In case you missed this

From New Advent:

Pope Benedict XVI, a study by Michael Noakes

... and from Rome Reports Chile's trapped miners send a flag to the Pope

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Real Climate Research

If you recall my recent post "Science? I think not!" I presented links to data showing how climate was affected by solar radiation way more than any human controlled factors. Well, more evidence is on the way. According to NASA scientists in the article "Getting to the SORCE of Climate Change":

...the phenomenal interconnectedness of each aspect of our world leads to misconceptions and incomplete notions regarding climate change. On Jan. 25, 2003 NASA will be launching the SOlar Radiation & Climate Experiment, or SORCE spacecraft...

More info about the SORCE (SOlar Radiation & Climate Experiment) satellite can be found at NASA's web site. A good summary is found at Ar Technica's post about a recent paper in Nature [link to the paper is with the article but you have to pay to read it - boo]:

In a recent issue of Nature, Joanna Haigh and colleagues report that the largest deviation from predicted activities of the solar cycle occurred between 2004 and 2007, when the Sun’s activity was in a decline. Data from the Spectral Irradiance Monitor (SIM) instrument showed a four- to six-fold larger decrease in ultraviolet irradiation, and an increase in visible irradiation, compared to predictions from a leading solar model. A second instrument on the SORCE satellite, the Solar Stellar Irradiance Comparison Experiment (SOLSTICE), also observed the drastic variations in the ultraviolet region.

The wavelength of solar irradiation determines what part of the atmosphere is affected the most. Ultraviolet irradiation leads to chemical reactions that produce more ozone in the stratosphere and warm up the stratosphere and mesosphere. Irradiation in the visible wavelengths penetrates further, leading to heating of the Earth’s surface, troposphere, and lower stratosphere.

Of course, this is still data gathering, but it will be nice to have some actual facts inserted into the climate debate, rather than computer simulations.

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A New Hope

If you recall my award winning blog post, "The end of the EZ Bake oven" about the evils of compact Fluorescent (CF) bulbs, things looked pretty beak at the end.

However "there is another". In fact there are several others. According to the article quoted in my last post:

General Electric Corp., the world’s largest maker of traditional bulbs, said that by 2010, it hoped to have on the market a new high-efficiency incandescent bulb that will be four times as efficient as today’s 125-year-old technology. It said that such bulbs would closely rival fluorescent bulbs for efficiency, with no mercury.

How can you improve on what is essentially a piece of wire? Well, according to this article, the filament can be pitted with a laser to make it more efficient. Additionally, reflective coatings inside the bulb can direct infrared photons back to the filament, requiring less energy to keep it hot. Well, here it is, the end of 2010 and we haven't seen these bulbs hit the streets, but there are other promising technologies.

Plasma bulbs have very high efficiencies, approaching 14%, but it is difficult to make them operate at low enough power to operate in the home. For instance, the lowest power plasma bulbs made are 100 watts, which in light output is like a 1000 watt incandescent bulb! In addition plasma bulbs require quite a bit of electronics to operate. The bulb is essentially a microwave oven, heating a noble gas until it becomes a plasma.

Most other technologies have bigger problems that make them unsuitable. The two really promising technologies in development right now are LED and OLED lamps. Note that these are "lamps" and not "bulbs", since they are solid, not hollow. Despite the fact that both have "LED" in their name, they are quite different in many respects.

An LED, or Light Emitting Diode is, well, a diode that emits light. A diode is a device that passes an electric current in one direction only. Because of the nature of semiconductors, all diodes emit some light, but it takes some tweaking to do it efficiently and make that light visible. And LED is about 15-20% efficient in emitting visible light, making them far better than either incandescents of CFs. However, that light is monochromatic, meaning one color. Because of this, they are perfect for applications where the light is supposed to be colored, such as auto tail lights or traffic lights (or perhaps not).

There are two ways to get usable (white) light for household use. One is to use several LEDs of different colors. In fact, by manipulating the brightness of three or more LEDs we can make a lamp that can change color to fit the homeowner's mood. A simpler (though less efficient) way is the so called "white LEDs" that are used in flashlights. This is an LED that emits ultraviolet light, coated with phoshors, just like the fluorescent tube. It is superior to a fluorescent tube in that the LED is more efficient, doesn't contain mercury, isn't breakable (under normal circumstances) and lasts pretty much forever (50,000 hours or more).

So why don't we see them used everywhere? Heat. Ironically, although an LED produces very little heat compared to an incandescent bulb, since it is monochromatic the heat isn't being given off as infrared radiation. It sits inside the LED and can destroy it if it gets hot enough.

