Environment: CFL's Not Panacea

TORONTO, ONTARIO - An interesting report aired tonight on CBC Television's "The National" from correspondent Reg Sherren. Sherren cited research at the University of Manitoba that indicates that the purported energy savings from compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL's) are not actually 75% in northern climates. Instead, they may be as little as 17%.

How can that be? Regular incandescent light bulbs are less efficient in large part because much of the energy that they consume does not turn into light. Instead, much of it is converted into heat. In the winter when the heat is on, this is actually a good thing--adding heat to the room, if not terribly efficiently, and thus decreasing the load on the furnace, space heater, or other heating mechanism. In the summer, it's a terrible thing, as the additional heat adds to the load placed on air conditioning units. Sherren even noted a BC Hydro study that showed that CFL's may actually add to greenhouse gas emissions in British Columbia, since while electrical use will decrease, the resulting increase in the use of fossil fuels for heating would actually cause more greenhouse gases to be emitted.

While I will give the CBC and Sherren some credit for trying to be balanced in this report (they didn't say NOT to buy CFL's, for example), this kind of reporting seems to miss the big picture it claims to pursue on several points.

First of all, CFL's last longer than incandescent bulbs, so there is a net positive to the environment right there from decreased waste and resource consumption. Second of all, even if there is only a 17% reduction in overall energy consumption instead of the 75% advertised in Winnipeg, that's still a 17% reduction. How can a 17% reduction not be a net positive? If the BC Hydro study is accurate, that's a call for retrofitting houses with better insulation and more efficient furnaces that operate on cleaner fuels, not an argument to stick with inefficient light bulbs.

Of course, if one lives in Phoenix, Arizona then all of this discussion is academic--there's no question that compact fluorescent light bulbs will offer something close to their advertised advantages. It's only in northern climates where the contribution of incandescent bulbs to heating is significant that the effects the CBC has reported on matter at all.

There's nothing wrong with revealing that the marketing on a product, including CFL's, is misleading. However, reporters have a responsibility not to similarly over-sensationalize the reality. This report probably didn't quite cross the line, but if anyone walked away from it wondering if they should be installing CFL's in Toronto, where air conditioners run in the summer, let me make it clear: Of course you should buy CFL's.

Margin Notes: Soot, Messing with Joe, Digital TV

Canadian Pacific trains #240 and #159 met above the Humber River in Toronto, Ontario on 25-February-2009

TORONTO, ONTARIO - Most weeks, it seems I complain about the weather each Sunday, but the above picture shows why the winter is so enjoyable in Canada--the white covering adds quite a bit to a picture of a meet between two Canadian Pacific trains at the Humber River in this neighborhood. It won't look nearly as attractive once the snow disappears until the spring growth starts to occur.

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Spring may start sooner according to some researchers. Recent research by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies appears to be backing up claims first publicized in 2003 that soot accelerates global warming. By making the snow less white, the soot causes the ground to reflect less energy and absorb more, thus accelerating global warming by what the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics recently reported may amount to snow packs in the mountains of the western United States melting a full month earlier than it would otherwise!

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While a spring melt one month earlier than usual might sound like a good idea right now, many of us are far more interested in the economy improving one month earlier than it otherwise would. In a major speech last week, US President Barack Obama announced that Vice President Joe Biden will be placed in charge of making certain that stimulus spending would occur as intended, "because nobody messes with Joe." I thought Joe Croce sang to us in 1972 that You Don't Mess Around With Jim, not Joe.

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I had occasion to listen to news about Obama and the rest of the world on the analog television channel signal of CBC Television (VHF channel #5 in the Toronto area) this week, and the thought occurred to me that there are already places in the US where listening to analog television is no longer possible. Analog television will disappear everywhere in the United States on 12-June-2009. Our time will come in Canada, though. The CRTC has currently scheduled the end of analog television to be 31-August-2011 here. Maybe by then I'll have a smart phone that will be able to pick up the live Internet feed of CBC Newsworld.

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This blog made available new material on the Internet every day during the month of February (radio picks on Saturday and photos on Sunday don't count toward that feat, so the post total is padded to 36 instead of 28). Now that I've proven I can do that, expect a few random days to be missed in the coming weeks as I worry more about quality than quantity.

Politics: Global Air Poisoning?

TORONTO, ONTARIO - It's been a cold week here in Toronto with the wind chill reaching -30 C when I woke up this morning. It's been a cold week all across northern North America, the kind of deep freeze that sometimes happens in the winter. In this era, though, whenever temperatures dip significantly below seasonal levels, a bunch of right-wingers starts claiming that this is evidence that "global warming" is not occurring. Never mind that for at least a decade, scientists and other informed people have been trying to explain that a more appropriate term for what it happening as a result of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is "climate change" that will result in more extremes in many places, but on average result in overall increased average temperatures. Clearly, this communication campaign has failed. People can't or won't distinguish between climate and weather, and many don't accept the idea that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere matters. A new communication tactic is needed, and I suspect the prospect of air smelling like rotten eggs--maybe call it "global air poisoning"--might be more convincing.

Even if one doesn't believe that the causes are man-made, the observation that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are increasing can't be regarded as a good thing. There are many impacts besides the well-known "greenhouse effect" of trapping heat inside the atmosphere. One of the more disturbing effects is that the increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere raises its level in the oceans as the two are in equilibrium. More carbon dioxide in water means greater acidity--carbonic acid is formed. The acidity of the ocean is reportedly already going down, to the extent that the phenomenon rates its own Wikipedia page.

So what? As water becomes acidic, it becomes harder for organisms that have an aerobic-based metabolism--basically, things we are used to from animals to plants to algae that exchange oxygen for carbon dioxide or vice versa--and easier for things that have a sulfur-based metabolism. These are things that for the most part live only in the deep ocean right now next to thermal vents. This is a good thing, because the bacteria based on a sulfur metabolism process sulfur oxides into hydrogen sulfide (instead of turning carbon dioxide into hydrogen oxide, better known as water). Everyone knows what hydrogen sulfide is--it smells like rotten eggs. Humans can detect it in the parts per trillion range. In higher concentrations, it basically kills off aerobic organizations, and some think a volcanic-based spike of hydrogen sulfide is what led to the Permian extinction.

The more carbon dioxide goes into the atmosphere, the more acidic that the oceans become, and the closer we come to allowing the anaerobic, sulfur-based organisms to gain a foothold in the ocean. As the Science Daily article linked above puts it:

In the end-Permian, as the levels of atmospheric oxygen fell and the levels of hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide rose, the upper levels of the oceans could have become rich in hydrogen sulfide catastrophically. This would kill most the oceanic plants and animals. The hydrogen sulfide dispersing in the atmosphere would kill most terrestrial life.

To me, hydrogen sulfide in the atmosphere is more disturbing than climate change, which is disturbing enough. Hence, I would suggest that those of us concerned about the changes taking place in the atmosphere quit talking about "climate change" and try calling it something like "global air poisoning" that encompasses both ideas.

Of course, basing environmental arguments on increased hydrogen sulfide probably won't work, either. People won't be able to smell the increased levels of hydrogen sulfide, so they won't believe that it is happening even when levels start to increase, if they ultimately do. By the time people would smell anything, we'd be on the verge of death and it would be too late to decisive action. So, if the scare factor doesn't work--and if it were going to, I would think that rising sea levels should have done that trick--it isn't going to help.

Still, the language of "climate change" doesn't seem to be working. Perhaps "global air poisoning" can lead us to some other terminology that will be ideally be more accurate and more effective. "Global atmosphere change" maybe? I'm still thinking.