Illuminating! I had literally not known until I read this that LEDs were a different technology from compact fluorescents, but it does explain a lot. My dad (who is not usually grouchy or change-resistant, but is a die-hard fan of the Big Light in the Living Room) absolutely HATED compact fluorescents because of the dimness when you first switched them on. He drove around every specialist lighting shop in south west London and bought up all the incandescent bulbs he could find — I suspect he’s still got some. He’s probably emitted several excess kilotonnes of carbon through this alone.
The thing is that I'm also somewhere in the Douglas Adams third category on LEDs. That is, I do kind of miss the days when buying a light bulb involved remembering two things: 60W or 100W, bayonet or screw. Whereas now, I'm always worried about getting the right colour, does it matter if I get a dimmable one, have I really understood the equivalent brightness properly etc. I'm a simple soul really.
Likewise - I just recall them as the “new kind” that showed up, were supposed to last much longer but somehow still needed replacing every five minutes.
Yes! I was getting really outraged by how often I was having to replace my LEDs. So it's one less thing to be annoyed about, I suppose. Although they are flipping expensive and I wish I didn't have eight of them around my bathroom mirror
Great post although I feel like westerners masking up for mpox is a bit of an easy target. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on a more contested topic - for instance banning smartphones for under-13s. Would you apply the same logic there or is this a time for the precautionary principle?
I'd have to say I'm on the fence on that one! I mean I can see the graphs that show mental health getting worse in those age groups and so on, but then I think (as people like Amy Orben argue) there are benefits to kids to being able to stay connected with one another. What would be interesting might be to do some kind of randomised trial though, because I'm not sure the data is convincing enough "as is" to justify a ban now, but it feels like we should check
I have been using the Compact Fluorescent saga as an illustrative comparator for my skepticism over the way in which the need to decarbonise road vehicle propulsion is being managed. For lighting, we are now at Stage 4 (Combustion - Incandescence - Fluorescence - Solid State), and for road vehicle motive power we are at Stage 3 (Animal - Internal Combustion - Battery Storage), with the diesel episode a fine tuning of Stage 2 with marginal improvement in thermodynamic efficiency. But one suspects that motive power -- and possibly lighting -- is not in Optimal End State, as Battery Electric has similar downsides to Compact Fluorescent (scarce and problematic raw materials), so portraying it as The Answer risks the Backfire Effect, should a better answer emerge with a few years (perhaps from the Hydrogen Infrastructure that is a candidate for domestic heating being dual-used for Fuel Cells).
I do always feel like hydrogen should be at least part of the answer (high energy density so can charge fast, can repurpose existing filling station infrastructure etc), but then people who know more about it than me seem to think that it's not the way forward so I probably ought to read up more about that.
Like yourself, Oliver, I don't have enough evidence as to viability of the hydrogen option, but my reading thus far has been unedifyìng. Some people who should know better seem to fall victim to False Analogy Fallacy, of the "Hydrogen is scary: remember the Hindenburg!" variety. And another argument used related to overall efficiency, in particular in relation to creating hydrogen for energy storage from electricity being lower at present than charging battery storage. But that seems to ignore the fact that (a) the efficiency problems seems to be implementation, not physical law limit, related, and (b) if the electricity is generated from renewables (e.g. solar / wind plant adjacent filling station, with local hydrogen micro-conversion plant, as some have advocated), then arguably the lower efficiency becomes a bit of a red herring
Thinks ... we run into Jevons Paradox, and, I think 'economies of scale' & the need for further industrial expansion, complex supply chains and further complexity?
Yours is a great write up though it leaves out the pre-electrification period of 'light', which destroyed among other things most of the whales of the world's larger species.
Our habit is apparently to seize on opportunities and then become highly dependent on them?
Adam Kucharski on mpox is essential as you say. He emphasises non-pharmaceutical interventions and behavioural change as well as rapid scientific knowledge acquisition because vaccines are unlikely to be sufficient. That is a difficult ball game. The global connected world is throwing invasive threats around like there is no tomorrow and has already changed the weather.
Thanks. OK, I'm British and I throw idiom around a bit. You are not supposed to be able to 'change the weather', even if the advertising people would have it so. What is already in the pipeline is weather, lots more of it, 'uncharted territory' as science is taking to call it. Sea level will take longer, but NW Europe could get a very nasty shock earlier if AMOC ceases in the next 100 years. I think also that extinctions in the natural populations deserve more discussion.
Illuminating! I had literally not known until I read this that LEDs were a different technology from compact fluorescents, but it does explain a lot. My dad (who is not usually grouchy or change-resistant, but is a die-hard fan of the Big Light in the Living Room) absolutely HATED compact fluorescents because of the dimness when you first switched them on. He drove around every specialist lighting shop in south west London and bought up all the incandescent bulbs he could find — I suspect he’s still got some. He’s probably emitted several excess kilotonnes of carbon through this alone.
