Episode #330

[Moloch]

It took me a while, but I found Dr. Novella's rap album on Amazon...

Holy cow!! This needs to be spread around!  ;D

[Kwisatz Haderach]

European per capita CO footprint is already around half of that for the USA.

I suspect that this is because of crazy consumer regulation (not that there is anything wrong with that).

For example, here in the UK it is almost impossible to find a lightulb brighter than 60 watts, while in the US I usually had 150-300 watt buls in most of my lamps (I managed to find a 100 watt bulb in a DIY shop ("DIY shop" is British for "Hardware Store")).

Also, the trash bags that they call "Super-Strong-Heavy-Duty" over here are about as thick and strong the cheapo supermarket-brand discount trash bags in the US.

[Trinoc]

For example, here in the UK it is almost impossible to find a lightulb brighter than 60 watts, while in the US I usually had 150-300 watt buls in most of my lamps (I managed to find a 100 watt bulb in a DIY shop ("DIY shop" is British for "Hardware Store")).

Well, if you will insist on using bulbs that only convert 2% of the electricity to light.

CFLs sold in shops are typically up to 60W filament equivalent and "warm white" (i.e. dim yellow) colour spectrum, but if you look online (ebay etc) you can find plenty of full-spectrum ("daylight") CFLs (or yellow if you really prefer) of higher powers. My work area is illuminated by a 105W daylight CFL, equivalent to about 500W filament bulb.

Also, the trash bags that they call "Super-Strong-Heavy-Duty" over here are about as thick and strong the cheapo supermarket-brand discount trash bags in the US.

Go to a garden centre and buy garden rubbish bags, or for real strength, rubble bags. Or of course you can always double the bags up for more strength. Don't expect shops to stock things most ordinary folks don't buy .. that's what online shopping is for.

[Kwisatz Haderach]

For example, here in the UK it is almost impossible to find a lightulb brighter than 60 watts, while in the US I usually had 150-300 watt buls in most of my lamps (I managed to find a 100 watt bulb in a DIY shop ("DIY shop" is British for "Hardware Store")).

Well, if you will insist on using bulbs that only convert 2% of the electricity to light.

CFLs sold in shops are typically up to 60W filament equivalent and "warm white" (i.e. dim yellow) colour spectrum, but if you look online (ebay etc) you can find plenty of full-spectrum ("daylight") CFLs (or yellow if you really prefer) of higher powers. My work area is illuminated by a 105W daylight CFL, equivalent to about 500W filament bulb.

Cool, I'll check those out.

Also, the trash bags that they call "Super-Strong-Heavy-Duty" over here are about as thick and strong the cheapo supermarket-brand discount trash bags in the US.

Go to a garden centre and buy garden rubbish bags, or for real strength, rubble bags. Or of course you can always double the bags up for more strength. Don't expect shops to stock things most ordinary folks don't buy .. that's what online shopping is for.

The ones at the garden center are the "Super-Strong-Heavy-Duty" ones I'm talking about.  The stronger "rubble bags" (which are as strong as the 40 gallon trash bags I used in the US) only see mto come in very tiny sizes.   In the US, strong trash bags are readily availalbe, you don't need to shop online from them!

[azinyk]

For example, here in the UK it is almost impossible to find a lightulb brighter than 60 watts, while in the US I usually had 150-300 watt buls in most of my lamps (I managed to find a 100 watt bulb in a DIY shop ("DIY shop" is British for "Hardware Store")).

Well, if you will insist on using bulbs that only convert 2% of the electricity to light.

CFLs sold in shops are typically up to 60W filament equivalent and "warm white" (i.e. dim yellow) colour spectrum, but if you look online (ebay etc) you can find plenty of full-spectrum ("daylight") CFLs (or yellow if you really prefer) of higher powers. My work area is illuminated by a 105W daylight CFL, equivalent to about 500W filament bulb.

... Don't expect shops to stock things most ordinary folks don't buy .. that's what online shopping is for.

I'll have to look for those.  I seriously thought that weak, pitiful illumination was just a limitation of CFL technology.  I mean, they sell 2300 lumen incandescent bulbs of a shelf that's devoid of CFLs brighter than 1300 lumens.  I don't understand why, because if what you say is true, they could make bulbs that are both brighter and more efficient.

