MIT has an experimental globe that uses some kind of crystal coating to reflect back the wasted heat generated by incandescent lights. The energy can be “recycled”, putting incandescents into a similar efficiency range as some LED’s. Potentially, the researchers claim, the efficiency scores could be nearly three times better than even the best current LED’s, giving incandescents total supremacy again.
Normal incandescents are only 2 – 3% efficient. These experimental ones are already 6.6% efficient. Current LED’s range from 5 – 15% efficient, but everyone hates the unnatural spectrum. Meanwhile, Compact Florescents (CFLs) are hazardous waste bombs, so whatever their efficiency is, it’s not enough.
Potentially, the press release promises, the new lights could reach a whopping 40% efficient. (Go Edison! Actually, go Joseph Swan. h/t Robbo in comments. :- ) )
Right now it’s probably illegal to sell them.
A nanophotonic comeback for incandescent bulbs?
David L. Chandler | MIT News Office
Traditional light bulbs, thought to be well on their way to oblivion, may receive a reprieve thanks to a technological breakthrough.
Incandescent lighting and its warm, familiar glow is well over a century old yet survives virtually unchanged in homes around the world. That is changing fast, however, as regulations aimed at improving energy efficiency are phasing out the old bulbs in favor of more efficient compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) and newer light-emitting diode bulbs (LEDs).
Incandescent bulbs, commercially developed by Thomas Edison (and still used by cartoonists as the symbol of inventive insight), work by heating a thin tungsten wire to temperatures of around 2,700 degrees Celsius. That hot wire emits what is known as black body radiation, a very broad spectrum of light that provides a warm look and a faithful rendering of all colors in a scene.
But these bulbs have always suffered from one major problem: More than 95 percent of the energy that goes into them is wasted, most of it as heat. That’s why country after country has banned or is phasing out the inefficient technology. Now, researchers at MIT and Purdue University may have found a way to change all that.
Light recycling
The key is to create a two-stage process, the researchers report. The first stage involves a conventional heated metal filament, with all its attendant losses. But instead of allowing the waste heat to dissipate in the form of infrared radiation, secondary structures surrounding the filament capture this radiation and reflect it back to the filament to be re-absorbed and re-emitted as visible light. These structures, a form of photonic crystal, are made of Earth-abundant elements and can be made using conventional material-deposition technology.
That second step makes a dramatic difference in how efficiently the system converts electricity into light. One quantity that characterizes a lighting source is the so-called luminous efficiency, which takes into account the response of the human eye. Whereas the luminous efficiency of conventional incandescent lights is between 2 and 3 percent, that of fluorescents (including CFLs) is between 7 and 15 percent, and that of most compact LEDs between 5 and 15 percent, the new two-stage incandescents could reach efficiencies as high as 40 percent, the team says.
The first proof-of-concept units made by the team do not yet reach that level, achieving about 6.6 percent efficiency. But even that preliminary result matches the efficiency of some of today’s CFLs and LEDs, they point out. And it is already a threefold improvement over the efficiency of today’s incandescents.
The team refers to their approach as “light recycling,” says Ilic, since their material takes in the unwanted, useless wavelengths of energy and converts them into the visible light wavelengths that are desired. “It recycles the energy that would otherwise be wasted,” says Soljačić.
Bulbs and beyond
One key to their success was designing a photonic crystal that works for a very wide range of wavelengths and angles. The photonic crystal itself is made as a stack of thin layers, deposited on a substrate. “When you put together layers, with the right thicknesses and sequence,” Ilic explains, you can get very efficient tuning of how the material interacts with light. In their system, the desired visible wavelengths pass right through the material and on out of the bulb, but the infrared wavelengths get reflected as if from a mirror. They then travel back to the filament, adding more heat that then gets converted to more light. Since only the visible ever gets out, the heat just keeps bouncing back in toward the filament until it finally ends up as visible light.
“The results are quite impressive, demonstrating luminosity and power efficiencies that rival those of conventional sources including fluorescent and LED bulbs,” says Alejandro Rodriguez, assistant professor of electrical engineering at Princeton University, who was not involved in this work. The findings, he says, “provide further evidence that application of novel photonic designs to old problems can lead to potentially new devices. I believe that this work will reinvigorate and set the stage for further studies of incandescence emitters, paving the way for the future design of commercially scalable structures.”
It’s interesting how Australia, I think, is the only country in the world where it’s illegal to sell incandescent lightglobes. That was Turnbull’s doing. I would like to know how much energy (if any) was supposedly saved by banning these globes, if the energy cost of manufacture and the lifetime of the alternatives is considered.
272
David,
The only incandescent bulbs outlawed are the standard ones that fit you everyday light socket in the ceiling. All specials for stoves, refrigerators etc as well as ordinary coloured bulbs are still readily available from the local Bunnings. Even the ones that we bought hundreds of a few years back (see 3 below) are still sold.
100
Nope.
Can’t get reflective 100W R63 ES as used in e.g. bathroom radiant heaters with extractor fan and that light bulb when 550W/1100W of radiant heat isn’t needed.
The lamp holder is ceramic; which rules out the use of any conventional electronic “replacements”.
Replacement cost for the light fitting; which is otherwise functional; and one can still buy the reflective 275W radiant lamps “anywhere”; is in the thousands of dollars. Not because of the electrical appliance but because it’s an “older” house and an electrician has to wire it in. But an electrician won’t unless the house wiring is brought up to code; ripping out good copper wires to replace with stuff that might have its approval forged; installing RCD’s on all 3 phases and splitting existing circuits, installing smoke detectors, etc., etc.
All because one can’t buy a replacement light bulb that would retail for less than $1. A light that’s used for perhaps all of 10 hours a year.
170
At local bunnings in australia they still sell similar one to what youre after ( sits in middle of the 4 x 275W radiant heat bulbs ) and is shaped a bit like a muchroom.
Maybe someone could mail one to you?
30
They’re not reflective. Not clear; or too low in light output for bathroom lighting; 60W tungsten or 42W halogen limit for clear R63; I will never understand why a 100W pearl is allowed and a clear reflector isn’t. I have one (pearl) and it’s rubbish because it sends light in all directions, not just down like the reflective type. The light fitting was designed to operate with a clear, reflective light globe. Under very hot conditions.
50
This isnt refelctive, but for standard Tastic bathroom heaters this is a standard light that we use.
http://www.bunnings.com.au/crompton-100w-edison-screw-r63-mushroom-halogen-globe_p4340273.
Looking around it seems 60W R53 incandescent seems to be the limit – it may be soemthing to do with heat perhaps?
10
Heat from a 100W pearl vs 100W clear with reflective coating?
Explain.
00
What I would do, in such a situation, is to get some reflective aluminum cooking foil, cut it into an arc of the correct dimensions, and wrap it around the stem of the bulb, afixing it using a few spots of heat resistant glue.
Mind you, that is just me, because of my intense dislike of bureaucrats who would think that such rules are useful. I am in no way encouraging anybody else to do as I would do.
50
Well, I still have some on the shelf in my shop. 97c each. 40w and 75w, frosted or clear. Dust is free. Id say they’ve been there since about 2003.
So nyar nyar Turnbull!
120
Wow! A light bulb based on the greenhouse effect, converting returned infra red to visible so it can escape and be useful?
As for the halogens, they don’t last. A high proportion of these expensive bulbs pop instantly when you turn them on. Bulbs which should last thousands of hours last hundreds. So the saving is what exactly? As they all have a cost of manufacture and distribution what exactly does the country save, as the bulb manufacturers are having a ball.
Even the city of Melbourne is prepared to spend tens of millions replacing perfectly good street lighting to reduce consumption simply because it is Federally funded. Spending millions to make less in savings than things cost is logic free Green madness and utter waste. So was spending billions on pink batts in houses in a temperate zone where they are not justified on savings alone.
With Federal borrowings at $1Billion a week, this craziness has to stop, borrowing money to fund future savings or simply CO2 output. There is no Global Warming.
191
Have you ever seent he series “the Games”? 97m hurdle track comes to mind….
30
And the diving pool not under the diving board because it was moved.
20
The place for Olympic records. 🙂
[I have the video tapes.]
00
Much though I don’t like Mr Turnbull, that’s not quite right.
Australia has not banned the incandescent bulb, its imposed an efficiency standard. Anything that meets the efficiency standard can be sold. Anything that does not can not be sold (that stock on the shelf in your shop can not legally be sold, sorry).
Speciality lamps (fancy / oven / etc) were to have the efficiency standards imposed too, but that never came to pass – thankfully.
So for example, you can still purchase the halogen versions of the incandescent lamps as these do meet the efficiency standards.
Personally, I’ll do for a 3000K LED lamp any time – these last around 5000 – 10000 hours (vs 1000); and as they don’t emit any infra-red they tend not to attract insects. And they cost vastly less to run. CFLs are an interim technology that will eventually disappear, along with their mercury and horrible slow start time.
40
Wally, “as they don’t emit any infra-red they tend not to attract insects” – after a lifetime in pest management and a great deal of experience in using light to control flying insects in food factories that work 24 hours a day in the fruit picking seasons, I can tell you that, generally speaking, flying insects don’t see infra-red well but just love ultra-violet! I used to put high intensity UV lights in the factory car parks, well away from the entry doors to the plant, and use low intensity lights with low UV emissions around the doors and in the plant itself. Worked a treat at night and no pesticides required. Commercial electronic fly zappers use UV as an attractant. I suspect your LEDs are low in both UV and IR.
80
All this chat reminds me of The Light Bulb Conspiracy: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1825163/
’twas an entertaining film.
10
I believe it’s also illegal in the European Union.
10
Incandescent light globes have just about been banned a great deal of the major countries of the world.
10
Yay! I got the first post!
40
And second, Yay for you! 🙂
50
Adding substance to the second post I’d like to say that Incandescent are the best, all other types can’t hold a candle to them……
130
Well, you get to shout the rest of us to lunch then … didn’t you get the memo?
20
One of the reasons that we stopped using incandescent light bulbs was the short life span of the bulbs. Our house is full of chandeliers which use the small candle bulbs (up to 8 in each lamp) and with the small package the heat produced burnt the filaments out regularly and we were forever replacing bulbs. CFLs and LEDs don’t have the same visual effect in a chandelier that the filament bulbs do so a filament candle bulb with less heat output would be welcome.
BTW – any one want 2 cartons of candle bulbs – my son went and bought them a few years back when MT told us they were not going to be available any more and now the chandeliers are full of CFDs and LEDs!!
70
Drat – missed again!!
10
Except I bought a compact fluorescent last year which lasted two days. And the replacement lasted two months. Complete waste of money. I have not had a flouorescent that has even approached the advertised life.
162
Sounds a bit like renewable generators, of one sort or another, Ralph.
30
How did they come up with the MTBFs for those new bulbs ? From Climate Models ?
00
Sadly this has been a common experience.
I took to writing the install date on the base of CFLs when I put them in, and found a huge variation. Some lasted 3 months (some exploded), and I recently replaced one that had been used for around 4 hours EVERY DAY for the last 8 years [so guess around 10,000 hours]. When that one went, it did so with a large bang but no shower of glass (thank goodness).
Mains powered LED replacement lamps are now fairly readily available though still quite expensive. I have a couple of those on the go now and I’m very happy with them – except the purchase price.
40
Did your light fittings happen to have the bulbs horizontal?
We found that both incandescent and halogen blow out much quicker in fittings that required they be that way.
And halogen aren’t worth a tinkers curse in an old style workshop light on a lead.
50
Yep – and if we had some sort of significant emp event, the LED bulbs being semiconductor would likely die, but the incandescents would possibly survive.
I just marvel at how the powers that be are setting humanity up to deliberately fail. I guess coming from the Establishment which seems to consider humans to be parasites on their beloved pagan Gaia it makes sense, just a tad unsettling though….
62
Quote
“The trouble, at least on the surface, seems to be that any government department would rather spend a dollar on simulation than a dime on in-service testing, and the simulation frequently misses vital points while stressing irrelevancies”
Herschel Smith (1981). “A history of Aircraft Piston Engines”
And I only realised while typing this
DOESN’T THIS SUM UP CAGW BEAUTIFULY?
40
Yes please JoKaH, if they are 25watts! Maybe you can send an email via Jo if she isn’t too dreadfully busy. I don’t want to publicise my email address.I much prefer the light from incandescents and we did have a flight of fancy with having a chandelier put in here. 🙂
Email sent Annie. I hope it works out, though I think JoKaJH is in Aust. – Jo
40
Received and answered email. Thanks Jo. It’s ok, despite my email address I do live in Australia!
00
When it is 30 degrees Celsius below zero, that heat is a blessing.
Since the “high efficiency” bulbs have been rammed down our throats, residents have noticed increased fuel use for heating.
Amazing how much smarter than us our kleptocrats are, they even know what type of light bulb is best for our purposes.
Hope this idea pans out, it would make me snicker even more with oil below $30/barrel.
Damn those “alternate energy systems” are so cost competitive.
122
I recall that for a while, some German outfit got away with selling 100W “heat globes” (with a few % “waste” light, natch.) Loophole closed, apparently.
10
I recall one story about in the USA how the heat from the incandescent lights in the traffic lights used to melt any snow that used to land in the light apatures…..then they went o LEDs and guess what? Accidents…no visible lights….the law of un-intended consequences.
30
John
My winter home brew heater used to be a 75 watt incandescent bulb.
Now I have to use a PAR 38 floodlight. Not much energy saved there.
120
I doubt that the reflected infra red is actually converted into light, rather that it maintains the filament at the ‘right’ temperature, reducing the heat loss so more of the current is converted to light.
Still, interesting technology. It should be mature in a few years and available as we roll back the AGW scam and associated idiocy.
141
Graeme No. 3-
Yes.
Portions of the infrared emission spectrum are reflected back towards the filament. This causes additional heating of the filament. The result is the need for less filament electrical current to achieve a particular filament temperature. Think of it as a system that modifies the spectral shape of the emissivity of the filament. There is no conversion of infrared photons to visible photons (a nonlinear process) taking place.
And this is an old idea, both theoretically and in practice. GE commercially produced a bulb like this starting in the mid 1990’s. It is a halogen lamp with an inner hollow quartz shell. The shell has a multilayer coating that reflects a portion of the infrared spectrum back onto the filament and transmits everything else. They worked out how to make a 20 – 30 layer coating in a batch process for a few pennies per bulb. No easy feat! There are many engineering details that limit the efficiency improvements while maintaining a long lamp life. I remember improvements in the lab going from 15 Lumens/Watt to 35 or 40 Lumens/Watt, but the product did not achieve this much improvement. Also, bulb life is basically the same as in a standard filament bulb, since a hot filament is still the light source.
The MIT paper seems to be proposing multilayer coatings with 50 or 100 or 200 layers. This can broaden the reflected spectrum and increase the acceptance angles over which the reflectance is high. However, the higher the layer count, the greater the chance of defects, and the higher the cost and difficulty of manufacturing such a structure.
There are other ideas, also old, also demonstrated, that modified the surface morphology of the filament itself to suppress infrared emissivity. However, it is difficult to maintain a desired surface texture when operating at temperatures high enough to cause significant surface evaporation of the tungsten filament. Lowering the temperature reduces the Lumens per Watt.
120
As described, this is pretty standard technology, one uses 2 materials with different refractive indicies in alternating layers with varying (but tightly controlled) thicknesses for each layer. Energy is reflected from each refractive index transition and these reflections either constructively or destructively interfere. The unwanted wavelengths are not absorbed but instead are reflected so if they are returned to the filament it means less input power is required to maintain the filament at the desired temperature.
The cool downlights had a similar approach but in reverse. The rear reflector was highly reflective for visible light but transmissive for infra red so the light went out the front while the heat went out the back – its called a dichroic filter. Nice cool light, pity what ever was behind the lamp got so hot. Hold one of these lights up to your eye and you will find you can just about see through the reflective coating.
The real issue in my mind however is to ensure that the energy goes back to the filament and is not just trapped inside the envelope. After all the filament should be at close to 3000K but the envelope should be far far cooler. Depending on how accurately the reflected light strikes the filament one could end up with a dangerously hot outer envelope. After all the filament is a pretty small target and if the envelope is not perfectly spherical with the filament in exactly the center the reflected rays may miss the filament.
Also which side of the envelope is the coating. If on the inside it will become contaminated by tungsten evaporating from the filament and depositing on the coating. If on the outside it will be at the mercy of dirty fingers, dust and environmental pollutants which at the reasonably high temperature of the envelope might become destructive to the multilayer coating. One of the reasons quartz halogen lamps sould never b handled with bare fingers.
Lovely idea but there are some technical challenges.
40
Michael Hammer-
You bring up some very important points.
Yes, it is a dichroic filter.
Yes, you need the reflected infrared to focus back onto the filament for maximum effect.
Yes, you need a sphere-like shell substrate to hold the coating to get the infrared reflected back to the filament.
Yes, you want the coating and substrate to be at a much lower temperature than the filament, mostly for lifetime reasons. It puts severe constraints on the types of materials you can use for the coating. You don’t want it to darken over time…
One way to avoid fingerprints is to coat a small spherical shell that houses the filament. Then put both inside a larger evacuated shell that can be handled like a regular bulb.
Yes, there are some serious technical challenges to making this work at all.
And then try to make it economical.
00
Thanks for the reply Chris. Presumably from an imaging point of view the filament would be made more or less linear and thick like a QI filament rather than the coiled coil C shaped filament of a conventional 240 volt light bulb. (Implies a low voltage lamp like a 12 volt downlight). Much easier to ensure the reflected light hits the filament. The 2nd “internal” envelope is a good idea and I presume it is made of glass or quartz. I am guessing the dichroic coating would have to be on the inside otherwise the quartz or glass would absorb a good deal of the infrared energy from the filament. Since its so much smaller in diameter than a conventional light bulb filament it would get rather hotter than a conventional light bulb element (similar energy absorbed but much less surface area). More like a QI lamp envelope which I have read runs at about 900C on the inside surface to make the halogen cycle work (which is one reason its quartz not glass). But if the inner sphere gets so hot it becomes a good IR emitter of itself. Does this limit the ultimate performance that can be achieved? Overall an interesting challenge and you are right, not at all trivial in execution.
I note Alle’s question 6.1.2 – assuming its not meant sarcastically (which I suspect it is) the answer is simply, firstly CO2 only absorbs over a narrow band of the IR spectrum so it would not absorb much of the IR, seconds what it did absorb would be absorbed not reflected so most of the energy would be conveyed to the outer envelope where it would be radiated away as heat, thirdly the CO2 would be a good thermal conductor/convector cooling the filament by transferring the heat to the outer envelope especially if the pressure was in any way significant (the exact opposite of what one wants) and fourthly and most damaging of all, at the temperature of the filament CO2 becomes very chemically reactive and would probably oxidise the filament to oblivion in the first second of turn on. It is worth noting that at high temperature, aluminium and magnesium will both burn in CO2 ejecting white hot fragments of carbon. The filament is of course tungsten not aluminium but at 3000C it would react.
