One big CFL scam

Sorry football fans (and critics), this is about Coompact Fluorescent Lightbulbs, not the Canadian Football League.

I think I've documented previously that I can be obsessive about things. (In ironic contradiction to that claim, I'm not going to bother linking to an illustrative previous blog post.) I also like having some sort of validation (even anecdotal) of claims I make or causes I defend. That is to say, I am a critical thinker.

In this vein, I didn't vigorously defend the little mercury buggers when a certain friend of mine, the kind who, on principle, doesn't use a green bin, told me that he switched back to incandescent bulbs after trying a set of CFLs.

He told me he tried CFL bulbs once but it didn't last nearly as long as it was promised to last, so he switched back to incandescents. For those of you just joining this decade, compact fluorescent lightbulbs are those little curly bulbs that are supposed to provide the same amount of light for about a quarter of the electricity, thus saving you more money than the much higher cost than traditional incandescent light bulbs.

Like a good little environmentalist sycophant, I use the bulbs and generally go along with the groupthink that they're better. (There are various arguments about the mercury contained in the bulbs vs the amount of mercury released in the generation of electricity for the less efficient incandescents, but since I don't have air conditioning I like that they don't put off as much heat)

For the record, my friend also complained that they took longer to get to turn on (and, subsequently, to get to full brightness). I no longer notice this myself (i.e. I've gotten used to it) but I must admit that it does take a second or so for the lights to come on.

But about the price, I wanted to contradict my friend, and tell him that the lights are rated for many years, so he must have gotten a dud. And the bulbs have gotten better since he would have tried them. But I wanted to be able to say this with the confident knowledge that my own experiences with the things were consistent with this claim.

This was a problem.

Sure, one remembers generally replaces the lights in one's house, but given how long they last, who can really say with confidence how long any particular one lasts?

This guy, that's who.

For the last couple years, I've been writing in fine-tip Sharpie the date of purchase and installation on my lightbulbs, and hanging on to the packaging (which is necessary anyway because I need a way to stockpile the old bulbs, since I don't get anywhere near any place that takes returns of these things, even though there are plenty of places that sell them)

Lo and behold, tonight I replaced a bulb in my bedroom ceiling fixture, and written on the bulb was "purchased 2012-10-28 Home Hardware Glebe, installed same". It was from a Sylvania 3-pack of 100-watt equivalents, and the other two bulbs were still fresh in the package in my closet. Incidentally, to my friend's point, the packaging has a little "Instant On" sticker.

My bulb's usage did not have any of the contraindications: no "dimmer, electronic timer or photocell, illuminated switch, totally enclosed recessed luminaires, or where directly exposed to the weather". So, being just barely a year old, it died well before it's 9-year warranty. The fine print on that is based on "normal household usage in accordance with package and bulb directions", which is to say an average of 3 hours a day, 7 days a week.

I figure I use my bedroom light for more than 3 hours a day, but I'm pretty confident I don't use it for 27 hours a day, which is what would be needed to reach the bulb's 10,000 hour lifespan.

So okay, the bulb died and the warranty obviously applies. So where do I get my replacement? Turn back to the fine print on the side of the box: "if this bulb does not last for the time period guaranteed...return bulb, proof of purchase, register receipt and your name and address to OSRAM SYLVANIA Inc, 435 E. Washington St., Winchester, KY 40391-2298. OSRAM SYLVANIA will replace the bulb. This replacement is the sole remedy available, and LIABILITY FOR DIRECT, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES IS HEREBY EXPRESSLY EXCLUDED [except in states where we're not allowed to exclude it]..." (all-caps original)

So for a set of three bulbs I bought for $14.99 plus tax, I'm going to have to spend how much to ship the bulb to fucking KENTUCKY?!? And that's just the first bulb; if I only use the other two one after the other, I'll have to wait another two years at the current rate to get through them to send all three back together. I mean, if I send in the proof of purchase etc with only the first bulb, I won't be able to get replacements when the other two die prematurely. But what if the other two bulbs last 4 years each? Then by the time I ship them back the warranty period will have been over, despite each bulb lasting less than half its expected lifetime.