The thing is that I'm also somewhere in the Douglas Adams third category on LEDs. That is, I do kind of miss the days when buying a light bulb involved remembering two things: 60W or 100W, bayonet or screw. Whereas now, I'm always worried about getting the right colour, does it matter if I get a dimmable one, have I really understood the equivalent brightness properly etc. I'm a simple soul really.
Me too…..“Warm” white whatever that means in degrees K (and I’m an ex-electrical engineer!)
The early LED lamps were awful also with a cold blue light.
The rate of improvement was exceptional though.
Likewise - I just recall them as the “new kind” that showed up, were supposed to last much longer but somehow still needed replacing every five minutes.
Yes! I was getting really outraged by how often I was having to replace my LEDs. So it's one less thing to be annoyed about, I suppose. Although they are flipping expensive and I wish I didn't have eight of them around my bathroom mirror
Great post although I feel like westerners masking up for mpox is a bit of an easy target. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on a more contested topic - for instance banning smartphones for under-13s. Would you apply the same logic there or is this a time for the precautionary principle?
I'd have to say I'm on the fence on that one! I mean I can see the graphs that show mental health getting worse in those age groups and so on, but then I think (as people like Amy Orben argue) there are benefits to kids to being able to stay connected with one another. What would be interesting might be to do some kind of randomised trial though, because I'm not sure the data is convincing enough "as is" to justify a ban now, but it feels like we should check
I have been using the Compact Fluorescent saga as an illustrative comparator for my skepticism over the way in which the need to decarbonise road vehicle propulsion is being managed. For lighting, we are now at Stage 4 (Combustion - Incandescence - Fluorescence - Solid State), and for road vehicle motive power we are at Stage 3 (Animal - Internal Combustion - Battery Storage), with the diesel episode a fine tuning of Stage 2 with marginal improvement in thermodynamic efficiency. But one suspects that motive power -- and possibly lighting -- is not in Optimal End State, as Battery Electric has similar downsides to Compact Fluorescent (scarce and problematic raw materials), so portraying it as The Answer risks the Backfire Effect, should a better answer emerge with a few years (perhaps from the Hydrogen Infrastructure that is a candidate for domestic heating being dual-used for Fuel Cells).
I do always feel like hydrogen should be at least part of the answer (high energy density so can charge fast, can repurpose existing filling station infrastructure etc), but then people who know more about it than me seem to think that it's not the way forward so I probably ought to read up more about that.
Like yourself, Oliver, I don't have enough evidence as to viability of the hydrogen option, but my reading thus far has been unedifyìng. Some people who should know better seem to fall victim to False Analogy Fallacy, of the "Hydrogen is scary: remember the Hindenburg!" variety. And another argument used related to overall efficiency, in particular in relation to creating hydrogen for energy storage from electricity being lower at present than charging battery storage. But that seems to ignore the fact that (a) the efficiency problems seems to be implementation, not physical law limit, related, and (b) if the electricity is generated from renewables (e.g. solar / wind plant adjacent filling station, with local hydrogen micro-conversion plant, as some have advocated), then arguably the lower efficiency becomes a bit of a red herring
Once again in a corruption of the words of Michelle Obama when I go low you go high.
Thanks for that. Good start to Sunday morning.
Thank you!
Thinks ... we run into Jevons Paradox, and, I think 'economies of scale' & the need for further industrial expansion, complex supply chains and further complexity?
Yours is a great write up though it leaves out the pre-electrification period of 'light', which destroyed among other things most of the whales of the world's larger species.
Our habit is apparently to seize on opportunities and then become highly dependent on them?
Adam Kucharski on mpox is essential as you say. He emphasises non-pharmaceutical interventions and behavioural change as well as rapid scientific knowledge acquisition because vaccines are unlikely to be sufficient. That is a difficult ball game. The global connected world is throwing invasive threats around like there is no tomorrow and has already changed the weather.
Can your comment be tweaked to say ‘climate’ rather than ‘weather’? You don’t *seem* like a conspiracy theorist. 😊
Thanks. OK, I'm British and I throw idiom around a bit. You are not supposed to be able to 'change the weather', even if the advertising people would have it so. What is already in the pipeline is weather, lots more of it, 'uncharted territory' as science is taking to call it. Sea level will take longer, but NW Europe could get a very nasty shock earlier if AMOC ceases in the next 100 years. I think also that extinctions in the natural populations deserve more discussion.
I’m British too. 😊 Thanks for replying.