00
Opps in my last post I meant so much smaller in diameter than a conventional light bulb envelope not light bulb filament. I should proof read better before posting – sorry for the confusion.
00
Why don’t they just fill the bulb with Co2 to stop the heat escaping ?
50
LOL
Liked.
10
Because the temperature would rise up to supernova. You don’t want that in your house
10
So we may not have to buy hazardous waste products from China anymore?
I always wanted to know what happens when you apply a mirror to the inside surface of an incandescent bulb….
60
Hmm.. As we’ve seen time and again, especially in the motor industry, the more efficient an invention, the more complaints from grabbermint due to reduction in taxes taken from the reduced use of the “fuel”, be it electricity, water or petroleum.
Watch your energy bills rise regardless what filament you burn.
130
Can’t they fill the bulb with CO2 so the IR can be absorbed and then re-radiated equally inwards and outwards?
This would tend to force the temperature of the filament up through the feedback of energy so less power would be needed to maintain the incandescence.
Sorry, I couldn’t resist
350
Would this not lead to CLGW (catastrophic light globe warming).?
240
Analitick, I do believe this technology already exists. NASA has developed an UNIPCC approved microwave oven using this very technology:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wUsAINA5YZY/TYR_yuSyWoI/AAAAAAAAAN4/ZR5kw4Qn5os/s1600/NASA_Microwave_chicken.jpg
80
Well spotted Analitik.
If you read Chris Y’s description above, it would seem that’s similar to what they did, only they actually used a reflective coating instead of a radiative gas. Still, good on you for noticing this working lightbulb prototype works similarly to the greenhouse effect and yet does not violate any laws of physics. A portion of outgoing longwave radiation is returned to the filament, which makes its equilibrium temperature higher. Different mechanism for returning the heat, but same effect from the filament’s point of view. Very similar to the LW IR that can be measured coming down from the sky at all hours of the day.
12
Thanks Andrew,
That is an interesting site.
I went back a few days and to a different observing station and found these observations:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/grad/surfrad/surf_check.php?site=sxf&date=2014-12-22&p1=dpsp&p2=upsp&p5=dpir&p6=upir
Note that the daytime downwelling solar is much lower but the downwelling LWIR is higher. That looks like clouds to me. I have no problem accepting that a cloud can radiate IR in all directions and I can even measure the cloud temperature with my little IR thermometer.
The downwelling IR from water vapour in a clear sky is harder to demonstrate let alone CO2. However NOAA may have something somewhere.
20
Maybe something here:
http://nsstc.uah.edu/atmchem/docs/DEPSCOR_progreport_9_13_07.pdf
They claim that there was a clear sky for the whole day and night (21 May 2007).
The variation through the 24 hours is much greater than shown at the NOAA stations. Is that a function of ground temperature?
Unfortunately they do not relate the DWLWIR to humidity or absolute atmospheric water vapour levels, even though they installed an instrument to measure that only 2 months before.
It is very frustrating that very basic questions about the green house effect theory have not been addressed, given the enormous sums spent so far on climate science.
21
> The variation through the 24 hours is much greater than shown at the NOAA stations. Is that a function of ground temperature?
Probably yes, plus they are in the middle of Huntsville so there might be some other local effects not seen in regional sensors. Also I suspect the data is more reliable than the words. You can see in the smoothest part of the graph that the noise error level is very low for this instrument. All the jiggly bits are from clouds probably, or maybe heat from the moist exhaust of the UAH cafeteria, who knows?
Have a look at the Goodwin Creek ESRL site, lat/long is: 34.255044, -89.873605. Basically same latitude as Huntsville.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/grad/surfrad/surf_check.php?site=gwn&date=2014-12-14&p1=dpsp&p2=upsp&p5=dpir&p6=upir
Virtually no cloud for the whole day. The diurnal range (no cloud) of the DWIR is 186 to 316, so about 30 W/m^2.
That’s about half of what you saw in the DEPSCOR project report. Your guess is as good as mine.
Compare Table Mountain with the same day in Desert Rock Nevada, which are almost the same latitude but very different altitudes and surrounds.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/grad/surfrad/surf_check.php?site=dra&date=2014-12-14&p1=dpsp&p2=upsp&p5=dpir&p6=upir
Putting those three graphs in tabs in a separate browser window and flicking between them is interesting for similarities and differences.
e.g. Desert Rock versus Goodwin Creek: At 7am local time both have almost identical UW IR, only a few W/m^2 difference, so were probably the same surface temperature. Yet they had very different DW IR levels at 7am, 250 versus 290, with the higher DWIR being in Missouri which you might expect was from higher humidity.
I don’t have time tonight to go through it, but their download data actually has station relative humidity, pressure, and temperature recorded too, so you can investigate relationships further.
Keep going and you may find the answers to the “very basic questions”. For what it’s worth, I reckon it’s good you are at least looking at observational data and doing your own research, as that is quite a bit more effort than most people on this web site bother to do.
20
Thanks Anrdrew,
I will look at those sites over the next few days.
00
Not quite right… The light bulb runs cooler overall and emits more light from its filament because returned IR radiation moderates the filament’s emission temperature, creating more light and less IR “heat”….. Whereas with the Earth’s Greenhouse effect, the Sun is the filament which is not being moderated by any returned IR radiation and the Earth is outside of it, but being effected by it. The two systems are completely different in design.
00
Actually I don’t. We have downlights in every room of our house and got rid of the halogens in every room that gets used regularly. We installed warm white LEDs in the living areas and cool white in the work areas like the kitchen. The change was dramatic, not just from an illumination point of view, but the power bill as well. I think this move must have paid for itself in the first electricity bill (we didn’t get the government freebie which came later).
In our previous house, we had chandeliers in every room (Victorian style hose) and the incandescent globes were blowing all the time (as mentioned) and didn’t really put out that much light. We replaced those with warm white and cool white fluoro globes and, again, the change was dramatic. Pity LEDs weren’t available at the time.
The final thing I’d like to mention is heat. Incandescent globes put out a lot of heat and the change from 50W halogen downlights to 9W LEDs is significant. And the new LEDs are available with very high CRIs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index) which can emulate natural light in ways that incandescent never will. Sorry, I’m a photographer, so light is very important to me.
140
About the halogen downlights, over the years I’ve been in quite a few roof cavities either for work or maintenance and I noticed some of the cardboard boxes covering the lights, to stop insulation getting through or igniting, had bad scorch marks inside if placed too close to the light, I was quite shocked to see it and wondered how many fires were started from this.
Unless these boxes are designed to handle this heat or not enough air gets in to ignite it looks bad, if someone with knowledge in this area can chime in it would put my mind at rest.
40
I’ve checked the roof cavity and made certain every light is clear of anything potentially inflammable, and just to give heat an escape route. I’m not sure that the heat is sufficient to start a fire, but if the conditions and material is right for ignition, then anything can happen.
50
This is a major concern of mine since an incident 25 years ago in our first house. The kitchen had a surface-mount (not recessed!) fixture in the kitchen that took four 60W bulbs. It provided adequate light for the first several years we lived there. Then I wanted to save some money on the heating bill and put rolled fiberglass insulation in the attic crawl space, including above the kitchen. I repeat: there were no recessed light fixtures — I knew better.
One day the ceiling fixture started flashing and sparking. After shutting off the power I took off the fixture and found all the insulation had melted off the wiring inside the metal junction box. The house was built in 1958; this happened in 1989, just a few months after I added the insulation. The kitchen fixture actually had a heat shield consisting of several layers of aluminum/cardboard lamination between the fixture and the junction box, but obviously enough heat from the 240W worth of incandescent bulbs made it past the heat shield to melt the insulation once it could no longer escape into the crawl space.
I ran new wires and replaced the fixture with a 40W flourescent. This experience is a big reason why I replaced all the incandescent bulbs in my current recessed fixtures with CFLs shortly after buying the house.
60
Alan,
It may have been due to the terminals working loose over a long period. Repeated warming and cooling of the copper can loosen the grip of the connectors screws. This causes a hot joint and can melt wiring. In industrial settings it’s common to have your electrician nip up connection screws yearly or so. It’s not a bad idea to do this in domestic settings, discuss with your electrician.
21
That is quite reasonable. In our previous house, our smoke detectors started squealing for no apparent reason as the batteries were fine and the detectors were not yet at their supposed end of life. But because this persisted, I replaced the detectors (you’d think that they would all have a standard power coupling, but no), yet the problem persisted.
So I then worked out where the detectors were drawing their power, the light switch to one bathroom and the other in a hallway, and checked the terminals. Sure enough, the screws had come loose, or not been tightened well enough, and once tightened, problem gone. Funnily enough, the same happened in our current home and same fix.
20
As I said, it’s been 25+ years, but I am pretty sure it was not loose wiring. That house had all copper wiring (no aluminum/copper junction issue). Standard practice in joining supply wires to the fixture itself was wire-nuts (also copper). If properly sized, and the wires properly twisted before installing the wire-nuts, they do not come loose (or at least I’ve never seen one do so). There was no evidence of oxidation at the joint. I’m pretty sure it was just heat escaping from the fixture (probably convection through the top wiring port) into the ceiling junction box and not being able to radiate into the crawl space because of the new insulation. As I said, both hot and neutral wires were completely devoid of insulation inside the box.
But regardless of whether it was direct heat from the incandescent bulbs, or resistive heat from loose wiring, lower-wattage LED lighting reduces both risks.
Some years prior I had gone through and replaced all the 2-wire outlets (standard when built in 1958) with 3-wire grounded outlets and discovered a fair number were mis-wired (hot lead on what should be the neutral socket prong). That was an eye-opener. I also connected all the new outlets using the screw terminals instead of the quick press-fit connectors (they do get loose, and when you run a circuit with a string of 4 or more outlets connected that way and then plug a 12-amp vacuum cleaner into the outlet at the end of the string, resistive heat is no longer just a theoretical risk).
10
Yonniestone – with halogen lamps its required that about 1 foot of clearance is left between the lamp and any insulation (all around and definitely no insulation OVER the lamp).
If this is not done, these cause fires. The temperatures are very high on the back of the lamp (hundreds of degrees C).
The halogen DICHROIC downlights are called DICHROIC for good reason, DI = two (as in chemistry), CHROIC = relating to colours. The idea of these is that the reflector is rather important, its tranparent to infra-red and reflects visible light. So the heat goes out the back and the visible light comes out the front. That’s why they get stinking hot at the back.
These downlight lamps were originally invented for use in things like projectors where you did not want the heat going out the front (it would melt film).
For domestic use, though popular, they are pretty terrible – high power use, removal of all that insulation means that there is more heat loss / gain through roof areas, and they present a fire hazard. Changing them to LED is one of the best things you can do.
30
Malcolm Turnbull led the trendies’ attack on incandescent lightglobes. It was one of his opening insane climate manoeuvres. We can look forward to more, as yet unknown ones in the future. It would be great to see incandescent globes stage a comeback, if only to see a disconsolate Turnbull.
210
Turnbull is a champagne socialist, so yes that makes sense….
60
Sandia made a commercial version of this lamp ~20 years ago but it was legislated out of commercial existence.
It is based on a dichroic reflector coating. This MIT story is not new science. I bet they are publicising it because they know the principle has already been patented.
50
Tin oxide will do that won’t it! Also used to keep low pressure sodiums up to operating temperature!
50
GE will let you know when it’s okay to buy new bulbs. Malcolm will then tell you it’s not okay not to buy.
80
There are a lot of incan lights available on eBay, many from China and are Edison screw and rated 220-240v.
Incidentally, Australia’s official voltage is 230v, not 240v as many think, although the tolerance, +10%/-6%, is high enough to allow 240v. The change from 240v was formalised with the Utilities Act, 2000. I don’t believe any change was actually made to any infrastructure, however.
60
You learn something everyday! No I did not know that the official voltage in Australia had been changed to 230V by the Utilities Act 2000.
Why did they do that?
50
I think it was because relatively few countries us 240V, Kazakhstan being one of them (!) and 230V is a far more common standard. For a list of voltages used around the world and other information see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mains_electricity_by_country
10
David
Spare a thought for Brasil – 127 0r 220 vo;t 60 cycle depending on where you are
00
Similar in Japan – 110V or 220V depending on where you are.
00
Not in western Australia where it is 240V +- 6%.
See here http://www.erawa.com.au/cproot/2372/2/D04%20Electricity%20Industry%20(Network%20Quality%20and%20Reliability%20of%20Supply)%20Code%202005.pdf
10
12 Jan: BBC: Roger Harrabin: David Cameron challenged on climate policies
The PM has been accused of double standards over climate change, ahead of a Commons committee appearance.
Mr MacNeil, who chairs the energy and climate change committee, told BBC News the decision to scrap the CCS fund was incomprehensible…
The decision to scrap the CCS trial was applauded by Nigel Lawson’s pressure group, the Global Warming Policy Forum.
Its spokesman Benny Peiser told the BBC: “Worldwide, there are currently more than 20 pilot projects being funded.
“Let’s wait and see whether the controversial technology will ever be viable at large scale. If so, Britain could simply buy it off the shelf if need be.”…
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-35284800
60
Lighting your home can be a dangerous business nowadays.
https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2012/04/21/theres-a-killer-in-your-house-2/
Pointman
51
OLED technology has started to enter the lighting market, and is considered as the next step after LEDs. Philips and LG have already started to produce some interesting applications for the house, office, cars, etc.
20
Last I knew, OLED suffered from severe light output degradation at around the 5000 hours mark. I’ve not seen anything to say that situation has changed. I’m reserving judgement on OLED, its been loaded with promise for nearly 10 years now.
00
As usual technology moves on. Philips claim 70% reduction after 10,000 hours and last up to 50,000 hours. No doubt OLED will have certain applications given its unique physical feature of being flat and flexible. As for standard room lighting using traditional fixtures, LED is the clear winner for now, especially the latest ones that run cool with very low power consumption.
10
70% reduction after 10,000 hours means you only have 30% of the output left. That’s TERRIBLE.
A good modern LED has an LM80 of well over 20,000 hours (meaning after 20,000 hours it emitting 80% of its original output).
So it sounds to me like OLED might have a way to go yet 🙂
00
My bad. I meant 70% lumen maintenance factor. Yes, a 70% reduction would have been very bad indeed.
00
Just goes to show that charging off in a new direction before the technology has advanced sufficiently to justify it (or not) is a bad idea yet that is all the Greenies ever seem to do.
Makes them feel good but causes increased environmental damage and increased resource usage in the process.
122
O/T Stephen:
Have you read What really causes Global Warming? by Peter Langdon Ward?
Note Langdon if searching, there is a Peter Ward – rabid CO2 fan.
00
He has a couple of crucial points wrong but that is off topic for here.
20
That author could be a ‘climate scientist’ with that kind of freebie physics. The reflected IR is at a lower flux density than the source, as the reflector has greater surface area; therefore, it is impossible for “adding more heat” [to the filament] to occur – all other conditions being equal. The filament merely cools at a slower rate.
No insulator ever makes its source hotter (unless new work is done etc). Eg, when a hot fluid is put in a vacuum flask & sealed, it starts cooling to ambient T as fast as it can (which may take hours), but it never gets hotter, despite returning IR.
Cooling slower doesn’t equal making it hotter; hence, there is no perpetual motion. Tired of this freebie stupidity.
91
What about the power that increased it temperature?
For a constant power input, reduced cooling efficacy, must result in a higher temperature! Look in the mirror when accusing someone of “freebie physics”.
No, I do not support the Clueless Arrogant Climate Academic Clowns, pronounced kaka, even in Cyrillic. 😉
63
Tom,
Will Janoschka seems to be in furious agreement with you.
The quote from Ilic is either very poorly worded or his comprehension of heat flows in indeed poor.
I have wondered about reflection and even performed experiments to satisfy myself that a reflective layer reduces the rate of radiant heat loss. It does.
As you say, reflection does not add heat. It only reduces heat loss The only source of heat in the light bulb system is the filament. If IR radiant heat loss is reduced the filament either gets hotter if the filament current is kept constant or the filament current can be reduced to keep the temperature the same as it was before. Either way the efficiency of the light bulb for visible light output is increased.
60
You, unfortunately have the physics wrong. Everything is just an energy equilibrium.
For a 100W globe there is a constant energy flow in 100 J/s and that must match the energy flow out. If I reflect some of the spectrum, being most of the power back to the filament then I have changed the emmissivity of the object. The power lost by it is lower, the filament temperature must then rise such that the loss of the light bulb is again 100W (100J/s). IT’S JUST THE LAW OF CONSERVATION OF ENERGY AT WORK.
This is why bulbs will break if you wrap them in aluminium foil.
00
Have you tried that?
00
Unfortunately the full article is behind a pay wall so details cannot be fully examined.
It indicates that the unwanted low frequency radiation is REFLECTED back to the source.
The greenhouse effect is absorption and re-emission which is a totally different kind of physics.
For instance the ‘reflection effect’ can be achieved by selective coating such as the ‘blooming’ of lens surfaces.
This is fully explained by classical optic theory.
This is how the thermal efficiency of solar flat plate collectors is improved.
http://www.almecogroup.com/en/pagina/16-solar
The article further proposes optimising the device to preferentially emit at wavelengths maximising at the part of the eye most sensitive to light to further increase the apparent efficiency.
https://www.nde-ed.org/EducationResources/CommunityCollege/PenetrantTest/Introduction/lightresponse.htm
Its good that the old tungsten incandescent lamp is having a revamp.
30
Bryan – it’s not the issue as to whether the radiation is reflected versus absorbed and re-emitted. The big difference between this light and the surface+atmosphere system is that the light attains its original temperature by electricity, whereas the surface (on average) does not get raised to its observed temperature by either solar radiation (which is about -40°C) or atmospheric radiation which I estimate to be the equivalent of a similarly slightly less cold (but still sub-zero) body. So neither type of radiation can supply the necessary thermal energy to raise the surface temperature to what is observed. Hence there is no radiative forcing that can make the surface reach the kind of temperatures we observe. The energy source was explained in a sequence of comments here in “Unthreaded” wherein I was debating with Jo’s husband David Evans and demonstrating why his hypothesis is based on the radiative forcing conjecture that is not supported by physics or empirical data. Those who understand entropy will find the new science fascinating and obviously what is really happening.
—
What debate?[ Doug doesn’t understand the point of David’s work. After several private emails (he’s sent me 38 in 5 days) I have tried to correct him a few times and got nowhere. He repeatedly misconstrues a quote out of context to mean almost the opposite of what it was about. I have given up suggesting that Doug read David’s posts. — Jo]
414
Doug says
“Bryan – it’s not the issue as to whether the radiation is reflected versus absorbed and re-emitted.”
Nonsense
The surface must let the visible frequencies out yet REFLECT the IR frequencies back to source.
Since these IR frequencies are NOT ABSORBED by the reflecting surface then your comment about the temperature of that surface is meaningless.
Read about about coatings for lenses.
These coating stop or reflect unwanted frequencies.
