Patterico's Pontifications

What the hell kind of lights are those? Mercury vapor lamps in the garage?

Christoph (8ec277) — 11/11/2010 @ 6:37 pm

Squiggly lights are teh suck.

JD (c8c1d2) — 11/11/2010 @ 6:47 pm

You make your wife change the light bulb in the garage?

(I’m guessing that’s why she knew what kind it was and you didn’t)

malclave (1db6c5) — 11/11/2010 @ 6:49 pm

Perhaps the biggest, baddest electric light you can find in the solar system.

Christoph (8ec277) — 11/11/2010 @ 6:52 pm

I guess you need parallel lighting systems. Good old-fashioned incandescents for you, and eco-green dim ones for her. Of course, she’ll get the more convenient switch.

Kevin M (298030) — 11/11/2010 @ 6:52 pm

I change all the light bulbs, but I don’t always buy them (or pay much attention to what I am using as a replacement).

Patterico (eaddea) — 11/11/2010 @ 7:20 pm

I change all the light bulbs,

Macho man!

I’m a bit amused by this issue because I have a similar problem in my garage, which I solved by never turning the garage lights off at least since Christmas.

Ðustin (b54cdc) — 11/11/2010 @ 7:29 pm

Meanwhile, in another house …

Barack: What is the deal with this light? It’s totally dim!

Mrs. Obama: You’re fading, Barack. Everyone sees it.

Barack: I knew I should ‘ve married Larry Sinclair. Better in the sack too.

Vermont Neighbor (95f5db) — 11/11/2010 @ 7:49 pm

Fluorescent ballasts use different speeds:

“Low cost ballasts mostly contain only a simple oscillator and series resonant LC circuit. When turned on, the oscillator starts, and the LC circuit charges. After a short time the voltage across the lamp reaches about 1 kV and the lamp ignites. The process is too fast to preheat the cathodes, so the lamp instant-starts in cold cathode mode. The cathode filaments are still used for protection of the ballast from overheating if the lamp does not ignite. A few manufacturers use positive temperature coefficient (PTC) thermistors to disable instant starting and give some time to preheat the filaments.”

SteveG (cc5dc9) — 11/11/2010 @ 8:03 pm

PS:

Get new light fixtures, you’ll get better light with faster starts at less cost using less wattage per circuit.

Thank the marketplace of ideas

SteveG (cc5dc9) — 11/11/2010 @ 8:12 pm

our friend Ernst at PW says you can thank a squishy Michigan R named Fred Upton for the silly squigglebulb edict

Fred is a member of Meghan’s useless daddy’s Soros-funded Republican Main Street Partnership which includes Chris Christie fave Mike Castle.

The more you know.

happyfeet (42fd61) — 11/11/2010 @ 8:38 pm

We have CFL bulbs in the garage (a northeastern state starting with P and ending with A)…in the cold weather, they’re very slow to warm up to full intensity.

RB (a07239) — 11/11/2010 @ 8:45 pm

I think you must be mistaken, Patterico. The CBO specifically scored those bulbs according to instructions and determined that they create or save sufficient light for your needs.

ras (d9926c) — 11/11/2010 @ 8:45 pm

Do you want to be happy or do you want to be right? Don’t complain.

daleyrocks (9896ff) — 11/11/2010 @ 8:49 pm

Brings a whole new meaning to the phrase “speed of light,” doesn’t it?

ras (a30317) — 11/11/2010 @ 9:00 pm

I have a feeling Patterico might be forced into Dustin’ solution – leaving the light on – which would kind of defeat the purpose.

Those super-intelligent lefties are creating more problems than they solve.

Christoph (8ec277) — 11/11/2010 @ 9:06 pm

I wonder how much energy is really saved when the darn things take so long to light up that I sometimes forget about it and the next morning I find that the light was on all night.

East Bay Jay (19f566) — 11/11/2010 @ 9:12 pm

Thomas Edison was a great man. He invented a light bulb that would, in later incarnations, turn on when you flipped a switch.

Now we have a government determined to make sure that never happens again.

We’re supposed to believe that’s progress.

