … andrew longman
Department: physics
Email: [email deleted by S,N! management]

Oh keerist. I suppose he’ll sue the U when he gets fired for “not believing in the theory of themrodynamics.”

 
 

or whatever the hell it was I learned about in PChem …

 
 

If white males are the Jews of liberal fascism, then what does that make a liberal white male?

Liberal White Males are the Hindi of Liberal Fascism.

 
 

why do you hate tools, cangrejero?

Only because they so often end up voting Republican.

 
 

Speaking of trollish Boilermakers, anyone have an update on Paul Deignan?

 
 

Everything Andrew Longman said is the truth, conservatives are logical and masculine and use logic and common sense to arrive at out conclusions whereas liberals are feminine and emotion based and like women liberals are weak and emotionally unstable. Call me sexist but it is true men are (except for liberals) logical and straightfoward while women (except for conservative women) are emotional and weak. So I guess liberal men are all a bunch of weak spined limp wristed faggots.

 
 

Umm, not to second guess Buckminster, but while a sphere itself might float, that wouldn’t necessarily go for it’s contents, would it?

I’d assume there would be, like, floors and benches and stuff.

Kind of a cool idea. Buckminster was an interesting guy. And he’s got a whole family of molecules named after him!

 
 

“your failure to apply quantitative understanding”

I’m using this one all the time now. I think I’ll start at my next parent conference: “Well, Mrs. Smith, your failure to apply quantitative understanding to the problem of your daughter’s lack of academic performance has prevented you from realizing that Paige is dumb as a bag of hammers. No amount of extra credit will save her grade. Let’s move on now, shall we?”

 
 

No, chemist that’s what I mean.

The temp differential would provide lift for the geodesic structure itself, making the ‘Cloud’ buoyant.

But then you add floors, benches, stuff, and people to it. I don’t think the temperature differential would still be enough to lift all that, right?

I mean, in ballooning, you get a beastly big balloon, made of unbelievably lightweight materials, to lift a little basket of folks.

But I like Bucky too, don’t get me wrong. Brilliant craziness attracts me.

 
 

The temp differential would provide lift for the geodesic structure itself, making the ‘Cloud’ buoyant.

But then you add floors, benches, stuff, and people to it. I don’t think the temperature differential would still be enough to lift all that, right?

Oh, I see what you mean. I guess you’d just have to make the sphere itself bigger and/or lighter, or heat it more. If he was talking about spheres a mile in diameter (compared to what, a hundred feet max for a balloon?), I’m guessing there would be a lot of extra lift to take care of internal structures, but I’m certainly no engineer.

I misread your last comment like you were saying that everything in the sphere would just get pressed against the bottom. I should have given you (a lot!) more credit.

 
 

Brilliant craziness attracts me.

His wikipedia page is full of interesting tidbits. My favorite:

Fuller documented his life every 15 minutes from 1915 to 1983, leaving 80 meters (270 feet) of journals.

I can’t even imagine.

 
 

g said,
Well, it’s awfully cold here in California this week, so I’m pretty glad that we are all able to huddle around the ceiling lamp, warming ourselves.

LOL

 
 

heat from incandescent bulbs helps heat homes in winter and that CFL’s, which put off less heat, would require that home heating systems work harder. Since these systems predominantly use gas, and since Longman mistakenly assumes that gas produces more carbon dioxide than oil- and coal-based electricity used to light the incandescent bulbs, Longman then concludes that the CFL would lead to more carbon dioxide.

Not that I would read his crackhead “argument”, but he also seems to be missing the fact that there is no fucking way that heat derived from incandescent bulbs is anywhere near as energy-efficient as heat from a damn furnace that’s designed for that purpose. You’ve also got the fact that people generally turn their lights on and off randomly, without regard for the heating requirements of a room, which also has to be massively inefficient compared to a good old heating system with a properly-adusted thermostat. So he’s a fucking moron.

 
 

Why huddle when you could just burn an illegal alien? They burns reel gud. Keeps ya toasty, yep.