But do you know how much it costs to ship things to the U.S.? I'm guessing somewhere between five and ten bucks at the slowest, cheapest rate. And then what? I'll get another bulb that will last a year, and for thirty bucks I'd have three bulbs plus three replacements that lasted for a combined total of 6 years when each one was supposed to last for nine?

I think my skeptical friend may be on to something, since thirty bucks could buy many many years' worth of incandescents (or would have, had Dalton McGuinty not banned them).

So let's summarize:
- bulbs don't last anywhere near warranty
- it costs as much or more to claim warranty as to just buy new bulbs
- BlackBerry's autoreplace changes correctly-spelled words for no reason
- you're not supposed to throw them out due to mercury, but there's you can't take spent ones back to where you bought them (for places downtown, at least)
- I'm still going to be using them

That last one is for two reasons: one, the heat factor. Two, they're still cheaper.

As five bucks a pop, if we assume 3 hours a day 7 days a week, and if we assume 5 cents a Kilowatt-hour, these 23-watt "100-watt equivalent" bulbs save me $4.21 per year over incandescents. Factor in the fact that I likely use it more than 3 hours a day and 5 cents a kWh is the rate before your hydro bill gets more than doubled by fees and taxes, it still saves me money.

So then the only unresolved question is, how do I punish Sylvania for this? I've already spent an hour writing this blog post, so that could be $20 or so of my own time. Why not go all out and play into their game. Here are some ideas:

- send the bulb in a bubble envelope so it will most likely arrive broken when they open the package
- waste at least as much of their time on the phone and responding to emails so their payroll costs match what I paid
- send by UPS with paperwork that triggers UPS to charge the recipient the fixed customs fee of $40
- hire a lawyer to sue them for $15 (hm... or a class-action...)
- send Sylvania a Canadian football

Ah, but this is all a pipe dream. Truth is, just like those weasels gambled, I don't really care to do anything about it, over a five-dollar-a-year investment in lightbulbs.

Except blog about it.

- RG>

It's that hour again...

Well, it's time for my fourth annual Earth Hour-bashing post. As I've said in past years, I don't like to celebrate events that consider it special to turn the lights off for an hour; it's something I do for many hours every night. Twenty-four hours for Earth Day is enough in my books.

Some self-promoting environmentalists are promoting a candlelight vigil on Parliament Hill. Of course, candles are a much less efficient way to convert energy into light than electric lights are, and paraffin candles, being pure hydrocarbon, produce considerably more CO₂ emissions than whatever the hell was burned to power that light you turn off. I'll laugh if some people end up driving downtown to get to the vigil.

So then people use beeswax candles, which they claim are 'carbon neutral' because it's from honeybees instead of million-year-old dinosaur bones. Notwithstanding that honeybees are producing less and less each year, if you want to reduce your CO₂ emissions, you'd toss the beeswax candle into the trash. Once it gets to the landfill, its carbon will be stored and sequestered, which is much better than releasing it into the air by burning.

Then there are those who turn off the lights but still watch TV in the dark, because they're so superficially environmentalist that they can't even peel their arses off the couch for an hour to spend some time with the kids. Or there's the people who use battery-powered flash lights or unplug their laptops--apparently oblivious to the fact that they're simply using the electricity (converted and stored less efficiently in batteries) merely at a different time. These ones are the worst because they don't even get the theoretical message the Earth Hourers are trying to spread with this overhyped event. Does Jim Watson really need yet another event to pack into his agenda?

Speaking of the hype, I wouldn't be surprised if the energy "saved" by people turning off their lights is less than all the energy that goes into producing all the advertisements, posters, candles, publicity events, and three-fucking-storey-tall banners (below), plus the hot air from those of us pointing out how inane it is to celebrate a holiday that lasts only one hour. People are so disconnected from reality that the greenwashers have them convinced that electricity is the only form of energy that counts toward CO₂ emissions.

In previous years, Earth Hour has gone by so quickly I didn't even get a chance to turn on all my lights and appliances in protest. This year I've got plans outside the house in the evening, so instead of leaving my house dark as it normally would be when I'm not inside it, I'll have to leave my lights on all day to make sure they'll be on during Earth Hour.

I wouldn't want someone walking by to see a dark window and think I'm an Earth Hour sycophant.

- RG>

Save the world this Earth Hour

Last year, I spoke about the 8759 hours in the year that aren't Earth Hour--you know, that one time of year for people who consider a whole day too long to be an environmentalist?