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/phyopt/antiref.html
By selecting the right 1/4 wavelength on multiple coating the incident radiation can be split into visible light passing through and reflected IR back to source
100
Bryan, this comment will serve as my reply.
09
Doug
You live in your own little world of make believe.
You think the answer to each and every topic is your own half digested theory.
This new device utilises existing technology from flat plate solar collectors as my link above.
There are thousands of them already in use so its no good you saying that they cannot work.
There are now two energy supplies reaching the source.
1. The reflected IR spectrum of a 3000K tungsten filament.
2 The electrical power of the grid
Now an electical power supply is the highest quality energy source and so has no difficulty transforming itself into light or any other energy form.
The paper states that the process might eventually reach 50% efficiency.
This upper limit to the overall efficiency might be the boundary set by the second law.
The posts by Michael Hammer, Chris y and Graeme 3 above are worth reading.
Alternatively you can write to the manufacturers and owners of the Flat Plate Solar Collectors and inform them that these devices cannot possibly work.
61
I’d read somewhere that soalr cells for electricty production degrade in performance as temeprature goes up. Assumingthis is the case, sure a combined solar panel with water run over it ( safely! ) to cool it but also use the same cooling water for your hot water needs could be practical?
00
Bryan.
The paper Mathematical Physics of BlackBody Radiation will help you understand the resonance process that occurs with radiation, and also why the Second Law of Thermodynamics applies for every independent one-way pencil of radiation. The way in which Nature ensures this lack of any decrease in entropy is fascinating, and was the subject of extensive research early this century, about which you have probably not read. You could also read my comments starting here. And yes, I certainly agree the limit for any process is set by the Second Law when maximum entropy is attained. That is the very reason why there is a stable density gradient in the troposphere – oh, and a stable temperature gradient too, as you will have read in those comments I linked above.
08
And Bryan, you do not appear to have read the comment to which I referred you (Jan 14 1:00pm) above as being my reply. I only wish to talk about the bulbs, and that comment explained what happens regarding energy transfers and the limitations imposed by the Planck function. Such limitations will always limit the efficiency of the bulbs to the percentage that the visible light band makes up in the Planck spectrum for the filament when it reaches the hottest temperature that the Second Law allows. That percentage does not vary a lot for different temperatures.
08
Bryan, I was not referring to anything outside of the laws of physics. All I refer to is normal, well known physics, such as the fact that radiation from a source which is not effectively hotter than the target (after attenuation due to distance, absorption etc) is not thermalized in the target but, rather, is “pseudo-scattered” as physicists call the process. It’s a fine point I admit, but the filament always gets all its energy from the electricity which is sufficient to warm it even more because of the reflected radiation which slows radiative cooling of the filament, but does not get thermalized itself. The way in which every one-way pencil of radiation never causes entropy to decrease is fascinating, and Nature achieves this with what physicists recognize as a resonance process.
08
Please don’t say “go Edison” when it was Joseph Swan who invented the incandescent light bulb
Fair point Robbo. Addition made to the post. – Jo
60
Jo, I hate to be pedantic but there are a couple of redundant apostrophes in the first paragraph: it’s ‘LEDs’, not ‘LED’s’.
61
Please try to change your attitude towards being pedantic. Learn to love it.
The purpose of the internet is to disseminate cat videos and porn, but it is revealing an appalling reservoir of semi-literacy both among English speakers and among Americans . (I cannot comment on other languages. It would nice to believe that the Chinese, Russian, Arabic, etc., on the net is all flawless, but I fear this may not be the case.)
We are being flooded with bad grammar. In order to maintain the language, all who have the ability to be pedants should take up the task of correction. (Even in the face of Phil’s Law: “Every post correcting a linguistic error will itself contain at least one linguistic error of equal or greater severity.”)
Languages convey meaning by means of shared conventions. In general, the more those conventions are broken, the less precisely the meaning is transmitted. The ” grammar doesn’t matter as long as you know what I mean” line is just silly. Bad grammar leads to ambiguity and, ultimately, incomprehensibility. And “languages are always changing” is true, but it is no excuse for bad grammar.
Be a pedant. We need all the pedants we can get.
90
I read of that as Muphry’s Law!
00
Try to find error in Pointman’s articles! Brad Keys of Climate Nurnberg, and now http://cliscep.com/ is also very good! Brad is the first that can do effective satire of his own satire! Truly WAIT what!!!
06
Post-Paris blues:
12 Jan: ClimateChangeNews: Ed King: Oil majors vague on climate plans post Paris deal
Crashing oil prices mean there’s less pressure on companies or countries to move way from oil and gas, pointed out said Jonathan Stern from the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.
“When oil and gas prices were at $100 a barrel you might have had to put money to renewables but nevertheless we could say fossil fuels will be expensive and it would be worthwhile. That argument is difficult to make now,” he said.
This week from Morgan Stanley oil expert Adam Longson suggested oil prices could dip further from their current $30 a barrel to $20.
Other analysts say prices could go as low as $10 a barrel, which would have knock-on impacts: Last year an estimated $200 billion of investments were postponed as a result of these slim margins…
“I think there has been a deafening silence over the last few weeks in terms of governments doing and in part spending money [on green goods],” he (Stern) said.
“I’m looking at a lot of Asian countries that are building coal plants… and I’m waiting to see fundamental changes in policy and spending that is serious… we’re talking tens of billions on low carbon energy.
“But it has only been a few weeks [since Paris]. There’s plenty of time.”
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/01/12/oil-majors-vague-on-climate-plans-post-paris-deal/
13 Jan: ReutersCarbonPulse: Ben Garside/Mike Szabo: ANALYSIS: Traders brace for more losses, volatility after EU carbon kicks off 2016 with 15% drop
Traders are bracing for EUAs to fall further despite a price collapse that has wiped out a year’s worth of gains in just over a week, losses that many have blamed on big speculative short-sellers pouncing while carbon was vulnerable.
The 15% drop to near €7 over the first seven trading days of 2015 has left many traders and analysts scratching their heads and scrambling to revise their projections after a becalmed year of relatively steady incremental gains.
Carbon Pulse has spoken to more than a dozen market participants in the past week to get a sense of why prices plummeted and what’s next once they stabilise…
“Some group of traders pushed down the market. For me there’s still a big question mark over how in the world we could fall €1 in one week with no bad news behind it,” another trader added…
Despite the huge losses in carbon, some traders see more downside in store for EUAs before they’re able to mount a recovery…
http://carbon-pulse.com/14156/
50
“I’m looking at a lot of Asian countries that are building coal plants… ”
Yes, but surely they are not considering the big picture, (sarc off).
‘Humanity’s burning of fossil fuels is postponing the next global ice age for at least 100,000 years, according to new research that has discovered the tipping point which plunges the planet into deep freezes.
‘Showing that human activity, via climate change, can alter global processes like ice ages is compelling evidence that the planet has entered a new geological epoch, dubbed the Anthropocene, according to the scientists.
Damien Carrington / Guardian
10
12 Jan: Daily Caller: Michael Bastasch: ‘Net Zero’ Progress: 8 Years Later And The Military’s Green Energy Plan Is Still ‘Unrealistic’ And ‘Cost Prohibitive’
The U.S. military has spent virtually no money implementing its plan to integrate more green energy and promote conservation at military installations across the country, according to a new government watchdog audit.
“None of the military departments have established net zero as a funded program,” the Government Accountability Office reported Tuesday, basing their findings on interviews and documents collected over the last year (LINK) on the military’s “net zero” plan.
“Service officials told us they believe that fully achieving net zero is unrealistic and ultimately cost prohibitive,” GAO reported, adding that the only branch of the military to even have a “net zero” program is the Army — ***but they’ve only spent money studying the feasibility of such a program…
http://dailycaller.com/2016/01/12/net-zero-progress-8-years-later-and-the-militarys-green-energy-plan-is-still-unrealistic-and-cost-prohibitive/
40
Well, if they have only achieved 6.6% in practice, I would say that they have little chance of getting it up to 40%. Once again, I suspect, they are (in theory) adding the flux generated by multiple reflections. There’s lots more flux, but in the real world there’s not much more light. Unless they reduce the amount of electrical energy that is converted to thermal energy (that is then wasted) they cannot get more energy in the visible spectrum. Reflecting back some of the thermal energy will slow the radiative cooling of the light and that is how they got their 6.6%, but I’m skeptical that they will ever get only 60% thermal energy generated with 40% light. They are counting their chickens before they hatch, probably to get research grants.
312
Isn’t that the whole point? The reflected IR reduces the heat lost from the volume that is surrounded so the filament within stays hotter, leading to its resistance increasing which reduces the current flow. This leads to the same amount (or slightly more) visible light being emitted for less power.
60
Echoing “bemused” above, this is an obsolete concern. With a little bit of searching you can find LED replacement bulbs from the daylight end of the spectrum (5000-6000°K) down to the incandescent equivalent (2700%deg;K). Not that typical retail outlets will be of any help here; the packaging usually omits that information while overcharging by a factor of three or more.
The price and versatility of LED lighting has improved enormously in the past 5 years. I have a bunch of track lighting that uses 50W halogen GU10-base bulbs; I recently used up the last bulb from my stock and I’m not buying any more. As each old bulb burns out it gets replaced by a 5W 2700°K LED which I get in batches of 6 for $36 delivered to the house. And I can get a lot more light without stressing the 20A circuit.
80
I find the white light from florescents and LEDs tend to keep me awake when working late whereas the warmer light from incandescents will put me to sleep despite any number of cups of coffee.
40
There are increasingly natural light LEDs and they’re great.
If these super incandescents are better, excellent! However, LEDs can now do natural light spectrum very well.
90
There are increasingly natural light LEDs and they’re great.
If these super incandescents are better, excellent! However, LEDs can now do natural light spectrum very well.
00
There are increasingly natural light LEDs and they’re great.
If these super incandescents are better, excellent! However, LEDs can now do natural light spectrum very well.
10
There are increasingly natural light LEDs and they’re great.
If these super incandescents are better, excellent! However, LEDs can now do natural light spectrum very well.
00
Er, sorry for the quadruple post.
W.T.F?
30
I thought it was a multiple pedant lighting post….
70
Normally most light posts only hold 2 lights…arf arf…..
10
There seem to be a number of light posts on this blog…….
20
Many are only used for support, not illumination.
30
Touche!
00
I agree with “bemused” & “Alan Watt” – I’ve recently picked up some reasonably priced LED bulbs from the local supermarket, and the colour rendition is very good. The packaging was marked with the colour temperature (2700K) so they are indistinguishable from traditional filament lamps.
However, I will believe the “tens of thousands of hours” lifetime claims if they are still working when I’m too old to change them! A small 6 watt LED I fitted to an Anglepoise lamp less than a year ago has just started playing up. I noticed it flickering, and found that it was running much hotter than when new – comparable to the CFL that I had used before, so clearly it must have been drawing a lot more power than advertised. This cannot have been due to poor ventilation, as it is mostly pointed upwards (i.e. cap down) to give a backlight effect from the ceiling. Which means the driver circuitry was not being “cooked” from any heat given off by the LED’s themselves (a common reason for CFL bulbs early failure).
I would blame cheap manufacturing in China, but even top brand names are made there these days…
40
The LED itself will last that long. The power supply that converts 110 or 220 into the low voltage required is the weak link and are often designed with little component margin. especially the capacitors, which tend to fail first in both LED and CFLs.
70
I’m not even sure about that. Whilst a small LED (such as might be found in a panel indicator) will undoubtedly have an extremely long lifespan, the remarkable increase in brightness that the latest LED lamps exhibit is mainly thanks to them being driven much harder. This is done by increasing the voltage, but due to the way they work, the current goes up dramatically*, and with it the heat dissipation. As I understand it, the individual devices have to be mounted on heat sinks, and it goes without saying that if this interface fails (possibly due to poor assembly practice) failure will rapidly occur. If several LED’s are fed from one power supply this will now be under much more stress, and will be the next thing to fail…
* I did some experimenting with a portable LED floodlight, which came with an AC-DC power supply. I wanted to run it directly from a 12volt battery, but found that the voltage is critical. Using an adjustable bench power supply I was able to watch the current draw with increasing voltage. If plotted on a graph it would have done a passable imitation of the famous “Hockey Stick”…
60
Current regulation, not voltage regulation is required to correctly drive LEDs, because of their strange I-V characteristic. (See the I-V graph under Technology Physics section .)
Also of note is that current demand of LEDs is quite temperature dependent.
From the same link
50
Yes, LED’s are prone to failure due to “thermal runaway”.
30
“Yes, LED’s are prone to failure due to “thermal runaway”.”
Do they have CO2 inside them, or something ?
71
These new incandescent light bulbs with photonic crystal coating will be exploited by the AGW believers as “proving” the radiative forcing greenhouse conjecture. They don’t, but we already see in the above post an incorrect statement claiming that the IR that is reflected back then gets partly converted to new light. Max Planck (winner of a Nobel Prize for physics) would turn in his grave, because nothing changes the spectrum of emission of the filament. Radiation that is emitted in the IR bands of that spectrum is not converted to visible light by reflection, and it is not converted back to thermal (kinetic) energy when it strikes the filament again. Its energy just becomes a part of the filament’s Planck function emission and it is pseudo-scattered (as physicists call the process) and re-emitted with identical photons still in the IR band. The rate of cooling of the filament is slowed, that’s all. It is in no way analogous to the fictitious radiative greenhouse conjecture for the simple reason that there is electricity causing the filament to reach its high temperature in the first place. In contrast, solar radiation is far to weak to raise Earth’s mean surface temperature to the existing temperature. What does I have explained in my 2013 paper.
014
You are confusing radiation temperature with temperature they are not the same thing
00
You bobl appear to be confusing radiation flux with the flux of thermal energy transfers. They are not the same thing. The thermal energy transfer is represented by the area between the Planck functions of the source and target, as I explained in about 10 pages published early 2012.
08
Radiation temperature has no meaning! Radiance is potential for radiative flux, in any ir all wavelengths but not flux itself. Brightness temperature is usefully used as a proxy for narrow band non thermal EMF to transfer power even at temperature higher than the absorber. The brightness temperature of your microwave oven can by higher than 1000 Kelvin. An industrial CO2 laser 500,000 Kelvin easy! Do not look into laser beam with remaining eye!!!
07
On the wider electricity scene (UK)
“…for electricity, the main drivers of 7 domestic price increases from 2009 to 2013 were the costs of social and environmental obligations and network costs…For gas, there has been a broadly even percentage increase in wholesale costs, network costs, obligation costs and indirect costs…”
More at
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2016/1/13/its-the-greens-stupid-1.html
40
Is this saving on lighting real? Unlike solar, residential lights are used at night and as most of our electricity is still produced by brown coal generators, it costs nothing and has to be thrown away or sold for aluminum smelting, if possible. Lighting is only 11% of all use of residential electricty and only at night. You might also note the wholesale price of electricity in Nevada of 2C a kw/hr against a retail of 25c! Now that’s a markup. The smart meters installed make no difference. We pay the same at night for electricity because no one points this out.
So what is the saving? There is none in CO2. When you factor in the extra cost of halogens, erratic lifespan in my experience, poor light colour, there is no saving at all. It is another Green scam. Revenue for everyone and now government control of the light globe industry on the pretext of saving our money and the planet.
Now if we wanted to save public money by investing, remove all those ugly telegraph/telephone/electricity/NBN poles underground, improve the streetscape, green the cities and save the $100million a year in Victoria alone spent trimming trees to ugly around power lines in the city allegedly to prevent inner city bushfires under the line clearances act.
Green excuses are used by Labor/Green Governments to justify raising their incomes and spending and interference in how we live. There was never any need to make this law. It is another example of governments trying to tell us how we should travel, what we are allowed to say, what children should eat for lunch and how we should read at night. Next the ABC will control the NBN. Then blogs like this will have to be approved by Government and taxed of course.
101
Why not let customers sort the light bulb issue? Why legislate. Customers want long life, low price, high output, low cost of operation anyway. In interfering with markets, governments destroy the motivation for companies to improve their products naturally. The creation of multiple paths for electricity distribution is having an effect in lowering prices through competition. It should be the same with everything.
We in Victoria were forced to take smart meters at enormous cost. So what benefit has the community seen? Have electricity prices dropped? Is off peak power cheaper? Do the smart meters allow shopping?
The public is being mushroomed on the whole business of electricity generation and distribution while dead tree posts are being replaced, not removed. Issues like the light bulb ones, free balloons in chimneys, subsidized pink batts, free State Government light globes and power boards are just decoys for governments interfering in commerce and walking into homes.
If people decided they could not commercially justify pink batts, why did the government put them in? How much has that really cost and what benefit has anyone seen? Apart from the tragic deaths and another $1 billion to fix faulty installations, has anyone actually reported back on the nett benefit to the country? No. Political sleight of hand to justify government intervention and rocketing taxation. That way the government appears to be doing good things, when nothing much is being done. Now the bankrupt Victorian government which spent $1Billion preventing a road we need and having real trouble finding commercial support now wants to put the trains overhead, like a 19th century or third world country. To save money of course. New light globes are just a ruse to show they care.
132
Absolutely correct TdeF
21
I agree with your economics, TdeF.
20
Once again, a superb comment, TdeF.
31
Excellent comments TdeF!
There is no benefit to Smart Meters and you can’t even look at the meter to see your instantaneous power consumption. That feature is in the menu but deactivated. Why? It is a native meter function, nothing to do with the network.
As for “pink batts” (a trade name, they should be called ceiling insulation or similiar) I could tell that would be a racket from the beginning, especially as it was dreamed up by the Labor Party.
Also, I remain to be convinced that taking account of energy to manufacture, life time and other factors that alternatives to incan lights are cheaper over a lifetime. The humble incan light costs almost nothing to make, not so the alternatives.
Market forces should be the only driver of energy policy.
31
They will never get 40% efficiency from these bulbs for the simple reason that the spectrum being originally emitted has far less than 40% of its energy in the visible light band. Once radiation is emitted, no amount of reflection will change its wavelength.
012
You don’t get it do you, radiation temperature is not the same as temperature – I can get a certain radiation temperature out of say a red laser, but the POWER of that laser can vary between milliwatts and megawatts at the same radiation temperature. However the energy into a system (must equal the energy out) if I decrease energy loss from the lamp, the lamp must react by increasing the energy loss, that is it must get hot enough to release MORE photons at a given radiation temperature (brighter) or its radiation temperature (colour) must increase or both.
10
Also Doug, if you are still monitoring this thread a simple example shows you are wrong.
An induction heater generates an EM field close to DC, it has a very low radiation temperature yet that field is capable of heating my pots to the point they glow red.
There exist materials that can absorb photons of IR and then emit the second or third harmonic of that IR in the visible range, we do not know how exactly the efficiency is being acheived but your assertion that more than 20% efficiency is impossible is clearly wrong.
20
But bobl, no energy is created – you just redistribute the electric power more towards the IR range, but, in the long run, there is an upper limit that is determined by how much of the Planck function is in the visible band.