Ag80 (743fd1) — 11/11/2010 @ 9:19 pm

LED lights which can produce a very nice light and are very powerful (I’m hugely in love with them for flashlights: What an improvement!) will be a great step forward when they become yet more economical. CFLs, I hate, as do most people.

Christoph (8ec277) — 11/11/2010 @ 9:23 pm

The CFL bulbs can also be a fire hazard, when mounted with the base up.

Here’s an example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FloKy8JvFyA

Ed K (fe4ad7) — 11/11/2010 @ 10:04 pm

Those super-intelligent lefties are creating more problems than they solve.

Comment by Christoph

I think it’s a bipartisan problem, though that could still be called lefty it’s really more a liberty vs dumbass issue.

I don’t have a very high power bill. I don’t think there’s any waste worth losing sleep over in having my light on for years at a time (I actually have a little meter that told me this light uses about 81 bucks a year at my top kwh rate which is practically nothing compared to total expenses for a year). The entire concern about light bulb energy waste is a complete load of crap.

In fact, I hope Americans use more power, and we have a favorable economic situation for more power plants, hopefully nuclear. Much of what makes the west wonderful requires a lot of electrical power. I think the best plan for the future is to assume people will use drastically more power in coming years, and save time and money by building the infrastructure we know we’re going to need.

It’s a huge shame we’re shutting down incandescent bulb factories in America. I think this does create more problems than it solves.

The only real, long term, solution to our energy needs is to build a lot of power plants. I can only imagine if Obama and the rest of DC had spent a trillion (of our) dollars on this, let GM and a few banks fail, and emerged ready for the future. Instead, we bought a bunch of clunkers and subsidized insulation.

Dustin (b54cdc) — 11/11/2010 @ 10:24 pm

“In fact, I hope Americans use more power, and we have a favorable economic situation for more power plants, hopefully nuclear.”

I would like to see research dollars put into plasma-based fusion electricity generation research.

Christoph (8ec277) — 11/11/2010 @ 10:28 pm

Although technically Lerner’s is a fusion-fission reaction using focussed plasma pulses that motivates electrons directly and so produces energy without needing to boil water into steam to drive a turbine. If successful, it will produce no radioactive waste, be able to produce virtually unlimited electricity, and produce no significant C02 as a waste product either.

It should be cheap, too. Far cheaper than even coal.

Christoph (8ec277) — 11/11/2010 @ 10:33 pm

*produces ~~energy~~ electricity

Christoph (8ec277) — 11/11/2010 @ 10:35 pm

“now” is overrated

EricPWJohnson (2a58f7) — 11/11/2010 @ 10:41 pm

My wife pulled the same thing with me. I don’t like it either. And if I want to water on any day I want, then I will water. And I want my toy in my Happy Meal too.

Arizona Bob (e8af2b) — 11/11/2010 @ 11:20 pm

Some YouTube for the Missus.

Christoph (8ec277) — 11/11/2010 @ 11:22 pm

———————————————————————————————————-
Welcome to the First Stage of Green Hell, Sir!!

Many more stages to follow….

For ease of access, you may choose to assume the correct position ahead of time.
———————————————————————————————————-

IgotBupkis, President, United Anarchist Society (9eeb86) — 11/12/2010 @ 3:00 am

P.S., while it should not be funded at the same level as fusion research, we should also be putting at least a good amount of money into investigating Ocean Thermal as a possible source of large scale energy.

It’s the one form of solar power that might actually work on a large scale, since it uses the vast surface of the ocean as an energy collector, so the diffuse nature of solar energy isn’t as much of a problem. In actual fact, solar panels, as well as solar thermal, are utterly ludicrous ideas with no possible widespread payout.

The primary obstacles to overcome are basic engineering problems, not ones which require magical breakthroughs and STILL require us to cover the equivalent of the ENTIRE state of Delaware with solar panels and/or mirrors.

The two obvious ones are creating coatings that resist barnacles (they interfere with effective heat exchange) and the issue of low-energy differential power generation, with the latter being the toughest of the two.

IgotBupkis, President, United Anarchist Society (9eeb86) — 11/12/2010 @ 3:33 am

I’ve solved the “warm-up” problem. Just buy the absolute largest bulb that you can buy for each light in the house. When you turn them on, they are dimmer, but still bright enough. Plus, even the strongest CFLs draw less energy than what you would have had in there. That’s what I like to call being “green like Gore at his mansion.”

