[Marxism] A little light on a NYTimes article on Compact Fluorescents

["Joaquin Bustelo" <jbustelo@xxxxxxxxx>]

There's a very interesting article in the New York Times web site trashing
compact fluorescent light bulbs. The article is here:
<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/28/business/energy-environment/28bulbs.html?
_r=1&hp>.

*  *  *

March 28, 2009
Do New Bulbs Save Energy if They Don't Work? 
By LEORA BROYDO VESTEL
SAN FRANCISCO - It sounds like such a simple thing to do: buy some new light
bulbs, screw them in, save the planet. 

But a lot of people these days are finding the new compact fluorescent bulbs
anything but simple. Consumers who are trying them say they sometimes fail
to work, or wear out early. At best, people discover that using the bulbs
requires learning a long list of dos and don'ts.

Take the case of Karen Zuercher and her husband, in San Francisco. Inspired
by watching the movie "An Inconvenient Truth," they decided to swap out
nearly every incandescent bulb in their home for energy-saving compact
fluorescents. Instead of having a satisfying green moment, however, they
wound up coping with a mess.

"Here's my sad collection of bulbs that didn't work," Ms. Zuercher said the
other day as she pulled a cardboard box containing defunct bulbs from her
laundry shelf. 

One of the 16 Feit Electric bulbs the Zuerchers bought at Costco did not
work at all, they said, and three others died within hours. The bulbs were
supposed to burn for 10,000 hours, meaning they should have lasted for years
in normal use. "It's irritating," Ms. Zuercher said.

Irritation seems to be rising as more consumers try compact fluorescent
bulbs, which now occupy 11 percent of the nation's eligible sockets, with
330 million bulbs sold every year. Consumers are posting vociferous
complaints on the Internet after trying the bulbs and finding them lacking.

Bulb makers and promoters say the overall quality of today's compact
fluorescents is high. But they also concede that it is difficult to prevent
some problem bulbs from slipping through.

Experts say the quality problems are compounded by poor package
instructions. Using the bulbs incorrectly, like screwing low-end bulbs into
fixtures where heat is prone to build up, can greatly shorten their lives.

Some experts who study the issue blame the government for the quality
problems, saying an intensive federal push to lower the price essentially
backfired by encouraging manufacturers to use cheap components. [and so on]

*  *  *

Now normally, I'm a sucker for articles on how the capitalists screws up
technology and its products. But I had a problem with this one. A decade ago
when I moved to this house I started using compact fluorescents -- no, not
everywhere. Unlike high-end consumers that buy bulbs at Costco, I'm a REAL
cheapskate that gets whatever is being remaindered at Big Lots. That meant
that originally what I got were 100-watt equivalents bigger than normal
bulbs that fit only in a few places. But over time, as the variety of bulbs
increased, and prices declined so you could get them for Big Lots prices at
other stores (when they were on sale) I replaced more and more.

Then a couple of years ago Big Lots got a big variety of "bright white"
(daylight color temperature) bulbs. I don't think I was more than curious,
so at first I just got a couple, and mostly because they were a size that
could replace incandescent in the kitchen light fixtures. And I was hooked.
This was light the way God made it. So over a year or so I replaced ALL my
incandescents and ALL my compact fluorescents with bulbs with high color
temperatures, and the higher the better. Feeling guilty about throwing out a
dozen or more perfectly good CFC's just because they were "warm" (puke)
color temperature, I gave them to my ex. 

So over ten years I've bought my share of CFC's. I had one of the original
100-watt equivalents burn out after seven or eight years, and two in a
bathroom got even MORE offensively yellow than they had been originally, so
when I replaced them I threw those out. And I had ONE burn out in a hallway
after only a year or so, but I don't blame the CFC. I knew I was installing
it contrary to manufacturer's instructions by placing it upside down in an
enclosed fixture, which it said right on the package not to do, but, hey, it
FIT in terms of brightness and size, those very small ones are hard to come
by (cheaply) and these had been like 5 for $8, including the
plastic-you-need-a-chainsaw-to-cut packaging.

And it is true, I still have incandescent inside the refrigerator and the
oven. The one in the over has been burned out for a few years but I'm sure
that if/when I get around to replacing it, it won't be a CFC because they
can't take the heat (says so right on the package, it gives a temperature
range). 

My point is that IF the problems the NY Times claims were so common were in
FACT that common, I would have come across them myself. 

Moreover, contrary to the Times, there's no huge list of do's and don'ts.
People who fail to read a temperature range like 0 to 50 degrees centigrade
and nevertheless insist on using it inside the fireplace for fill-in
lighting or mix them with incandescent inside an enclosed multibulb fixture
and fry the fluorescent have only themselves to blame. And from years of
abusing, misusing and plain violating manufacturer's recommendations (ALL
the earlier generations of bulbs --at least cheap ones-- said to install
upright), I've found the bulbs to be surprisingly tolerant.

Moreover, in my day job I focused on sci-tech and environmental reporting
for almost a decade until a couple of years ago. The complaints I always
heard about compact fluorescents was color quality (a problem that's been
pretty much overcome as different fluorescent compounds have come off-patent
making it possible to build "full spectrum" bulbs), price, that they don't
fit right in lamps, that it takes a second or two for them to come on (no
longer true) and a minute or two to achieve full brightness, which is still
true.