Last night, however, I was lying in bed trying to get to sleep (you know, that time every single night when you turn off the lights for a whole bunch of hours?) when I got to worrying about Earth Hour.

You see, last year, I turned on all my lights and appliances during Earth Hour mainly to be a contrarian dick, and to distance myself from this superficial, contrived event for SUV-driving armchair environmentalists. But this year I might actually save the world by doing so, and you should too.

To complicate matters, I've been invited to an event that night, and that means that I'll either have to turn on all my appliances for the entire time I'm out of the house, or I'll have to inadvertently mark Earth Hour the same way as all the wannabes--by turning off my lights and appliances.

Either way, I'll be damned if I burn any candles. Do you know how wasteful those things are?

But the real reason I'm worried is that my traditional (well-illuminated) celebration of Earth Hour might actually be helping the environment.

You see, power generation isn't a linear thing. When the grid needs to pull more electricity than normal, you turn on more power plants. There are various plants that can be easily activated for peak use. After all, spikes in power consumption are literally an every day occurrence. Have a look at the near real-time Ontario Wholesale Electricity and Prices. It is these peak usage times that strain our electricity system, requiring electricity retailers to import power from other jurisdictions (often coal-fired plants from the US) at ridiculous prices.

The real problem for the electricity grid is when power consumption drops below the normal consumption. While there are plants that can be easily activated and deactivated for peak use, the majority of the power comes from base load power plants, which produce a generally consistent amount of power. Think nuclear plants, which can take days to turn on and off.

Weekends are not a peak usage time. So much so that when Hydro Ottawa introduces time-of-use billing, weekends (all 48 hours of every one) will be priced at the lowest pricing range.

Now, Earth Hour--which is held on a weekend--is only a recent phenomenon, but thankfully I chronicled it in 2009 and 2008. As its popularity grows, the risk of damage does too.

If enough people and greenwashed organizations actually cut their power usage at a time of low electricity demand, they run the risk of leaving the province with a significantly oversized supply of base-load power and no way to turn off the tap. In this type of circumstance, they have to burn it off and waste the electricity. In a doomsday scenario, it might actually cause damage to our power grid, but that's just wild speculation on my part.

Based on this, if I really wanted to be a dick, I would actually go along with the Horoterrestrial Deluminants to help demonstrate they're doing more harm than good.

But then, in the days of Glen Beck and Ann Coulter, if we're going to resort to wild speculation, we'd might as go all the way:

Maybe with the knowledge (er, 'knowledge') that this could do major damage to our power supply, turning off all my lights during Earth Hour at the behest of jingoistic governments and environmental groups might actually consist of conspiracy to commit terrorism!

If anything, it's my civic duty to leave my lights and electronics running during Earth Hour!

- RG>

From the weather variations that brought you Winterlude...

The National Capital Commission recently announced that they will not have the Snowbowl outdoor concert stage this year as part of Winterlude. They said that the big expense applied to that venue can be used for many other attractions during the winter-themed festival, which starts in three weeks. One of the reasons cited by the NCC is the impact on global warming caused by the CO₂ emissions from the heaters on the stage.

In a heaping pile of irony, the Rideau Canal, the world's largest skating rink, opened yesterday, and is looking to be rather slushy over the next few days as temperatures hover around zero. This will prevent them from flooding the ice to get a good smooth skating surface. Trends suggest that Ottawa's climate is getting warmer, with winter temperatures being more conducive to freezing rain than to frozen canals.

Bummer. One of the things I like about winter (aside from motorists' misery in snowstorms) is skating on the Rideau canal. It's free, it's car-free, it's fun.

But only when the ice is good.

[I re-used this logo in a 2011 post]

- RG>

Office Temps

Normally in the office I work in, the office temp is 20-22. Occasionally, we get 18s, or even 17s, more often in the summer. In the winter we can frequently get 24s and 25s.

Today, we got a 29.

This wouldn't be so bad if "office temp" was shorthand for "temporary worker," but unfortunately in this case it refers to the office temperature, according to the thermometer in my Planet Bike cycle computer (which I only really use for telling temperature).

What better thing to arrive to after a long weekend with important things piled up (plus the late night last night fixing my laptop), than a sweltering office with no windows that open. The landlord gave a story of why it couldn't be fixed.