DeadGuy (becaa9) — 11/12/2010 @ 4:51 am

Since SteveG seems to know what he’s talking about, I’ll toss this out:

We know that once you have a CFL and an incandescent next to each other, the CFL costs less to run (both in energy and in money). But that totally ignores the process of making the things, from mining,etc. the raw materials on up, and the cost (environmental) of disposal. These things have mercury in them, right? Are they officially a hazard when they break in the workplace per OSHA?

What about the spectrum of light? Any comparisons ever done about the incidence of SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) with CFL’s vs incandescents, or any other effect on circadian rhythm?

Doesn’t GE get a ton of money from CFL’s? Isn’t GE a big Dem supporter?

I think they’re intended to make people more susceptible to influence by television programming, unless you’re watching Fox. 😉

One source of energy that is not talked about much, probably because it can’t be used in densely populated areas, is geothermal. Pipes go down under the ground where the temperature is always 60 or so. So in winter time the earth heats cold air up to 60 degrees and the other power only needs to do a little more (except in our house, where 60 is warmer than it often is!!), and in the summer who needs an air conditioner. Of course, if everybody did that it would cool off the earth’s molten core and do all kinds of things to the magnetic properties of the earth, etc., etc. Of course, the sun will run out of energy one day too, but no one tells you that. 😉

MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 11/12/2010 @ 5:54 am

#29 Solar will eventually work but it would look like nothing you have ever seen.

You think of power generation as these massive factories with all the headaches and cost BIG involves.

I agree that model will not work but I can anticipate as many issues with ocean based power generation.

Solar will work b/c the cost per unit is dropping by 50% every 18 months. Same principles to why microprocessors got faster underlies why solar paneling is getting cheaper.

Smart folks in the business estimate than within 5 year it will be MUCH CHEAPER to buy and install the system in your own home and start converting the US Electrical grid into something akin to the internet. A highly distributive model.

In fact in some states, if you do Solar in you home and generate tooooo much electric you can actually sell it back to the electric company.

Lots of money to be made as the economics change and solar will displace a tonnnnnnn of natural gas consumption – a reason why nat gas is as low as it is.

Trick now is to displace nat gas into mobile power needs like cars and trucks which would kill the need for Oil.

And then we have the terrorism problem and trade imbalance problem solved. Seriously.

Torquemada (a8a9b2) — 11/12/2010 @ 5:59 am

Save the receipt – I’ve found that those lights do not last nearly as long as their guarantee.

Amphipolis (b120ce) — 11/12/2010 @ 6:19 am

I actually bought a “bright when turned on” CFL for a bulb replacement (our kitchen was already full of CFLs when we bought last year). So I now have one light that turns on when the switch is flipped, and 5 others that turn on 5 minutes later.

Darin H (c335c2) — 11/12/2010 @ 6:26 am

um, yeah, what kinds of lights are these patterico. i never heard of ones that operate like that. i mean we have some of those squiggley lights, but they only take a second to turn on. not quite as fast as old fashioned bulbs, but not a big deal in the difference.

Aaron Worthing (e7d72e) — 11/12/2010 @ 6:36 am

Aaron, they turn on but gain in brightness over a short period.

SPQR (26be8b) — 11/12/2010 @ 6:58 am

My husband and I were having this same discussion this morning in our kitchen, as we were waiting for our ceiling lights to warm up (from Home Depo, I have no idea of the brand because he’s the sucker who bought them.) However, after watching that video, we will be having a chat. My oldest son’s bedroom is directly above those lights.

Mama bear says screw the screwy bulb.

Em (bb38cb) — 11/12/2010 @ 7:29 am

“Depot” – curse you silent t.

Em (bee127) — 11/12/2010 @ 7:33 am

I use the standard 48″ fluorescent tubes, which turn on quickly. They give plenty of light, don’t draw a lot of power, and you can get them in a variety of color temps.

Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (fb9e90) — 11/12/2010 @ 8:18 am

I have in my garage a 10 year supply of incandescent bulbs which I purchased via the internet. Screw the green fanatics.