OLEDs, or Organic LEDs, are a newer technology. Yes, they are LEDs, but instead of using semiconductive crystals of materials like Gallium Arsenide Phosphide the use thin films of polymers (plastic), as thin as 50nm (a human hair is about 100,000nm thick). Because they are so thin, there is a high ratio of surface area to mass, meaning the light doesn't have to travel far before it is out of the LED and free to go out and light up the room. It also means there is more surface to cool off the device.

Unlike LEDs, OLEDs do wear out. They have a life span of about 14,000 hours before they degrade to 80% of their original brightness. On the other hand, they are up to twice as efficient as LEDs (or 20x as efficient as incandescents), which is why they are often found in cell phones, where battery life is important. One OLED technology, Phosphorescent OLEDs (PHOLEDs) claims it can reach up to 50% efficiency. And of course they are made without mercury or other toxic substances.

So when can I buy my OLED light bulb? According to this post we should see them starting to hit the market within the next year or two. However, if this roll out is like most in the tech industry, don't hold your breath. I'm sure they will be very expensive at first, but the technology can be printed with inkjet-like printers, which means once factories are tooled up they have the potential to be much cheaper than CFs. So perhaps the best course of action for the environment is to stock up on incandescents to make it to 2014 or so.

In researching these two posts I learned a lot about lighting technologies, the problems involved, the innovations taking place and tradeoffs in various designs. It was illuminating. No doubt I'll be posting more on the subject.

One final note. I'm sure "green" people and government will be touting how their regulation produced this lighty goodness. However, it should be known that OLEDs have been aggressively developed since before this legislation, and not because they would "save the Earth" but because they would increase the battery life of cell phones and media players. Here's a case where market forces alone produced innovation.

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The End of the EZ Bake Oven

Congress hath decreed that we must all give up incandescent light bulbs by 2014. That led to the recent closing of the last light bub factory in America. We will now be importing all our incandescent bulbs. Yay us.

My first thought was to stock up, so I can keep my EZ Bake over going if the bulb in it fails. Seriously, this is yet another case of inappropriate use of ("green") technology. Let's take a look at the technologies involved.

The old standard incandescent bulb is very similar to the bulb Thomas Edison invented in 1879. Prior to that the "best electric light bulb was the carbon arc lamp, which had been invented around 1800. The carbon arc was more efficient, but wasn't very appropriate for household use, and only lasted 100 hours (Edison's original bulbs only lasted 40, but were soon improved to last longer, with modern bulbs lasting about 1,000 hours).

An incandescent bulb works by passing an electric current through a filament made of tungsten until it glows from the heat. Tungsten is used because of its properties at high temperatures. The filament is encased in a glass bulb filled with argon, to prevent the filament from burning, which it would do in air. Argon is a chemically inert gas, and the third most common gas found in our atmosphere (after nitrogen and oxygen).

The down side of the incandescent bulb is that it only emits about 2% of the energy it uses as visible light. The rest of the energy is emitted as infrared radiation. That is a plus if you are trying to keep your chickens warm in the hatchery, or baking a cake in your EZ bake oven, but is a nuisance in a factory, where the waste heat must be removed by air conditioning.

Because of this most offices use fluorescent lighting. Fluorescent light bulbs are about four to five times as efficient as incandescent bulbs (about 9% of their energy is turned into visible light) at first. I say at first because they begin to degrade very quickly in use to about 75% of their original light output. That still makes them about three times as efficient as incandescent bulbs.

Fluorescent bulbs work by passing a high voltage through a low pressure mixture of mercury and a "noble" gas (argon, krypton, neon or xenon). The gas becomes a plasma and emits ultraviolet radiation, which causes a coating on the inside of the tube to fluoresce (hence the name) and emit light.

Until recently, fluorescent bulbs haven't been very popular in the home. First off, the bulb does not emit a "full spectrum" of light (even bulbs that say "full spectrum" on them), but emit certain colors only. So even a bulb that appears white to the eye (because it emits the right amount of red, green, and blue colors) will make colors look "odd" (because the color of the object doesn't match the color the bulb emits). The result can make food look unappealing (a boon for dieters), skin tones appear wrong, colors that appear to match in their light will look wrong in daylight or incandescent light, etc.

In addition, the bulb does not stay lit continuously. It blinks on and off 60 times a second with the household AC current. Thus while it appears to be a constant light to the eye, it can cause headaches and visual stress.

But the biggest problem is the environmental impact. In addition, almost everything in the bulb is toxic. A broken fluorescent bulb provides not only broken glass, but various phosphor compounds that are toxic and worst of all, mercury. attempts to clean up the glass and phosphor dust with a vacuum will spread the mercury around. Mercury, being a heavy liquid metal at room temperature, is very difficult to get rid of and will stay in your house until it is absorbed into your body. Assuming you don't break your bulb, when it fails you need to take the bulb to a hazardous waste center - putting it in the garbage, or even recycling is a no no, as most recycling centers don't have the facilities to properly handle the mercury.

