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

[Marc_F_Hult <MFHult@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 30 Apr 2007 17:35:44 -0400, "Robert Green"
<ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
<_8idnQ1JRLGb7KvbnZ2dnUVZ_oytnZ2d@xxxxxxx>:

>I'm beginning to think CFL's are the gypsy moths of the '00's.  Instead
>of catching mercury spewing out of smokestacks like we should (along with
>carbon)

There's evidence for burning of coal going back at least to Iron Age
(pre-Roman) AS Uggo (maybe?;-) said: " Must catch Double Oxide of Black
Crud and Quicksilver. Must solve problem for 36,000 moons from now."

You do understand that these problems are cumulative, right? And that the
carbon that you BobbyG caused to be put in the atmosphere in the past is
only infinitesimally less important than the carbon that you will cause to
be released in the future.

I assert this, because it is a critical concept with wide ranging
repercussions and implications and constraints on how to solve the
problem(s). Economists are grappling with the third order effects (so to
speak) of this at this time.

Pop Quiz:  With respect to CO2: Is it better to spend X dollars now to
make n units of improvement now, or 0.8X dollars in the future to make
0.9n units of improvement in the future. The answer depends both on the
science AND the economics, and ya know BobbyG, I'm quite sure that you
don't really know despite all the words you write and the certainty with
which you write them,

>we're distributing toxic mercury all throughout the environment,

Yes, by burning coal and refining gold, and building thermostats and
filling our teeth , and trying to cure syphilis, and by using it record
river water levels and 70 years of conventional fluorescent lamps and ....
and its is all with us forever.

>hoping it's all going to be properly recycled

Reality check: *Who* is hoping  that it is all going to be "properly
recycled" ?  It hasn't been and won't be. Period.

>even thought we know Americans aren't the best recyclers in the world.

The list of things in which the US is far behind the leaders includes:

Life expectancy
Health care
Education,
Foreign Aid,

What we are leaders in includes.

Percent of population in prison
Military expenditures,
Per capita energy consumption

>It is pretty bizarre, when you stop and think about it.

When I stopped to think about it, it seemed pretty much what I expected
and projected.

>Perhaps the best we can hope for from CFL's is that
>they will spur development of better alternatives that don't require
>creating mercury vapor in fragile glass tubes in our homes.

Hippo-Talk Alert

We could give this assignment to sixth graders  and they would come up
with a long list of benefits "that we could hope for" from CFLs. many have
been repeated in the newsgroup several times. But BobbyG seems impervious
to these facts and instead hippo-speaks in ways that would get the
greenest cub reporter fired.

Whether Bobby understands it or not,

	the excess CO2 that he didn't create,
	the mountaintop he didn't help to remove,
	the mercury that didn't get spewed,
	the urban heat he didn't contribute to
	the ...( etc)

Became

	the excess CO2 he *did* create,
	 the mountaintop he *did* help remove,
	the mercury he *did* cause to be spewed,
	the urban heat island he *did* contribute to
	(etc)

when he switched back to the incandescent lamp.

That's the reality that he wants to avoid to have to "stop and think
about" with this hippo-speak.

It helps to "stop and think" about the old adage that "if you aren't part
of the solution, you're part of the problem".

Or in the immortal words of Walt Kelly's Pogo in a poster for the first
Earth Day in 1970 (published in the book of the same name in that
extraordinary year of 1972) : "We have met the enemy and he is us".

... Marc
Marc_F_Hult
www.ECONtrol.org