But the relation to solar activity is an interesting one to consider, as one of my colleagues pointed out the other day: Even if there is no obvious cause and effect cycle…. how much worse will things be if we’ve primed our atmosphere with an excess of CO₂? Do we want to sit around and wait and find out?

Have a look at the discussion on RealClimate.

Cheers,

-cvj

The video features a panel of notable scientists from US, Canada, UK, Japan, Israel who claim that the man-made global warming movement has evolved into a climate change orthodoxy such that dissenters are branded as heretics and likened to holocaust deniers. They claim that global warming is driven by sun, or rather sun spot activity, and CO2 is irrelevant. And that there is a corruption of the peer review process in IPCC.

But their “claims” are not without basis, showing a long-term correlation between sun spot activity and temperature change and a several hundred year lag of CO2 change behind temperature change.

How are we to make of these?

Cheers,
IP

Best,

-cvj

Incidentally, you can probably get more info about new CFLs and autsim etc if you contact charities and campaigning groups directly, since these groups often have more info than what they publish online. You could try phoning or mailing some organisations for autistic people to get more info.

Cheers,
IP

-cvj

I’ve seen no discussion of this in the press, which is interesting in itself (although I am not sure exactly what that signifies, to be honest).

That most people aren’t aware of the disability issue, and most people who are told and aren’t affected by it don’t really care that much.

There’s very little reasearch into balance disorders — as far as I know the current treatment methods are over half a century old. There’s reasearch into autism, but little or none of it seems to be about lighting.

–IP

Why get hung up on this issue? Lighting uses soemthing like 25% of the electrical energy we use. CF’s use something like 20% of the energy of incandescents. So, something like 20% of electrical power could be saved. That’s really big.

My el-cheapo 4 door sedan is getting an average of 43 MPG. That’s much better than it’s 32 MPG EPA rating. I get it by driving 60 MPH instead of 70 MPH. I want to add a cruise control soon, and push it to closer to 50 MPG. I estimate that a $100 cruise control pays for itself in my car in about 25,000 miles. That’s less than a year for me. But, I’d put one in anyway. I like them. I consider it a comfort issue.

I’m also adding insullation to my house. It appears to pay for itself pretty fast. And, the house is less drafty.

I’m not kidding, and I’m not being rhetorical.

I know it’s not an absolute either/or. But it is a question of priorities. Sicne there are so many ways to decrease our harmful effect on the environment, prioritising these needs affect the stategies we pick for minimising eco-damage.

We could say “we’re not going to use any more incadescents” and tell people who are neuorologically hypersensitive to … what? Lump it, I guess, and live with permanent nausea and migraines and being unable to function until LEDs become viable. (An easy suggestion for those who don’t have to live with it.)

We could all stop buying airplane-imported produce…safe in the knowledge that producers in developing countries will have no income and starve, and the economies and infrastructures of dozens of companies will collapse.

We could set some flat limit on carbon dioxide emissions for all countries…and potentially limit industrialisation and infrastructure development of poorer countries, causing economic problems, potentially including starvation. (NB, infrastructure collapse has other consequences for the environment as well as people)

If we use all and any strategy that is at all possible to minimise our impact on the environment, we will cause human suffering. So if our motivation for getting our act together with regard to the planet is that people will suffer if we don’t, we need to rethink what we want to accomplish.

So, yes, there is a question of priorities. We need to balance people’s needs and environment needs (even though there is an intersection of the two). The question is: how do we do that?

There are lots and lots of ways to minimise environmental damage. Banning incandescents doesn’t have to be one of them right now, while we don’t have a viable alternative for people with disabilities. There are lots of other things that *are* viable though: developing LED lights so they’re a viable option for widespread use, using green fuels instead of petrol, congestion charges, public transport systems, caps on CO emissions for wealthier companies, importing by ship instead of plane, and tonnes of other ways.

It’s not as simple as convenience. It is possible to be reckless with initiatives for energy efficiency, and recklessness can have serious health consequences for some people. This is the case with lightbulbs, and my example of a reckless way of minimising food-miles is a more drastic example. Access isn’t trivial, by the way…especially if your own home isn’t accessible.

It’s very easy to talk about access, people, etc as details. But given that we can employ so many other strategies for energy efficiency, why get hung up on this one?

–IP

Sypder, do you think that those projections (in particular, Lovelock’s future population predictions) are accurate? I don’t see it myself. What, India and China cease to exist? Billions of people don’t have kids? Or are you seriously expecting that sort of number of people won’t have any kids? People being born today will grow up and have children that are still alive in 2100. I don’t see how the numbers add up.

