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Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

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Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#191

Post by BanazirGalbasi »

comfypotato wrote: post #177
_yb2s wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I resent the laws banning incandescent lights. I consider myself an environmentalist, and am very careful about wasting electricity. I love the warm dim light from an incandescent and think it helps me fall asleep... the light from one incandescent dimmed to about 20-40W is all I need after sunset, and all I want. It's like sitting near a campfire. My house is solar powered, and I keep a window open witho…

Just use an LED that produces the same color. They 100% exist. I agree that incandescent is better than cold LED. A little shopping and consumer research will 100% find you exactly the LED you want.

There was an article posted here earlier this year[1] that pointed out the flaws in modern LEDs, and just how hard it is to get one that matches the color you want. It's a pretty long read, but the author does a really good job of showing just how much trouble he has getting comfortable lighting that actually lasts a long time.

[1] https://nymag.com/strategist/article/led-light-bulbs-investi...

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#192

Post by fencepost »

_yb2s wrote: post #176
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #88

> Back in the prehistoric era a person would have to gather, chop and burn wood for roughly 10 hours a day for six days straight in order to produce the equivalent light of a modern lightbulb shining for about an hour. This feels like a very odd comparison/metric. It doesn't really matter how many lumens/watts it has, I think a better metric is "How much does it take to 'comfortably' light a single room for 1 hour".…

This is why I resent the laws banning incandescent lights. I consider myself an environmentalist, and am very careful about wasting electricity. I love the warm dim light from an incandescent and think it helps me fall asleep... the light from one incandescent dimmed to about 20-40W is all I need after sunset, and all I want. It's like sitting near a campfire. My house is solar powered, and I keep a window open witho…

Sounds like you're looking for a color temperature even lower than 2700 which is usually the low end for standard bulbs. Two options that might work for you are 'smart' color changing bulbs that you can set to much warmer and dimmer values OR 'vintage' or amber glass bulbs, typically in a narrower bulb shape and sometimes with a smaller base (adapters are available).

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#193

Post by comfypotato »

alfalfasprout wrote: post #190
comfypotato wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m more familiar with the advancements in CRI in recent years than dUV (this is the first I’be heard of that) but LEDs can now be purchased with equivalent CRI. The context of this discussion is incandescent color/perception/experience.

My point is that CRI alone isn't sufficient. Nor is CCT (correlated color temperature). In practice, two bulbs with the same CRI and color temperature can have drastically different tints. It all boils down to how these measurements work. In practice, the vast vast majority of LED bulbs do not even remotely come close to the color reproduction of halogen. Not to mention the flicker response to 60hz wall power. There…

Well OK, I was more speaking in the context of a reading lamp. And I wanted more to point out that an LED lamp with smooth color and brightness spectrums allows for you to find a better sweet spot for comfortably reading at night.

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#194

Post by dragonwriter »

_yb2s wrote: post #176
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #88

> Back in the prehistoric era a person would have to gather, chop and burn wood for roughly 10 hours a day for six days straight in order to produce the equivalent light of a modern lightbulb shining for about an hour. This feels like a very odd comparison/metric. It doesn't really matter how many lumens/watts it has, I think a better metric is "How much does it take to 'comfortably' light a single room for 1 hour".…

This is why I resent the laws banning incandescent lights. I consider myself an environmentalist, and am very careful about wasting electricity. I love the warm dim light from an incandescent and think it helps me fall asleep... the light from one incandescent dimmed to about 20-40W is all I need after sunset, and all I want. It's like sitting near a campfire. My house is solar powered, and I keep a window open witho…

> and yet my minuscule usage is nowadays categorically illegal /rant

No, even when the efficiency rules go into effect, using noncompliant bulbs will not be illegal. Stock up on your inefficient bulbs before August, and you can use them as long as you like.

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#195

Post by ltbarcly3 »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #132
ltbarcly3 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the poor people are too stupid and helpless argument. It is not true. Your list of reasons is really just betraying how little you think poor people are like yourself. You are portraying them as helpless animals. Also, lack of motivation as a reason they can't boil an egg, so they just go hungry instead? Do you even care about reality or just scoring internet points?

