kickstarter farmer laboratory: CFLs at 30 seconds

[Squirl]

Maybe next they will ban all powered clothes dryers because clothes lines use less power.

Maybe.  The government has been using carrots and sticks to try and wean people off of electricity for heat for years. In most cases it is realistically a nightmare of wasted efficiency.  Fossil fuel is burned to create steam.  Only a small portion of this heat is captured as mechanical energy, then there are losses in transferring this to electric power, then there are losses in transmission, only to be used as heat again. If you are talking subsidies, fossil fuels and electricity are some of the most heavily subsidized industries in the U.S..  Rather than spending tax dollars to upgrade the electric grid or raise the price of all electricity they have been using regulation to target inefficient usage.

[MountainDon]

Maybe it's just me, but I can not find a reference anywhere here as to the object of this experiment, nor any references to the method or equipment.

[paul wheaton]

Don, some of it is here.  A lot of is rooted in my CFL article.

The article started as somebody, somewhere, insisting on "the truth" about CFLs.  I tried to reply to point out some problems with what they were saying and 12 hours later I had the article.  Now I get people insisting that points of the article are wrong - but they won't go read the reference links in the article.

And then I get people that insist that they are "green" and "eco" because they bought CFLs.  Since they bought they CFLs, they have done their part and don't need to think of anything else. 

That leads me to think that there is a lot of stuff that needs to be conveyed in a digestable format.  And a good place to start is to consider light bulb use at 30 seconds.  Something that is not printed on the box.  Something that most people are not aware of.  Something that a few people insist is not so.  Something that a few people have told me is pointless because "everybody" already knows.

[Bob S.]

  I think it is terrible what we have let our goverment do to us in a supposedly free society.
  I feel that we elict representatives to protect us from a over reaching government and they have not done the job for us. Instead they take care of the lobbyists. They are on the take at our expense. Both parties are guilty. Thats way they fear the tea party so much.
   Make us buy light bulbs that are junk or set in the dark, buy toilets that you need to flush twice to get rid of the waste (and tell us it saves water).
  It's time to throw the bums out!!