Not to mention that in the summer, we use even more electricity to pump the heat generated by the lights out of the house, so the energy savings by switching to CF is even greater. In the winter, the extra heat is put to good use warming the house, but in many parts of the country, we have heating fuels that cost less than electricity. So by heating less with electricity, and more with our other fuels, we still save by switching to more energy efficient lights.
The real problem people have in this thread I believe is more tied to simply not liking government interference. I have no problem with people trying to stop government interference in our lives. I'm all for smaller government. But I do have a problem when people misdirect there frustration with the government at the "evils" of converting to energy saving lighting technology.
Trying to get people to reduce their energy usage by converting to a technology which will actually save them money at the same time it does more good, than harm to the environment, is not something anyone should be making fun of or resisting. Man is having some serious global effects on the world and it's something we can't ignore any longer. This is the one thing we can all do without having to make any big changes to our lifestyles.
Don't be an idiot. Read the facts. Global warming is very real. There isn't any doubt about whether it exists or what it has done. (unless you listen to the oil company lobbyist). What's unknown, is the full extent of the damage it will cause in the future and how fast it will happen. No one can really predict it with any accuracy since it's never happened to the earth before. What they are tracking with great accuracy is the damage it's already done and how fast it's getting worse (at alarming rates).
If the damage is reversible, then we aren't in a real danger. As things get worse, things will be done, and in the end, man's effect on the environment will be regulated to a workable level. A few million animal and plant species will probably be lost, and millions of people will be displaced from their coastal homes (NY city might be under water), millions might die, but man will survive and life will continue much as it always has. The greater danger, is the potential for a chaotic shift in the climate which could take many thousands of years of ice age to "fix" - such as a major change in the ocean conveyor belt. If it changes, we won't have the power to fix it. That would likely lead to a major ice age causing large parts of the earth (like most of Europe) to become a waste land within a year of the switch. This will create major disruption of our most basic economic needs - like food, and we will see a disaster unlike anything man has had to deal with in modern times. It's happened in the past in the history of the earth many times and it's likely to happen again. We are really pushing our luck by running head-long into this without trying to slow down man's impact on the climate. Major changes will happen to the environment if nothing is done - there just aren't any doubts about this anymore. WE just don't know how how major, or how fast. But the risks are very real.
Switching the lights are not going to have a big effect, but it's something that will have a real effect that we can do without having to make any real change our lifestyles. It actually saves us all money by switching the lights. People should be doing it just to save money even if they don't give a shit about what's happening to the earth.
As I just wrote in my other post. Don't mix up your concerns about government regulation with the issues of global warming. I'm not all that happy about the government forcing anyone to do anything (other than the obvious like forcing people not to harm others). I'm a big believer in motivating people by hanging carrots rather than locking doors.
There are no big money interest groups with an "agenda" pushing to get people to switch to cheaper energy saving light bulbs. Only the little groups with the agenda of slowing down the impact man is having on the earth so that we will have more time to study, and deal with the changes we are creating. In fact, most of the "agenda" at work, are the ones fighting the facts of global warming.
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If every American home switched their five most-used light fittings to energy-saving bulbs, they would save $6bn (£3.2bn) and reduce greenhouse gases by nearly half a million tons.
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The average American generates about 15,000 pounds of carbon dioxide every year from personal transportation, home energy use and from the energy used to produce all of the products and services we consume ...
Replace a regular incandescent light bulb with a compact fluorescent light bulb (cfl) CFLs use 60% less energy than a regular bulb. This simple switch will save about 300 pounds of carbon dioxide a year. If every family in the U.S. made the switch, we?d reduce carbon dioxide by more than 90 billion pounds!
That's 300 pounds of carbon dioxide a year saved by switching one bulb (probably a 60w I would guess). Switch 5 of them, and you save 1,500 pounds of saving per year. That would be a reduction in the total personal contribution by 10%. Reducing the total amount of CO2 put into the atmosphere every year by Americans by 10% is substantial enough that it's absurd not to do it - even more absurd when you add to it that it saves money for everyone that does it.
Have people here not looked at the math for what these CFLs do for you?
I don't have accurate numbers at my finger tips, but let me try to do it from memory. A standard 100 watt incandescent costs about 50 cents I think and lasts for about 750 hours. A 23 watt CF which gives off the same amount of light, costs about $8.00, but the new ones have an average life of 10,000 hours (a money back guarantee of 10,000 hours).