Bar Sinister (6b6cc7) — 11/12/2010 @ 8:30 am

“I have in my garage a 10 year supply of incandescent bulbs which I purchased via the internet.”

Hopefully that will get you through the economical LEDs.

Christoph (8ec277) — 11/12/2010 @ 8:45 am

I have in my garage a 10 year supply of incandescent bulbs which I purchased via the internet. Screw the green fanatics.

Comment by Bar Sinister —

I don’t have that many, but I do have quite a few. Not for my garage, but I just can’t read under CFLs.

Dustin (b54cdc) — 11/12/2010 @ 8:47 am

Also, I think hydrogen fuel cells are the future for cars. There’s a waste of energy involved, but it is ultimately powered by the grid. The solution is to have a few hundred nuclear power plants, too.

Dustin (b54cdc) — 11/12/2010 @ 8:49 am

Comment by Bar Sinister —

I said I planned to do that, haven’t. Is it too late???

“First they came for my cigarettes, and that was ok, because I didn’t smoke, then they came for my trans fats, and that was OK, for I could live without trans fats, and then they came for my incandescent bulbs and there was no one left to help me…”

Any comments on my questions in #31?

MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 11/12/2010 @ 8:55 am

Did someone say Green Hell?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-T_HHcrj4o

East Coast Chris (ded5f2) — 11/12/2010 @ 9:06 am

Comment by Christoph — 11/11/2010 @ 9:23 pm

When trying to illuminate a specific object, in a tight enclosure, LED flashlights Teh Suck, since you can’t focus the light as well as with an incandescent bulb – particularly with a movable fixture such as in a MagLite.

AD-RtR/OS! (413a4e) — 11/12/2010 @ 10:47 am

MD in Philly, I can’t answer your technical questions, but I can direct you to where you can buy some light bulbs.

Dustin (b54cdc) — 11/12/2010 @ 10:53 am

Maybe those are transdimensional lights, Patterico, that are co-located in a parallel universe, such that the light from them travels at less than the speed of light that’s constant in our universe, and the photons/waves are just taking longer to get to you than you’re used to.

Beldar (7aa6f6) — 11/12/2010 @ 12:15 pm

When trying to illuminate a specific object, in a tight enclosure, LED flashlights Teh Suck, since you can’t focus the light as well as with an incandescent bulb – particularly with a movable fixture such as in a MagLite.

But they pump out tons more light with less battery draw so I’d say they still win.

Christoph (8ec277) — 11/12/2010 @ 12:17 pm

Stealing from Jeff now….

Enron Diego (ca41a2) — 11/12/2010 @ 12:41 pm

Flush toilets, light bulbs. . .what will be the third ubiquitous household item that the fanatical environmentalist left will force us to abandon before the technnology to replace it adequately is ready? Idiots.

M. Scott Eiland (596a11) — 11/12/2010 @ 4:15 pm

Thanks, Dustin.

Looking at new products, those self-propelled vacuum cleaners are the rage with children everywhere; now there is an alternative excuse to, “The dog ate my homework”.

Next in line, a claim that the machine ate the family dog. Pain and suffering big time.

MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 11/12/2010 @ 4:40 pm

I am a lighting engineer, and my field is lighting energy conservation. I DESPISE the self-ballasting, screw-in compact fluorescent (CF) lamp. Dedicated CFs with proper ballasts work fine, with a very short warmup time.

Keep in mind, folks, the oh so wonderful hero of the conservative movement, the exalted George W. Bush, signed the Act that effectively banned the incandescent lamp. That includes the ones still in the lab that had all the energy conserving characteristics of the CF with none of the issues. Because incandescents are banned by name, you will likely never see them.

the friendly grizzly (2f59a6) — 11/12/2010 @ 5:51 pm

Are they officially a hazard when they break in the workplace per OSHA?

MD, as i understand it, for the spatial volume of the typical living room (usually the largest room in a house) the mercury in a typical CFL will disperse into the air at a PPM which will exceed OSHA safety requirements for Lab Techs.