 
 

conservatives are logical and masculine

Hello sailor! How’s Larry Craig doing? Mark Foley? Show a gal a good time?

 
 

Call me sexist but it is true men are (except for liberals) logical and straightfoward while women (except for conservative women) are emotional and weak.

So there you have it, folks! Ann Coulter really IS a man!

 
 

Don’t be shocked but Chris St. James is using the same computer as Saul and Bastion Booger. Same schtick, different name. Very appropriate in a post on sockpuppets, but perhaps lost on Chris St. Saul the Booger

 
 

99%-heat-efficient ceramic bulb provides therapeutic, penetrating heat for your herp

Can’t come up with any snark, but that just sounds funny to me, for some reason.

 
 

Don’t be shocked but Chris St. James is using the same computer as Saul and Bastion Booger.

Hi Saul! I missed you? How was the hospital? Do they let you have sharp objects yet?

 
 

Hey Clif, you seem like a trouble maker. How about me and you meet on the street and settle this man to man. We’ll see how tough you really are you little bitch!

 
 

Why does he insist on insulting Christians in his comment-thread rant?

I mean, no one here assumes that all Christians are as stupid as an Andrew Longman, do they?

 
 

Why do homosexuals keep sucking Chris’ cock?

 
 

How about me and you meet on the street and settle this man to man.

I don’t know for a fact, but I don’t think he swings quite that way, Chris. I can recommend several Republican senators, however.

 
 

Anybody else remember Buckminster Fuller’s plans to construct geodesic domes of such huge size that they would defy gravity and spontaneously float all by themselves?

Wait! You mean you guys don’t all have one of these? I’m the only . . . . er . . . .

Nope! Never heard of this. Not at all. Ever.

 
 

How about me and you meet on the street and settle this man to man.

OMG, it’s that Spatula guy!

 
 

OMG, it’s that Spatula guy!

Chris St Booger is Billy Mays???!?!?!

 
 

Okay, Chris St.James, saul’s a rabbi and Bastion Booger is a sheriff’s deputy. What’s your line?

 
 

I’m a “consultant” for Jeff Gannon.

 
 

I don’t know who Saul or Bastion Booger are but I am not them. Clif is just a troublemaker snot nosed punk who wants to stir up crap. I served in the 101st Airborne Division during the First Gulf War, I’ll show him a thing or two about putting your money where your mouth is, U.S. Army style!

 
 

I served in the 101st Airborne Division during the First Gulf War

I see.

And how well did they tip?

 
 

Funniest post ever.

Call of Duty 4 doesn’t count as combat experience, dildo.

 
 

I’ll show him a thing or two about putting your money where your mouth is

Seriously, some trolls just write the jokes for you…

 
 

Oops, forgot to change my name back. That was me at 2:53, if anyone cares.

 
 

Above: Clif starts walking away, then turns around again

Most amusing.

 
 

In fact the majority of active duty military personel are what you people would call “wingnuts”. In a poll taken a few years ago 57% of active duty military personel said they are registered Republicans. That breaks down to 66% of Officers and 49% of Enlisted personel. In addition 53% of active duty military personel described their politics as either conservative or very conservative. So you see my lefty friends the military is considerably more conservative than the general public as a whole so I guess your arguement about conservatives being “chickenhawks” doesn’t hold up to the evidence does it?

 
 

“No Ace, just you.”

 
 

Watch out, Clif. Now you’re messing with St. James the Moor Killer!

 
 

This is the best treat anyone could have, really. the original post and the whole thread should be preserved for all time.

aimai

 
 

but the real question is, how many CFL bulbs does it take to pull spaghetti?

 
 

Kevin St. James Polevaulter,

So does this mean that you want The Glorious Conservative Patriot Jeff Gannon to put his money where your mouth is?

 
 

It’s funny watching the SaulBot pull out numbers. It’s like an Andrew Longman with global warming or a dog trying to work a doorknob.

 
Smiling Mortician
 

Don’t be shocked but Chris St. James is using the same computer as Saul and Bastion Booger.