So, to start, the cheap incandescent costs .50/750 * 1000 or 66 cents per K hour.
The CF costs 800/10000 * 1000 = 80 cents per K hour.
So even without the electricity savings, the CF is only 20% more expensive. In other words, for one CF, at $8, you will have to buy 13.3 of those 50 cent bulbs for a cost of $6.65 (no counting the trouble and energy you waste replacing the bulb 13 times). So while the sticker price makes the CF look way more expensive, it's really not that much more - and when you buy them in bulk for sale, they can actually be cheaper. The CFs are getting cheaper all the time - and as more people using them, they will continue to drop in price.
But the CF is using 23 watts instead of 100. So that's a 77% reduction in electricity used for this CF. Electricity costs around 10 cents per kilowatt hour. So over the life of the CF (10,000 hours) the incandescent lights will use up 100*10,000 or 1,000,000 watt hours or 1,000 Kilowatt hours, or about $100. Of electricity. The CF on the other hand, will use only $23.
So, for the life of the CF, we see the bulb costs $8, and the electricity cost $23 for a total of $31. For the incandescent, the 13.3 bulbs you would have to use to equal it, cost you $6.65 for the bulbs, and about $100 for the electricity for a total of $106.65. For 5 hours per day of use, that's about 5 years.
Switching to CFs ends up reducing your total lighting costs (price of bulbs plus price of electricity) by 71%. And that's before you count the reduced cooling costs by not having to pay twice by running your air conditioner to take all that heat out of your home. (all the electricity used in the bulb ends up being converted to heat in case anyone doesn't understand that).
Ignoring the global warming issues, it's just stupid for the most part for people not to make the switch and reduce their costs like this.
The issue of course, is that because of the high up-front cost of the CF bulbs, it takes a bit of time before the conversion will actually create a savings. That time, on average, is from 1 to 2 years. It depends of course on how much you use the lights and how much electricity costs you.
And there's always the risk that you might break the CF early in it's life
- or that it just fails for some other reason to last as long as it should. If it fails after only 1000 hours, you will have lost more than you were expecting to save (the bulbs I bought all came with money back guarantees so you can protect yourself that way if it's important to you).
If you don't use much light to start with, or you only switch one or two lights, then the odds of not seeing the savings is much higher, than if you are like me, and have a large house full of lights and you can switch out about 30 of them like I did. If 5 of them fail to last, I will still see a big savings.
At the same time, not only will people save money, many of us end up buying some CFs that produce more light than the bulbs they were replacing, and we end up getting more light, for less money, and helping do something for global warning all at the same time. It a triple win.
But none of that should be as important to people right now as what it can do to help reduce our personal contribution to CO2 emissions. We can see as much as a 10% reduction in personal CO2 if everyone would just switch their their highest used lights.
I'm not happy to see governments forcing people to switch by banning incandescent lights, but if you know the facts of what is happening to the earth and the potential dangers we are facing, and the facts of how much impact this simple act of switching to new bulbs can have, it's wrong that more people aren't already switching without the government having to try and force it to happen. People are switching, just not fast enough.
I watch many of those shows (love them) but haven't seen that one. What was the result? No extra wasted energy at start up (or not significant wasted energy)?
Like I said, what I was reporting seems to all be rumor.
Odd..which facts are you talking about? The propaganda from the global warming crowd, or the data from the climate scientists who say there is no "global warming", but a slight increase due to increased activity of the sun, part of the natural climate cycle.
One should note, that at one time the US as an example, was covered in a mile thick sheet of ice. What caused that ice to melt? SUVs and CFCs?
When Greenland was much warmer, to the point it, along with the UK and other northern climes, growing grapes for wine was common and easily done..was it warmer or colder than today? Oh oh...if the ice sheet melted..and it was semi tropical in Vineland....what caused those temperature changes?
Suvs..right? Mars one supposes is also undergoing a warming trend. This beause of all the Martian SUVs, right?
Gunner
"Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western civilization as it commits suicide"
Yep. As an Australian whose had this foisted on him, I say it sucks, big time. As usual, its a cheap publicity grab - we are doing SOMETHING, ANYTHING - but you, the poor saps at the bottom of the food chain, have to pay for it.