06
Correction: “more towards the visible range”
00
An induction heater depends upon a process of alternating current producing oscillating magnetic fields. This has nothing to do with radiation or conduction. Induction is more efficient because only the special metal base of the pot is heated, whereas radiation goes in all directions, much of it missing the target, and by no means all of it being thermalised anyway.
06
Another bizarre assertion from Doug, desperate to salvage his bizarre theories. Now he claims that ER radiation carries information as to how it was generated, and the target object uses this information to “decide” whether to absorb the radiation or not.
Unbelievable!
60
My 10 cents for what it’s worth…
More efficient than current LEDs may be a good thing. However, there’s that hot filament that tends to burn out on a regular basis causing the frustration of changing light bulbs at the most inopportune times. They never go out when I have a spare in my hand just in time to exchange it for the bad one. Ha! Ha! Ha!
Here’s the deal with the LEDs. I have the Cree brand bulbs in just about everything in the house and haven’t had to replace a single one. They’re rated for something like 23 or 24 thousand hours of life, which at the average on time is going to be 10 to 20 years. Even from the two in my outside fixtures at each door that run from sundown to sunup I expect years of service.
So why would I be interested in something with a hot filament that will do no better than any other hot filament used for lighting? And it’s a sure thing that these will be running even hotter than the conventional incandescent bulb. The heat stress gets them — turn them on or off and the temperature change is going to cause trouble. I’m glad to see good solid LEDs taking over the lighting job. I can get 75 Watts equivalent light from a bulb that looks like a light bulb and needs only 13.5 Watts.
Watts to like about incandescent (pun intended).
60
Price. Each person should make their own judgement about the value of a product. Your argument is great, if you have the money and that is your priority. You can buy the lifespan you want. These are market balancing forces, lifespan and cost. Of course the engineering changes. Edison’s original long life globes were carbon impregnated bamboo.
However I have paid handsomely for long life bulbs only to have them explode on startup. Sure they come with a guarantee, but who is going to chase $5 or $18 with letters? Can you really enforce a guarantee outside a court? You just reach for another waste of money and swear never to buy that brand again.
The market normally sorts this out, but once governments start picking winning technologies, we are in for whatever politicians decide, which is wrong. We blew $93million of public money (Government money) supporting a failed hot rocks experiment in SA recommended widely and approved technically by our own dead Kangaroo expert Tim Flannery. The directors were on salaries of $400,000 pa. No risk there. If you want to throw money away, let the government back the winners. We would end up with wooden telephones, hand carved in Thailand.
71
Yes, the price of the LED is significantly greater than the incandescent. But amortize that over the life of the LED and compare with replacing standard light bulbs and they look very attractive. Also, I count not having to mess with the replacement problem as something worth paying for.
These Cree bulbs are the first LEDs I’ve tried because I never saw any other brand the didn’t have an outlandish shape or was too big, etc. I’ve 11 or 12 of the Crees in use and never a failure, no infant mortality. So at this point it’s, so far, so good, with some of them now in service during darkness for over a year.
All I can say is, you’re right, the market will sort it out. And judging by the large display of Cree LEDs at the local Home Depot (more on display than any other brand) the market definitely likes them.
30
Government should never have even started to worry about energy efficiency. Had they left the subject alone the consumer would have a wider choice of home appliance types and techology and I wouldn’t have a washing machine that thinks it knows more about how to do the job than I do — they beat the clothes to death, don’t get them as clean and the front loaders take twice as long to not do the job.
I despair of finding any common sense prevailing any time in my lifetime. 🙁
41
Make sure to use low-sudsing detergent. Regular stuff cushions the fall and degrades cleaning.
20
Brian,
We nearly bent over backward trying to get a front loader to work for us. After so much frustration we ditched it for a top loader that is at least better than the front loader.
But give me my old worn out GE any day — dumb as a rock and quite willing to do exactly what I told it to do. But it finally became unmaintainable and forced our hand.
00
I should have added that larger volume manufacturing and improving technology should see the price of LEDs become more competitive with incandescent and CFL.
20
And, before you say “Ah, but it is reabsorbed and then gets re-emitted with any wavelengths” I will tell you that you are seriously mistaken. It is pseudo-scattered when it gets back to the wire, and such a process does not change its wavelength either, because identical photons are emitted without the energy ever having been converted to thermal energy. That’s the law – the second one.
012
Doug:
If you were a real physicist, [Snip, a bit inflammatory] , you would know that solid, repeatable, controlled, experimental laboratory data completely refutes your hypotheses.
Reflecting radiation back to the tungsten filament does indeed increase the temperature of the filament. This increases the electrical resistance of the filament, which is easily measurable. It also changes the spectrum of emission of the filament, moving it to shorter wavelengths and increasing its intensity, as has been measured many, many times. This is in complete agreement with the very standard physics that says the filament will re-absorb much of this reflected radiation.
150
Agreed. Why people bring entropy into heating stuff is a puzzle. Things get hotter. Entropy increases. Some law. Never heard of this identical photons business. These are not gamma rays but from simple vibrational movements in a continuous spectrum.
40
“See the world as no others have ever seen”? Try reading this guy’s site: http://entropylaw.com from which I quote …
“The major revolution in the last decade is the recognition of the “law of maximum entropy production” or “MEP” and with it an expanded view of thermodynamics showing that the spontaneous production of order from disorder is the expected consequence of basic laws.
“The key insight was that the world is inherently active, and that whenever an energy distribution is out of equilibrium a potential or thermodynamic “force” (the gradient of a potential) exists that the world acts spontaneously to dissipate or minimize. All real-world change or dynamics is seen to follow, or be motivated, by this law. So whereas the first law expresses that which remains the same, or is time-symmetric, in all real-world processes the second law expresses that which changes and motivates the change, the fundamental time-asymmetry, in all real-world process. Clausius coined the term “entropy” to refer to the dissipated potential and the second law, in its most general form, states that the world acts spontaneously to minimize potentials (or equivalently maximize entropy), and with this, active end-directedness or time-asymmetry was, for the first time, given a universal physical basis.”
07
It is because this process of maximum entropy production (the Second Law) always tends to happen (as explained in his site) that we are able to work out the direction in which heat transfers will tend to happen. You’ll be surprised to learn that, on the sunlit side of the Moon, there must be heat flows deep below the surface moving towards the hotter core (where this says the temperature is “probably about 1600-1700K”) – all maximizing entropy. Otherwise the Moon could easily have cooled off in a few thousand years at the most.
07
Maybe you’ll understand better from http://entropylaw.com.
There’s also Dr Hans Jelbring PhD (climatology) with his paper published in “Energy and Environment“ from which I quote …
““The generally claimed importance of greenhouse gases rests on an unproven hypothesis (ref 1). The hypothesis is based on radiative models of energy fluxes in our atmosphere. These are inadequate, since radiative processes within the atmosphere are poorly described, convective energy fluxes are often inadequately described or omitted, and latent heat fluxes are poorly treated. The whole GE in these models is wrongly claimed being caused by greenhouse gases. The considerations in this paper indicate that effects of the greenhouse gases, other radiative effects, and convection effects all might modulate GE to a minor unknown extent. Hence, the atmospheric mass exposed to a gravity field is the cause of the … substantial part of GW“”
08
ED:
Perhaps the main reason why you and others have been cynical and sarcastic about what I have explained is the easily-demonstrated fact that I have been first in the world to explain …
(1) How the Sun’s energy maintains temperatures of planets and moons right down to the core.
(2) How this happens because of downward natural convective heat transfers including thermal diffusion (“heat creep” for short) which are obeying the Second Law
(3) Because this happens, the temperatures build up from the outer anchoring layer(s) towards the core with this “heat creep” process.
(4) Also because of this process we can explain such things as surface temperatures correctly without any need for any “greenhouse” warming
(5) How we can quantify the temperature differential in a vortex tube based on the same process of heat creep.
07
So we have just two possibilities …
(a) My explanation of how temperatures build up from the anchoring layer(s) where there is radiative balance with the solar radiation, or
(b) The climatology explanation that planets are just cooling off from an originally hotter core, and the core temperature at this point in time, is now at just the right level so that we can observe just the right calculated temperature gradient that we expect all the way out to the anchoring layer(s) in the troposphere where the temperature has by then got down to just the right level at just the right altitude – all by a huge coincidence that is repeated in all planets with significant atmospheres with combined probability of the order of one in a million or less.
07
Does it have something to do with back radiation or black bodies?
10
Finally, EdBo, the “movement towards shorter wavelengths” is very minor – nothing like the trebling of efficiency. By Wien’s displacement law the product of the peak wavelength and the temperature is constant, but I would suggest that, unless the absolute temperature (T) increases dramatically the shorter wavelength shift is not the main contributor to the increase in efficiency. In any event, something else would have to initiate the warming. But yes the shift is a positive feedback resulting from the warming, not causing it. None of this negates what I said about the reflected radiation not being thermalised: it’s not, and the physics is in that paper I linked.
09
EdBo – for more detail on how the filament warms and the limitations see this comment of mine.
08
EdBo. The experimental results observed (namely warming of the filament and a shift to SW) can be explained by (and could have been anticipated from) standard physics as follows …
The reflected radiation is pseudo-scattered and becomes part of the filament’s quota as per its Planck function, so the electricity has less work to do in the LW bands, and does more in the SW bands making the temperature increase, but retaining a Planck curve for the flux. The usual slight shift towards SW (based on Wien’s Displacement Law) is just a minor positive feedback because the peak frequency is proportional to the absolute temperature.
08
Doug, you are simply proving once again that you are no scientist. A real scientist knows that experiment trumps theory ever time. You can’t grasp that concept.
You have a theory that says that returned radiation cannot contribute to an increase in temperature of a powered source. But controlled repeatable experiments demonstrate that your theory is wrong. In these experiments, the only change is the addition of returned radiation to the filament. The results are reduced electrical resistance, an increase in total radiative output, and a shift in the resulting spectrum toward shorter wavelengths.
I repeat: these are CONTROLLED, REPEATABLE laboratory experiments. And your response is simply that they don’t agree with your precious theory. No real scientist would say that!
70
Good God! another that refuses to think!
“In these experiments, the only change is the addition of returned radiation to the filament. The results are reduced electrical resistance, an increase in total radiative output, and a shift in the resulting spectrum toward shorter wavelengths.”
The change is “reduced” exitance from the filament from opposing ‘radiance’ of the reflective coating at longer wavelengths. there is absolutely no radiative flux in the direction of the higher temperature filament. This reduction in exitance results in higher filament temperature thus higher filament electrical resistance and a lowering input power from the fixed input voltage!
Doug Cotton has demonstrated that even he can think for 35 minutes in evenings of odd numbered Fridays!
You Ed Bo, have demonstrated that you can do nowhere near that amount of thinking!
08
Me: “To purchase an item in a store, I gave the cashier a $20 bill, and he gave me $15 in change.”
Will: “No, no, no! You’ve got it all wrong! You paid $5 for the item!”
That’s how ridiculous your argument is. Don’t ever become an accountant. You’d quickly end up in jail for your inability to distinguish net from gross flows!
80
Ed Bo and Will – please read comment at 2:37pm below and this comment above.
08
Will Janoschka:
I think you have to make allowances for us slow thinkers who may only dimly remember their training. For instance I always thought that when a object radiated (I.R. etc.) that it lost energy, therefore cooled a bit. Thus I was thinking that in climate science when the warmer ground radiated I.R. to the air which radiated half back that it was a case of 4-2+1=5, but apparently this isn’t so as radiation leaves its energy behind and the greenhouse gases pick up energy from some source (low interest loan from the World Bank?) which they don’t radiate back so the ground warms.
Further I always thought that heat flow from a cooler surface couldn’t warm a hotter one, and if the deep sea was warmer by 3 thousandths of a degree that it couldn’t warm the air much when it came to the surface, but because of the much greater heat capacity of water it is now a big threat to our future.
Apparently any knowledge I had of Carnot’s ideas is wrong. This could well be the case because in climate science when floating (arctic) ice melts it raises the sea level. I still cling to Archimedes unaware that he has been disproved.
I hope you can clear up my confusion with a few simple phrases, and it might help one or two others.
00
Graeme No.3 January 15, 2016 at 3:19 pm · Reply
Will Janoschka
Even though Thermal EMR is powered by some heat maintaining ‘temperature’ it is not heat but politely obeys the second law of thermodynamics by simply conforming to Maxwell’s equations for all electromagnetic radiative flux. The important one here is from the rewriting to vector form by John Poynting, that flux (the actual power per unit area) is not the potential for flux from one surface called radiance with units of power per unit area per unit solid angle (meaning direction) W/(m^2 sr) but only proportional to the local vector sum of all radiances at that frequency. This means that any radiative exitance is always limited by the opposing potential for such in each direction.
This is what makes the Climate Clown claim of radiation proportional to temperature to the fourth power so very ridiculous!! Such simply cannot happen!
The cake in the oven at the same temperature as the oven does not have electromagnetic energy banging back and forth between cake and oven walls. The oven is only filled with the potential for transfer should one be reduced in radiance (T^4). The cake does this as the moisture is evaporated. Then and only then does the oven transfer any power to the cake by any known means including EMR.
The whole (not half) Stefan Boltzmann equation correctly demonstrates the concept. Inside parenthesis are not one but two T^4 termse correctly arranged as the sum of opposing vectors (namely a difference). Evaluating the parenthesis first, as must be done, results in both a magnitude and a direction, this result is the maximum flux in the direction evaluated that can be ever emitted.
With an opposing 100% ‘reflection’ the two radiances are equal and no flux emits. The power to the lamp merely raises the filament temperature untill it evaporates.
07
Will wrote quite correctly “This means that any radiative exitance is always limited by the opposing potential for such in each direction.” Which is of course why all those energy budget diagrams are garbage. In fact, for the majority of Earth’ surface the solar radiation is not transferring ANY thermal energy into the surface.
The atmosphere supports the surface temperature.
The surface temperature supports temperatures in the crust.
The inner crust temperature supports temperatures in the mantle.
The inner mantle temperature supports temperatures in the core.
That’s what we can deduce from the Second Law.
08
Because there is less total energy loss for the bulb, the filament can be raised to a higher temperature with the same amount of electricity, or, more likely in practice, we can use less electricity to produce whatever particular light output is required. Will doesn’t think any IR will be reflected by the photonic “shell” of the globe, but, seeing that it is transmitting less in the IR bands, there must be extra reflection.
Now, the process whereby the component of the rate of radiative cooling of an emitting body is slowed down depends upon there being some other radiation (from an effectively cooler source) reaching the filament. In other words, there has to be a specific process “communicating” back to the filament which, in effect, says “Hey there’s a traffic jam out here.” The reflected (or “back”) radiation is not thermalised in the filament which is at least as hot, but instead the energy in each photon is temporarily converted only to electron energy (not kinetic energy) and thence back to electro-magnetic energy as a new identical photon is emitted.
Physicists consider this a type of resonating process and the overall process is now called “pseudo-scattering” because it looks like diffuse reflection and is the same energy-wise. So it does not matter precisely how much of the IR radiation is reflected by the photonic “shell” and how much is pseudo scattered: some will affect the rate of radiative cooling of the filament, but only in the same IR bands. Hence not as much electricity is needed to produce the Planck “quota” of radiation by the filament in these IR bands, and so a greater percentage of the electricity produces visible light.
The huge difference between what happens with the bulb versus what happens in the tropospheres and solid surfaces of planets like Earth and Venus is that the electricity is able to be sufficient on its own to achieve filament temperatures in the observed range, whereas the solar radiation is far too little to do so for the planet’s surface temperature.
08
Ed Bo: Please read the comment just above which is explaining the experimental results. There’s no need to do another experiment: we are both talking about the bulb experiment and I’m just explaining the correct physics, because thermodynamics and radiative heat transfers have been my line of post-graduate study for several years now, so I may be able to help you to understand why the results are in fact just as I would have expected from the theory. They will never get even 20% efficiency, so I do not recommend investing in the product, or shares in some manufacturing company.
08
Doug, you really are too much! First you deny that the reflection back to the filament would lead to a higher filament temperature. Then, after I point out to you multiple times that controlled experiments show that this is in fact the case, you turn around 180 degrees and say that these results “could have been anticipated from standard physics”.
If that is true, then why didn’t you – the great physics master – anticipate these results?
And then you have the audacity to tell me – who just convinced you that you were wrong about this – that you “may be able to help [me] understand why the results are in fact just as [one] would have expected from the theory.” What are you smoking?
In another post, you say, ” there has to be a specific process “communicating” back to the filament which, in effect, says “Hey there’s a traffic jam out here.” Please point me to a physics text book, any physics textbook, the explains this process in detail.
70
Ed Bo
Of course there is a higher temperature in the filament, but the energy required to raise the temperature does not come from the radiation from the colder reflective coating, because any such heat transfer by radiation from a source that is not hotter than the target would violate the second law. I have explained that all the energy that raises the filament to whatever temperature it reaches comes from the supply of electricity which is redistributed so that more of it creates light in the visible spectrum. This has nothing to do with climate science anyway.
08
Nope, Ed Bo. The reflected radiation is pseudo-scattered and becomes part of the filament’s quota as per its Planck function, so the electricity has less work to do in the LW bands, and does more in the SW bands making the temperature increase, but retaining a Planck curve for the flux. The usual slight shift towards SW (based on Wien’s Displacement Law) is just a minor positive feedback because the peak frequency is proportional to the absolute temperature.
08
AZ writes “You continue to fly in the face of verifiable experimental results.” No, I refer to hundreds of experiments that support what I say – everything I say in fact. Empirical data makes the probability that I’m wrong millions to one against, as explained in the “coincidences” comment in Unthreaded. The Second Law of Thermodynamics applies to every independent one-way pencil of radiation, such as the reflected radiation which is not striking a cooler target and so is not thermalised but instead, as physicists have realised this century, is pseudo-scattered and can only slow radiative cooling of the target. Because it does that, then the electricity is used more in the SW bands when warming the filament to the higher equilibrium temperature. In all cases electricity warms the filament, not back radiation. But for Earth’s surface there is only the cold Sun, which cannot raise the already-warmer surface, and back radiation can’t help the Sun either because radiation cannot be compounded: if one electric bar radiator warms a target to 350K you cannot correctly deduce that 16 radiators will warm it to 700K. You would do better in the long run to not assume I am wrong when I write something relating to physics: it is more likely to be your own lack of understanding of entropy, and possibly lack of a degree in physics, perhaps? Forgive me if I assume such incorrectly.
08
AZ wrote: ““You continue to fly in the face of verifiable experimental results.” I do no such thing. The experimental results show that the filament gets hotter with the same input of electricity (and I have explained why) and that there is greater efficiency in that about 6% of the electricity is converted to visible light. I have explained this also, based on the laws of physics. Once people understand the correct physics they will realize that efficiency levels even over 20% are impossible. They have no evidence that proves otherwise, and never will achieve 40%, because there is a lower limitation on efficiency.
08
What a twisted up old world we live in!
