Re: Anyone moved to LED Lighting?

["Robert Green" <robert_green1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

"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.

--
Bobby G.