Re: Fluorescent Bulbs Are Known to Zap Domestic Tranquillity; Energy-Savers a Turnoff for Wives

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

Marc Hult wrote:

>Now it's taken BoobyG a while to get taken in"

Marc apparently bases his rather caustic comments on his own quite mistaken
premise I fail to understand multivariate analysis.  His supposition was
quite wrong:  I understand it quite well enough to know that his estimate of
his recent flight's carbon load was astonishingly incomplete.  It lacked a
host of important variables so it's no wonder his numbers came out
ridiculously low compared to the source Dave cited about the carbon load of
a typical jet flight.

He omitted big things like the megawatts of radar his plane was bathed in
from start to finish, the support facilities it took to get that flight in
the air, megawatts of airport and air traffic control tower electrical power
and landing lights, the carbon load of constructing the plane, refining the
fuel, maintaining the plane, the airport and probably a dozen other
interrelated activities that all produced CO2 (and worse) on his behalf,
just for that one flight.

I don't know why these additional, collateral items slipped his mind.  After
all, he's told us - repeatedly - what an expert he is at building these
models.  I think there's another reason he's so in favor of CFL's.
Someone's got to offset all that flying extravagance for him!  Another
poster who supports Marc's position also appears to own two homes on
different continents.  So many homeless people, so much pollution and they
want us to pee in the dim light of a CFL so they both can maintain and fly
to residences on different continents?  That's chutzpah!  And resource
hogging on a pretty grand scale.  All while piously preaching that we
commoners should accept an inferior product, covered with warts,  to help
save the world.

With gross omissions like the aircraft and flight support from his
calculations, it's not surprising that I don't buy into Marc's premise that
putting mercury into millions of previously mercury-free consumer products
is going to solve the mercury problem.  Like his jet flight model, he's
missed way too many variables in the CFL scenario for his multivariate
analysis to give him very accurate information (although he apparently and
quite astonishingly was able to calculate the projected mercury landfill
load to the microgram using it!)

In addition to the variables he's outright missed, he's made assumptions
about the efficiency of recycling that my monthly train trips to NYC show to
be very optimistic.  We had to wait recently while the contents dumped from
a truck were removed from the tracks, including sofas and beds.  The Amtrak
roadbed is one big garbage dump from DC to NYC.

I guess since he's not likely to father a child, the known mutagenic effects
of mercury aren't really an issue for him.  But they should be for everyone
young enough to have children. The interesting thing about mercury pollution
is that the cost is shifted at random to young couples who have to care for
babies with birth defects.  I'm sure an honest model would account for those
dreadful societal costs.

--
Bobby G.