A couple summers ago it was even worse. Every day I'd come into the office and it would be 17 or 18 degrees, while it was in the mid to high 20s outside (and, I might add, in my home). Not only could I not acclimatize to the high temperatures, but I couldn't wear any of my summer clothes. I wore sweaters and cycling gloves with cut fingers to keep my hands from freezing. I even have a space heater, which is fucking insane to have to use when it's 26 degrees outside. I started keeping a log of what the temperature is each day, both when I get in and when I leave.

The worst part is the complete randomness. Some days, irrespective of season, it'll be freezing cold, and others it will be boiling hot. Getting dressed in the morning isn't so much an exercise in fashion as in survival.

The last office I was in was similar, although it had windows that you could open, and it was at least consistently freezing cold in the summer. A family member of mine who works in a federal government department told me she has a blanket in her office to keep warm, leading me to believe that most offices are like this.

It's no wonder, then, that buildings produce over a third of GHG emissions! And no matter how high a LEED rating some new building has (which may not even have lower energy usage - PDF), it's still adding to the total amount of energy consumed by our building stock. Maybe if energy prices skyrocketed again building owners would pay more attention to this waste.

In the meantime, I think I'll go someplace for a cold drink.

- RG>

Here's to 8759 unearthed hours

Celebrations can be so unkind. I try not to partake (parades excepted), so I have a tendency to miss them.

Except, you know, when they're shoved down your throat from all angles. Which is always.

There was Kindness Week a few weeks ago... I was unfortunately kind to people on each of the three days after it ended. Had I been more up-to-date with my newspapers, I would have realized my awkward timing and kept my kindness to myself. Apparently Ottawa-Centre MPP Yasir Naqvi wants to take Kindness Week provincewide, which is the kind of thing a back bench parliamentarian does to try to feel like he's doing something. At least a provincewide Kindness Week is fairly benign, unlike Naqvi's proposed SCAN legislation.

But the occasion for today's rant is of course Earth Hour, that one hour of the year where you pretend to care about the earth by turning off your lights. My blog entry on Earth Hour last year, titled For Every Light You Turn Off gets a lot of hits, thanks mostly to Italians and Germans searching Google Images for the associated graphic that I myself had located the same way in preparation of the post.

It's somewhat ironic that I post more about Earth Hour than I do about National Grouch Day, but I guess that just proves I'm not biased when it comes to non-celebration.

For a good rant against Earth Hour, I suggest reading this entry on the blog of Citizen editor Ken Gray. For assorted ramblings about Earth Hour, continue reading here.

Earth Day, in its simplest form, is--

Sorry, Earth Hour. My brain has a hard time acknowledging that people can hold an annual celebration in the span of an hour. I can barely get a blog entry written in that much time. Even though most people only celebrate it at 11am, November 11th is still called Remembrance (or Armistice, or Veteran's) Day. Now the 2003 blackout, that's the kind of thing we should be doing every year. That brought people away from their TVs and cell phones and into the streets communing with neighbours. (For reference, Earth Day is April 22nd.)

Anyway, Earth hour is an insane concept because it asks us to turn off our lights for one hour on a Saturday night once a year--something that nearly everyone does for many hours every other night of the year anyway. Then again, the idea started in Sydney, Australia, so maybe the lights there are normally on during the night because of the time difference...

This year, Ottawa City Hall made a big motherfucking poster for Earth Hour. Literally three stories tall:

And I'd be really surprised if the amount of energy saved by Ottawans' horoterrestrial delumination will balance out the amount of energy that went into making that damn thing.

But people say that Earth Hour, even though it's symbolic, inspires people to make real changes in their lives. Yeah, like changing their vote to the politician who promises the most smiles and rainbows.

It's a way to get people to feel smug about caring for the environment, and for those who don't care about the environment to get their annual lip service out of the way and feel equally smug. You can even drive to the coffeeshop and tell your friends about how great you are for having turned off your lights off at home while you're not there.

Another aside: you'll release a lot more CO2 emissions by burning candles than you ever will with lightbulbs, and those emissions are released right in your house, not at a power plant hundreds of kilometres away.

