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Termyn8or -> RE: Contraband (12/29/2010 3:43:40 AM)
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The problem with all this is the age of specialization. I will assert that it is worse for the environment to manufacture the new lamps, as well as the trusty old flourescent lamps than to manufacture incandescent lamps. However, incandescents have a terrible short lived existence, which offsets that to some extent. Whether it is one way or another, I don't know. You know whay I don't know ? Because I am not familiar with the process of manufacturing lamps of any lind, it's not my field.
I can go by personal experience though. When the newer high efficiency flourescents came out we wound up with a bunch of those in the basement. Well I remember the day when flourescents were used not only for the energy savings, but for their longevity. I can tell you - those days are over. We had to buy new tubes by the case. It was ridiculous and we changed to incandescent. Now it seems even incendescents have lost their longevity, again by personal observation. In this case, CFLs are the way to go. The only exception really is if you want to use light dimmers.
Nobody can think of everything though. What about the impact to the healthcare system because of workers exposed to mercury where these lamps are produced ? More sick people means more medical waste. Does an electrical engineer take that into consideration ? Doubtful. Even the designers of the CFL probably didn't think of the cost of the mercury in the environment as these spent units are discarded. Sure they say that people should take them to be recycled, but how many people are actually going to do that. The broken ones can't be dealt with effectively, and I doubt people will collect them like aluminum cans. For one they are fragile, you think guys riding around in junk trucks scapping are going to have padded containers in which to carry them ? A bit doubtful to say the least.
And what of the people who can't stand flourescent lights ? Is it because of the 60 Hz flicker which most of us can't detect, or is it because of the spectral output ? I guess we'll find out sooner or later. Nobody can find all the variables and properly apply them. It is simply impossible.
So they all lie. Some want to sell the Prius, others want to sell the Humvee. Noone is without bias when it comes to money.
Another example is all the heat pumps they sold in this area. Wondeful machine, when in heating mode it acts as a reverse air conditioner. Good right ? Well air conditioners do not remove heat they only move heat. It's below 20 F right now. So these reverse air conditioners have to work so long to get the job done any savings evaporate. It took prctical experience to figure that out, but anyone could've told them that heating a house by turning window AC units inside out is effecient would be laughed out of the room by anyone with a triple digit IQ. But doctors, lawyers and engineers bought heat pumps, which is essentially the same thing. Thay have mostly been scrapped, although some enterprising folk have picked them up and used them as quite dandy central AC units in split systems.
There are two major factors afoot when it comes to rcycling. One positive is to produce less overall scrap. This comes chiefly from longer product life cycles and economy of design. The other major factor is producing scrap that is reusable. That is one of the major factors inhibiting electric cars, at least in one sense. With a regular car you can melt down almost the entire drive train, but even the lead acid battery is a problem. Newer battery technology introduces a host of new problems, some forseen, others not as of yet.
Oppenheimer, Fermi and that group probably gave little or no thought to nuclear waste, how could they ? They were interested in fast fission, not slow fission. Henry Ford gave no thought to carbon monoxide. The list can go on.
T
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