Andy Hall wrote:
On Mon, 3 Jul 2006 15:50:26 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote
(in article ):

Andy Hall wrote:
On Mon, 3 Jul 2006 00:13:10 +0100, Andrew Gabriel wrote
(in article ):

In article ,
Tony Bryer writes:
You can't make people reduce their electricity usage: "Up to 3 low
energy lamp fittings had been specified in the original proposals for
the dwellings in the sample. The fittings had generally been installed
in hallways, landings and some bedrooms, but few remained in the
completed and occupied dwellings. Most had been removed by the
occupants, and occupants expressed their intention to replace soon
those few that remained." BRE Survey 2004
I found an EU survey on adoption a year or so back, which
broadly agreed. Number one reason given for not using them
was not fitting in lampshades/lightfittings people want to
use or already have.
One can add a number of additional things to this:

- People don't like being dictated to by the government that they should
have
a particular kind of lighting in their house. They shot themselves in the
foot by it being a different fitting.

- Quality of the light

- People are not that sensitive to the costs of running tungsten lightbulbs.

- People are sensitive to paying a great deal more for other bulbs where
they
don't see the benefit.



The benefit of CFL's appears in about tow years when you realise they
actually do have the sort of life claimed for them.

Irrespective of electricity costs.

Wjat IO find more amusing is that cry that yo will save megawatts by
boiling half a kettle. Or reepalcing bulbs.

In fact, all that happens is you burn more oil/gas to heat the
house..the stray heat from lights and cookers is a significant
contributor to house heating.

Although its true that oil burn in a boiler nets you about 60%
efficiency, so does oil burnt in a power station, and 25% of electricity
comes from nuclear...the only thing one can say about CFL lghts is they
will save you money. Oil is cheaper than electricity...Their impact on
the actual carbon figures at first glance would appear to be absolutely
zero.



Right.

Of course the impact is asymptotic to zero.

So the obvious solution to the problem is to invest in nuclear power
generation and then the issue doesn't matter.



Well, that is in fact one possible solution, yes.

You then have a pollution that takes only 65000 years to go away rather
than the 5 million it has taken to reduce atmospheric CO2 down to the
levels it was last century, from the level it will be at shortly..and
whose actual toxicity in terms of lives lost is far far lower than the
drilling and mining industry, and whose global effects at best are
confined even in the worst case scenario.

However expecting that people will actually work out that Nuclear is far
far less polluting than a nice friendly gas fire is actually too much to
hope for.