Considering how little of the household energy bill goes to lighting, does anyone really think that Earth Hour is responsible for recent reports that Ottawa's average electricity demand is going down? I'd also be interested to know the response when people are asked to cut energy use in order to feel good as compared to, say, being threatened with rolling brownouts.

There's a general shift in the public consciousness toward environmentalism and conservation, and it doesn't need a celebration to happen. It makes sense to reduce your energy consumption, and can save money, too, since energy use often has a direct cost factor somewhere up the line, and people are. People are making changes in their lives; Earth Hour is just a contrivance to let them talk about it. And talk is cheap.

Be it kindness, grouchiness, or energy consumption, if you want to change your habits, don't wait for a bloody holiday to do it.

- RG>

For every light you turn off... (or how I spent my Earth Hour)

I don't know if you've heard about the latest fad called "Earth Hour". If you haven't, essentially it's a thing where regular people turn off all their lights for one hour of the year and pretend that they're granola-eating hippies.

I knew when I first heard about it that I didn't like it, and not just because Mayor O'Brien was supportive of it.

There is a Japanese saying: "Vision without action is a daydream; action without vision is a nightmare." As profound as this saying is, this Earth Hour event doesn't fit into either category. Earth Hour is more "action without action", and hence this post is deserving of the "yellowribbons" label (see "Support Motherhood and Apple Pie").

If you really cared about the environment, you'd make changes in your everyday habits (such as reducing your car use, eating less meat, living in a smaller and more energy-efficient home, etc.). Turning off your lights once a year at 8pm doesn't really mean very much if your TV, computers, and other appliances come right back on an hour later.

And if you really cared for the Earth, you'd give it more than just an hour.

I mean, shit: every night, most people do more than was accomplished in Earth Hour simply by turning off their lights and sleeping for six to eight hours!

Of course, as is reported in the Citizen, greenhouse gas emissions will probably not be reduced during Earth Hour, especially with many people burning candles. Even if they're more 'natural', candles put a lot more dirty shit into the air per unit of light than electric plants do. (Not that I care much for the GHG fad, either.)

So how did I spend my earth hour? Well, along these lines:



While all the suburbanites were sitting in their living rooms signing kumbayah and eating marshmallows, I turned on every light in my house, including the one in the stove. In fact, keeping with the theme of the image above, I ate three animals too!

Interestingly, when I was done cooking my "three animals" (two eggs and some strips of bacon--I hadn't had bacon in years. So tasty!), I turned off the stove, and my arm automatically reached for the stove light switch. I had forgotten that I was keeping my lights all on for the hour.

I guess energy conservation is just one of those pesky habits that dies hard.

- RG>

Climate: a much higher priority than it should be

I just received yet another of those myriad e-mails from friends, acquaintances, and, presumably, random people who coughed while typing and somehow entered my e-mail address.

It's one of those e-mails that invites you to get involved with this campaign, or go to that event, or to otherwise bitch about somebody's inaction climate change. Heck, this week's Charlatan even has a full-page article on how you can save the world if you stop using plastic bags.

Fancy that, eh? And you didn't even have to go out and buy that Prius!

Nobody's really asked me whether or not I believe in climate change, but that hasn't stopped me from telling them that I don't care.

For me, environmentalism is mainly a byproduct of pragmatism. That is to say, any choice I could make for the benefit of the environment is likely to have other benefits that affect me in much more direct and concrete ways.

Consider my decision to use the bicycle as my primary mode of transportation. What are the benefits of riding a bicycle?

Well, for one, I'm not contributing to the smog problem. That means that it is slightly easier to breathe in my neighbourhood and city. That's an environmental benefit. But considering I live on a major street in downtown Ottawa, the difference is negligible.

My community benefits on a financial basis as well: a bicycle is much smaller and lighter than a motor vehicle (including a bus). Having a smaller vehicle means I contribute less to traffic congestion (a benefit you don't get with low- or zero-emission cars), and having a lighter vehicle means the roads I travel on will take longer to deteriorate. These mean it will be longer before the municipality has to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild the roads I use, and when they do, there will be less need for additional lanes.

But all that means is that property taxes in my city might be very very slightly lower in a decade or two.