Yes, but are they also Gary? What about Kevin? I don’t want to be bothersome, but I’m trying to get a handle on the raw number of unduplicated trolls for a little research project I have going . . .

 
 

The other aliases used by “Bastian” and “Saul” are zython, Mikey Smells Like Shit, and Gavin Smells Like Shit.

 
 

About blowing heat outdoors: that’s called a “fan.” Of course that only works when it is warm in your house and cold outside…but whatever…details are for womenfolk.

By the way I have a master’s degree in “science” so don’t question my authority!

Women are made of rats and snails and puppy dog tails. (Yes, you were taught incorrectly.) Men are made of dissassembled Wii controller.

 
 

The other aliases used by “Bastian” and “Saul” are zython, Mikey Smells Like Shit, and Gavin Smells Like Shit.

How about that – I thought the X Smells Like Shit contingent were a different and even less talented troll. Whenever I’ve seen it show up, it wasn’t long before there was a big rash of really tedious namestealing crap. Saul/Booger/Chris/SmellsLikeShit must just have different moods that make it more or less tiresome – from “amazingly” to “unbearably”.

Wotta tool.

 
 

Thanks for the homework Clif!

 
 

zython? Really? I mean, I may be remembering it wrong, but he didn’t seem like such an absolutely choad compared to the other aliases.

 
 

Yeah, Zython has been a fairly regular poster. Perhaps name-stealing on Bastion St. Saul smells like shit’s part? Disappointing if not.

 
 

Thats it Clif you’re gonna get your ass kicked muthafucker!

 
Clif smells like shit
 

The fact is, liberals are a bunch of faggots!

Time to die!

 
 

Too bad she won’t live! But then again, who does?

 
 

Ban it. And forward it to Dr. BLT’s site, it needs professional help.

 
 

I’m kind of late to this party, but the question is, how the hell does someone who cant understand the laws of Thermodynamics get a job as a lecturer at an Engineering college? Is this Purdue University a real university, or is it one of these places where you can buy a degree for $1000. As a actual engineering graduate, I am absolutely dumbstruck y this guys arguments. I might expect it from some dumb ass who has no scientific training and will believe any old crap, but from someone who actually teaches Science and Engineering……. for fucks sake.

My 5th year high schools physics class would have ripped him apart in about 10 mins, and had him sobbing in the corner like Hugh Hewitt on Nov 3rd, 2008.

 
 

As for the poor grammar, I will give the guy a pass, Engineers, as a rule can’t ‘right’ for shit (me being the perfect example). However, even with the poor grammar, his arguments make no sense. My particular favorite was the:

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 … blah, blah, blah……

that is going to keep me going all day…

 
 

pedestrian said, at 22:15

And. . . and . . . you can just paint yourself green and eat raw food with your snobby gay little nose in the air, you silly lefty

A Monty Python french accent will increase the comic value of this quote by 55%

Actually, it’s only 53%. You are forgetting to take into account thermodynamics and the inherent losses of the French accent due to the Conservation of Masculinity. Once again, you have fallen into the trap.

Somewhere, Ackbar weeps.

 
 

that is going to keep me going all day…

If you could get it to work, it would keep you going a lot longer than that…

 
 

I’m sorry, but I seem to have missed the part where Mr. Longman applied his quantitative reasoning to the summer versus winter issue. In winter, some of the missing heat from the light bulbs has to be made up by other heating sources, which he claims are less carbon efficient. But in the summer, not only are you wasting energy on the inefficient light source, you have to expend additional energy to get rid of that heat – a double whammy. And the summer is the peak time for electricity use, so the marginal production is coming from the least efficient plants economically, which are often also the least efficient in carbon reduction, e.g. expensive natural gas electricity generation,

So where is the quantitive reasoning that shows the inefficiency caused by shifting the source of heating from light bulbs to other sources in the winter is greater than the inefficiency caused by the light bulbs themselves and the additional air conditioning load in the summer? Where is the quantitative reasoning that shows that the winter loss is even of the same order of magnitude as the summer loss? In winter case you are just shifting some of the source of heat generation. In the summer you are creating waste heat, and then wasting more energy to reduce the waste heat.