They take a 215 year old invention, the filament light bulb which was claimed by the wise men and women of the Earth Saving Green Creed of Climatology to be long past its use by date as it was the creator of too much “carbon” so we had better find something better.
So we took their advice and banned the incredibly cheap and reliable 215 year old filament light bulb technology for the latest gee whiz energy saving light creating gadgetry and then found that, as usual, it proved to be no better in lots of ways that the 215 year old light bulb technology we had used over all those decades past.
In their wisdom the Green and Scientific Earth Savers then demanded that we replace modern highly efficient, totally reliable coal and gas fired power generators that provided always there, ever reliable , always on electric power to run our energy based civilisation, those coal fired generators that operated reliably for lifetimes of 50 or 60 years with efficiencies of 85% or higher, all of them are to be replaced in their entirety with a very ancient 3000 year old windmill technology which has an efficient operating life time of 20 or so years, which operate only when the wind blows and which generates a power output [ sometimes ] of about a maximum of 28% of the plated capacity or a lot less and which costs 3 or 4 times as much to build and run as does a coal fired power plant for the same amount of [ intermittent, unpredictable ] power output.
The same identical very ancient windmill technology that was rapidly and thankfully abandoned some 250 years ago or more by our ancestors just as soon as those old coal fired steam engines could be made to run reliably.
And then to further show off their Green Earth Saving credentials the Green and Scientific Earth Savers decreed that we must use those gee whiz, latest technology earth saving Solar panels for our power needs.
You know the ones where they only produce power when the Sun shines and there is not much cloud.
And then dig vast polluting holes in some forgotten nowhere to mine the highly polluting elements, [ as long of course as they are not in the Planet Savers NIMBY’s, ] to make solar panels that only work when the sun shines to generate power, again to Save the Planet!
And just when you need the power to run that latest LED gadgetry to light your home, the Sun goes down and the solar panels don’t generate power and there you sit in the dark with a house full of the latest “carbon” saving gadgetry as decreed by the Earth Savers, completely unable to do your part in Saving the Earth because you don’t have any power to run all those latest gadgets that will help Save the Earth all over again.
Truly a twisted old world indeed!
Replace a two hundred old light bulb technology that can be further developed with the latest gee whiz LED technology to “Save the Planet”
Then replace an ultra reliable two hundred year old coal fired power generating technology with a 3000 year old totally unpredictable , intermittent, unreliable vastly more costly, grossly inefficient Windmill power generation technology, abandoned as fast as possible by our ancestors, to Save the Planet all over again.
To ,do that we have to dig huge holes in some far back blocks a long way from the Planet Saver’s NIMBY’s to mine highly polluting elements to make power generating solar panels that only work when the Sun is shining.
And then insist on installing them at latitudes where the Sun shines for 3 or 4 hours a day in winter and expect them and windmills to run a civilisation of 7.5 billion people.
It seems that the Planet Savers are best described as “having minds like concrete”!
All mixed up and set very hard!
112
On my farm, we have gone back to using tallow candles. We get heat, and light, and it is all organic. For cooking we use wind-felled timber, or timber felled by an axe, and all of that is renewable and organic. We have also tried cow manure, but it is hard to light, especially when fresh.
Shame about the carbon particulates though, still I am sure it is sequestered somewhere, because it originally came from nature, didn’t it? We are just returning it!
And it keeps Mrs Whakaaro very fit, peddling to run our inter-nets thingie. But I return the favour, when she wants to listen to the wireless, and we both take turns in peddling to charge up the batteries, that run the electric fences, so that is all right, then.
140
RW
You ain’t fooling me. Been there, done that
The heat generated by your wood chopping is responsible for cagw.
A friend went from a rural property to a city business.
His first 6 months summation of the difference was “I never realised how much time you spent in the bush looking after your self”.
Without elaborating too much think considerable travel time and other costs and time to get it fixed.
Or, if you can, DIY.
20
RW, you are too much! I can’t stop chuckling about going back to tallow candles and so on. I wish you luck with that venture but I should take bets as to how long it will last. 😉
20
As a last stand measure in case commercial power fails, my wife does keep candles around. But a good flashlight with an LED bulb in it along with fresh batteries will be a much more versatile and useful measure against power failure.
Other than that, candles are strictly a decorative ambiance thing for those intimate dinners on special occasions. I much prefer those times. 😉
10
Roy
Don’t overlook those LED camp lanterns as reserve lights
00
Ian,
I do have an LED flashlight that runs off the 6 volt battery used in those camp lanterns. Pointed straight up at the white ceiling it provides some measure of useful light for the whole room. I found it for less than $5 US including battery (cheap) at Home Depot one day and it suddenly jumped right into in my cart. I may never need it now that I’m prepared for a serious blackout — the world seems to work that way.
10
pedalling
Unless you’re selling your output.
20
Peddling the pedalling? Now that is an idea. I wonder what Mrs Whakaaro’s RPM rating would be …?
20
I take it the electric fences are there to keep the greenies out.
31
Wood makes you warm at least four times.
When you fell it.
When you split it.
When you stack it.
And finally when you burn it.
Who could ask for more?
30
That really made me laugh! My husband wanted to know how you and Mrs W power yourselves? I’m never allowed to forget that I used to power myself with Mars Bars.
10
You are missing the point. The old incandescent bulbs used a lot of electricity, which polluted the atmosphere with dangerous CO2. The new bulbs create less CO2, and, when they break, release good, healthy, mercury vapour.
110
Like solar panels, which would be banned as poisonous to the environment if they were not Green. We can really pollute the planet as long as we save CO2 apparently because CO2 is the worst pollutant in human history. Apart from H2O.
121
So we think that the banning of filament type light bulbs was a somewhat stupid bit of the usual behaviour from politicians bowing and kowtowing to the green blob and the hell with the rest of the voters.
Well just wait until the ignorant Green blob wakes up to how much coal is used for cement production.
————–
A / In 2014 the World produced 7,823 million tonnes of coal [ including hard coal and lignite ]
.
B / It takes about 200 kg of coal to produce one tonne of cement.
.
C / It takes about 300-400 kg of cement is needed to produce one cubic metre of concrete.
.
D / Four billion tonnes of cement was consumed globally in 2013
.
E / China used more cement in the three years [ 2011- 2013 ] than the USA used in the entire 20th century;
China [ 2011 -2013 ] = 6.6 gigatonnes of cement .
USA [ 1901 – 2000 ] = 4.5 gigatonnes
70
Darn!
References ;
A Stunning Statistic About China and Concrete
World Coal Association
30
How much of that cement goes into the concrete at the base of the bird choppers?
40
According to http://www.aweo.org/faq.html “thousands of tons”.
20
From the Australian Anti -Wind turbine site;
Stop these things
How Much CO2 Gets Emitted to Build a Wind Turbine?
One MW of Wind Turbine capacity requires 220 tonnes of coal to manufacture
Also Real Clear Energy
Wind Is Champion at Consuming Steel and Concrete
A very interesting comparative graph is included here showing the relative amounts of steel and concrete used per MW of generating capacity by the various power generation technologies of ;
Nuclear
Wind
Coal
Natural Gas
&
The Portland wind farm in SW Victoria has 26 wind turbines with a total plated capacity of 126 MWs giving each turbine a 7 MW plated generating capacity.
On the basis of the above figures on concrete and steel used and the energy required for mining of the ores, manufacturing and transport and erection and foundations it appears that each of the Portland turbines would require the energy from around 1500 tonnes of coal to produce a turbine from mining the ore stages right through to the final power generating stage.
There is some data around that suggests that the purported CO2 emmission savings from using a Wind Turbine for power generation, when the whole process from mining to power generation is taken into account, will possibly at best, barely equal the actual CO2 emmissions that result from the whole long process of mining and processing the ores, manufacturing a wind turbine, installing it and bringing it into operation.
10
In producing those sort of comparitive stats, we can’t overlook hydro.
The up-front cost of the dam, in terms of steel and concrete, will appear to be astronomically high, until you consider that the power is almost free, and endless, and you have all of the amenity benefits of the lake formed behind the dam.
30
In reference to my above post;
Of course the whole rationale , the ONLY rationale for building wind turbines is to SAVE on CO2 emmissions.
And so by implication; If the whole chain of processes from mining and processing the ores, the manufacturing and erection of the turbines right through to the actual generation of power by a wind turbine turns out to be negative, ie; the whole process of creating a wind turbine and the CO2 produced from that process is never covered by the Turbine’s claimed lifetime CO2 savings in power generation compared to the equivalent power generated by a coal or gas or nuclear generators , if those claimed savings are negative or neutral or barely in favour of the Wind turbine, then there is no justification under any circumstances to ever have Wind turbines as a significant generation source on a nation’s electrical grid ..
Even more so when the financial impacts on the public purse, the serious societal impacts of much higher power costs plus the downgrading of grid reliability, the grid stabilisation complexities, the debilitating health problems from turbine infra sound on some rural residents and the scamming tax rents extracted by the wind turbine scammers is taken into account as well.
10
“until you consider that the power is almost free, and endless, ”
Tasmania is finding out the hard way that hydro is NOT endless.
Their hydro dams are currently very low, and BassLink is broken.
They have had to re-open the Tamar Valley gas power station, which fortunately they hadn’t started to de-commission.
20
Not that I think having mercury around is a particularly good idea but I have some difficulty swallowing the line that the mercury in a CFL is so dangerous as to cause a hazmat response, which actually happened when a woman dropped and broke one. She called 911 (emergency number in U.S.) asking what to do and minutes later she was invaded by men in protective suits with vacuum cleaners who went over her whole house like some dangerous radioactive substance had been released in large quantity. She could have swept up all the visible pieces, vacuumed the floor and as far as I can see, would never have come to any harm.
Here’s my problem. My grandfather was a dentist and for 40 years he handled mercury on a daily basis, pouring it out to mix for amalgam fillings. He even poured out some in his hand to show to his grandchildren, pushing it around to show us what it did. During his career he must have had direct contact with it many times and inhaled the vapor even more frequently. And I know of no harm it ever did to him. I have some amalgam fillings still in my mouth with no harm I can see from it.
These days good judgment would say don’t use mercury and we don’t use it where there is a substitute. For the CFL and for bright but efficient outside lighting using high pressure sodium lamps there is no substitute (LEDs are finally becoming a viable substitute). But I stick at being afraid of it and I despair of ever getting to the bottom of exactly how dangerous it really is. Knowledge is always better than fear but all we ever get handed from our “experts” is fear. Yet clearly the example of my grandfather shows us that mercury ain’t so bad as to panic over it.
I’m tired of being told to be afraid of nearly everything, as in climate change, dangerous (or not) chemicals, what I eat or what I don’t eat but should and a long list of other things. For once, all you “experts”, tell us the truth, which seems to be that it’s not as bad as you make it out to be… …just once, please, give us the real danger instead of fear.
71
Roy
Time for retrospective panic
The 1952 version of Popular Mechanics book “The Boy Mechanic” had plans for a MERCURY POOL MOTOR!!!
30
Like this? http://youtu.be/1fRC7V3KMA4
10
Roy Hogue wrote “My grandfather was a dentist and for 40 years he handled mercury on a daily basis.” So did both my parents, and my mother (who was the first woman to get the Sydney University medal in dentistry) died from Alzheimer disease, and my father was starting to get it when he also died on the same day. Their combined obituary was on the front page of “The Sydney Morning Herald” with mention also of my father’s uncle, Prof Frank Cotton who invented pilot’s anti-gravity suits. My father’s two brothers, also dentists, died young, whilst I have had many dentists as clients using my software since the 1980’s, and I have known of some who got Alzheimer Disease, with perhaps many more I did not hear about after their retirement. It is now well known that mercury causes Alzheimer disease, and that’s why it is advisable to have any amalgam fillings replaced. See this article. How old was your grandfather anyway?
04
Doug,
I cannot find anything that conclusively links mercury to Alzheimer’s. The link is circumstantial and weak. I can tell you that my grandfather definitely did not have Alzheimer’s but died of complications from a stroke.
I get suspicious when told something like, mercury is the (or one of the) most toxic substances known to man because there are clearly much more toxic substances, stuff that will kill you in minutes or seconds if ingested or inhaled. I don’t bend to fear and sensationalism.
I know the stuff has harmful effects and I’m glad to be rid of as much of it as possible. But I will not fear it.
This is like the California ballot proposition 65 passed by the voters that requires a warning wherever any kind of toxin may be present. It’s even posted on every gas pump in the state. If I believed that inhaling the gasoline fumes I smell every time I pump gas was that dangerous I would be paralyzed and dysfunctional.
Let some common sense prevail instead of fear. I’ll never get out of this world alive and I know it. Neither will you. I don’t know the time or manner of my death either. And so it is for you as well. I choose to not live in fear of some danger about to hiit me from behind with a fatal blow. That’s not living. Everyone should do the same.
20
Roy: I gave you a link to the research. Your skepticism may be the death of you.
02
And I read it. There is no data in it from which I could actually see how they reach their conclusions.
I also did some Internet research of my own. The conclusion I reached from that is above.
What I said above is still my attitude now. Yes, it’s not a good thing to have around. But it’s probably not going to be the death of me. I know I’ll never get out of this world alive and worse than that, I won’t know the time or manner of my death. I flew single engine at every chance I could get when I was younger and I always knew I was vulnerable. And so it is with driving. And just climbing up on a ladder or getting in and out of a bathtub has killed many people over the years.
So which danger shall I worry about? Answer: I’ll consider them all and look at the probability that they’ll bite me. I’ll adjust what I do if the danger is above some “must do something” threshold. And when It’s below that threshold I’ll ignore it.
20
By the way. They’re still telling us that tuna is laced with mercury but for some reason it’s still allowed to be sold and eaten. Even during my recent hospital stay they served me tuna salad sandwiches more than once. You would think a hospital kitchen or their dietitians would avoid something so dangerous.
The U.S. FDA has jurisdiction to pull something from market shelves if they thought it was sufficiently dangerous. They have not messed with tuna. And given how many groups want to influence the FDA and how so much of what they do is obviously politically influenced, I think they would love to take action if they thought they could get away with it. But they have to have some actual evidence; observation under controlled circumstances, you know, that thing that’s always in the way of those who want to push us all around and don’t care much for the facts.
This is just my opinion based on watching how things work for a long time. So you can make up your own mind, Doug and do as you think best. But so can I.
20
And, Roy, the rate of human aging is accelerated by modern eating habits and agricultural methods. We should be able to live to about 120 or perhaps more, and we can slow the rate of human aging with certain supplements like SODzyme, AMPK activator, Resveratrol, melatonin just to name a few. I consider myself a human guinea pig regarding this research. (By the way, I have done a one-year course in nutrition and post-graduate studies in Natural Medicine through Swinburne University in Melbourne.) See my site http://slower-aging.com
00
120 year life spans??? Now you’re in lala land. I don’t go there.
20
Roy – how old do you think I look? http://slower-aging.com (By the way, 120 year life spans were foretold in Genesis, first book of the Bible.)
00
Just in case there was any doubt about Turnbulls’ Socialist tag :
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/obamas-address-points-to-a-close-rapport-with-malcolm-turnbull-20160113-gm523t.html
“Barack Obama’s final State of the Union address was not written with his Australian counterpart in mind – not by a long shot. But it could have been.
On each and every one of the key issues that will dominate Malcolm Turnbull’s first visit to Washington as Prime Minister next week, the two leaders are of like mind.
Whether it is the importance of innovation or the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the challenge of climate change, the value of multiculturalism or the nature of the terrorist threat, the two leaders speak the same language.
The contrast is not just with Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, but also with Turnbull’s predecessor, Tony Abbott, especially on questions of security and social cohesion, where Abbott was prone to using stronger language.
It is not unusual for American presidents to forge a close rapport with Australian prime ministers, with George W. Bush and his “man of steel” John Howard being the most recent standout example.
What is unusual is for a Democrat president to have almost identical attitudes and policies to a Liberal Australian prime minister, which is why few on the conservative side of Australian politics will make much of it.”
Birds of a ( Socialist ) feather…….
70
What is interesting in this morning’s paper is that for the first time in history, an Australian PM Turnbull has directly refused a formal US request for more troops in a war zone. Maybe Obama does not want to win the war in Syria either but it confirms we now have an unelected socialist, leftist do nothing Prime Minister who would agree with Obama that the Great Barrier Reef is in clear and present danger, despite UNESCO saying it is not true.
60
The Australian reports today;
SARAH MARTIN
Conservatives warn of ‘World War III’ if Liberals’ moderate faction isn’t stopped from trying to topple sitting MPs.
I say: Turnbull & Bishop have split the Liberal Party.
50
Yes. They have hijacked the Prime Minister’s position, his authority and the Liberal party. It is completely different to the party which won the last election. The US government would be shocked at the refusal of their best ally to assist. When we need help, who will we ask?
60
And they are cutting a swathe through Abbott’s friends, shoring up Malcolm’s position. Dumping ministers. Forcing resignations. Old hands leaving parliament. It is all about Malcolm. Forget what’s good for the country. Stalin would be proud.
60
A good old fashioned Soviet style purge…..
00
Well I hope Malcolm will one day take a stand and have this country pay due diligence to looking into the relevant atmospheric physics. Within the next two years I hope to organise a class action that might force such, but I won’t go into details.
09
Do not get me started on Obama. He gave his annual State of the Union speech on Tuesday and the TV audience rating was his lowest ever and it was lower than the rating of any other U.S. President since televising the speech began.
He is a sinking ship to which we are chained and he’s quite willing to take as much of the country with him as he goes.
From observation over the years since he first campaigned in 2008, he isn’t worth a single meadow muffin* to honest hard working citizens.
70
* If that isn’t familiar, just remember that cattle graze in a meadow and you’ll know what I mean.
50
Also known as ‘Cow Patties’ down here Roy. 🙂
You’re correct on Obama, meadow muffins serve a purpose and produced by animals that function better in society than he ever could.
31
Among other trivia, I’ve also seen cow pies. Human imagination has a lot of fun with such things. I think more work is done to try to clean up unmentionable things than we might suspect. And I’ve often thought, just say it outright, everyone knows what you’re talking about anyway. But no, we continue to try to make it more polite (or whatever the right term is).
00
Prophetic 2008 post-poll bumper-sticker: “One Big-Ass Mistake, America“.
10
“he isn’t worth a single meadow muffin”
Roy, you deserve a pat on the head for that description 😉
00
What? Only a pat on the head? Isn’t there a prize or something? 😉
00
So long as it isn’t a Cow pat…
10
I’m glad to see the dung beetles are back clearing up our cow pats!
00
Residential (household) lighting always interested me, mainly because so much was being made of so little, in respect of power consumption.
In the main, here in Australia, lighting makes up only 7% of actual household power consumption, (see the pie chart at this link) so, with the average Australian home consuming (on average) 20KWH of power a day, and power costing (around) 25 cents per KWH, so $5.00 per day, then the lighting part of that comes in at around 35 Cents a day.