5% of Australia's greenhouses gases come from light bulbs. Whoopee. Huge amounts from grossly inefficient, outdated, obsolete coal fired power stations. Any move to force the power companies to update the stations - naw, thats anti-competition - our state government has announced it will GIVE a huge subsidy to a PRIVATE power company to keep a 25 year old brown coal fired power station running.
CFL's do have their place - if a light runs for long periods of time, ideal. My experience is they dont like constant on/off cycles and have a very short life if you do. Have a mixture here of em.
Buy a reputable brand - yeh, sure. Once upon a time the brand MEANT something - now, its all made in China crap. And the Chinese do make really good stuff - we don't see it as we cant afford it, so they will happily sell us the crap.
some light fitting will not take the physical size of a CFL - who pays for the new ones. I can do it myself, the average homeowner has to pay a electrician. The incandescent bulb in the refrigerator, the oven, the microwave - they CANNOT be replaced with CFL's due the harsh environment. So, what is going to happen.
Its at times like this that Gunners views seem reasonable compared to the idiocy thats foisted upon us....
BTW - they are lovely radio frequency interference generators, supposed to be standards for these things, but hey, self regulation and no Government inspectors or test labs means if the paperwork is done properly, then it MUST be up to standard.
And have you ever, out of idle curiosity, pulled one of them to pieces
- full of electronics that will go to landfill. mercury as well - if its small enough to throw in the rubbish bin when it fails, it will be.
Global man made warming fear based propaganda trying to make high cost dead end technology palatable to the ingnorant masses is the goal. Government mandates are the only way to prop up products and services that consumers deem to high priced and unnecessary. Grandiose claims of the end is near being preached by some politians should get them an accademy award.
this move is actually quite dangerous in a machine shop environment.
fluoro lights pulse light at the supply ac rate. if you run a lathe at a speed which is a multiple of the ac rate the strobing effect will cause the job in the lathe and the chuck to appear stationary. the illusion that the job is stationary is quite convincing I can tell you.
if you must use fluoro lights above a spinning machine you actually need 3 phase supply and you need a triple tube light set up so that each light is supplied off a different phase. with this arrangement you dont get the strobing effect.
one option I have been thinking of implementing to get around this, and I think it is dangerous, is to use a solar panel to charge a 12 volt lead acid battery, and to use that to power a few 12volt dichroic lamps above the lathe. or to stock up on a lifetime supply of tungsten globes.
I am amazed that I can write this sincerely but I really do see Gunners's views as reasonable. I've been agreeing with them for a while now although he wouldnt know that :-)
'n he gets a pat on the back for a past life as a sniper.
When Eric the Red led the Norwegian Vikings to Greenland in the late
900s, it was an ice-free farm country--grass for sheep and cattle, open water for fishing, a livable climate--so good a colony that by
1100 there were 3,000 people living there. Then came the Ice Age. By
1400, average temperatures had declined by 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, the glaciers had crushed southward across the farmlands and harbors, and the Vikings did not survive.
Such global temperature fluctuations are not surprising, for looking back in history we see a regular pattern of warming and cooling. From
200 B.C. to A.D. 600 saw the Roman Warming period; from 600 to 900, the cold period of the Dark Ages; from 900 to 1300 was the Medieval warming period; and 1300 to 1850, the Little Ice Age.
During the 20th century the earth did indeed warm--by 1 degree Fahrenheit. But a look at the data shows that within the century temperatures varied with time: from 1900 to 1910 the world cooled; from 1910 to 1940 it warmed; from 1940 to the late 1970s it cooled again, and since then it has been warming. Today our climate is 1/20th of a degree Fahrenheit warmer than it was in 2001.
[excerpted]
Please explain how that fits into the global warming senario.
On Tue, 20 Feb 2007 21:34:25 -0600, with neither quill nor qualm, Ignoramus1582 quickly quoth:
I switched over to 23w CFLs a few months ago when they went on sale for a buck a pop. I love them and they're brighter than 100w incans.
A friend is suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD.) Who has a good and very inexpensive 5900k lightbox, or who makes good bulbs and fixtures? I can make a box for her. She'd rather spend the $50 she has than the $200 she doesn't.
-- If it weren't for jumping to conclusions, some of us wouldn't get any exercise.
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