People who prefer "warm" (i.e. dim yellow) bulbs are strange.

[grant]

A bit on fracking:

A little natural gas humor

[Trinoc]

For example, here in the UK it is almost impossible to find a lightulb brighter than 60 watts, while in the US I usually had 150-300 watt buls in most of my lamps (I managed to find a 100 watt bulb in a DIY shop ("DIY shop" is British for "Hardware Store")).

Well, if you will insist on using bulbs that only convert 2% of the electricity to light.

CFLs sold in shops are typically up to 60W filament equivalent and "warm white" (i.e. dim yellow) colour spectrum, but if you look online (ebay etc) you can find plenty of full-spectrum ("daylight") CFLs (or yellow if you really prefer) of higher powers. My work area is illuminated by a 105W daylight CFL, equivalent to about 500W filament bulb.

Cool, I'll check those out.

Unfortunately, last time I bought any at least, the prices for daylight CFLs had not come down the way those for mass consumption have. Look out for ones made in Europe, typically Germany: some of the Chinese ones I've bought have buzzed, overheated or expired rather quickly.

Also, the trash bags that they call "Super-Strong-Heavy-Duty" over here are about as thick and strong the cheapo supermarket-brand discount trash bags in the US.

Go to a garden centre and buy garden rubbish bags, or for real strength, rubble bags. Or of course you can always double the bags up for more strength. Don't expect shops to stock things most ordinary folks don't buy .. that's what online shopping is for.

The ones at the garden center are the "Super-Strong-Heavy-Duty" ones I'm talking about.  The stronger "rubble bags" (which are as strong as the 40 gallon trash bags I used in the US) only see mto come in very tiny sizes.   In the US, strong trash bags are readily availalbe, you don't need to shop online from them!

Well, I'm guessing if you filled a full sized rubble bag with rubble then it would burst, but I agree, there's no good reason why they couldn't sell larger ones but not rated for rubble.

[Trinoc]

For example, here in the UK it is almost impossible to find a lightulb brighter than 60 watts, while in the US I usually had 150-300 watt buls in most of my lamps (I managed to find a 100 watt bulb in a DIY shop ("DIY shop" is British for "Hardware Store")).

Well, if you will insist on using bulbs that only convert 2% of the electricity to light.

CFLs sold in shops are typically up to 60W filament equivalent and "warm white" (i.e. dim yellow) colour spectrum, but if you look online (ebay etc) you can find plenty of full-spectrum ("daylight") CFLs (or yellow if you really prefer) of higher powers. My work area is illuminated by a 105W daylight CFL, equivalent to about 500W filament bulb.

... Don't expect shops to stock things most ordinary folks don't buy .. that's what online shopping is for.

I'll have to look for those.  I seriously thought that weak, pitiful illumination was just a limitation of CFL technology.  I mean, they sell 2300 lumen incandescent bulbs of a shelf that's devoid of CFLs brighter than 1300 lumens.  I don't understand why, because if what you say is true, they could make bulbs that are both brighter and more efficient.

See my comments to KH above.

Fluorescents can be as bright as you like. Somewhere I have a 200-watt monster which I was unable to use because I couldn't find a paper globe lampshade with a hole big enough (without a shade these can be dazzling out of the corner of your eye).

The big ones are typically sold by hydroponics suppliers. They don't usually mention what sorts of crops people might want to grow hydroponically indoors where they can't be seen. I don't use mine for that purpose, by the way.

People who prefer "warm" (i.e. dim yellow) bulbs are strange.

Agreed. People got used to that colour since it was about the best you could get out of a tungsten filament, at least before halogen lamps. My grandparents' generation complained that electric lights were bad for your eyes compared to the good old gas lamps with white light thorium oxide mantles, but by my parents' generation electric light was the norm, even though it was more like candle light in colour, and they regarded anything whiter as too bright (even if it's the same actual intensity).

[lukebourassa]

It took me a while, but I found Dr. Novella's rap album on Amazon...

Sorry but you are not allowed to view spoiler contents.