None of this namby-pamby, feminized, fuzzy, liberal absolute equivalence assumptions for Longman. Nope, a real man, schooled in the ways of quantitative thinking, assumes absolute overwhelming superiority for his side. The effect in winter is much greater, quantitively, than the summer effect, and it’s so obvious I don’t have to make a quantitative argument to show it. A good, rational conservative can always find a simple black and white argument for his (remember were talking about masculine thinking) side, and won’t tolerate any thoughts of symmetry or equivalence.

A further thought: where does Longman quantitatively address outdoor lighting, which does not iincrease the need for other heating sources, or where does he address light bulbs in unheated areas like unheated garges? How does he address the times of the year when people don’t have their heating or cooling on, and just live with their rooms being half a degree cooler because they chose CF lights. In these cases the numbers all line up against his argument – energy is wasted on the inefficient bulbs, and not made up anywhere else. Where are the numbers.

I guess I’ll have to wait until his ground-breaking analysis is published in the Journal of Engineering Thermophysics.

 
 

Holy shit, that is an entire rose parade of stupid all in one little piece. I’m frankly astonished that anyone that fucking dumb can even operate a keyboard (assuming mom doesn’t act as his intertubes secretary).

Seriously, you can make up shit funnier than this.

 
 

Clif, if you’re still around and have the time, could you please tell us if the Zython comments in this thread came from the same place as Chris St. James’ comments here? Thanks.

 
 

J— said,
January 31, 2008 at 6:38 · Edit

Clif, if you’re still around and have the time, could you please tell us if the Zython comments in this thread came from the same place as Chris St. James’ comments here? Thanks.

No.

 
 

Alright let’s cut this Gordian Knot. Longman probably does have some valid points in there… somewhere. So does everyone else. It is all besides the point anyways. No one really thinks that replacing every incandescent bulb will do much to combat global warming or save us oodles of money and finally free us all from foreign oil. But it is something that we can do, something everyone can do to feel like they are helping. It’s a beginning, that is the important thing.

The best way to tackle a monumental task that seems impossible is to take little steps at first. You build from those to move on to bigger, harder problems, like raising CAFE standards or demanding that industry get serious about reducing carbon consumption. Take one step at a time and before you know it, problem solved. Even the Kyoto agreement was never really meant to solve the myriad problems surrounding climate change and our need to reduce our carbon emissions. It was intended to be a start, that’s all.

It would be interesting to know what Longman’s opinion on global warming is. I bet he is a denialist. I bet we’ve only scratched the surface of his wingnuttery.

 
 

Like Andrew Longman, I don’t know shit about science but this thread is the funniest thing since…the last funniest thread.

 
 

I go away for the day and you people all get weird.

Buckminster Fuller is the Albert Speer of Liberal Fascism.
Billy Pilgrim wins the thread.

manly logical thinking of real scientists.
Indeed, I’m sure my testosterone levels were higher back when I was studying lattice gauge theory.

 
Qetesh the Qaveat Qat
 

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.

I just love this, really. I’ve never heard thermodynamics called ‘trickly’ before, though. It rather demeans the whole manly masculine manliness of the whole affair. Sounds very limp and ineffective, in fact.

And I’d like to know what ‘science’ this guy majored in. It doesn’t seem to be physics, and it’s certainly not engineering. I’d check in his bio, but the link goes to some whacked out Christianist paranoia site that I couldn’t bear to look at.

 
 

And I’d like to know what ’science’ this guy majored in. It doesn’t seem to be physics, and it’s certainly not engineering. I’d check in his bio, but the link goes to some whacked out Christianist paranoia site that I couldn’t bear to look at.

its creationist thermodynamics, you liberal fascist

 
Qetesh the Qaveat Qat
 

Actually, wasn’t Longman the crazy professor in the Red Dwarf episode “Quarantine”? I should say, Longman was the original in the book, who was turned into Hildegard Landstrom in the series (probably because a man/snake, man/goat, and man/something I forget, would be too much for the special effects budget).