Enter the compact fluorescent (CF) bulb. I was once a big fan of CF bulbs, converting most of my household to using them over the last few years.I crowed over the fact that I was saving "40 dollars a year" off my electric bill (um yeah, I don't see that on my bill). I liked the fact that I could put a 27 or 36 watt bulb in one of those cheap "60 watts or less" lamp fixtures and get a decent amount of reading light for my ancient eyes. However, reliability issues have caused me to rethink that, especially for bulbs in unheated areas. They light dimly, if at all, and constantly need replacing. The more research I did the less impressed I was by them.

The compact fluorescent bulb is a fluorescent bulb that has been bent into a "U" shape or a coil so that it takes up less space. It was invented in China, and China continues to produce most of the CF bulbs in the world. The more "popular" ones you see in stores have an "edison base" (they screw into a socket made for incandescent bulbs) and have an electronic ballast that helps with the slow turn on and flicker issues.

However, the electronic ballast does not work at low temperatures, and cannot stand up to weather. Although the bulb claims to have ten times the life of an incandescent bulb (10,000 hours) they often fail to live up to this because of the number of components in the ballast that can fail. The phosphors have been changed to make the bulb appear the same color as an incandescent bulb, but it still has the same problems of unnatural colors as "standard" fluorescent bulbs.

Most importantly, it has all of the ecological down sides of a fluorescent bulb, and more. The electronics contain lead and other hazardous compounds. The production of the bulbs is quite "dirty", using environmentally hazardous solvents. This is the basic reason why the bulbs are made in China.

According to this MSNBC story:

Manufacturers and the EPA say broken CFLs should be handled carefully and recycled to limit dangerous vapors and the spread of mercury dust. But guidelines for how to do that can be difficult to find, as Brandy Bridges of Ellsworth, Maine, discovered.

“It was just a wiggly bulb that I reached up to change,” Bridges said. “When the bulb hit the floor, it shattered.”

When Bridges began calling around to local government agencies to find out what to do, “I was shocked to see how uninformed literally everyone I spoke to was,” she said. “Even our own poison control operator didn’t know what to tell me.”

The state eventually referred her to a private cleanup firm, which quoted a $2,000 estimate to contain the mercury. After Bridges complained publicly about her predicament, state officials changed their recommendation: Simply throw it in the trash, they said.

So while we are saving some energy we are putting poison in our landfills and homes. In order to save how much? The number look large, but consider that the US consumes 29 PWh, while residential lighting accounts for 212 TWh of that. That means if all of the US residential lighting was incandescent (which it isn't), and all of it was converted to CF, then the US would save 140 TWh/year, or in other words would reduce our energy needs by approximately 0.48%.

To save this 0.48% we will introduce deadly mercury into our homes, and eventually into landfills and waterways. Congress has set the precedent that they can ban a product from the US not because it is dangerous or because it is bad for us, but because they feel like it.

Thus the award for inappropriate use of technology in the home goes to the compact fluorescent bulb.

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George Washington

From today's American Minute blog:

On OCTOBER 3, 1789, from the U.S. Capitol in New York City, President George Washington issued the first Proclamation of a National Day of Thanksgiving and Prayer to Almighty God, as just one week earlier the first session of the U.S. Congress successfully approved the First Ten Amendments limiting the power of the Federal Government. The First Amendment begins: "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." In his Proclamation, President Washington stated: "Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the Providence of Almighty God....we may...unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations..." Washington continued: "and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions, to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our...duties properly...to render our national government a blessing to all the People, by constantly being a government of wise, just and constitutional laws...and to bless them with...peace and concord...and the increase of science...and...to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best."

 Amen!

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Content and Intent

No doubt you have heard about the disgusting "green: videos by 10:10. If not, be warned before you follow this link - the video is extremely graphic and depicts the murder of children. For those who prefer not to watch it, in the video a teacher asks her class to reduce their carbon emissions, and has the children who want to participate raise their hands. Two children don't and are murdered by the teacher, who detonates bombs in their desks, spattering the rest of the class with blood and body parts. There is another equally graphic video involving graphically murdering adults who don't do enough to cut their carbon emissions.

Of course the media and blogosphere is abuzz. One post I read asked "what's the difference between these images and graphic abortion images?" They are referring to images like these (warning again, link is directly to graphic images of aborted fetuses) used by organizations like the Center for Bioethical Reform. The image at the top of this post is taken from their college campus education program, the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP).

Anyway, the there are two major difference between graphic videos like 10:10 made and pictures (and videos) of abortions and aborted fetuses. The first is in content. The 10:10 videos are simply movie special effects (I hope), while the GAP photos document the actual killing of human beings. Like photos and videos of KKK lynchings, the Tiananmen Square, the JFK assassination, Nazi concentration camps, Civil War battles, North Korean executions, and many more, the GAP photos are important historically and as a warning for generations now and to come.