So who's the dude with the gun?

(Not that the picture encourages gangsta racial stereotypes! Oh no, not at all!)

It's Ice Cube, I believe :)

I was thinking about sticking Randi's face there, but I didn't want to portray any of the rogues with a gun.

[Citizen Skeptic]

During Science or Fiction, Steve asserted that US energy consumption decreased in the period 2007-2009 "because people are trying to conserve." Upon hearing this, all the other rogues unquestioningly jumped onto the self-congratulatory bandwagon... "We're decreasing our CO2 emissions." "Hooray for us!" "Now China's gotta get on board!"

Indeed. And last time I looked China's total emissions were about the same as those from the US, with four times the population. Go figure who it is who needs to get on board.

That's because most of china lives in poverty and they don't have big screen tv sets, computers, or even electricity most of the time. If you looked at the industrial cities the story would be substantially different. The problem comes when they can all afford that cable.

Maybe, but to say China (India, etc.) need to "get on board" is disingenuous. They have not messed up yet, the way we have done in the West, and I think there is a much better chance that they will do a half-decent job of it than there is that we will reduce our wastage. If/when they have achieved comparable prosperity using maybe half the energy we use per capita, they will certainly be able to point to us and tell us to get on board.

European per capita CO₂ footprint is already around half of that for the USA (which is the biggest offender among countries of any significant population, except maybe Australia), so there should be room for improvement even well below that level.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita

china and india have a great advantage over us in that they virtually have no infrastructure so all the capacity they are adding is state of the art. on the other hand, we're stuck with old infrastructure because adding new infrastructure is virtually impossible due to regulations and the cost so we just keep recycling the old stuff.

china consumes less per capita and the fraction that is being added is cleaner. i think china is doing fine.

from my trips to china though i think they have a long way to go environmentally. it's co2 emissions is a pretty small part of the environmental damage they've done.

[uolj]

It took me a while, but I found Dr. Novella's rap album on Amazon...

Sorry but you are not allowed to view spoiler contents.

So who's the dude with the gun?

(Not that the picture encourages gangsta racial stereotypes! Oh no, not at all!)

It's Ice Cube, I believe :)

Actually it was Eazy-E with the gun. Ice Cube was the one at the top who you replaced with Bob (I think, although it's hard for me to tell Bob and Jay apart with just the upside down face).

[Steven Novella]

I don't think its fair to say that China is doing fine with respect to environmental issues. They have the most polluted cities in the world. They have comparatively energy inefficient industries. They are building many new dirty coal-burning plants. They are building their industrial infrastructure any way they can, and are not interested in limiting their development for environmental or even safety concerns.

They are developing clean energy too - because they are investing heavily into everything. But this does not appear to be any kind of priority for them.  It's not fair to compare CO2 emissions per capita because they have vast populations of people living in poor conditions. Despite this they still are the #1 CO2 emitters, and this is only growing. China, in fact, hides behind the per capita number and argues they should be judged by this, because it makes their emissions look relatively lower.

They are slowly getting better in terms of health concerns, but this is not impressive given how terrible the current situation is there - terrible air quality, environmental poisoning, etc.

When I stated China is not interested I was referring to these facts above - essentially, China is interested in development, and they don't think it's fair for them to limit their development when the West didn't have to when they went through their industrial revolution.

"Addressing the issue of pollution, Mr Steiner said there were costs associated with the "let's develop and clean up later approach to development" China has employed over the last three decades." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-15756235

Some more facts here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment_in_the_People's_Republic_of_China

[Citizen Skeptic]

good point that a lot of the dirty industries have moved to china.

[Trinoc]

good point that a lot of the dirty industries have moved to china.

Yes, I think we need to address "pollution tourism". Like many people, I happily buy dirt-cheap Chinese goods from ebay etc., which are so cheap there is no point in even complaining if they don't work, but if I knew the conditions in which they were manufactured I might get a nasty surprise. Just about every electronic design job I've had for the last 10 years or more has carried with it the assumption that it has to be documented in such a way that it can be manufactured in China to cut costs. As customers, we have to take a large part of the responsibility for their headlong rush for development.