I’m just saying, that’s all. Not that it’s the same Longman, because there’s obviously millions of them.

 
Qetesh the Qaveat Qat
 

Doesn’t Andrew L’s use of words like “POOF” and “Oops!” reek like ‘feminine emotional thinking´?

Down here in Oz, “Poof” is something that carloads of hormone-ridden teenage boys shout at any male on the street. The full version is “poofta”, although it’s fallen out of usage these days: most Aussie rednecks now shout ‘fag’ (they watch a lot of television, after all).

As for “Oops!”, it sounds a bit girly to me. I normally shout “Fuck!” or “Bugger” or, in extreme cases of oopitude, “Arseholing buggeryfuck!”

But then I’m just a little Aussie female. The men have much tougher swearwords.

 
Qetesh the Qaveat Qat
 

Anybody else remember Buckminster Fuller’s plans to construct geodesic domes of such huge size that they would defy gravity and spontaneously float all by themselves?

Hey, White Male Fascist Jew, Bucky Fuller was a certified genius. Man had some truly awesome ideas, he was just a little too far ahead of the pack.

 
Qetesh the Qaveat Qat
 

Since I’m choking the life out of this thread, I might as well add the coup de grace. Warming yourselves around a light bulb reminds me of a Chekhov-ish scene in the Young Ones episode Bambi*.

* I added the link to the little youtube clip not because it’s the Chekhov scene, but because it gives an idea of how piss-funny The Young Ones were. Ahhh, British comedy.

 
Grumpy McGrumperton
 

On behalf of Purdue graduates everywhere I would like to apologize for Andrew Longman. I swear that most of us aren’t as batshit crazy as he is.

This is the second time I can remember that he’s attracted attention in Blogospheristan. The first was when he posted a crazed rant at Renew America about Brokeback Mountain a few years ago and garnered the attention of General JC Patriot.

http://patriotboy.blogspot.com/2006/01/you-cant-fight-islamism-with-homosexual.html

 
 

a dime bag? how old are you, about 70?

 
 

Bucky Fuller … had some truly awesome ideas, he was just a little too far ahead of the pack.
And he was looking back at us though a squitty little rear-view periscope because he reckoned that drivers really only needed one window, at the front.

 
Qetesh the Qaveat Qat
 

El Cid said,
January 31, 2008 at 5:42

Too bad she won’t live! But then again, who does?

El Cid, I love you for that Bladerunner reference. May I bear your children? Intertubically, of course. No need for any real world meatspace nonsense.

 
Qetesh the Qaveat Qat
 

Call me sexist but it is true men are (except for liberals) logical and straightfoward while women (except for conservative women) are emotional and weak

Because breasts interfere with the brain. Proven fact.

 
 

I would argue cogently and persuasively against that contentious claim from Qetesh, except my brain shut down on an earlier thread, after Susan of Texas linked to pictures of Jill St. John.

 
 

Qat: Intertubic children are known to be the devil’s spawn.

 
 

Because breasts interfere with the brain. Proven fact.

Absolutely true. Breasts interfere with the brain constantly. If it weren’t for this fact, most men would double their productivity.

What can I say, we’re easily distracted.

Hey, is that a nickel?

 
 

Darn – beat me to it.

We are, indeed, easily distracted.

Hey, is that a pair of boobs?

 
 

I would argue cogently and persuasively against that contentious claim from Qetesh, except my brain shut down on an earlier thread, after Susan of Texas linked to pictures of Jill St. John.

Bwahaha! Little does our troll know that women have girly parts as part of a massive mind-control plot against men. Whenever men get out of line we flash a picture of boobage, and their brains quit.

 
 

“Some would point out that American homes are heated by a variety of devices and not just natural gas furnaces.”

Don’t tell anyone, but at this very moment I’m designing a furnace which is nothing but a large bank of incandescent light fixtures. I’m gonna turn that Snap! into a Cha-Ching!

 
 

“A good, rational conservative can always find a simple black and white argument for his (remember were talking about masculine thinking) side, and won’t tolerate any thoughts of symmetry or equivalence.”

