Re: Digital Tools Help Users Save Energy, Study Finds

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Lewis Gardner" <lgardner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:4790db51$0
> >>Robert Green wrote:
> >>
> >>>(and I KNOW you're old enough to remember the exhaust of a
> >>>high compression 1960's V-8!),
> >>
> >>All other factors being equal a higher compression engine would have
> >>lower emissions due to increased efficiency.
> >
> >
> > That's way beyond niggling.
>
> Blah, blah, blah...

You've gone non-sequitur on us Lewis.  There was NOTHING in the phrase "high
compression 1960's V-8" that implies any of the absolutely bizarre things
you've claimed.  It was a phrase meant to evoke the image (and smell) of a
certain type of muscle car of an age gone by.  Yet you believe it's evidence
that I either claim to be an expert on engines or that I was making some
sort of comment on compression ratios and engine efficiency.

Its easy to see why you're having so much trouble understanding the very
simple things I'm saying.  It's pretty clear from the flip and dismissive
"blah, blah, blah" that you don't really want to have an intelligent
discussion.  You just want to try to throw some stink on me so you can blunt
my contentions about the risks of CFL's.

> My point is that you tend to throw in "technical" terms like
> "compression" and "bore" to make you sound credible when in reality you
> don't know much about internal combustion engines.

I find it rather remarkable, that in a thread about saving energy, that
anyone would search out two different (and peripheral) comments from two
different messages and try, in vain, to imply causation that didn't exist
nor was ever implied.  Clear thinking people know exactly what I meant.

Do you really think I don't know what the terms "compression" and "small
bore" mean?

Do you really think you have to explain, repeatedly, the rather simplistic
assertion that "any savings are good savings" because "I don't get it?"

I'm just astounded that someone can take two phrases from two different
messages:  "high compression 1960's V-8" and "dirty, small bore engine" and
use them to proclaim "you don't know much about internal combustion
engines."  It seems pretty obvious that you're trying to focus the subject
away from the main topic of CFL's and off onto a personal tangent.  I'm
sorry that I seem to vex you so thoroughly that you feel this is your only
option.

> You continue to downgrade the contribution CFLs can make to the
> environment in favor of some pie in the sky grand solution.

No, it's in favor of the *correct* solution.  You talk about "every little
bit helps" as if it were the single most important principle on earth.
Well, oddly enough, I believe in its converse, that every little bit of
mercury added via a new dispersal vector *hurts.*  Adding even *more*
mercury to millions of consumer products to reduce smokestack emissions a
preposterous solution.  You appear to want it both ways.  You'd like only
the little "good things" to add up but not the bad.  It doesn't work like
that.  A solution that adds as much bad as it does good is not really a
solution at all.

We need to fix the mercury and CO problem at the source, not via "we sure
HOPE this reduces demand" trade-off schemes like mandated CFL use.  We're
going to spend perhaps $1 trillion fighting Al-Queda.  We should be able to
marshal similar resources to fight pollution.  That won't happen if people
are satisfied with Band-Aid solutions.  Hoping that demand will slacken and
pollution will lessen by using CFL's is just that:  hope.

I've already cited studies that show Americans don't recycle yet CFL
proponents just gloss over those statistics as if they weren't even there.
It's that sort of blind eye to reality that convinces me that solutions that
contain poison have to be evaluated very carefully.  Proponents of plans to
trade one vector of pollution for another have to PROVE that they work and
that there won't be a tremendous remediation cost downstream.

As for demand, AFAIK, Americans have NEVER slaked their demand for
electricity.  Worse, still, people tell me that they find instead of 10
tungsten bulbs, they need 15 CFL bulbs to achieve the same amount of light
as before.  Little things like that make the alleged savings fuzzier and
fuzzier all the time.  That's why I don't believe this mandated push to CFLs
is going to do anything terribly positive for the environment.  I do believe
it's going to be a great boon for *some* light bulb makers and that it will
allow operators of old, exceedingly dirty plants to keep their pollution
generators on line for longer than we should let them.

> The fact of the matter is that cleaning up internal combustion engines has
been the
> result of many incremental changes. For you to continue to blast away at
> CFLs is the equivalent of saying that there is no need for an internal
> combustion engine to have PCV since it really needs to run on CNG.

Wow!  I am frankly amazed that you could conjure up such an unfounded
analogy out of what I have been saying.  All along, I've been very clear.
We cleaned up cars, despite Big Auto assurances it was impossible.  We can
(and must!) clean up power plant exhausts.  All of these carbon offset
schemes, alleged savings from CFLs and other proposed solutions are all
boons for certain sorts of businesses, but no one can say for sure what the
future *total* costs and benefits will be.  Recently, with the discovery of
lead in Chinese toys, there's been a big push to redefine the levels of
acceptable lead exposure:

<<Numerous studies have now shown that there is no "safe" dose of lead in
children's blood. Five years ago the National Research Council (NRC) said,
"There is growing evidence that even very small exposures to lead can
produce subtle effects in humans. Therefore, there is the possibility that
future [safety] guidelines may drop below 10 ug/dL as the mechanisms of lead
toxicity become better understood."[4,pg.3] The NRC offered evidence that
lead at 5 ug/dL (half the official "safe" level) can cause attention deficit
in children and in monkeys; reduced birthweight in children; and hearing
loss in children.[4,pgs.69,254-256] >>

http://consumerlawpage.com/article/carcinogens_everywhere.shtml

What if all those same scientists discover they were far too optimistic in
how much mercury we can tolerate, and the mercury released by used CFLs
becomes a great concern?  Who will pay for the remediation?  Who'll go
collect all those bulbs with their trace amounts of mercury spread over the
land anywhere anyone uses a light bulb?   The Superfund's record is proof
positive we often don't understand the ramifications of industrial decisions
until decades after they are made.  We need to direct ALL our efforts toward
a direct solution and that's cleaning the pollution at the smokestack.

> In
> reality by starting with PCV and adding EFE, EGR, EFI and other TLAs the
> internal combustion engine was cleaned up to a degree unimagined in 1960.

And who said otherwise?  It seems you did get my point, after all, despite
what you've written.  Car exhausts were incredibly dirty in the 60's when
the high compression V-8 was king.  Now they're much cleaner because
automakers were FORCED to clean up their acts.  No one is applying the same
pressure to power plant operators.  Instead, we're all supposed to plug in
magic lamps and all our pollution problems will be cured.   US citizens and
lawmakers have to lean on the power plant owners the same way they (and
competitors) leaned on Big Auto to clean up car exhausts.  And they have to
be willing to pay their share of the cost of pollution controls *at the
plant.*

> A trip of a hundred miles starts with a single step.

And if it's down the wrong road, it can add two hundred miles to your
original trip.  I'm trying to avoid hearing 20 years from now that we've got
to spend trillions dollars searching for mercury in a billion bulb carcasses
spread all over God's green earth.  We need direct solutions; not Rube
Goldberg schemes of replacing one mode of mercury pollution with another in
hopes of achieving some magical reductions in demand.

--
Bobby G.