Saturday, August 29, 2009

Burning White Hot

This Czech physicist is burning hot over the upcoming European Union ban on incandescent bulbs. Here are some key bits from a posting by Lumo:
Starting from Tuesday, September 1st, 2009, the EU companies won't be allowed to produce and the shops won't be allowed to sell any conventional light bulbs with a milky or otherwise obscured surface as well as the transparent classic 100-Watt incandescent light bulbs - or any light bulbs above 80 Watts: see e.g. UPI. In one or two years, the cutoff will be lowered and new light bulbs will be banned, and so on. In 2012, only "efficient" light bulbs will be allowed and by 2016, they want to ban even the halogen lamps.

While Fidel Castro had some rational economic justifications for his decision (well, he simply wanted to reduce recurring blackouts), the reason behind the same policy in Europe is that the Eurocratic wise men think that American imperialist Thomas Alva Edison is causing a catastrophic global warming. ;-) Well, there are cases in which Fidel Castro looks relatively sensible, moderate, friendly to America, and pragmatic.

It's pretty clear that the total "warming" that classic light bulbs may have contributed since the birth of Edison was less than 0.01 °C, i.e. also less than a one-day fluctuation. Only a relatively small portion of the "man-made" CO2 comes from electricity production; only a very small portion of electricity is used for light (most are electric motors): this reduces the figure by more than an order of magnitude; only a part of light came from these light bulbs; only a part of the electricity is produced in coal-burning plants. ...

As he was christening his new book, Klaus [the Czech President] explained that it is a fatal silliness for the political leaders to dictate the citizens what they should do, what they are allowed to buy, and how many times a day they should turn on the light bulb: video in Czech.

Klaus said that this conclusion is self-evident and if he were a normal citizen, he would go to a shopping mall before September 1st and he would buy a sufficient reserve of the good old Edisonian light bulbs, in order to have enough of them - a sustainable supply - until the end of his, surely "no longer so long", life. Because he's a president, he will probably kindly ask someone else to do this job for him.

Well, even before they heard Klaus's recommendation, the Europeans already began the hoarding of the soon-to-be a scarce commodity, as the retailers have observed. ;-) This is so similar to the hoarding of various products during the communist era! And it has the same underlying reason, too: arrogant imbeciles who think that they're able to control the society in a better way than its own mechanisms. ...

As a conscious citizen of Europe, I have filled my stocks with the 100-Watt "standard light" sources, as they're still being called. The clerks claim that they will be able to order them even after September 1st. There's some confusion because some sources indicate that only bulbs strictly above 100 Watts (not 100-Watt ones) will be banned since Tuesday.
Lumi, as a citizen of an ex-Communist country, knows what it is like to have bureaucrats decide for you what you can and can't do, when, how much, where, and in whose company. Nuts! I detest the "greens" because they are moral bullies. They think they have a stranglehold on morality, but they are extremists (OK, some of them are decent people, but they belong to a movement that has lost contact with reality).

Personally, I think the world will turn green as we get wealthier and value a healthier planet more (I've seen huge changes in my lifetime). Poor people have very little time for "green" arguments from rich people who want to dictate how others live. (Remember Al Gore's flood lit jumbo mansion with a whooping big carbon footprint who jets around the world spewing CO2 to tell everybody else to tighten their belts to save the planet. That's the kind of hypocrisy I'm talking about.)

The world is also turning greener as we direct more resources toward better technology. The solution of the wood shortage in 1500 England wasn't to ration wood and tell people to crowd more into a room and huddle closer to the fire. It was to move to coal technology. Well, today we can more to newer technologies with smaller carbon footprints, if we invest. But by putting all the hot air into moralisms and berating fellow citizens, we are metaphorically telling everybody to live with less wood, crowd more into a room, and huddle closer to the fire. Nutty.

What really, really bothers me is that usually moral crusades are run by borderline personality types with megalomaniac tendencies. These Chicken Littles are hysterical (which would be OK if they kept it to themselves) who want to bludgeon the rest of us into their vision of the future. The old maxim of Jesus applies: before you try to remove the speck out of your neighbor's eye, remove that goliath-sized plank stuffed up your own eye.

1 comment:

Lighthouse said...

For more about the strange EU and industrial politics behind this ban
http://www.ceolas.net/#li1ax

Anyway, - as you say - the supposed savings of a switch to CFLs aren't there for many reasons
- for example, they nearly always have a power factor of 0.5 which means they draw twice the power from the power station than what they are rated for (due to how they draw current) - it doesn't show up on the meter but consumers ultimately of course have to pay for this
This is well known and covered by say the US Department of Energy
See http://www.ceolas.net/#li15x
-- also lifespan lab tests are done in 3 hour on-off cycles but of course switching CFLs on or off more often markedly shortens lifespan
-- not to mention the often ridiculed but research proven heat benefit of ordinary light bulbs, in temperate climates

In more overall terms,
Europeans and Americans choose to buy ordinary light bulbs around 9 times out of 10 (light industry data 2007-8)
Banning what people want gives the supposed savings - no point in banning an impopular product!

If new LED lights -or improved CFLs- are good,
people will buy them - no need to ban ordinary light bulbs (little point).
If they are not good, people will not buy them - no need to ban ordinary light bulbs (no point).
The arrival of the transistor didn't mean that more energy using radio valves were banned... they were bought less anyway.


Certainly we can think of the environment
-however, banning light bulbs is not the way to go...
Light bulbs have been safely used for 100+ years
We are not talking about lead paint here,
and light bulbs do not give out CO2 gas (like cars)...

= power stations give out the emissions, power stations can of course be dealt with directly
(CO2 processing and/or energy substitution, as is already planned anyway).

Ironically the environmentally questionable CFL lights are the one being promoted - in another world, those mercury containing bulbs would be the ones banned!

For all reasons why banning bulbs is wrong,
and why the energy emission savings arguments don't hold up,
and for the EU and industrial background politics behind the ban
see http://www.ceolas.net/#li1x onwards

(if banning was nonetheless desired, governments could gain (or could have gained) a lot of income from a tax that nevertheless reducedthe sales on the cheap popular bulbs which could be used towards home energy schemes and renewable projects, lowering emissions much more than remaining bulbs were causing them = in the UK for example, a pound or two on reduced c.250-300 million annual sales would give substantial sums)