Re: Anyone moved to LED Lighting?

[salty@xxxxxxx]

On Sat, 2 Jan 2010 07:05:12 -0500, "Robert Green"
<robert_green1963@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>"Don Klipstein" <don@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>news:slrnhjqasl.ggg.don@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
><stuff snipped>
>
>> >5) Does this alleged tradeoff work when you substitute LEDs for tungsten
>> >bulbs?
>>
>>   Yes - once LED bulbs as good as CFL bulbs are available for where CFLs
>> are used.
>
>Do you think that widespread adoption of CFLs will:
>
>a) help LED development and pricing
>
>b) hurt LED development and pricing or
>
>c) have no effect?
>
>My econ prof would assure me it's b), especially if utilities underwrite the
>initial cost of CFLs and not LEDs.  This is really just about cost, because
>LEDs have really hit mainstream but most people don't know it.  Many people
>bought one a year or two ago, it was bad, they didn't look again.
>
>I learned a valuable lesson from Bob Bass when I was grousing on line about
>how I couldn't see LCD monitors from an angle.  He said "You haven't seen
>the newest ones" and darn it he was right.  In the two years since I had
>bought my monitor, amazing advances had occurred in LCD displays.  The
>speed, the angle of view, the contrast and brightness were incredibly
>improved over my then "top of the line" display.
>
>The same is true for LEDs.  I was astounded at the light quality of Philips'
>recent offering.  So now it comes down to cost and denial.  People don't
>like admitting to themselves that they may have made a mistake.  They don't
>like to consider that they might embrace a poisonous technology over a more
>eco-friendly one simply over cost.  So they minimize the potential damage to
>their peace-of-mind by several ways.  First, they maximize the potential
>benefit of the choice they've made.  Second, they attack, often without
>mercy, anyone who dares question their self-image as a socially
>conscientious person.  Third, they minimize any harm their choice might
>entail.  It's called "cognitive dissonance."  You know that mercury in bulbs
>is bad, but you want to believe you're still helping, thus you play up what
>suits your argument and discard what doesn't.
>
>http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/dissonance.htm
>
> "The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun beating its
>legs but you're not helping. Why is that?"
>
>(I thought you might need a quick pop movie quiz to 'lighten' the mood.)
>
>> >Yes.  LEDs provide the same alleged reduction in emissions, and they do
>it
>> >WITHOUT adding mercury to hundreds of thousands of homes in billions of
>> >light bulbs.
>>
>>   Puh-leaze - how much mercury do CFLs add to homes?
>
>One home or all of them?  When you take a commodity like a light bulb, add
>mercury, send 10, 20 or 100 bulbs out to a million homes, it adds up.
>Ironically, Don, that's wonderfully simple indication that you're a victim
>of cognitive dissonance.  You apparently believe that "little things add up"
>when it comes to reducing harmful emissions but discount that very same
>theory when it's regarding the extent or implications of new vectors of
>mercury pollution.
>
>> >  If anyone really cares about the environment, they won't
>> >poison it further by using mercury-laced CFL bulbs instead of LEDs.
>>
>>   Until I can get LED bulbs for my needs, I am reducing emissions
>> including mercury by using CFL.
>
>Well, it's clear from the passion of your argument that you *believe* that
>you are reducing emissions.  And who wouldn't want to help the environment
>and not hurt it?  To what extent your belief is *true* is the subject for
>less passion and more detailed modeling.  I would be more than happy to help
>you analyze any of the studies making extravagant claims for CFL emission
>savings for their soundness.  I did work like that for close to 20 years
>with much larger models.  I suspect that anyone with a good sense of detail
>knows how complex a model it would take to prove substantial savings and how
>the "unintended consequence" costs in the future could easily outweigh any
>benefit in the here and now.
>
>> >6) Are CFL bulb makers serious about recycling used bulbs?
>> >
>> >Hell no.  We have deposit laws for mostly inert glass soda bottles but
>NOT
>> >environmentally hazardous CFL bulbs.  Studies estimate that perhaps as
>few
>> >as 10% of all CFL bulbs get recycled.
>>
>>   They would be reducing net mercury contribution to the environment if
>> none of them were recycled.
>
>This fascinates me.  You state that as if we should just believe you.  No
>details.  Just fiat.  It also makes the completely erroneous assumption that
>this is the proper way to clean up mercury, and not by making coal plants
>recapture it.  Present some numbers or a study and we'll work through them
>and I'll can guarantee you I'll find assumptions that are probably not
>valid.
>
>The biggest fallacy in the CFLs save their weight in mercury is that it's
>somehow impossible to scrub mercury at the stack so we're stuck with this
>stupid tradeoff.  There's that pesky cognitive dissonance again.  What
>happens when we finally stop believing this very "credit default swap-ish"
>sounding mercury tradeoff nonsense and clean up the coal fired stacks?  The
>answer is simple.  CFL's will then be the number one source of mercury
>pollution in the environment.  Brain squirming yet?
>
>In order for you to believe you're really helping, you have to believe it's
>impossible to clean up mercury at the source.  You virtually have to believe
>that to enter into a dubious "swap" agreement, swapping the alleged huge
>savings in emissions by adding teeny bits of mercury to every corner of the
>country, even those places running on hydroelectric.  It's only a teensy
>bit, right?  The problem is that each teensy bit in 3 billion bulbs adds up.
>But a number that large is really outside the realm of most people's
>experience so they just discount it.
>
>>   Those who want to help with increasing that 10% by recycling their dead
>> CFLs:
>>
>> www.lamprecycle.org
>>
>> Home Depot also accepts deasd CFLs for proper disposal.
>
>Study after study shows that hardly 10% of fluorescent bulbs are recycled.
>Having places where people can drive (using energy probably not factored
>into the model!) their dead bulbs to is no guarantee that anyone but the
>most green will actually recycle them.  It's also no proof against some
>minimum wage earner at Home Depot dumping them in a trash bin when the boss
>isn't looking.  But there's that cognitive dissonance.  You know how bad the
>American recycling rate is and where a lot of that mercury will end up.
>People will care when they can't eat fresh trout, and we're closer to that
>moment than you seem to believe.
>
>We were stupid for buying into the idea of credit default swaps and we paid
>dearly.  They were the product of some of the smartest economists in the
>world who believed they could eliminate risk from financial transactions.
>But boy, weren't all those MIT eggheads all wet!  We're repeating history
>with this even harder to believe "adding mercury to subtract mercury"
>canard.  Who benefits?  Power plant owners, because they don't have to buy
>pollution control equipment as long as they've convinced people they can
>solve the mercury pollution with a mercury swap and that somehow this the
>right way to control emission, instead of at the stack where the actually
>occur.  It's sad that it doesn't take much to fool people anymore.
>
>I challenge you to *really* work through the numbers with me.  I can tell
>you're a guy that doesn't like to make mistakes.  That's good.  You'll need
>that brainpower to figure out that in the great scheme of things, CFLs could
>quite easily end up doing more harm than good.  And that's even if their
>only crime was to slow the development and commercial acceptance of LEDs.
>How could CFLs hinder LEDs?  Well, if you've already stocked up on CFLs
>you're not likely to want to buy LEDs until you've used them all up.  That
>lowers the demand for LEDs which in turn inhibits LED makers from reaching
>large economies of scale and much lower prices.


MEGO!