A bicycle can't travel as fast as a motor vehicle, and therefore my trips either must take more time, be less frequent, or go less far. Some might see this as a drawback, but it also acts as a benefit, as it requires me to plan my trips better, and consider what I choose as destinations. As proof to that, I rarely go more than 2 kilometres from my home. When you consider that the average person travels four times as far in a day today than they did sixty years ago, and there are many more people, a heckuva lot of roads need to be built to accommodate that traffic. That's extremely expensive for taxpayers.


So by making this choice to cycle, I may have reduced everyone's tax bill by a couple pennies over a decade, not counting inflation. Don't bother giving me an award just for that.

But let's get to the person who really matters in today's society: me.

By cycling, I am getting cardiovascular exercise, thereby improving my health and increasing my life expectancy. If my trips were longer than my average 15-minutes-in-traffic rides, my body would release more serotonin and I'd feel happier, too.

A cynic would say, "If you care so much about your health, why do you eat so much unhealthy food? And why don't you get a doctor to check out that twitch in your eye?" Okay, the twitch thing I should get checked out, but our cynic is correct on the other point. Being healthy and active simply is not a high priority for me, nor is it for the average North American.

While some people put time out of their day to go to the gym or to jog, I cycle precisely to avoid this. Since I need to get to work anyway, why don't I get my exercise while going to work? That's all there is. It saves me time, and saves me having to worry whether I should dedicate a specific time to exercise to improve my health.

Cycling saves me money, too. If I could own and use a car for as little as it costs to go by bike, I would certainly consider it. But even the bus is more expensive: in 2006, my total transportation costs for all modes totaled $706--less than twelve monthly adult bus passes.

While society tends to push money as the most important goal, for me it's time. I don't believe in an afterlife, and I might die in sixty years or in sixty hours--so I'd better make good use of the time I know I have--right now.

There's a wonderful quote by Ivan Illich reprinted in the book "Divorce Your Car!" by Katie Alvord (and probably on my blog once or twice):

The typical American male devotes more than 1,600 hours a year to his car. He sits in it while it goes and while it is idling. He parks it and searches for it. He earns the money to put down on it and to meet the monthly installments. He works to pay for fuel, tolls, insurance, taxes, and traffic tickets. He spends four out of his 16 waking hours on the road or gathering his resources for it. And this figure does not take into account the time consumed by other activities dictated by transport: time spent in hospitals, traffic courts, and garages; time spent watching automobile commercials or attending consumer education meetings to improve the quality of the next buy. The model American puts in 1,600 hours to get 7.500 miles; less than five miles per hour. (Ivan Illich, Energy and Equity, 30-31.)

That bolded part is the most important to me (as much as I get a kick out of the five-miles-per-hour bit): There are some people who actually spend hours each day commuting to and from their boring jobs. To me, this is insane. Commuting is most often a means, not an end.

A means? To what?

To work, which itself is often just a means to get money (which is an end goal only for the most pathological of people). There have been many attempts to make commuting less stressful and more productive (for example, the car radio), but at the end of the day, if you're not deriving pleasure from traveling from one place to another, and if you do a lot of that, then you should think about how your life is structured.

If you live your life in such a way that you don't have to spend so much of it getting from one place to another, you'll have more time, more money (or less need to spend time earning money), and you may have helped keep the mean global temperature from increasing by one degree over the next fifty years.

Gotcha!

Remember, this blog post is about Global Warming; cycling is just an illustration. Compared to my arguments based on pure hedonism, greed, and utility, the altruistic "prevent climate change" argument is pretty weak.

And that's just for the argument to get one person to ride a bicycle. Individuals making changes in their own lives will never solve more than a fraction of the world's problems. There are also many institutional, industrial, and international problems that require change. The changes necessary to address these problems might also affect climate change, but somehow I doubt that a person in a war-torn Middle-Eastern country would really care to sign your petition to prevent Global Warming by reducing bombing in their country to 5% below 1990 levels.

Whenever I hear someone citing "Climate Change", or "Greenhouse Gases", or "Kyoto Protocol", I get the same feeling in my gut as when I hear "Mandatory minimum sentences", "War on Drugs", or "Tough on Crime". It shows that they haven't got their priorities straight.

Like any other buzzword, these terms are used by people to draw attention to themselves, to their groups, or to the events they are organizing. Were these people to actually look at the goals of these events, how to achieve them, and how to sell them, they might actually elicit some real change.

- RG>