He knows a real man doesn’t take any back talk from his data. You gotta smack that bitch around ’til she says what you f’in tell her to say.

 
 

Well at least I am not on his damn foot anymore. And I have nice new eyes.

 
 

This reminds me.

I have to go home and change a few bulbs in my highly efficient all-lightbulb furnace.

 
 

Longman is listed in the Perdue news article as a “consulting information scientist”.

That means he’s not a physicist, (who actually has some knowledge of stuff like, mmm…thermodynamics), but just a computer geek with a wannabe attitude. Hey, Longman! If you’re paying attention; when analyzing heat-pump operation, should you use Gibbs free energy or enthalpy?

BTW, the whole “radiation detection cellphone” stuff is a waste of time. It’s premised on building new cellphones with radiation detectors in them.

Yeah, and if I build bicycle light with a GM tube, it can detect radiation too. Big fucking whoop.

As one might expect, the physics guy behind this radiation detection nonsense is Fischbach. He’s a theorist fercrynoutloud! And not only that, he was the guy who was pushing the totally-discredited “fifth force” crap 15-20 years ago.

 
 

Well, ahem, here in Salt Lake City, our electrical supplier makes electricity with natural gas. It’s a twofer.

 
 

Strange that he faults his critics for incorrectly assuming an “absolute equivalence”, when he’s the one guilty of it. Carbon footprint aside, his basic argument hinges on the idea that heat generated by incandescent lights has the same or lower cost per unit than heat generated by an HVAC system.

That is an interesting idea. Is the entire HVAC industry missing out on Easy-Bake heating by foolishly installing gas-fired furnaces instead? What an oversight!

Think of the billions that Americans have wasted on gas-fired forced-air units. Instead we could all be enjoying the low cost warmth of radiant electric heat from a source that needs to be replaced every 1,000 hours or so. And you thought electric space heaters were just for people who couldn’t afford to have proper HVAC infrastructure installed into their homes.

When competitiveness (and profit!) are driven by increasing efficiency in a system, why on earth would these knuckleheads fight against the adoption of anything more efficient? Are they so loathe to acknowledge their wrongness, so vehemently against anything that smacks of environmentalism, that they will cut off their noses to spite their own faces?

Even Wal-Mart – never a bastion of liberal activism – has been a leader in CFL adoption over recent years. Not because they want to destroy America, not because they let idiots make decisions, but because in aggregate it saves them money. Millions of dollars every year! Perhaps these additional profits for their shareholders are their way of displaying contempt for capitalism.

For consumers, it frees up money that would otherwise be spent on energy, to use for more economically stimulating consumption.

It really does make your head want to explode.

 
 

Snarki, child of Loki: when analyzing heat-pump operation, should you use Gibbs free energy or enthalpy?

Stupid work eating my brain:

don’t you use enthalpy to calculate Gibbs?

?G = ?H + T?S

 
 

First off, let me say i invented air. All argument proves your stupid.
Not only that, but i didn’t actually write this comment. It was written by a different nobody.
He too, is an expert on air. Not that i have to prove that to you.
Air doesn’t contain carbon dioxide. You made it up, so that you can make me “save energy”.
Anyway, the heat i bloviate is a much finer form that anything you exhale.
Since my point is proved, you may rest ashamed of yourself.

(just in case.. i know it sometimes happens.. i’m ONLY JOKING!!!!!)

 
 

[…] You see Longman Fan’s IP resolved back to Purdue University and the leftist blog Sadly No! has recently had an incident with Longman: In our original post we said that Andrew Longman, the author of the Wingnut Daily piece, had also […]

 
 

While you work hard to insult Longman, you haven’t really dealt with his arguements too well. Being Andrew Longman myself, I want to clarify what I meant by this. “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.”

Clearly explanation on this site…can’t be dumbed down or approximate for you folks. Forgive me, I tried to oversimplify. Here’s a clearer answer.

