Re: the light bulb police are coming

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Marc_F_Hult" <MFHult@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:hjejv2t5gsu50o2j0p0piapk8lf5dacpmq@xxxxxxxxxx
> On Wed, 14 Mar 2007 12:02:03 GMT, nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Dave Houston) wrote
in
> message  <45f7e0a9.1866152781@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
>
> >http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/14/business/14light.html?ref=science
> >
> >The article uses figures for the percentage of electricity used for
lighting
> >that are about 7.5 times the figures given by DOE web sites. Either the
DOE
> >is incompetent or the people hoping to profit by forcing everyone to
switch
> >to CFLs are cutting their figures from whole cloth.
> >
> >I've cited this page before.
> >
> >    http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/recs/recs2001/enduse2001/enduse2001.html
> >
> >Table 2 indicates that lighting represents 8.8% of 2001 US residential
> >electricity use. From other DOE statistics, residences use about 1/3 of
> >total electricity with industry and commercial sites using approximately
the
> >same 1/3 fractions. That means residential lighting uses 8.8/3 or 2.933%
of
> >total electricity, not the 22% claimed in the article.
>
> The claim and premise of this post that the cited New York Times article
says
> that "residential lighting uses  [22%] of total electricity" is utterly
and
> patently false.

Here's what I read (and copied, pursuant to common law fair use doctrine!):

"Replacing incandescent lamps could slow the growth in greenhouse-gas
emissions, but not radically. About 22 percent of electricity is used for
lighting, and about 42 percent of that is now generated by incandescent
bulbs, according to the organizers. That means that a little over 9 percent
of all electricity is used in incandescent bulbs. If that figure were cut by
half, it would be equivalent to two or three years of growth in electric
demand. Replacing older fluorescent lamps with newer, more efficient ones
would help, too."

Bear in mind those statistics are attributed to Noah Horowitz, a scientist
at the Natural Resources Defense Council, not quite as neutral-sounding
organization as the DOE in this particular debate.  It wouldn't be the first
time the NYTimes published numbers that were in error, either.  It's also
not clear from the context, since they started out talking about residential
consumers only, whether that number only applies to them or to the entire
universe of electric customers.

The last time I called a reporter to correct some statistics I knew to be
feloniously in error, she shrugged it off, saying "that's what they told me"
as if it absolved her from looking any further into the matter.  The problem
I see is that now 1,000's of readers disassociated the quote from its
dubious source and believe the number to be true since it appeared in a
newspaper article.  Sort of a credibility transfer.

So what IS the portion of the yearly average US electrical consumption
devoted to residential lighting?  Do we also figure in that some commericial
and industrial establishments also use incandescents?   Are the DOE figures
correct?  The Federal government is now nearly totally outsourced and is
being run by the lowest bid independent contractors they could find, so I
have about as much reason to trust their numbers as I do the NYTimes.  (-:

--
Bobby G.