Now, think about it for a minute. What’s the first light in your home that gets turned on around dusk, and in fact, usually the last one turned off, and more often than not it stays on for all that time, the longest one in use? It’s the Kitchen light. Now designated as a work area, regulations say that this should be a bright light, and in virtually every case, it’s a bright fluoro, in my case, and in every house I have lived in over the last many tears, a tubular Fluoro. When you really think about it also, it’s probably the one which lasts the longest also, mainly because it’s not being turned on and off, and some say that is a fallacy, but it is (fairly) accurate.
This one light probably makes up around 80% of that lighting component on your power bill, so in effect, all the other lights in your home are costing you around 7 cents a day to operate, on the basis they are being used, so this ‘meme’ of changing all your home bulbs to CFL was, in my opinion, not only a waste of money, but resulted in absolutely tiny savings in power consumption (75% (The savings from conversion of incandescents to CFL’s) of 20% of 7% of 33% (The total for all Residential power consumption)) so only one third of one percent of total Nationwide power consumption, (0.34%) and that’s if EVERY home in the Country changed their bulbs.
If you changed them, the pay back period for the cost of those CFL’s by comparison was more often than not unable to be reached before those CFL’s expired, and there’s no way known they last the time periods claimed, and please don’t try and tell me the lighting is better, because they mostly go dim pretty quickly, take longer to reach their full luminescence, and invariably people replaced a (for example) 60W incandescent with a CFL equivalent or 80W or more.
They were always a con on every level.
As to that kitchen light, I use a Triphosphor fluoro, which are much brighter again than the standard one, and if and when the replacement time comes to change them, always change the starter as well. That’s there to fire the gas on startup. You can tell the bulb is on the way out when one end of the fluoro starts to darken in colour.
Residential lighting was always such a tiny part of power consumption that was overblown to mean so much.
Tony.
122
And I suspect the same here, Tony. So as a worthwhile energy saver, these CFLs and LEDs don’t do anything significant.
For years I put fluorescent lights everywhere I could simply because they lasted 10 or even 15 years. And I still buy for longevity, not energy efficiency.
If we really had to save energy for some reason — which we don’t because the crisis is man made — we would have to do away with refrigerators and freezers, air conditioning, in-sink garbage disposers, dish washers, even vacuum cleaners before worrying about lighting.
Welcome to the early 1900s where, if you wanted to keep anything cool you had an icebox* and needed to have ice delivered on an almost daily schedule. Never mind freezing anything. Never mind the 20th and 21st centuries. They would never arrive as far as energy is concerned.
21
* My grandfather’s house still had an icebox when I was born and I grew old enough to know what it was, perhaps 3 or 4 years old, so I know what they were all about. It was still there when, after WWII was in full swing, he moved to an apartment.
We have grown complacent about our modern technology and have forgotten what it takes to get along without it. I fear that we might soon get a lesson in reality that will bite very hard.
40
I remember ice boxes too Roy. We had them in Egypt for a time. New ice was delivered each day; the batman having cleaned out the box. Unfortunately nothing my parents could say or do could stop him putting the box out into the strong Egyptian summer sun to dry and air! They had to be on the alert to rescue it!
Joy of joys when we were eventually issued with a Kelvinator refrigerator. 🙂
00
I have yet another avatar pic I see. This is on my old iPad, a purple one for my newish smartphone and my original triangular green one on my laptop and old smartphone. What a chameleon I am?!
00
Annie,
The picture you get depends on the exact spelling of your email address. I discovered this one day when I clicked the preview button and up popped a different picture. I had no idea why but I started looking for a reason and soon discovered I had mistyped my email address. I corrected the typo and clicked preview again and back came the picture I was used to.
So I can happily report that you’re not a chameleon after all but the victim of how the gravatars work. You can easily verify that I’m right with a simple experiment. So you need to make sure the same email address gets used no matter where you are.
00
Actually Roy, I definitely always have the same email address at all times as I remain logged in, so I am not re-typing it. I found it was different on my new smartphone, the avatar, that is, and different on my old reading-at-breakfast iPad. For some reason it now seems to have reverted to the original one all round…strange!
00
If it resolved itself without action from you then I’ve no idea at all about the cause. The internal workings of computer software are sometimes a mystery to the best of us.
But I’m glad it’s back to normal. 🙂
00
Good analysis. My additional point is that in countries run on coal, saving power at night is no saving at all. This power is wasted anyway. No a kg of CO2 is saved.
Tony, as you know, saving base load should be the major objective, if only to save precious resources.
One of the greediest devices in the home is the electric clothes dryer, an utterly illogical device, a clam steamer. For half a lifetime I have used a gas dryer because it is fast, cheap and gas produces hot wet air. Electric dryers have to steam the clothes because they cannot allow the heat or steam out. The electricity cost and drying time is absurd. No commercial laundry would have one as they do not make sense.
However for the same period I tried to buy a gas clothes dryer from the Gas & Fuel. They never had one. I assumed this was because they did not want to compete with electricity even though most Victorian homes were plumbed for gas because of stoves, hot water and originally lighting.
In frustration I rang a commercial laundry supplier and for twice the price of an electric clothes steamer, I had my huge capacity gas dryer next to and the same size as the washing machine. The end of clothes drying and the tyranny of Pat’s four seasons, it can take a 20kg load and be finished in 20 minutes, cost almost nothing and clothes are dry, not dessicated. No more replacing silly felt runners and useless short lived tiny electric dryers.
I have yet to see a gas clothes dryer at Harvey Norman or Dick Smith or anywhere. Why?
For Victoria, most homes would have an electric clothes dryer. 10 amps, 2.5Kw. Running for hours during the day. Say 10kwhr per day. Adding to the base load. Switch to gas and the daily energy saving alone would equal all the lights in a house. The labour saving is fantastic. Across the state, 2 million electric dryers at once and you have 2,500 Megawatt at peak more than our biggest electricity base load generator at Hazelwood at 1,600Megawatt.
So our government hates incandescent bulbs but our government energy companies refuse to sell energy and time saving gas devices which would substantially reduce base load. Why?
By the way, the Germans have a great new electric dryer you can buy here. A ‘condenser’ dryer, it has a small integrated refrigerator which condenses and removes the water, liters per dry. You empty out the water after drying. This is more expensive, but far more efficient and faster of course. You do not have to release the hot steam, just condense the water out. Of course the Greens know nothing of any of this. Force people to change lightbulbs and save electricty at night? Nuts.
Also in Melbourne, we burn precious and limited gas to quickly supplement base load in the morning and night. Good idea but how much more efficient would it be to reduce the base load in the first place by using electricity for motors and electronics and gas for heating and cooling? Yes, you can cool with gas. Changing light globes does nothing for anyone except light globe manufacturers and distributors. It is as useful as windmills and solar panels, the real inconvenient truth.
42
I suspect the Greens hang their clothes outside. What idiots.
20
Hey Gee oi… looks like our government knows a thing or two despite being full of lefty greens…
“Around 54% of households in Victoria own a clothes dryer, but how often and how long they are used varies widely.” http://www.sustainability.vic.gov.au/services-and-advice/households/energy-efficiency/at-home/appliances/clothes-dryers
OMG there are incentives in place to buy a gas or heat pump dryer…http://www.sustainability.vic.gov.au/services-and-advice/households/energy-efficiency/at-home/appliances/clothes-dryers
This can’t have been written by a greeny though since they don’t know about these things so there must be some common sense people like TdeF writing public service information pages!!!
40
Exactly. I wrote at length about gas clothes dryers above. No one would buy an electric clothes dryer if they knew about gas dryers, except for the current move into apartment living. Even then the new technology condensing dryers are vastly superior, eliminating the steam problem. I had one in a holiday house and it would not work until I emptied the water. The very idea of a dryer collecting the water was a shock, honestly. The water can be tipped out instead of steam cleaning the laundry and growing mould. It is the very essence of clothes drying.
Why do Greens get to dictate the craziest non science solutions? Why did Kevin Rudd get our best and brightest together and they were media personalities, actors and actresses (there, I said it) and more silly non science people, except to surround himself with celebrities.
Why isn’t energy policy and priorities decided by scientists, not politicians? If it was, we would not have a single windmill and we would not be subsidizing solar panels in the cities. We would also have turned our massively expensive desalination plants on to feed the power stations, not the people, dramatically freeing our most precious resource, water. The CSIRO would be working on project which made both sense and money, if we did not just close it down or sell it. So would most of the BOM as so much is automated these days anyway. You would think they have the time to include the pre-1909 Federation drought in their figures and show the true picture of the Australian climate.
51
In the middle of the Y2K drought in Victoria, when Labor was desperate, there was an engineering review to look at converting Yallourn power to use sea water instead of 30% of all our fresh drinking water. The cost was prohibitive unless it was rebuilt with stainless steel, at a minimum.
However we now have a bought a $28,000,000,000 hire purchase desalination plant next door to Yallourn which is not going to be used. Ever. It has 50 full time staff and maintenance problems anyway. We will not pay it off for another 25 years at about $1Billion a year to not use it.
Similarly in other capitals including Adelaide and Sydney. Surely someone has the sense to turn it on, saving the really fresh water into rivers and sold to farmers at a huge profit? Plants only need three things. Sunshine. H2O and CO2. What is wrong with our mad Green driven politicians. Special taxes, no dams, no CO2, no water, desalination plants turned off, special light bulbs and windmills. Green religious nutters. Talk to a scientist today. At least ask one what should be done. Greens cannot add or multiply. Rudd could speak some Chinese. Turnbull is a merchant banker. Only Abbott made great sense, as he did recently in Europe though ridiculed by the Australian press, as usual. What a tragedy that the Liberal upper echelon removed the one man who knew and cared what he was doing.
41
‘Surely someone has the sense to turn it on, saving the really fresh water into rivers and sold to farmers at a huge profit?’
Could you expand on this?
20
The amount of water available to farmer is controlled, limited by the state. Then there is a price to every litre. Ask a farmer. Many farms are wet (irrigated) or dry. As CO2 is combined with H2O to form hydrated carbon dioxide (CO2)m(H2O)n or as we know it, carbonhydrates. The amount of water dictates exactly how much you can grow. Some irrigators in the Riverina in southern NSW are 2km long! Food from the desert, a giant solar collector if you have the water. For humans too, the amount of drinking water is critical. Lose few kilograms of water and you will fall over. For creatures from the sea, we need water and salt.
Water comes from our dams and river systems, Victorian or the Murray/Darling basin. We have canals too like the Mulwala canals. We can also send Melbourne’s drinking water north, to Sugarloaf and into the Goulburn. Yallourn needs lots of water, 30% of Victoria’s normal fresh water. If we had to starve Yallourn of fresh water, we would have a power shortage too and this was a critical issue in the drought, to free up precious water resources if only for drinking. The increase in crop value in South Eastern Australia could/would be 50%! This is simple arithmetic when you release say 33% for farming.
So the idea is simple. The desalination plant converts salt water but needs expensive power. Yallourn would love to use desalinated water but it costs money. I suspect that the owners do not pay for the water they use today, so why change? The desalination plant has a cost, possibly additional costs to the groups who financed it. Surely to some extent the water and electricity could be covered to some extent in a ‘contra’? Power for water, water for power.
I expect we are in a simple commercial stand off where Yallourn does not want to pay anything for water and the Desal plant wants to be paid but does not want to pay for power and the State Government does not want to be blamed for increasing costs and they are broke anyway, especially after paying $1Bn to stop a road and finding no one will fund their projects. Odd that. Meanwhile 1/3 of our fresh water is used in the power plant and the farmers have to pay for water.
Surely this is a job for government? It is why we have governments, not to pass laws about lightglobes. No political courage needed. A simple accounting solution. Stop the free State water to Yallourn. They can contra the water and power. The state can cover the different by selling the extra water. Send the Yallourn water North (we built by mandate an $800million north south pipeline for this). Sell the extra water to the farmers who grow more wheat and sell it for cash. Once it is running, the whole country is better off. That is what governments are supposed to do! Farmer output is limited mainly by availability of water not cost, as they can make money with the water. That is what farmers do! Water is the major cost and many of our dry farms could be wet farms. Food is a markup on water. The food comes from the air, not the ground. Less than 1% of plants comes from the soil. It is all CO2 and water. Trees are made from CO2.
All food is valuable. Try living without it. Food has only two major components, CO2 and H2O. We can take advantage of the extra CO2. Besides, why should people drink desalinated water when the fresh water goes up in steam?
Similarly for South Australia. Take less water, turn on the desalination plant as it cannot be worse than the current water and charge for the water. The wine growers would love additional allocations. That is so much better than doing nothing while a huge unpaid investment sits idle and gobbling cash.
Feel free to comment. I could be wrong as always, but it seems so obvious.
41
Also the agricultural output of the Western Riverina is $277million. The exports alone from the irrigated Mildura region closer to $1Billion. Surely increasing available water by 50% would bring in another $500 million. That would help pay for the desalination plant which would become an asset, not a totally useless commercial liability.
20
Thanks for that.
Your idea sounds rational and its a pity there isn’t the political will to investigate the idea further, or perhaps government hasn’t even given it a thought.
20
Up my way they are debating whether to give clean sewerage water to a gold mine for profit, or continue to pump it into the Macquarie river for the farmers and graziers downstream.
http://www.westernadvocate.com.au/story/3657329/righting-the-wrongs-mine-fights-for-water/
10
It is tragic how much money Victoria is spending on not using a desalination plant. Over $50million a week! Whether my idea is right or not, fresh water is a precious commodity. How much water would $50Million buy? Surely we can do better than pay to not use it? My idea is simple and based on the perceived need to run the whole valley on sea water if possible when perhaps 20km away, there is a huge desalination plant? Surely someone in government can join the dots?
20
Hang on a min GO! I like to hang my washing outside, most days it dries quickly and it smells nice without stupid artificial ‘fresheners’. We don’t have a clothes drier and just hang stuff on a rack in the winter if necessary.
10
let me help http://www.appliancesonline.com.au/gas-clothes-dryers/?gclid=Cj0KEQiAq920BRC8-efn57XrotYBEiQAlVlMQxu00TaGwwxYgD8dZ4JnQR4eJuqIcgUURzQz_tN9TZIaAlRc8P8HAQ
https://www.binglee.com.au/rinnai-dry-soft-6-6-0kg-dry-soft-gas-dryer
10
Amazing. All retail! This is the internet working to expand choice dramatically. Every year I would ring the Gas & Fuel or visit their showrooms and other white goods manufacturers. My unit is now 25 years old and a US commercial brand for supplier to laundrettes and not commonly available. Now gas is readily available. I put it down to time, demand and the internet making everything available and lowering the cost of selling a wide range.
00
TdeF mentions this: (my bolding here)
Every time I hear this phrase ….. BASE LOAD used, I just shake my head.
The general public has no idea whatsoever what it means, or the extremely vital importance of even attempting to explain the simple Load Curve for power consumption, the single most important thing to look at in this whole electrical power consumption (non) debate.
Currently Australia (excluding WA, and I have no idea why WA is consistently left out of power consumption figures) consumes 18,000MW of power at the absolute minimum for any day, so that means that the total of 18,000MW MUST, MUST be available for the full 24 hours of EVERY SINGLE DAY.
It’s not a task of making what amounts to minutely tiny little efficiencies , like changing light bulbs or even electric clothes dryers, or dumping it for aluminium smelting.
It’s an absolute physical requirement.
It’s hospitals, every emergency service, Industry that now operates 24/7, Business that now operates 24/7.
It’s the electric rail system, which operates 24/7.
It’s traffic control and lighting of roads and streets.
It’s every High Rise building in every town and city, small or large, every one of them you can see that’s taller than 2 stories, that needs those compressors on the roof of every one of them to operate 24/7, not to cool or heat them, but to supply and circulate breathing air into and out of them. The taller they are, the bigger the compressor, the more power consumed.
It’s Coles and Woolies, and every other Supermarket or general store, or 7/11, every one of them, small to huge, which have humungous banks of cool, cold, and very cold storage units to keep the food we eat. If those units are off line at all, then it all HAS to be thrown out and replaced.
It’s every city shop and office which is required to be lit all night.
NONE of all of that can just be turned of, be rationed, or cyclically rotated. It MUST be there.
Off peak residential water heating is a (very) minor part of that.
Residential light bulb changing is so minor, it most probably would not even register.
Clothes dryers is also a very minor part.
Residential air conditioning is also minor.
Wind and solar can NEVER supply that. You need power that is available ABSOLUTELY on a 24 hour basis, and until people are actually told that so that they understand it, then this debate of replacing coal fired power with wind and solar will persist.
I know I harp on this in a manner similar to a broken record, but it is just so vital.
We can make efficiencies in the home, but they are so minor as to be not even noticeable.
Until there is widespread understanding about this, I’m just beating my head against the wall, one voice which no one takes any notice of. There ARE people out there who KNOW this, and yet they dare not even mention it.
Sometimes, words fail me.
Tony.
20
Tony, please check the amounts on clothes drying. Do you do the laundry? In the land of the Hills Hoist, in even a small family in winter, this takes hours per day at 10 amps or hours of taking out and hanging laundry and bringing it in. Every day but harder when it rains. Most appliances would use far less than one amp. A 100 watt globe is only 100/230 or .4 amps, so it is 25 x100 watt light globes. I suspect that short of airconditioning in summer, nothing uses more domestic power than the millions of Minimax dryers around the country and they are grossly inefficient, slow, expensive and ineffectual.
As an aside, in Russia my landlady in a guest house in Listvyanka on Lake Baikal returned my laundry soaking wet . Drying? Just wait. Or in winter hang it out until snap frozen and then shake the ice off.
Also I love the efficienty of reverse cycle airconditioning, often pumping 2kw free for every 1kw used, so 3x as cost efficient as an electric heater. Who knows this stuff?
31
You are right as always, TdeF. The only electric clothes driers that are sold in Canada are to those people who are not on natural gas reticulation.
Gee Aye does have a point. A clothes drier is a modern necessity in Canada, whereas even in Tasmania it is usually possible to dry them out of doors.
Along the same line of reasoning, I have difficulty with the near religious affiliation people have with electric air conditioners. Gas fired adsorption units, should they be in such demand as to bring the capital outlay down, would also save a load on the grid in the summer months.
00
yes – fluoro in the kitchen…but i’m still using incandescent in living areas, because I prefer its glow…except it now costs about 500% more than it did prior to all the CAGW fuss. go figure.
meanwhile, this morning heard talk show host talking to 3AW morning host about what was on his program today – Melbourne’s extreme, unprecedented, out-of-whack weather no less. talk show host says you know what they say – Melbourne – four seasons in one day. the 3AW host reacted almost angrily – I’ve never heard of that!
having heard it all my life, his response made me laugh. besides…
Wikipedia: “Four Seasons in One Day” is a 1992 single released by rock group Crowded House…
It was written about the city of Melbourne as it is commonly known as being a city of “four seasons in one day”, because the weather patterns in Melbourne are like ‘four seasons in one day’…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Seasons_in_One_Day
and, from the paper that, in 2000, gave us the infamous (now disappeared) headline “Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past”:
13 Jan: UK Independent: Lizzie Dearden: UK weather: Snow warnings for England and Scotland as temperatures expected to plummet to -15C
The cold snap comes after the warmest December on record in the UK
Temperatures are expected to plummet as low as -15C in parts of the UK over the coming days as several inches of snowfall threatens to block roads and railways.