But hey, perhaps somehow I missed it. So reading about how "Consumers are
posting vociferous complaints on the Internet," I decided to remedy my
ignorance, and googled "CFC complaints."

The FIRST hit was the archive of a November 13, 2003, email that said, in
part: "Since CFCs have been around, I've written several reasonably
substantial apps (along with a lot of mini-apps) using CFCs and have been
quite satisfied.  All of them have had small parts written in Java, where I
needed the capabilities of a full OO language, but for the most part, CFCs
provided all I needed." I have no clue what THESE CFC's are, but I'm pretty
sure they're not lightbulbs.

The NEXT hit was from the Illinois department of human services: "Filing a
complaint - Individuals who have complaints concerning the Department's or
the CFC's HIPAA privacy policies and procedures ("policies and procedures"),
or the Department's or the CFC's compliance with those policies and
procedures, may submit a complaint." Nope, this doesn't sound like light
bulbs either.

The next one was titled "CFC asthma inhaler PETITION UPDATE," the one after
that a PDF from the Vermont Long Term Care Ombudsman Project, and then
regulations pertaining to "CFC Charities."

I repeated the procedure with the alternate abbreviation CFL and finally
with the phrase "compact fluorescent" and did find some bulb complaints, the
main ones being the light quality and the price. There were also complaints
from what appeared to be people who bought bad batches of bulbs -- one
person got them from Home Depot but when several burned out after several
months, the store would not honor the 5-year warranty because the consumer
had no receipt. And there were a couple of more like that. But usually when
there is a significant pattern of problems you'll find specialized web sites
and message boards going up, and I didn't come across any here.

So while I guess that "technically" it is true that "consumers" (more than
one) have posted complaints on the Internet, "vociferous" is merely
editorializing by the times reporter in this context, and the impression the
writer is trying to create of massive generalized problems is something I
did not find.

It is also true that "some experts" echo the complaints, for the
bare-minimum two that allows the use of the vague "some" and the plural
"experts" are cited by name in the article. 

But if you look at what you get in  Google under compact fluorescent
complaints, they're not reliability or endurance, they are *mostly* rants
against government "interference" in the free market and denunciations of
"totalitarian" proposals to ban incandescents. And if you look carefully at
the New York Times article, you'll see this is the real theme of it --
bumbling government interference with the free market.

With a minor sub-theme of government failure to require sufficiently strict
warnings on the package (like, "before using compact fluorescents, please be
sure to see a neurosurgeon to have some brains installed," which --judging
from the description of their actions-- would have been the only warning
that could possibly have helped the couple featured in the New York Times
article as poster children for consumer victims of CFC's and Al Gore's
propaganda.)

And actually, I've got a complaint about that, too. The member of the couple
quoted is San Franciscan Karen Zuercher. A quick google reveals the amazing
coincidence that there is a journalist in San Francisco who just happens to
be called ... Karen Zuercher. She worked for SF Weekly as a contributor and
Associate Editor, though apparently not in the last couple of years. 

Generally, it is considered shady in the news racket to cite other hacks as
a source, witness, etc., and especially without revealing the other person's
profession and affiliations.

That's because some people might consider it relevant. For example,
zoominfo.com says: "SF Weekly is considered San Francisco's smartest
publication. Cherished as a leader for San Francisco business interests and
for their political independence, the SF Weekly has challenged massive
public subsidies for private companies as well as holding accountable
liberal political advocates for fostering inhumane conditions at a city
jail."

That undoubtedly self-provided description has a pretty clear ideological
bent: a "leader" of "business interests", that "challenged massive public
subsidies" and holds accountable "liberal political advocates." 

This is a rag with a somewhat shady reputation owned by the even shadier
Village Voice Media and which has the distinction of having lost a predatory
pricing lawsuit by the rival Bay Guardian for selling display ads below cost
to drive the Guardian out of business and thereby establish a monopoly in
its niche. The jury awarded $6.3 million in damages, but the judge
apparently viewed Village Voice Media's actions as so outrageous that she
upped the award to $15.9 million.

As for this article, the thing to note is that there are no FACTS in it --
no data on return rates to stores or manufacturers, testing lab results,
rates of premature failure nor anything else. Just anecdotes and opinions.
The only thing I can say is that there may be two or three dozen bulbs in my
house, all but a very few are CFC's, none are premium, many/most remaindered
or on sale and I've had NONE of the problems the author of the article
suggests are so widespread. And also, I've not heard of others having these
problems despite having had for a decade science and technology as my beat,
and google searches do not reflect these problems on anything like the scale
that the wording of the article suggests, at least to me.

ON THE OTHER HAND, the article is VERY MUCH aligned with freeper-type
right-wing defense of the free market religion, as well as with the
lighting, interior design and interior decorating industries, because all
their products are designed to look "right" with the sickly yellow-red
emanations of conventional incandescents. Fluorescents have gotten fairly
good at matching this but beyond any doubt, I believe the real advantage of
fluorescents (apart from lower energy use) is the color balance/quality
light from the "full spectrum" (natural daylight) types. 

Joaquin





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