Also consider these standards pretty much assume adults, whereas many households have children, who are FAR more susceptible to mercury — I’m sure you’re familiar with the thimerosol (sp?) vaccine issue, regardless of your belief in either side of it.

Yet here we are ramming mercury into peoples’ homes, even as we come up with more and more ridiculously stringent legislation at the state level to detail exactly how one must handle asbestos and lead remnants in the environment.

It’s amazing to me the absolute lack of rigor in the Environazi arguments. And yet somehow Audi couldn’t figure out how ridiculously offensive their “give in and buy our car” Superbowl Green Police commercial would be…

P.S., Radon, anyone…?

IgotBupkis, President, United Anarchist Society (9eeb86) — 11/13/2010 @ 11:37 am

#29 Solar will eventually work but it would look like nothing you have ever seen.

Torq, NO, IT WON’T.

Unless you’ve actually made a college study of it (and I mean more than a single course), I probably understand power generation FAR more than you do, as well as the whole cycle of distribution nets and the upside and downside of them.

The primary thing YOU fail to grasp — that almost EVERYONE who thinks “solar might work” or “can be made to work” is just how ridiculously DIFFUSE solar energy REALLY is, and how DIFFICULT it is to actually get useful energy out of “diffuse energy conditions” (this latter is STILL the main problem with OTEC).

The amount of energy that strikes the earth’s surface at this distance from the sun is not more than about 1kw/sq.meter — that’s not weather, that’s just how much energy there IS =plus= minor attenuation through the atmosphere.

We aren’t even CONDIDERING cloud cover, atmospheric dust, day/night, seasonal variance, and so forth here. This is just THE MOST energy could could POSSIBLY get with a PERFECT system.

That means that, to generate a single kW of useful energy, you MUST — no magical tricks! — MUST cover NOT LESS THAN a FULL square meter of area with SOME form of collector — be it solar cells or mirrors or whatever. There’s no magical way around this, it’s a PHYSICAL CONSTANT.

You’re more likely to find a way to violate GRAVITY than to generate more than a kW per M-sq.

OK, “so what”?

Replacing the entire US power generation with solar would thus, after a number of relevant factors are applied (day/night, distro losses, efficiency of collectors, and so forth) require covering a land surface area with collectors (and, mind you, all the concrete infrastructure underlying your system!) of not less than 4/5ths the entire land surface area of the entire State of Delaware!!

Here is a more extensive breakdown of how that figure was derived I don’t believe it requires a great deal of technical or mathematical knowledge to understand, but I did write it.

Now go tell Environazis that you plan to build a collection of structures (dispersed or centralized) that will cover 4/5ths of the surface area of an entire STATE — even if it’s the second smallest one.

Take a recording device — The howls of outrage will be perfect for next Halloween’s decorations.

What, you only plan to generate 25% of US energy that way? So ONE FIFTH of Delaware is ok with you…?

Now, if you’re a TRUE BELIEVER, those facts won’t make a difference, you still remain CERTAIN that, somehow, magically, these problems can be solved.

Me — and I hope, most others — we live in The Real World where some things work (like capitalism and individual liberty) and others don’t (like socialism and centralized planning), and we grasp this not from prejudice or wishful thinking, but from observing empirical evidence of experience to indicate it.

IgotBupkis, President, United Anarchist Society (9eeb86) — 11/13/2010 @ 11:59 am

Solar will work b/c the cost per unit is dropping by 50% every 18 months. Same principles to why microprocessors got faster underlies why solar paneling is getting cheaper.

I’ll challenge that in a moment, but for now, let’s make a “true for the moment” assumption, and see what flaws we can find:

1) Silicon Fab is both an energy intensive and a remarkably environmentally FILTHY process. This means you use lots of energy to MAKE silicon products, and also create lots of fairly toxic waste byproducts as a result, which must then be reprocessed to render effectively harmless. And that… takes substantial energy.

Remember, we WERE attempting to REDUCE the waste products associated with energy, right?

And you’re talking about taking an already filthy process and ramping it up to produce literally BILLIONS of square meters.

Which leads us to…
2) The actual areal quantity of processors being produced has probably gone DOWN for the last couple decades — the current systems create CPUs much, much SMALLER than they used to be, and packed with FAR more components. The external packaging has remained much the same size for practical reasons, but the size of the chip inside it has shrunk remarkably over the last 30 years.