An air conditioner puts a cold thing in the apartment and a hot thing outside in the breezy outdoors. The heat in the apartment naturally wants to flow to the cold thing. The heat in the hot thing wants to radiate off into the outdoors.
In both of these “ends” of the air conditioner, you have hot flowing to cold.
The work the air conditioner does is to move heat from the cold junction in
your apartment to the hot junction hanging outside. The air conditioner moves heat – it doesn’t have to supply it. It just has to supply enough energy to move the heat from inside the apartment to outside the apartment. It ‘helps it’ ‘out the door’.

A heat pump is the same idea run in reverse. And if the whole world was heated with heat-pumps and cooled with air conditioners, SadlyNo’s punditry might have a leg to stand on. But heat pumps don’t work for heating most American homes because the temperature differences required for heating are too great, and the pumps become unworkable.

So heating with a furnace means you must burn 1000 watts of energy
(at very least) to put 1000 watts of power into your home. So if you remove 1000 watts of heat from your home by replacing the incandescents with CF bulbs, you have to replace 1000 watts with natural gas (or whatever) for the time the bulbs would have been turned on.

But in the cooling case, 1000 watts of incandescent heat does not cost
1000 watts to remove. Your air conditioner expends far less than 1000
watts to remove the 1000 watts and dump it outside your window.

So we Andrew Longman are correct in that point.

Its remarkable that SadlyNo didn’t wish to dispute the NPR statistics in our column. NPR states that natural gas heated homes produce much more CO2 than do electric. We Longman point out that shifting the burden to natural gas and away from electric causes more CO2 to be released. NPR’s statistic was national average. The only person who even tried on this was the guy who said in Minnesota it’s different. But the concept is clear.
Electric, in some part, has clean energy sources supplying it. Natural gas
is 100% burning hydrocarbon. So if NPR’s numbers are correct, there is no escaping the fact that CF bulbs replacing incandescents releases more CO2.

To review the imbalances:
1) heating a home costs more energy than cooling it because
a) air conditioners are heat pumps but furnaces are not
b) heating requires a larger energy change in a home, on average,
than cooling does (i.e. furnaces are everywhere and heat pumps are
rare, but air conditioners are plentiful)
c) electric power comes from a mix of sources, but burning hydrocarbons
produces released carbon every time.

2) There is more of America with a (measured in energy) heating need
for more months of the year, than there is with a cooling need. That
is the total watt-hours of released heat in winter far exceeds the
need for watt-hours of cooling.

Most of SadlyNo concentrates on attacking us Andrew Longman (whom you clearly hate) and pretending that cooling/heating are balanced when they are not.

Why not just admit that CF light bulbs are a boondoggle made of feelings instead of facts, and hate CF bulbs and Congress rather than Longman?
(Answer: because SadlyNo gets more emotional satisfaction in bashing the Andrew Longmans than in getting the answer right. Yes?)

I would again like to reiterate my request you not credit me with that article.

 
 

Its remarkable that SadlyNo didn’t wish to dispute the NPR statistics in our column. NPR states that natural gas heated homes produce much more CO2 than do electric.

Whatever the fuck you’re talking about, the NPR article states this:

In colder states, heating can account for up to two-thirds of your annual energy bills, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). And, on average, heating an American home with natural gas produces about 6,400 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2, a major warming gas). Use electricity, and CO2 emissions average about 4,700 pounds. In a cold state like Minnesota, the numbers jump to 8,000 pounds of CO2 for natural gas and 9,900 pounds for electric heat.

In hot parts of the country, the calculation changes: Air conditioners become the bigger energy users. A typical centrally air conditioned home in Florida, for instance, produces about 6,600 pounds of CO2.

In other words, the numbers vary with the circumstances you dumbass.

 
 

Since 1980, we at Bradshaw Plumbing have been building a reputation as a family owned, family operated Pompano Beach plumbing company you can rely on for dependable plumbing service and value.

 
 

I’m excited to find this web site. I need to to thank you for your time for this particularly wonderful read!! I definitely liked every little bit of it and i also have you saved to fav to look at new information on your blog.

 
 

(comments are closed)