Even London could see light snow as the cold snap takes hold, bringing ice, frost and Arctic winds to the country.
Amber and yellow warnings are in place on Wednesday and Thursday in parts of northern England and Scotland, with the heaviest snow arriving in Shetland and border regions tonight.
The Met Office is urging people to prepare for “very difficult travelling conditions” and possible disruption to transport and power supplies, while cold alerts have been issued by Public Health England and charities for asthma sufferers and the elderly…
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-weather-snow-ice-frost-warnings-for-england-and-scotland-as-temperatures-expected-to-plummet-to-a6809761.html
60
We first came to Melbourne in 1984 and were given two pieces of advice:
1. Buy a Melway
2. Expect four seasons in a day!
The forecast weather in the UK sounds like very usual winter weather to me; it nearly always happens like that at some stage. What is different is the amount of warning hype/drivel.
Same here in Victoria now; since when was one day of 40/42 a ‘heatwave’. I was always under the impression that a heatwave lasted several days minimum. I will admit though that after yesterday’s 42 here I’m not sorry it’s cool and wet today!
40
That’s 107 °F. Southern california is not unfamiliar with such temperatures since 110 (43 C) is fairly common in the summer depending on where you are. So yes, it’s all hype and drivel for sensationalism to get audience share. Bless their little hearts, they can’t help it.
50
Annie here on the 13th we had a high of 38.9°C on the 14th the high was 16.7°C with light showers, anyone that lives in Victoria and hasn’t heard that 4 seasons saying either lives in an incubator or grew up with Gollum under a mountain.
50
btw WUWT has jo’s Daniel Alongi thread up & some are saying he’s not a “climate scientist”. I’ve posted the following in the comments & at jo’s thread:
(some other familiar CAGW names in the list):
PDF: 4 pages: Great Barrier Reef Foundation: Research projects
p3 of 4: Solutions & Adaptation,
Carbon Budget, Ocean Acidification – Daniel M. Alongi – Funding allocated 2013/2014 & 2014/2015
Carbon chemistry – Daniel M. Alongi – Funding allocated 2013/2014, 2014/2015
http://www.barrierreef.org/sites/default/files/List%20of%20GBRF%20Funded
%20Projects_March2015_1.pdf
20
the second link will explain why i’m posting the first!
Feb 2014: PennLive: Penn State president-elect Eric Barron was renowned researcher, community leader through two decades in State College
Eric Barron is coming home, and along with him he’ll bring a wry sense of humor, a reputation as a noted climate researcher and an affinity for racquetball…
The president-elect spent about two decades in State College between 1986 and 2006, serving as the director of the Earth System Science Center and spending his last four years at the university as the dean of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences…
While at Penn State, Barron – who has a background in climatology and atmospheric research — became the founding director of the Earth System Science Center, a research initiative focused on the study of the Earth as a system…
After Barron was named dean of the College, he brought in Michael Mann — a leading researcher in global warming and climate change — to serve as the director of the Earth System Science Center. Mann said he remembers Barron as a “great” scientist and a “consummate administrator and leader,” also adding that he’s delighted to see him named the next president at Penn State.
“He’s adept at building consensus, something that I think was apparent years ago when he was on the local school board,” Mann said. “Eric displays both wisdom and objectivity in how he goes about making decisions. Even those who might not agree with a given decision recognize it was made comprehensively and objectively.”…
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2014/02/new_penn_state_president_eric.html
13 Jan: TheCollegeFix: Penn State asks students to report microaggressions to administrators
by Michael McGrady, CU Colorado Springs
At Pennsylvania State University, no hurt feeling is too small, no slight too inconsequential, no unintentionally biased statement too unimportant.
Administrators want to know it all…
“There is no place for hate, overt or subtle, at Penn State – such actions do not represent our mutually held values,” Eric Barron, president of Penn State, stated in a recent message to the campus community…
More than 1,000 images of a stop sign in the form of posters and magnets have been distributed at Penn State…The posters classify a wide array of situations as a “bias incident” including cases of discrimination, bigotry, inequity, sexual assault, injustice, and much more.
Barron, in his message to the campus, stated that students should report acts of “hate or intolerance.”
Lisa Powers, director of Penn State’s strategic communications office, said in an email to The College Fix that an act of intolerance includes microaggressions…
Powers told The College Fix: “The First Amendment doesn’t just apply to those who express ideas with which we agree. It also applies to those whose ideas we may find challenging, repugnant or even appalling. By providing an outlet for individuals to report bias they have seen or experienced, we are giving them an equal right to express their thoughts and feelings on the matter.”
http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/25845/
30
another on today’s “education” system!
13 Jan: UK Daily Mail: David Martosko: EXCLUSIVE: Textbook sales leader says national Common Core education standards are ‘all about the money’ as teacher insists bureaucrats created a ‘new f**king system that f**king sucks to sell more books’
‘I hate kids,’ confessed the textbook sales leader. ‘I’m in it to sell books. Don’t even kid yourself for a heartbeat’
‘Oh my god, it’s all a money game. It’s all a money game,’ she said
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt fired the sales executive Tuesday morning after DailyMail.com told the company about the video
The guerrilla video crew that exposed Obamaphone cheaters and shut down the left-wing advocacy group ACORN is at it again, this time hammering the ‘Common Core’ education standards as a scheme for publishers to sell more textbooks…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3394331/Textbook-sales-leader-says-national-Common-Core-education-standards-money.html?ito=video_player_click
40
13 Jan: ReutersCarbonPulse: Mike Szabo: German authorities charge British man for suspected tax evasion in EU carbon trading probe
German prosecutors have charged a British man suspected of forming part of a gang that evaded some €58 million in taxes using the EU ETS between Sep. 2009 and Apr. 2010, the authorities said in a statement on Wednesday.
The 35-year old man, formerly director of a Munich-based trading firm, turned himself in at Frankfurt airport last September, the prosecutors said.
The individual was not named but he matches the Frankfurt Prosecutors’ office’s description of Faisal Zahoor Ahmad from Halifax, West Yorkshire, who managed Munich-based Roter Stern GmbH and whom German authorities said they had arrested last September after issuing an international warrant in Apr. 2014…
Ahmad’s arrest came days before another British man, 57-year old Mohammad Safdar Gohir, was extradited to Germany from the US over similar charges linked to €136 million in evaded taxes, after he was detained in Las Vegas in May 2014.
Authorities said Gohir is “strongly suspected” of masterminding and funding a VAT carousel fraud ring through his Dubai-headquartered company during the period in question, which traded allowances with four other firms based in Frankfurt, Munich and Berlin.
US court documents seen by Carbon Pulse show that the allowances traded between Gohir’s MP Solutions FZE, and German-based Roter Stern GmbH, Tageslicht Umweltssysteme GmbH, Energie Intelligenz GmbH, and Vektor Energie GmbH, were “later sold almost exclusively” to German investment bank Deutsche Bank…
http://carbon-pulse.com/14181/
30
Relax! No new ice age for ages;
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-14/global-warming-could-stave-off-next-ice-age-for-100,000-years/7088698
40
‘Professor Allen said the world was currently in a mild interlude coinciding with a near-circular orbit like one 400,000 years ago when the mild interglacial lasted longer than usual.’
Hmmm … that’s a bit of a stretch.
30
They are headlining the story at Watts and I picked up a copy of the paper.
http://www.clim-past.net/7/1415/2011/cp-7-1415-2011.pdf
You can skip most of it and jump to the ‘discussion’ where he comes up with a novel idea on how glaciations come to an end, its very dusty.
20
We are in an ice age. Glacial periods (assuming that’s what you mean) are about 100,000 years apart anyway, being regulated by cycles in the Earth’s eccentricity that affect the average annual mean distance to the Sun. There will be a ~500 year decline by about 1 to 2 degrees starting soon after the next 30 year warming period from 2028 to 2058.
211
We are already familiar with the basics, the author is referring to the squiggle around 400,000 thousand years ago.
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/temp/vostok/graphics/tempplot5.gif
My theory on the Holocene plateau is related to the Younger Dryas placing a damper on temperature excess.
20
Your start date for the next warming looks accurate.
https://justdata.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/continuitybysectors1900-2009sine.jpg
It appears to be a 60 year cycle.
20
I archived this prediction on 22 August 2011 …
“From 2003 the effect of El Niño had passed and a slightly declining trend has been observed. This is the net effect of the 60-year cycle starting to decline whilst the 934 year cycle is still rising.”
08
12 Jan: Reuters: Spanish court demands multi-million-euro bonds from Abengoa ex-bosses
Spain’s High Court on Tuesday increased the pressure on two former managers of troubled engineering and energy firm Abengoa, giving them 24 hours to deposit millions of euros in bonds as it investigates mismanagement allegations…
On Tuesday the High Court said in a written ruling that insurance contracts presented by the former managers to cover the funds would not adequately cover all eventualities, adding that the two would have to provide the cash themselves.
The court is investigating whether there are grounds to charge Benjumea and Sanchez with mismanagement, and it is also looking into insider trading accusations against Sanchez.
Magistrates had previously said they could freeze Benjumea and Sanchez’s assets if the bonds were not posted…
http://uk.reuters.com/article/abengoa-lawsuit-idUKL8N14W3MR20160112
30
This statement in the [SNIP “MIT press release”] is incorrect: “the infrared wavelengths get reflected as if from a mirror. They then travel back to the filament, adding more heat that then gets converted to more light.“
Radiation such as the radiation which comes back to the filament is not thermalised ([SNIP, “as MIT”] claims it is) and the energy in that radiation only temporarily becomes electron energy (raising an electron through some quantum step) and then is re-emitted with an identical photon that cannot thus convert IR into visible radiation” as the electron returns to exactly its original state.
That’s is why they incorrectly think they could achieve 40% efficiency, but I guess even <10% will be good for Christmas colored light shows and small special purpose incandescent light globes.
08
Doug,
All this presumes that photons are like bullets, which is reasonable for high energy photons that I work with (diagnostic xrays and nuclear isotopes) but does not work well for Infrared.
Infrared wavelengths do not travel back to the filament , adding more heat, (IMHO), they just do not pass at all if there is no difference in temperature. Since a reflector has effectively the same temperature as the source it inhibits any radiant heat transfer.
05
Yes that’s what I said and explained in my 2012 paper. Professor Johnson wrote …
“We shall find that the answer is resonance in a system of resonators (oscillating
molecules):
• incoming radiation is absorbed by resonance,
• absorbed incoming radiation is emitted as outgoing radiation, or is
stored as internal/heat energy,
• incoming frequencies below cut-off are emitted,
• incoming frequencies above cut-off are stored as internal heat energy.”
Mathematical Physics of BlackBody Radiation” page 24
08
Neon the 5th element Lighting gives a nice rosy glow for night lights and does not interfere with sleep. Most of the LED nightlights wake people up fully which is not wanted.
40
Rocky @ # 49
and any others who might be suffering from some insomnia over the last few years.
E.M Smith a very smart and switched on guy indeed and otherwise known as The Chiefio has an often excellent blog article on items that catch his interest.
This entry is on “superchiasmatic LED light insomnia”
A graph of the spectrum for the common home lighting LEDs from the Wiki entry on LED’s is supplied.
Chiefio’s blog article is well worth a read and some mulling over if you have installed LED lighting and anybody in your family has recently started to suffer from insomnia.
The crux of Chiefio’s article is that the common LEDs have a very sharp peak in the blue light spectrum. [ Wiki graph as above ]
And the sharp peak of the blue light spectrum of the particular common type of LEDs resets the body’s biological clock.
So lots of [ blue spectrum] LED lighting at night and some individuals will be quite susceptible to having their biological clock reset to a time that no longer matches the daylight / night time changes .
A type of semi-permanent jet lag effect but due in this case to the spectrum created biological clock resetting characteristics of LED lighting.
—————-
[ quoted selectively ]
&
Outdoor-lighting research suggests strong LED impact in suppressing melatonin
[ quoted ]
Not so hot on a good long night’s sleep myself these days but on reading Chiefio’s article again, just maybe I will try changing my computer screen background colour from the nice blue I now have to something else plus changing the LED lighting I have in my “office” and then see how my night time sleep goes.
[This was probably trapped in moderation because of the length. We prefer smaller direct quotes with links to the source. A shorter summary in your own words along with the links would be preferable. Otherwise there’s no problem and this is approved for publication.] AZ
20
Flux! You are looking for “flux” — it’s a cool little program I use to make my screens go orange-dim at night time. I wouldn’t be without it now. Just set your timezone, and choose the depth of color, and the program changes the screens every day.
I also have bought alternate lights for night time — and even amber glasses –though I only use them if I wake up too early and I want to filter out the blue light of dawn briefly so I can get back to sleep.
50
Thanks for that hint Jo. I’m giving it a try!
00
All very well AZ (moderator),however ROM is prone to long replies. As he says he has “quoted selectively” here.
So I think the filter needs to be opened out a bit.
00
ROM: Regarding melatonin, I have been taking a high dose (10mg or sometimes 20mg) every night for I would estimate about 20 years. I fall fast asleep quickly and sleep more deeply, probably gaining an hour night. There’s no doubt in my mind that daylight “switches off” the effect of melatonin quite quickly and, when taking it at night, I suggest doing so just before lights out. There is also evidence that it helps prevent breast cancer and slows the aging process. There is more on my site http://slower-aging.com of course.
00
problem solved? not really. worth reading for the various CAGW remedies suggested:
13 Jan: ReutersCarbonPulse: California air regulators weigh how to mitigate SoCal methane disaster with offsets
By Jim Hight, Senior Editor, Climate Change Business Journal
SoCal Gas Co’s Aliso Canyon methane leak is a disaster for the adjacent communities and a setback for California’s climate change goals, but it’s also a large potential business opportunity for some California businesses, farmers, cities and nonprofits…
Since methane is a more potent GHG than carbon-dioxide, ARB uses the latest IPCC analyses to calculate that one ton of methane = 25 tons of CO2. So 130,000 tons equates to 3.25 million tons of CO2-equivalent emissions. At current California carbon allowance prices of $12 to $13 per CO2-e, we’re talking potential demand for $40 million worth of carbon offsets…
http://carbon-pulse.com/14188/
update for those following this story:
13 Jan: ReutersCarbonPulse: Ben Garside: EU ETS reform work limbo continues as MEPs reject offer to split work
The issue will now be decided by the chairs of the parliamentary committees, which meet next on Thursday, though it will most likely be raised at their next meeting a week later…
http://carbon-pulse.com/14191/
10
Bogus ratios; CH4 breaks down in air into H2O and CO2. Their numbers are “added” in.
10
Well I’m betting they will never get anything like 40% efficiency. Max Planck would turn in his grave if they managed to squash or reshaped his beautiful curves.
Radiation (such as the radiation which comes back to the filament) is not thermalised (as the author said in the above post) and the energy in that radiation only temporarily becomes electron energy before an identical photon pops back out, thinking it’s a part of the filament’s own Planck quota – which it is.
It is the electricity which can now make the filament hotter, and some of it finds its job in the IR bands has already been done by the reflected stuff, so the electricity finds some use for itself boosting the SW emission with more effort than it needs for the low energy output that’s not as low as it would have been. Get it? And there’s a minor bonus positive feedback than shifts the whole Planck thing more towards the visible light end. So that’s how the whole thing works.
08
I don’t know what Jo means about the spectrum of LED bulbs being so unnatural as to be hated; the first one I turned on looked much more like incandescent bulbs than did fluorescent bulbs. Given that there are LEDs of several colours in a white LED bulb, the manufacturer has some control over the spectrum by varying the relative numbers of LEDs each colour.
Let’s also remember bulb lifetime and cost; and the fact that in cold climates incandescent bulbs provide also some heat, which would otherwise be provided by other heat sources.
30
14 Jan: Bloomberg: Jessica Shankleman: As Oil Crashed, Renewables Attracted Record $329 Billion (in 2015)
Wind and solar added about 121 gigawatts of capacity
The 4 percent increase in clean energy technology spending from 2014 reflected tumbling prices for photovoltaics and wind turbines as well as a few big financings for offshore wind farms on the drawing board for years, according to research from Bloomberg New Energy Finance released on Thursday.
“These figures are a stunning riposte to all those who expected clean energy investment to stall on falling oil and gas prices,” said Michael Liebreich, founder of the London-based research arm of Bloomberg LP…
China remained the biggest market for renewables, increasing investment 17 percent to $110.5 billion. That’s almost double the $56 billion invested in the U.S., which was second in the BNEF rankings…
In India, funding for clean energy rose 23 percent to $10.9 billion, and new markets including Mexico, Chile and South Africa attracted tens of billions of dollars. Brazil bucked the trend with a 10 percent drop to $7.5 billion…
***Europe recorded its weakest year since 2006, in part because of slower activity in Germany after the government cut subsidies and revealed plans for a new auctioning system in 2017. Investment in the continent’s biggest economy fell by 42 percent to $10.6 billion. The continent as a whole suffered an 18 percent drop to $58.5 billion.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-14/renewables-drew-record-329-billion-in-year-oil-prices-crashed
00
How much of all of that was hydro?
10
Wind pumped and PV pumped hydro is almost viable in the Canary islands where other fuel costs are astronomical!
Just imagine a large doable underwater thorium reactor, near Scandahovia tuned for maximum efficiency/efficacy continuously pumping non saline pure H20 to maximum altitude for storage of energy. Thus a completely renewable reliable on demand power at any scale imaginable! I suppose that would not fit well with Naomi’s plan!! 😉
10
Off topic, but here is an update on the electricity situation in Tasmania.
Hints of brownouts, blackouts, and curtailment are beginning to surface.
The Premier admits it is a “tough situation”.
10
I wish the Tasmanian Government was not taking a defensive position on electricity supply, they should be reminding voters about Union’s Labor & Greens being largely responsible for the situation.
22
The punters blame whoever can’t fix the problem quickly
Politics 101, lecture 1
20
13 Jan: ClimateChangeNews: Megan Darby: Climate communicators told: Don’t use protest pictures
Most people don’t identify with environmentalists, surveys show, so react cynically to images of demonstrations
If you want to inspire people to act on climate change, for goodness’ sake don’t use a photo of long-haired hippies waving a banner.
Such images “attracted widespread cynicism” in surveys, according to guidance (LINK) launched by Oxford-based think tank Climate Outreach on Thursday…
Instead, researchers recommend photos of real people affected by impacts of global warming like floods, as more emotionally powerful. These should be coupled with information about potential climate solutions, so the viewer does not feel overwhelmed.
They have set up an online gallery (LINK) for researchers, campaigners and journalists to find suitable images…
The principles for choosing the best images were based on an online survey in the US, UK and Germany, plus discussion groups and informal interviews with experts.