So even though we’re producing more chips, the actual “amount” in areal terms is generally trending lower.

This is PARTICULARLY relevant in light of my former comment, because you’re not talking about something you can make smaller and smaller — its actual size is a FIXED MINIMUM.

And now we need to deal with another matter…
3) So far, efficiencies of solar cells in mass production remain well below 50% — that “50%” means “2m-sq/kW” (not one sq-m) to put it in real terms. But improvement can ONLY reach 100%, and even THAT is markedly unlikely to the point of true magic. And those sub-50% cells are not being produced cheaply in mass quantities.

It is not an absolute number BUT in real experience, the TOP LEVEL CONVERSION EFFICIENCY in the Real World is about 65%. It’s extremely difficult to even CREATE a system that gets better than that — that is, if you specifically tailor your conditions and the devices to take advantage of them, you MIGHT top out at getting 70-75% of the electrical power which was nominally possible from the amount of power actually generated. That is NOT Real World production conditions, though, mind you, it’s lab-controlled and meticulously fussy attention conditions.

In short, 65% is almost certainly the best you can possibly hope for in a production environment, and 50% is a lot more realistic, even though it’s not even close to practical at this point. And that “50% target” is one of the figures used to produce that 4/5ths Delaware figure (i.e., reality at this point is even greater)

The chief gist of this is that, unlike microprocessors, there is a clear upper physical limit on how far that curve can go, as well as the overall problem is the very simple one of the insane areal coverage we’d need to make to even put a real DENT in US power production using solar (or wind, but that’s another kettle of fish)

And now a final element which is relevant to the above, but not directly:
4) Solar cells have both a lifespan (currently much less than 20 years, compared to 40-50 years for a power plant) as well as an upkeep cost. If solar collectors are not kept CLEAN, their efficiency diminishes rapidly. A solar collector which is crapped up by as little as 10% diminishes in production by as much as 50%. So they have to be kept CLEAN. Which is labor intensive. And what, behind auto accidents, is the chief cause of accidental death in the USA? Ah-huh: Accidental falls. Now, if people slipping in the bathtub kills THAT many people, what do you think will happen to that statistic when you force lots of people up on slippery roofs to clean collectors in the dead of winter? Or lots of extra personnel to perform the cleaning job on this “Stateworth” of cells you plan to put in place…?

The lifespan issue is also important because the average panel currently drops to about 50% of its original, factory efficiency within about 10 years. So not only will be be making BILLIONS of meters of these filthy solar cells, but we’ll be replacing/recycling them every 10-15 odd years!! You CAN say “we can and probably will improve on that” — and I won’t even argue it — but it’s just ONE MORE FACTOR in what makes solar energy a ludicrously ineffective option as an energy policy choice.

==================

Now, let’s call into question your other claim: that “prices are dropping by 50% every 18 months”.

OH REALLY?

… REALLY…?

Says **WHO**?

If they’ve been dropping that steadily, then, in the last six years, they’ve dropped to 1/16th of what they were — 1/2,1/4,1/8,1/16 — 4×18= 72 months = six years.

Let me restate that — One Sixteenth?

Do I really, actually have to go dig up cost figures for anyone to call “Bovine Excreta!!”, here? If they’ve dropped by a factor of sixteen, then why do they need to be subsidized by the government, STILL, as they have for the last 40 years…? Why does The Big 0 want so much to increase the subsidization for businesses which use them for their power needs? I mean, they’re a one-time (sorta) cost, here — Businessmen LOVE those. They amortize well, they are utterly predictable, and their affect on the bottom line of the company is easily anticipated and factored into expectations and planning analyses.

Yet we STILL have to PAY businesses to install the things.

So, if you want to actually cite the source for that claim, I’ll comment on it further, but until then, yeah, if no one else wants to do it, I’m shouting out “Bovine Excreta!!” regarding it.

IgotBupkis, President, United Anarchist Society (9eeb86) — 11/13/2010 @ 12:51 pm

Comment by IgotBupkis, President, United Anarchist Society

Thank you

MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 11/13/2010 @ 1:00 pm

In fact in some states, if you do Solar in you home and generate tooooo much electric you can actually sell it back to the electric company.

