If this won't cure my SAD, what will?

[fivemack]

This is the 85W-from-socket 425W-incandescent-equivalent-power lightbulb that I bought to see whether it would make me happy.

For size comparisons, that is an Apple smallish keyboard, a real apple and a real kiwifruit. The fruit are normal-sized examples of their ilk, and the bayonet on the lamp is of the standard size.

Comments

[del-c.livejournal.com]

Years ago, we had 100W incandescent bulbs, or lower wattage incandescents to save power. Now we have lights with the luminance of the 100W bulbs and the power use of the dim bulbs, but we still have sockets designed to draw 100W or more.

Won't it be funny if, after all the government campaigns to get us to "emit" less carbon, we all end up getting lights that draw 100W, but just put out a lot more light than the old ones?

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

If it all means we live in brighter-lit houses, and if we want to live in brighter-lit houses (*) then at least we have some progress for our constant energy demand. And, y'know, you can't stop progress!

(*) I have a suspicion that the interior designers of the day would suggest to us that we don't, or, "shouldn't", but instead that we want, or "should want", to live in houses with incredibly intricately designed lighting conditions generated by having 160 tiny, specialised and expensive strategically-located lightbulbs placed just so in each room.

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

I am keeping the 20W CF bulbs, it may be sensible to put them back in once it's no longer so dark outside and my inner lizard no longer wishes to be indulged. One watt-year costs about a pound, and I probably have the light on 10% of the time; to spend six pounds a year and three kilos of CO2 emission (537 grams per grid kWh in UK) to feel less gloomy in the winter seems a damn good deal, especially if otherwise I'd be contemplating flying to Thailand.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

I wasn't criticising you. Either a kilowatt hour is a big deal or it isn't. If it is, then 100W new lights makes the drive to reduce "emission" via new lights futile. If it isn't, then it makes the drive for new lights humbug.

As you can guess from my use of quotes, I subscribe to the third option, that running around urging oil and gas companies to pull carbon out of the ground faster, as Gordon Brown does, makes calls to reduce emission just hypocrisy. There is no substitute for leaving carbon in the ground, because once you take it out, 99.99% of it's going to be "emitted" to the air in oxidised form.