Re: Anyone moved to LED Lighting?

[don@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Don Klipstein)]

In article <hhne6q$qsq$4@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Robert Green 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.

  LEDs are just now barely hitting mainstream for home lighting, maybe
comparable to CFLs as of 1989 or so.  Subsidizing a couple or 3 dollars
can easily take away a majority of the retal cost of a CFL.  (Heck, I see
promo packs of CFLs worth having at big-name home centers at less than $2
per CFL even without utility subsidy!)

>  Many people
>bought one a year or two ago, it was bad, they didn't look again.

  Bought one or two *what*?  LED "bulb"?  CFL?  Dollar-store stool specimen
CFL?

>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.

  I saw those at Home Depot, with energy efficiency about 2/3 of CFL and
cost 7-10 times that of CFL, though with life expectancy 5-7 times that of
CFL.

>  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.

  The bulbs with mercury in them on average still actually reduce mercury
pollution in comparison to incandescents.  So far, they still have
significantly better energy efficiency and much better cost-effectiveness
in all areas than the latest warm-color LED ones that I saw at Home Depot,
though I am impressed by how far LEDs have advanced so far.

>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.

  Except these bulbs have an impressively high rate of keeping their
mercury within themselves.

>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.

  How do you think that CFLs emit mercury within homes?  I would think
that the over-99.6% that leave their homes unshattered do not do so at
all, and the small fraction of a percent otherwise emit little as far as
mercury goes.

>> >  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.

  Or the sounder ones that I have cited in my postings within the past few
years?

  Google does archive those, anhd my authorshyip is don@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

>  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.

  Based on CFL-vs-incandescent power requirement, and based on USA
nationwide average mercury emissions per KWH from the USA-nationwide
fraction of power generation being achieved by burning coal.

  Looks like I gotta cite along lines of what I have cited before:

Not that this one is one I cited before, but I think it tells the story
somewhattruthfully:

http://www.ecmag.com/index.cfm?fa=article&articleID=10261

>  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.

  How about slowing the construction schedule for new coal plants?

>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?

  No, if and when we accept a significant cost increase for electricity
for the scrubbing you advocate (which increases attractiveness of CFLs),
we still have the 4-foot fluorescents in most of USA's lighting since
1960's!

>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.

  I did say nationwide, as-a-whole, or along such lines.  And the
hydropower-supplied regions of northeastern USA and nearby parts of Canada
are shortly downwind of a lot of coal-fired power plants!

>  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.

  Except that so far, CFLs on a whole get to reduce 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.

  Snipped from here is that changing from incandescent to CFL reduces
mercury pollution even if the recyclingrate is zero.

>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.

  However, even if the recycling rate of expired CFLs is zero, switching
from incandescents to CFLs will reduce mercury pollution of our trout.

>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.

  By adding less than subtracting!

>  Who benefits?

  How about those who eat trout?

>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.

  I don't stock up on CFLs for usual home use to have on hand beyond a
$10 6-pack.  (I have many other CFLs that I purchased for testing
purposes to extent beyond that of typical Americans, and the ones I like
I will make use of until LED lighting with nice warm color and CRI at
least 82 gets more cost-effective than CFLs were in 1990.  I hear that
incandescents are what my fellow Americans are stocking up on.)

>--
>Bobby G.

 - Don Klipstein (don@xxxxxxxxx)