The second major difference is in intent. The 10:10 videos are advocating violence against children (and anyone who is not "green" enough), while the GAP photos are protesting violence against children and mothers.^*

Yes, there are major differences between the 10:10 videos and GAP photos and videos. The former are purely offensive and have no merit, while the latter, though equally disgusting, are essential.

[* Note to anyone who want to claim that 10:10 isn't promoting violence - imagine that the two children who are murdered in the video are gay, or black, or Muslim, and tell me if you don't think it would be interpreted as advocating violence. And for anyone who wants to claim that abortion isn't violence against children and mothers, go to the GAP site and look at the dismembered bodies of fetuses and tell me how none of them are human.]

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Dry Gulching

Ya know what bugs me? When we were in Yellowstone this summer, pretty much the big stink at all the lodges/inns/hotels/cabins/resorts/marinas/camp grounds/etc. was how "green" they were. Every square inch of the landscape was plastered with signs saying how this toilet used less water, the light bulbs used less electricity, the paper towels were recycled. Since I wrote the recent post on acting "green", I wanted to mention my loathing of "faux green" things, and in general the inappropriate use of technology to try to promote something that isn't so.

But there's so much of it around us every day, I don't know where to start. I bet I could find 100 things that fit the category (inappropriate use of technology, usually to make one think something is "green") just around my own home. So I decided to pick a random thing that irked my in Yellowstone to start with. Paper towel dispensers.

At the top of this post is a picture of the standard towel dispenser in use in millions of restrooms all over the world. It's inexpensive, has no moving parts (I'm not counting the door to refill the dispenser, I mean it has no parts that need to move to dispense paper towels), cheap to construct, hygienic (made from easy to clean stainless steel) and kind cute. How could we improve on it?

Add inappropriate technology, of course! Almost every place we went in and near the park had those new fangled "motion sensor" paper towel dispensers, like the one shown at right. Now, rather than easy to clean (and recyclable) stainless steel, we are greeted by germy plastic. Each unit now requires a mercury and/or heavy metal containing battery (or in-wall wiring, but I believe most of these were battery powered, as the bathrooms hadn't been built anticipating that someone would use electricity to deliver a paper towel).

Just to make things better, nearly every one was "broken" like I believe the one pictured is. Rather than deliver a paper towel when you approach it and wave a hand in front of it (like the inappropriate ones I see around NJ), it leaves a paper towel hanging in the air, collecting overspray, germs, etc. When one tears off a sheet of paper, another one immediately descends, in order to catch whatever germs it can before the next hapless user arrives.

Another solution is to forgo paper entirely and use warm air to dry hands. While this may use less energy in the bathroom than it takes to create a paper towel and cart it to the bathroom and then the landfill, it uses electricity which (may have) involved carting fuel to the power plant, burning it, transmission losses (typically 50% of power is lost in the electrical lines) and the inefficiency of blowing the warm air onto your hand.

I have not seen an in-depth energy budget for these things, but I would suggest that if you use waste industrial heat to manufacture your paper towels, and at the end of life burn them in a co-gen facility, the paper towels wind up being "greener". There are just too many variables to make that analysis.

Plus, aside from the green arguments, they are noisy, take a long time to dry hands (relative to a wipe of a paper towel), and as one article I read points out, blow air at the perfect temperature to promote bacterial growth. Add to that the fact that they can't be used to wipe a stain off a shirt, or in fact wipe up anything, and I am not a big fan.

One of the restrooms I was in had an even higher-tech "green" solution, the Dyson air blade. This device vacuums water off the hands, and claims to be faster and use less energy than the warm air drier. You simply insert your hands and the drier activates, blowing and sucking water off of them. Not only can't this device wipe anything, it can't even dry anything other than hands. Admittedly my hands are rather large, but I had a hard time getting them in and out of the slots in the device without rubbing against the germy plastic. I have no data on the reliability of the unit, but I'll note that the unsupported plastic arch sticking out looks like a target for being bumped, sat on, etc. and broken.

Note that, in addition to the above complaints, since most of these device must sense your hands, they uses electricity 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, whether someone is drying their hands or not. I doubt that fact is advertised as a cost by the manufacturer.

All this to save the energy in a paper towel. While I support not wasting paper, is this actually a large enough issue to warrant the time, expense, and sanitary compromises made in order to use these high-tech solutions? Don't we have bigger waster and energy use issues to solve?

Admittedly, some of these technologies have some benefits to offset the disadvantages, but one does not. It delivers the same old paper towel, but with more waste. And so I hereby award the prize for most inappropriate use of technology in a restroom to the motion sensor paper towel dispenser.

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