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/01/14/climate-communicators-told-dont-use-protest-pictures/
13 Jan: ClimateOutreach.org: New Resource & Website : Climate Visuals – 7 Key Principles for Visual Climate Change Communication
DOWNLOAD: The seven key findings also inspired the Climate Visuals website (LINK), an evidence-based resource for visual climate change communication a growing and interactive library of images.
http://climateoutreach.org/resources/visual-climate-change-communication/
00
14 Jan: ClimateChangeNews: Alex Pashley: Climate calamity ‘top threat’ to global economy in 2016
Climate disasters seen doing greatest damage for first time, finds World Economic Forum survey of global risks
Disasters caused by climate change beat nuclear proliferation and forced migrations to head economists’ concerns for the year ahead.
A survey of 750 experts (LINK) by the World Economic Forum before its annual meeting in Switzerland next week pushed the environment to first place in 11 years.
“Climate change is exacerbating more risks than ever before in terms of water crises, food shortages, constrained economic growth, weaker societal cohesion and increased security risks,” said Cecilia Reyes, chief risk officer at Zurich Insurance Group who collaborated on the report…
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/01/14/climate-calamity-top-threat-to-global-economy-in-2016/
World Economic Forum: Global Risks Report 2016
http://reports.weforum.org/global-risks-2016/
00
At a news conference last week (October 2015) in Brussels, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism.
Read More At Investor’s Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/021015-738779-climate-change-scare-tool-to-destroy-capitalism.htm#ixzz3xG7NubF1
10
in case you don’t want to download the Climate Visuals stuff:
Climate Visuals: An evidence-based resource for climate change communicaton
http://www.climatevisuals.org/
00
14 Jan: CarbonBrief: Robert McSweeney: Q&A: How scientists link extreme weather to climate change
A rapid near-time analysis of the UK’s record-breaking wet December in 2015 suggests that climate change increased the odds of the exceptionally high rainfall by 50-75%.
Carbon Brief takes a look at the research and quizzes the experts on the science behind attributing extreme weather events to human-caused climate change…
You can find more details on the findings, which haven’t yet been peer-reviewed, on the climateprediction.net (LINK) website…
Following the announcement of these results, Carbon Brief spoke to two of the scientists behind the research: Prof Myles Allen, a professor of geosystem science, and Dr Friederike Otto, a senior researcher. Both are at the Environmental Change Institute (ECI) at the University of Oxford – a leading centre for attribution research…
http://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-how-scientists-link-extreme-weather-to-climate-change?utm_content=bufferec861&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
ClimatePrediction.net: 2015 December Extreme weather in the UK
We use a combination of statistical and dynamical modelling to assess the relative roles of observed sea surface temperature anomalies and anthropogenic influence on climate in these temperature and precipitation anomalies. The section Observational analysis gives the results from statistical modelling based on observed time series alone. The sections Large ensemble atmospheric simulations: Weather@home and Coupled model simulations: EC-Earth give results from the weather@home model simulations and from the independent coupled model EC-Earth and explain the experimental setup of the two methods.
http://www.climateprediction.net/weatherathome/2015-december-extreme-weather-in-the-uk/
10
14 Jan: CarbonBrief: Andrew Barrett: Guest post: Untangling fact from fiction in media warnings of extreme weather
Dr Andrew Barrett is a researcher in the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading. His work focuses on the physical mechanisms behind why we get heavy and localised rain, which has been the cause of recent flooding events in the UK.
The confusion between hurricanes and windstorms has been further complicated by the fact the Met Office are now naming UK winter storms, something previously only associated with hurricanes…
Next time you’re wondering if the weather is likely to change, think critically about the stories and claims you see. You can also test yourself with our BuzzFeed quiz (LINK), launched today by a network of early career researchers called the Voice of Young Science (LINK)…
http://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-untangling-fact-from-fiction-in-media-warnings-of-extreme-weather?utm_content=buffer5a596&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
00
multiple links:
13 Jan: Financial Times: Martin Sandbu: Free Lunch: The economic enormity of climate change
Energy revolution looks ever more necessary — and achievable
Kenneth Rogoff, the Harvard economics professor who was formerly the chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, rounds up the evidence in his latest op-ed that extreme weather harms growth. Read it in conjunction with Amy Davidson’s New Yorker review of William Chester Jordan’s book on the three-year Great Famine that started exactly 700 years ago and was caused by changes in the climate. All of this makes the most recent economic estimates of the cost of unabated climate change, which are huge and which we covered in an earlier Free Lunch, less shocking but no less scary. And for slightly lighter research, which nonetheless brings home the same point, Tyler Cowen points to a new paper analysing a billion tweets to document a fall in happiness when temperatures rise above 70F…
What to do? Adair Turner rehearses the case we have made many times in this space: the investments needed to bring climate change under control are large but affordable and profitable. He writes that the Paris commitments require $68tn in energy-related investment by 2040; limiting temperature rises to 2C would require only marginally more — $75tn…
So we are left with the politics: how to overcome inertia and resistance? …
Christopher Flavelle goes through recent psychological studies documenting that neither moralising nor scaremongering help win over climate sceptics. A simpler focus on the economic advantages of climate policies can be much more effective — something illustrated by Ben Ho’s recent piece on the conservative case for solar subsidies…
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/3/9bf4e34e-b929-11e5-bf7e-8a339b6f2164.html
00
13 Jan: Scientific American: Mark Fischetti: Ask the Experts: Is El Nino to Blame for So Much Weird Weather?
Winter heat, pounding rains, tornadoes—a climatologist explains which extremes can be attributed to El Nino and which cannot
We asked Emily Becker, a research scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who specializes in climate diagnostics, to clarify how much of our unusual weather we can blame on El Nino.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ask-the-experts-is-el-nino-to-blame-for-so-
much-weird-weather/
00
Worth a read
http://notrickszone.com/2016/01/13/japanese-modeling-expert-slams-james-hansen-climate-scientists-calling-them-lawbreakers-in-the-court-of-science/#sthash.5ZTV3Fqy.dpbs
31
And here I was thinking the light bulb was just a passing fad… 🙂
20
@Billy Bob Hall, brilliant!
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Sorry Jo, but the incandescent light bulb was more efficient, cheaper and brighter than CFL’s and LED’s. The Edison light bulbs were banned in favour of an green ideology and because of that prices of CFL’s and LED’s sky-rocketed. Here you have The Edison light bulb of one man’s greatest inventions corrupted by a political agenda overnight. In the UK you can still buy incandescent light bulbs from on-line and in small shops. You got to give it to these enviro-lunatics they actually believed by phasing out the Edison light bulb you could reduce world temperatures to under 2 degrees by 2020.
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Bartender refer to my post below.
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AZ:
In response to your question, “real experimental results” (over 850 this century) confirm force fields create temperature gradients. What I write is developed directly from the Second Law using standard Kinetic Theory. Every vortex tube throughout the world also confirms what I say.
The Second Law causes there to be a density gradient and a temperature gradient in a planet’s troposphere and even in sub-surface regions down to the core, and I have explained why. As a result, the process described in the Second Law enables heat transfers towards the core provided entropy is increasing.
In a nutshell, all temperatures within a planetary system, right down to the core, are determined by this process. The concept that temperatures are determined by radiative forcing or by hot planetary cores cooling off is wrong, because it would be a huge coincidence if all planets just happened to have just the right core temperature and then cool off with just the right temperature gradient down to just the right altitude where there is then just the right temperature to be in radiative balance with the Sun. The probability of these “coincidences” is millions to one against.
How does the core of a planet “know” how far away is the Sun? It doesn’t. The intensity of the Sun’s radiation is what has determined (and will continue to maintain) the core temperatures of all planets and satellite moons.
08
It’s not a good idea, AZ, to assume what I say is incorrect when you have not read the development of the hypothesis that uses standard physics. I quote an unsolicited review of my book …
“The fallacies in the greenhouse conjecture are exposed rigorously and backed up by a comprehensive study (in the Appendix) which compares rainfall and temperature data for locations on three continents. The study concludes convincingly that the wetter regions do indeed have lower daily maximum and minimum temperatures than dry regions at similar latitudes and altitudes. This supports the hypothesis in the book which shows that so-called “greenhouse gases” (mostly water vapor and a little carbon dioxide) do in fact reduce the lapse rate and thus lower the “supported” temperature at the surface. In other words, water vapor cools and so does carbon dioxide, the latter by only a minuscule amount.
“The book discusses how and why surface cooling slows down almost to a halt in the early pre-dawn hours as the supported temperature is approached. This slowing down process is well known, but the concept of the supporting temperature (due to a temperature gradient autonomously induced by gravity) was not understood, even though this “gravito-thermal” effect was originally proposed in the nineteenth century. Modern day physics can now be used to prove the Loschmidt effect is indeed a reality, as this book shows.
“As a physicist, I can honestly say that the physics is indeed mainstream and valid in all respects. It discusses the maximum entropy conditions that evolve as the state of thermodynamic equilibrium is approached, and then goes on to develop a real break-through hypothesis of “heat creep” which, when we consider what happens on Earth and other planets with atmospheres, we see must be the process which explains how the necessary energy gets into the surface of Venus to raise its temperature during its sunlit period. Indeed all planetary temperature data, even that below any surface, can be explained by the hypothesis in this book, which is indeed a totally new paradigm that completely demolishes the old greenhouse conjecture that was based on mistaken understanding of the laws of physics.”
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WOW!!! possibly three times as efficient as current LED’s. I’ve just returned from three nights in the bush catching marron. All of us involved are almost septagenarians, so have seen torch (flashlight) technology evolve over decades. We were commenting on how remarkable our led torches were compared with those with fragile, inneficient, dull, power gobbling torches of our youth.
I look forward to living long enough to see this new technology in common use.
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No Ted, only three times as efficient as current incandescent bulbs. I have explained their observed results with standard physics, but standard physics can also be used to prove that their guesswork about getting 40% efficiency in the future is based on incorrect physics similar to the GH radiative forcing conjecture, which is also based on false physics.
07
In “simple terms” AZ it means I have explained the “real experimental results” and why they do not violate any laws of physics. Only the author’s assumption that it will be possible to get 40% efficiency violates the laws of physics, and of course has not been demonstrated in any real experimental results. Once again, I say it is not advisable to assume I’m wrong if you are not qualified in physics (as I am, with extensive postgraduate studies in thermodynamics) and you have not even read my papers.
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And AZ I think you should not find it too hard to understand what I wrote in the comment in moderation, namely that “if one electric bar radiator warms a target to 350K you cannot correctly deduce that 16 radiators will warm it to 700K” with its obvious implication that Earth’s surface temperature cannot be determined by adding the flux from back radiation to that from solar radiation, as does the IPCC. Correct physics explains what we do indeed observe.
07
Jo wrote: “Doug, every long and complex theory can be explained in a sentence — at least so that the main identifying difference with the current way of doing things is obvious.”
OK here is a one sentence “summary” of my paper “Planetary Core and Surface Temperatures”
The hypothesis turns planets and moons inside out, proving that they are not cooling from the core outwards, but warming from the upper atmosphere inwards, so that we find that the Sun is in fact maintaining all temperatures from the upper atmosphere to the core.
07
Fly: A one-way pencil of radiation is basically radiation from a source of spontaneous radiation to a target. For example, radiation from the Sun to, let’s say, a small puddle of water which then warms a bit and partially evaporates, thus transferring some of the absorbed energy from the Sun’s radiation back into the atmosphere in the form of kinetic (thermal) energy that crossed the surface-atmosphere boundary via both molecular collision and evaporative processes.
07
Fly: A one-way pencil of radiation is basically radiation from a source of spontaneous radiation to a target. For example, radiation from the Sun to, let’s say, a small puddle of water which then warms a bit and partially evaporates, thus transferring some of the absorbed energy from the Sun’s radiation back into the atmosphere in the form of kinetic (thermal) energy that crossed the surface-atmosphere boundary via both molecular collision and evaporative processes. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pencil_(optics)
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What do you mean by a vortex tube please, Doug?
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Anton: A vortex tube is a simple device with one air inlet and two air outlets. Pressurized air is forced into the inlet and it swirls around inside. The outlet on the periphery has hotter air than the input air; the outlet at the center has colder air than the inlet. It’s a neat device with no moving parts.
Doug has stated repeatedly that he considers this a thermodynamically isolated system, which just shows that he didn’t understand even the first week of an introductory thermodynamics course. The first thing you learn in such a course is the difference between an isolated thermodynamic system (no energy or mass transfers across the boundary), a closed thermodynamic system (no mass transfers across the boundary, but energy transfers), and an open thermodynamic system (mass transfers across the boundary).
It is obvious to even mediocre starting students that a vortex tube is a massively open system, with large mass transfers in and out. But since Doug doesn’t understand either the concept or its significance, he considers its temperature differences as evidence that this would happen in an isolated system with his precious “gravito-thermal” effect. It’s like arguing that since a bike pump heats the air it compresses, it will maintain that increased temperature indefinitely while compressed.
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Elementary mistake Ed Bo – copied from climatology fissics which, ironically uses the Ideal Gas Law which was derived for an isolated system.
What Ed Bo does not understand is that, with a simple theoretical change of reference frame to one which moves down the cylinder we can then consider a circular cross-sectional slice of the tube as being an isolated system, no input or output of gas is happening because the reference frame moves with the gas.
There is no reference to high pressure maintaining high temperature in anything I have written. I have said several times high pressure does not maintain high temperatures so it just shows how little Ed Bo has read of what I have actually said, as distinct from what he thinks I have said.
08
Hmm – Went out of place before – let’s try it again…
Doug – You have stated before that you consider the vortex tube in operation to be (at least a very good approximation of) a thermodynamically isolated system. Do you still believe that to be the case?
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No Doug, with the hot air and the cold air flowing in opposite directions, even in the drawings you reference, there is no change of reference frame that can make any part of the vortex tube an isolated system.
These are such trivially simple concepts that you continually get absolutely wrong!
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The “opposite directions” is just a manipulated convenience wherein the central cold air is redirected back up an even thinner tube in the middle that can be ignored, because you could just have two concentric exits at the end instead. In any event, experiments have been conducted measuring temperatures at various points on the way down. I don’t make silly mistakes and it’s best not to assume I do, because there is ample evidence in various forms for the gravito-thermal effect, and there is correct physics based on the Second Law that explains precisely how it forms, just as we can explain the density gradient using the Second Law. Centrifuge machines also cool the central region as “heat creep” transfers thermal energy outwards from cooler regions towards hotter regions.
07
geez I am glad I am not engineering any high tech equipment. I’d be having critical failures all over the place if I followed the sheeple paradigm
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Anton: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_tube
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Look it up in Wikipedia
07
Thermal energy is only transferred by a one-way pencil of radiation if the effective temperature of the source (after attenuation due to distance and absorption) is above that of the target. That’s what the Second Law of Thermodynamics tell us. The full explanation of the physics takes several pages in my 2012 paper. See also this professor’s summary.
–I REPEAT: So a photon of one particular wavelength will heat or not-heat, depending on the temperature of the source of that photon. Is that another way to restate that? Yes or No? — Jo
07
I have answered that repeated question, Jo, in another comment.
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No Jo – you don’t understand the physics which is explained in my 2012 paper. Radiation has a Planck function and the Planck function for a warmer source is higher than that for a cooler target and fully envelopes the smaller Planck function. That portion of the radiation from the hotter source which is represented by the area between the Planck functions cannot resonate in the target and consequently is thermalised, causing an effective transfer of thermal energy.
09
Jo, I didn’t ask to be taught anything by you, even if you consider my expression or language has shortcomings. I’m only interested in explaining physics and helping people with genuine enquiries about my papers – people who have read such. And you haven’t asked me to teach you about such things as radiative heat transfer or entropy maximization, so I won’t presume to think you want such teaching. You and David could probably work it out for yourselves if you wanted to, and the 43 minute video presentation is the easiest explanation to understand, which is probably why nearly 1,000 have watched it since August 2015.
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And Jo, scientists say the core of our Moon is at about 1600 to 1700K. My hypothesis can be used to explain why. Considering how cold the dark side gets, why hasn’t it cooled right down? Do you think there’s a permanent and uniform atomic or nuclear process that has been keeping it at that temperature for at least a billion years?
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Jo wrote:
“Oh. So a photon of one particular wavelength will heat or not-heat, depending on the temperature of the source of that photon. IS that another way to restate that? — Jo”
No, because it depends how many such photons there are – whether the capacity of the target (as per its Planck function) has been exceeded beyond “cut-off” or not – whether the photon was invited to the party or was gatecrashing. If one radiator raises the temperature of an object to 350K, adding another 15 radiators does not raise it to 700K because the rest of the photons are gatecrashers, beyond “cut off” (capacity) numbers. Read the summary on page 24 from the good professor of applied mathematics and argue with him about his computations in Mathematical Physics of BlackBody Radiation. It might be worth an article.
07
Let’s say girls represent a cool target and boys represent a warmer source of radiation. Girls have arrived at a party (because the target has a temperature) and their (Planck) distribution of ages is: 2×14, 4×15, 6×16, 4×17, 2×18. Now the boys start arriving, but will only dance (resonate) with a girl their own age. The boys’ age distribution is 1×13, 3×14, 5×15, 7×16, 5×17, 3×18, 1×19. Everything is fine, and no heat is generated while there are couples dancing (resonating) but the extra boys are gatecrashers and generate friction (heat) at the party.
07
AZ said “you’re butting your head against real experimental results”
The opposite is the case. For example, I have explained the observed results for these globes using well-recognised physics pertaining to radiation.
The radiative GH conjecture is refuted by experimental results such as …
(1) my study which showed more moist regions had lower mean daily maximum and minimum temperatures than similar but drier regions;
(2) the “coincidences” issue for all planets as explained in another comment;
(3) the radial temperature gradient in all vortex tubes and all the other evidence for my hypothesis, because both cannot be true.
The physics I present is supported by so many experimental results that the probability of it being wrong is millions to one against.
07
“More than 95 percent of the energy that goes into them is wasted, most of it as heat.”
This is an extremely biased figure, since it completely ignores the daily hours of use during colder months when the light bulb makes a positive, if tiny, contribution to indoor heating. Since the heat isn’t “wasted” by any means during these colder periods one could argue the incandescent light bulb is 100% efficient. Indeed, even during the milder months it’s use is, by its very nature, confined to the darker – and cooler – hours of the day when heating, from whatever source, may be desired.
So, let’s cut the “95% inefficient” meme.
00
Doug – You have stated before that you consider the vortex tube in operation to be (at least a very good approximation of) a thermodynamically isolated system. Do you still believe that to be the case?
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Yes. We can postulate a moving reference frame (a thin cross-sectional slice) that moves down the tube with the air. Calculations using -g/cp give results close to observations.
06
Hmm – Went out of place before – let’s try it again…
Doug – You have stated before that you consider the vortex tube in operation to be (at least a very good approximation of) a thermodynamically isolated system. Do you still believe that to be the case?
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In winter in Canada that heat is useful.
00