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

[Marc_F_Hult <MFHult@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 11 Jun 2007 09:04:31 -0400, "Robert Green"
<ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
<-o6dnUMPwK-i1PDbnZ2dnUVZ_u3inZ2d@xxxxxxx>:

>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!

I demonstrated quantitatively that the carbon was 'saved' 1.5 times over by
_*my*_ walking and biking _*myself*_ and the estimate corroborated by three
other carbon estimators/calculators.

And I _also_ contributed financially to creation of carbon offsets for 2.5
times the carbon cost.

So I -- not "someone else" -- covered the carbon (and much more) four times
over in two ways.

BobbyG's intellectual dishonesty is appalling.

And the claim that it is "extravagant" unveils much about BobbyG.

For starters, I don't think that visiting your mom who just got out of a cast
after her fall is "extravagant". It happens that she was born and raised, and
schooled and fought a war and has lived in Europe for 70 of her 85 years.
These are what George Monbiot calls "love miles". Swimming there is not an
alternative. A gas-guzzling van like BobbyG has written that he uses to help
his dad is of no help.

It is not financially "extravagant" because the offset from the 5,000
mile/year I did not drive has the additional benefit of saving (calculated
using only 75% of government mileage reimbursement rate) of $1000 above and
beyond the price of the ticket ($1800/year total).

There are additional benefits to _others_ of the reduced smog, and reduced
road congestion, and reduced need for roads and maintenance . Is this somehow
negated  because I also personally benefited through better health because I
exercised instead of vegging in a car? )

>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!

"Pee" ?

"Maintain a residence". Can I use that line on mom? "BobbyG of internets fame
says that someone else maintains your home for you."

(Not that a stone house on a street with buildings from the 1390's with no
central heating, no air conditioning of any kind, no garage, a 30-amp
electrical service and water that until a few years ago only ran a few hours
a day needs much "maintaining" compared to the "extravagance" of BobbyG's US
home.) This is not an poorly-built extravagantly wasteful American house in a
wasteful sprawling suburb.

When someone with normal basic intelligence strays so far from reality, my
experience is that it is because emotions have taken over. In this case I
think it is much more than a "I coulda had a V-8 moment" -- although if
BobbyG had walked the walk as I have, he too coulda enjoyed the benefits my
family reaps from it.

IMO, it is same emotion that torments BobbyG curmudgeonly prodder.

"Envy: Dante defined this as love of one's own good perverted to a desire to
deprive other men of theirs. In Dante's Purgatory, the punishment for the
envious is to have their eyes sewn shut with wire, because they have gained
sinful pleasure from seeing others brought lowly." (Wikipedia)

If BobbyG compares even his understanding of "schadenfreude" to this
explanation of Dante's definition of envy, he might gain a little insight
into why I wrote what I did and meant what I wrote, then and now. Hello, he
might even understand it.

Part BobbyG's problem is that he's an Ugly American stuck at home.

>And resource hogging on a pretty grand scale.

Walking and biking and bussing to work, saving money and reducing
environmental impact for decades on end so that you can go to see mom once a
year is "resource hogging on a grand scale" ?

In my opinion, "extravagance" is living far from where you work, driving
miles in a gas-guzzler, building extravagant car habitat and all the other
trappings of US suburb life. These are also societal issues solutions to
which are embodied in the concept of Smart Growth.

I walk this walk _and_ I talk this talk (literally) as a founder of the Smart
Growth organization in our three-state metro area, as its President, and as
one of many authors of its Smart Growth Guide. available at
www s g c o a l i t i o n.org

>All while piously preaching that we commoners should accept an inferior
>product, covered with warts,  to help save the world.

"commoners"?

Part of what is speaking here is the envy and resentment of someone who wants
what others have worked a lifetime to achieve.

I've had two bicycles in 43 years. The first one I bought in 1964 from the
proceeds of delivering papers before dawn outside in the snow and cold of
Minnesota winters. Pretty "common" before child labor laws ended it.  The
second one I bought in that amazing year 1972 from proceeds of driving a taxi
during the graveyard shift while still in college. It still my only bike.
BobbyG has not the faintest, foggiest notion of what the ... he talks about.

>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!)

What BobbyG claims are "gross omissions" are nothing of the sort as I already
showed. My calculations are astoundingly close agreement with calculations
from three other source.

To BobbyG's permanent discredit, he also falsely claims I wrote that "putting
mercury ... is going to solve the mercury problem." I did not and he knows
it. What I have written repeatedly is that CFLs help with the energy issue in
a way that _also_ *reduces* -- not "solves" -- _part_ of the mercury
conundrum.

To BobbyG's permanent discredit, he also falsely claims that I "calculate[d]
the projected mercury landfill load to the microgram using it".  I did
nothing of the sort. Ever. Anywhere.

>In addition to the variables he's outright missed, he's made assumptions
>about the efficiency of recycling

No, I have not.

>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.

  huh??

>I guess since he's not likely to father a child,

Yikes. Now BobbyG is gonna 'disappear" my children ?

This and BobbyG's insinuation that I have al z hei mer s has got to be the
most vile personal verbal attacks anyone has leveled at me. There is deep
shame in this for BobbyG.

>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.

huh? Mercury has "been a issue for me" since I measured environmental
concentrations in late 70's and was peripherally involved in trying to puzzle
out why fish in otherwise mostly pristine lakes in my state were loaded with
mercury.

What might he be saying? That a environmental pollutant transport model that
didn't also the into account "societal costs" is somehow "dishonest". So all
environmental scientists and indeed environmental science are "dishonest"
Wow.

To BobbyG's discredit, he tries to personally vilify me because I concur with
the conclusions of the USEPA, CDC, FDA, USGS and comparable institutions in
other counties, numerous states, PBS, and many environmental organizations.

BobbyG thinks he knows better than them all.

"He who knows not and knows not that he knows not is a fool; avoid him. "
"He who knows not and knows that he knows not is a student; teach him. "

To this  for purposes of comp.home.automation we might add "If at first ..."

... Marc
Marc_F_Hult
www.ECOntrol.org