Ugh??? You are kidding right??? There is no either/or here; without a healthy sustainable environment (one that provides clean air & water, ample and sufficient food and energy resources, reduced eco-systemic collapses) humans and most other species cannot survive. James Lovelock suggested a month ago, that he expects the population of the planet to reach a sustainable level of around 500 million by 2100, and possibly as few as 200 million. This is planet-wide, not just the US. Projected and modeled expectations for systemic and infrastructure collapses (as far back as the Global 2000 report of 1980) predict up to 200 million humans dying per year beginning around 2037; most suffering from toxic water and greater susceptability to disease pathologens. Without a healthy environment humans–who are necessarily co-dependent upon countless species of monerans, plants, and animals–will not long survive.

Suggesting that the choice is between people (jobs, economies, convenience, access) and the planet’s health requires axioms that frame humans as something other than another species of the planet. Such dichotomies are inappropriate and the root of many of the causes of the environment’s potential complete collapse.

Certainly people who are able to do so should be encouraged to used CFLs and be more energy efficient generally in other ways too. I’d love to see advertising that makes CFLs look sexy and money-saving and stuff so that people will use them more. I’d also love to see other measures like congestion charges in cities other than London, better public transport, more people using green fuels if they do have to use cars (eg, in London you are exempt from the congestion charge if you use liquified petroleum gas instead of petrol), more support for local produce markets so that apples isn’t flown halfway around the world when we can grow them perfectly well here. I do think governments should take a stand on these issues, but I think they should take into account the needs of people.

–IP

I was happy to see Australia taking a stand.

I still think it would be irresponsible to ban the sale of incandescents without either research showing that CFLs are not a problem, or widespread anecdotal evidence suggestin that the new bulbs aren’t problematic.

‘In Sweden they have started exchanging traffic lights for LEDs some time now with large energy savings, and no broken lights anymore.’

In the UK too. Bike lights are generally LED too. They’re great for visibility, although I’m not sure how good they are for lighting up a room, which requires projection. There should be a way around that, though.

–IP

http://www.sustainablebusinesssolutions.net/4.html
http://www.gaiam.com/retail/2/Lighting

When it comes to the spectral features of the CFLs it is indeed a line spectrum, albeit with very broad lines. However, the perceived spectrum is a convolution of the real spectrum and the eye’s sensitivity. The eye (now very simplified description) is basically sensitive for three different wavelength regions, red green and blue (so, there is physilogical, not physical reason for considering these as base colours), and the intensity of the nerve signal from these different receptors are interpreted by the brain as a specific colour. So it is possible to fool the eye to think that a line spectrum looks like a blackbody spectrum.

A camera of course has different sensitivty and therefore one needs to correct for the changed illumination using filters (or for digital cameras, proper white-balance settings).

“It probably emits line spectra which have a peak similar to the intensity of a 60 watt blackbody spectrum at the same frequency, ‘justifying’ their claim, but doesn’t produce any light at other frequencies.”

Most fluorescent bulbs have very unnatural light spectrums. Whereas the sun and incandescent bulbs have smooth (though not necessarily flat) spectrums, fluorescents do not. And the overall color balance is usually strange. Take a picture of something under fluorescent lights with your film or digital camera set to a daylight balance without using a flash. It never looks natural, and the worst cases will yield a sickly green skin color.

“I use LEDs for caving, they are small, reliable, and about as efficient as you can find for low power. They are still not as efficient as florescent, but they are getting there. For monochromatic lights that turn on fast (e.g. brake lights) they can’t be beat.”

I think I remember a MythBusters that was testing power consumption of light bulbs, and the LED bulb they had only used a fraction of the energy of the CFL. I could be wrong though.

They are cheaper to use over all.

Use incandescent bulbs in the bathroom, if you take hot showers. The moisture will ruin a compact florescent. That means you need to keep almost as many of the old bulbs on hand, just for two rooms.

Don’t compare the brightness when it has just been turned on. Florescents are much less efficient when cold. They don’t use much more power, they produce much less light. You should see about a fourfold increase in brightness over the first five minutes.

I use LEDs for caving, they are small, reliable, and about as efficient as you can find for low power. They are still not as efficient as florescent, but they are getting there. For monochromatic lights that turn on fast (e.g. brake lights) they can’t be beat.

Don’t expect to see a new light source twice as efficient as CFs (They are already more than %50).

I have exchanged almost all my bulbs for low energy ones and have no problem with strange light or low intensity. It takes a few minutes after turing on for the bulb to reach it’s full intensity, but apart from that I have no issues with them. I think quite many people in Sweden now have low energy bulbs after IKEA started selling them quite cheaply and advertised heavily for changing.

There was an article in the Economist a while back about LEDs for lighting called “An even brighter idea” (subscr. req’d)