Power companies HATE this crap, btw — it’s never cost effective for them in terms of the energy that actually gets put into the system, creates HUGE load balancing problems (load balancing failures are almost always what cause widespread blackouts), and is generally forced on them by local libtard-green PSCs, not by anyone doing an actual analysis of its cost-effectiveness and saying, “yeah, this is a positive net economic benefit to society”.

Lots of money to be made as the economics change and solar will displace a tonnnnnnn of natural gas consumption – a reason why nat gas is as low as it is.

Torq, the “economics” aren’t going to change, or the Fed would not need to be getting involved. Despite libtard notions to the contrary, business under capitalism is a remarkably dynamic model, and fairly quick to experiment with — and even adopt — promising new ideas. It takes central planning to make it impossible to change things for the better.

An obvious case of this is one of those things The Left Loves To Hate — Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart’s business model is an utterly complete flip from the one which dominated into the 60s. Companies used to have buyers whose job it was to select items for sale in the companies’ stores. No longer. Wal-Mart flipped that notion on its head, and said, “our shelving is for sale” — companies basically pay Wal-Mart to place products on Wal-Mart’s shelves… and retail sales haven’t been the same ever since.

IgotBupkis, President, United Anarchist Society (9eeb86) — 11/13/2010 @ 1:17 pm

Comment by Christoph — 11/12/2010 @ 12:17 pm

They may put out more lumens for a specific current flow, but that light is difused over a much wider area, so is not as efficient.
Take it from someone working on a race car in the pits with only flashlights for illumination at dusk, or trying to look down a fuel fill-pipe to see when to tell the guy with the gas jug to stop pouring.
The incandescent works better, at current levels of technology!

AD-RtR/OS! (747679) — 11/13/2010 @ 1:40 pm

“…the oh so wonderful hero of the conservative movement, the exalted George W. Bush…”

You obviously haven’t paid attention to the criticism from the “conservative movement” re Mr. Bush, and his actions in this matter, and campaign-finance reform, and comprehensive immigration reform, and import quotas, and ….

Trust me, he is not some “oh so wonderful hero”, only just somewhat better than the alternatives that we were offered.

AD-RtR/OS! (747679) — 11/13/2010 @ 1:46 pm

The sun does not generate energy by fusion. In fact, a considerable amount of energy has to be put into the process to produce fusion in a star. There are fusion processes we can use to generate energy as we do in a bomb but the process is different.

Beldar,
Actually the speed of light changes with the medium it is passing through. This is the source of Cherenkov radiation in heavy water reactors.

MD in Philly,
The sun will expand into a red giant and absorb us before it runs out of energy.

AD,
Most light bulbs produce diffuse light. It is the reflector that concentrates or spreads it. Incandescent bulbs don’t produce light from electricity, they produce heat. A by product of this heat is light from the glowing filament. This means 90% of the electricity is producing a waste product, heat. An LED converts electricity into light so it gets ten times as much light from the same battery or produces the same light for ten times as long. It is white light so it often works better for inspecting small parts or seeing lead or fouling in the rifling and cylinders of handguns, at least for my eyes. Once the other machinists I worked with tried my LED lights for inspections under magnification, they were often borrowed. If you are using Maglights with LED bulbs I think you will find they use the old reflectors that are tuned for the Zenon bulbs. Proper LED reflectors work very well.I have lights using two D cells that will burn for 100 hours or will put out 200 lumens for more than an hour. No incandescent light can come close.

Machinist (74634b) — 11/15/2010 @ 11:54 pm

IgotBupkis, President, United Anarchist Society ,

Nice summery on the problems with solar. I don’t think solar, tidal, or wind will ever be more than a local source of energy in special conditions.

It seems like fusion and geothermal are the sources showing promise for long term practical energy. Once set up, inexhaustible and cheap.

Machinist (74634b) — 11/16/2010 @ 12:02 am

11/11/2010

My Conversation With My Wife After Flicking the Switch to the Lights in the Garage

62 Responses to “My Conversation With My Wife After Flicking the Switch to the Lights in the Garage”

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