These are not dumb people, they are my friends and neighbors who are being systematically oppressed. Unless you're working a blue collar job in America you don't see this

Right, I'm saying they aren't dumb. If what you are saying is true they would have to not only be dumb, but barely have human level intelligence. You believe that your friends and neighbors are completely incompetent at things that are trivially easy, and they have no hope of ever figuring it out on their own.

You are actually claiming that there are tens of millions of adult humans, who have lived 20, 30 years, and are literally incapable of procuring one pot. You are saying they can't independently manage to acquire the cooking skills to boil rice. It's just absurd.

Meanwhile those same people are statistically obese. Somehow despite living without electricity, money, pots, illiterate and 50 miles from the nearest grocery store they eat enough to be obese (can you explain how they get enough food to eat too much despite it being impossible for them to acquire groceries at all?) and yet it is unreasonable to think they might boil an egg.

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#196

Post by comfypotato »

BanazirGalbasi wrote: post #191
comfypotato wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just use an LED that produces the same color. They 100% exist. I agree that incandescent is better than cold LED. A little shopping and consumer research will 100% find you exactly the LED you want.

There was an article posted here earlier this year[1] that pointed out the flaws in modern LEDs, and just how hard it is to get one that matches the color you want. It's a pretty long read, but the author does a really good job of showing just how much trouble he has getting comfortable lighting that actually lasts a long time. [1] https://nymag.com/strategist/article/led-light-bulbs-investi...

As I mentioned in some other comments, I settled on a lamp with a fully adjustable color and brightness. It’s lots of diodes, and the net effect is very nice.

In other words, I’m agreeing with your article that the fixed bulbs typically don’t hit the mark.

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#197

Post by zamadatix »

pests wrote: post #126
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #88

> Back in the prehistoric era a person would have to gather, chop and burn wood for roughly 10 hours a day for six days straight in order to produce the equivalent light of a modern lightbulb shining for about an hour. This feels like a very odd comparison/metric. It doesn't really matter how many lumens/watts it has, I think a better metric is "How much does it take to 'comfortably' light a single room for 1 hour".…

I think they meant a fire itself would need to burn 10 hours a day for 6 days a week - the chopping to support that fire. The light over the duration is as much as a lightbulb for one hour.

I can't see any combination, length of time burned or length of time to gather the material, where it takes 60 hours to get a fire that outputs as much light as a single lightbulb over one hour.

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#198

Post by misnome »

ltbarcly3 wrote: post #111
misnome wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congratulations, you alone in the world have had this one genius thought that nobody else has ever thought of or considered, and definitely isn’t the first thing anyone who has spent zero time learning about any of the actual problems and just wants the most shallow possible dismissal of other peoples’ problems reaches for. The entire problem is solved, everyone, crisis over.

The proof that this is not a problem is the rampant obesity and lack of people actually starving.

This is the _second_ obvious thing people go for when trying to achieve the same.

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#199

Post by _yb2s »

comfypotato wrote: post #183
_yb2s wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't look or feel the same to me. Maybe something to do with CRI (I don't really understand that). I am not switching to LEDs... It would be wasteful to throw away something that works great and replace it with something new that doesn't work as well. I like incandescent, and my 40 year old reading lamp and a few extra bulbs will last forever running a few hours a night dimmed to ~20W.

> It doesn't look or feel the same to me. I used to be in this camp before branching out and trying some different LEDs. Unless it is literally the glowing filament that you like looking at, which is reasonable, you can definitely find a bulb that looks and feels the same. That was my point in repeating myself saying that it 100% exists. If you’re not in a place to financially experiment with a few bulbs that’s diffe…

It just seems like a solution looking for a problem... incandescent lights are exactly the perfect solution for my use case, I am completely happy with them.

The whole problem LED bulb mandates are trying to solve is mostly a problem of unnecessary and excessive lighting which is causing tons of light pollution, interrupting peoples circadian rhythm, etc. If people used a very dim light near their body just between sunset and sleep it wouldn't matter much how efficient it is.

Brightly lighting up our cities and houses is totally unnecessary and terrible for us, and terrible for the planet regardless of how efficient and cheap we can make it. It lowers quality of life for us, and other animals affected by the light pollution.

I would have no problem affording LED lights I don't want, but cannot afford to move someplace with enough land to escape the neighbors light pollution from their cheap LEDs... which makes it harder to sleep, impossible to enjoy the stars, etc.

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