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

["Joaquin Bustelo" <jbustelo@xxxxxxxxx>]

Louis: " My building does not allow ceiling fixtures to use light bulbs in
excess of 60 watts so it was always tough to do see what I was doing in the
kitchen, etc. With the new bulbs, the output can be in excess of 100 watts
since they run cooler."

I don't think that's peculiar to your building, but is pretty generalized
for ceiling fixtures. May even be a normal part of building codes.
Technically, the new bulbs don't violate the rule either -- because they put
out 4X as much light/watt, you get the light of a conventional 100-watt bulb
from a 25 watt bulb. LED lighting technology is several years, perhaps a
decade behind fluorescent, but when it arrives, you should be able to get
that "100 watt" output using only 7-10 watts.

That the LED's will eventually get there I think it unquestionable. Already
in TV studios they're being used to as fill lighting where it was very hard
to put before. New cameras I saw recently have a bank of LED's underneath
the lens/prompter/robotics assembly, say 15-20 degrees below the anchor's
line of sight, to soften shadows under the chin. I suspect in a few years
LEDs will become standard studio lighting.

Louis: "I am not really sure what the motivation of the NY Times was in
printing what amounts to disinformation but you have to remember that it has
a couple of people on the payroll who are really hostile to environmental
reforms even of the most tepid nature like this: John Tierney and Gina
Kolata." 

Beats me also. The writer doesn't seem to be a right winger, having written
for Mother Jones and such. Then again some of those bay area "radicals" have
a strong admixture of libertarianism. I AM a little surprised that the Times
allowed such a thinly sourced piece in its pages, though with the purge this
week, people may have their minds elsewhere.

But they even front-paged the piece, both in print and on the web. And there
is zero new in it, it's just a pumped up version of a blog post she did 2
months ago.
<http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/why-efficient-light-bulbs-fail
-to-thrive/?partner=rss&emc=rss>

A science & politics blogger has also picked up on the piece -- basically
had the same reaction as I did, which was, where's the beef?

http://scienceblogs.com/scientificactivist/2009/03/unfounded_alarmism.php

Joaquin


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