General: LED - too good to be true

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- CommentAuthorfostertom
- CommentTimeSep 14th 2022 edited
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/14/increase-in-led-lighting-risks-harming-human-and-animal-health

"While LED lighting is more energy-efficient and costs less to run, the researchers say the increased blue light radiation associated with it is causing â€œsubstantial biological impactsâ€ ... its ability to suppress the production of melatonin ... can worsen peopleâ€™s sleeping habits, which in turn can lead to a variety of chronic health conditions over time .. findings on how local street lighting has dramatically reduced the abundance of nocturnal insect populations ... some authorities are ... changing the bandwidths of their LED bulbs to produce less harmful blue light, as seen on the Isle of Wight, which uses warmer bulbs that emit less blue light"
- CommentAuthortony
- CommentTimeSep 14th 2022
Some places have changed their new bright white high temperature spectrum streetlights for new low temperature spectrum warm ones, the bright white ones have a harmful effect on wildlife including humans.

Although the new led lighting uses less energy it causes much more light pollution across a wider ranges of the spectrum than the old lighting did.

Then there is the â€˜pondingâ€™ problem.

Is this progress?
- CommentAuthorWillInAberdeen
- CommentTimeSep 14th 2022
Electricity is going to be very low carbon soon. Then, everyone can switch back to incandescent lighting, without guilt, if they like it and can afford it!
- CommentAuthorSimonD
- CommentTimeSep 15th 2022
Posted By: tonyThen there is the â€˜pondingâ€™ problem.

I'm not familiar with this - can you elaborate or post a link?

Posted By: tonyIs this progress?

I think we're going to continue to see much more common unintended consequences following new technology over the coming decades as the measures are so often far too narrow. It's become endemic in the tech industry to test and refine development using consumers.

In my mind it isn't progress as we need to primarily change our thinking about technology development and its consequences much earlier in the design process.
- CommentAuthordjh
- CommentTimeSep 15th 2022
Posted By: WillInAberdeenElectricity is going to be very low carbon soon. Then, everyone can switch back to incandescent lighting, without guilt, if they like it and can afford it!
As long as electricity is not carbon free everywhere and available in excess quantities then the responsible thing to do will be to minimise use of electricity (and other power sources) as much as possible. Also carbon free electricity doesn't mean it is carbon free to build new electric plant, so another reason to continue to minimise consumption. "Too cheap to meter" focusses on the wrong things.
- CommentAuthorWillInAberdeen
- CommentTimeSep 15th 2022
I was being slightly tongue in cheek....!

But if anyone really does feel that green progress is a bad thing and things were better in the good old days, then renewable oil lamps are still available. You can use waste animal oil, ideally not from whales, or renewable vegetable oil, ideally not from palm nuts! These will also minimise use of electricity, if you see that as the ends rather than the means.

Digressing slightly on the subject of new electric plant, I came across some interesting numbers on the embodied carbon of various generators:

Domestic PV : 75-116 gCO2/kWhe
Nuclear : 6-26 gCO2/kWhe
Offshore wind : 9-13 gCO2/kWhe

The UK grid is likely to fall below 100 gCO2/kWhe this decade, due to the rapid offshore wind roll out. At that point, any new domestic PV installations will actually become damaging for carbon, not beneficial, and we will probably have to regulate to stop people installing any more of them!

It's amazing how decarbonising electricity forces us to rethink the previous truths - LEDs, PV, what next?!

https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/post/postpn_383-carbon-footprint-electricity-generation.pdf
- CommentAuthorSimonD
- CommentTimeSep 15th 2022
Posted By: WillInAberdeenut if anyone really does feel that green progress is a bad thing and things were better in the good old days, then renewable oil lamps are still available.

Interesting comment that completely misses the point, which wasn't even nuanced. Criticising the vast untested rollout of technology that has not been assessed sufficiently in terms of its wider negative environmental impact is more valid that a considerable number of 'greenists' would want to admit.

Being green is far more that carbon intensity and carbon emissions, especially if its unintended consequence is found to be damaging to the wider ecosystem.

As I said, it harks back to rigid thinking that cannot seem to contemplate that the solutions we need may not be technological.
- CommentAuthorfostertom
- CommentTimeSep 15th 2022 edited
Posted By: SimonDits wider negative environmental impact
not to mention social and political impact - who asked the population if they wanted to be offered an addictive exploitative implimentation of social media - or even social media at all?
- CommentAuthordjh
- CommentTimeSep 15th 2022
Posted By: fostertomwho asked the population if they wanted to be offered an addictive exploitative implimentation of social media - or even social media at all?
Err, every supplier of such services? AFAIK you have to sign up to social media, it's not like they force you to have an account! Not that I wouldn't be happy if somebody made it all disappear, but still it's a free choice whether to use it.
- CommentAuthorfostertom
- CommentTimeSep 15th 2022 edited
Posted By: SimonDvast untested rollout of technology that has not been assessed sufficiently in terms of its wider negative environmental impact
Posted By: djhit's a free choice whether to use it
That's all very libertarian but politics means nothing if it isn't to have a big say, if not the determining say, in the conditions of our lives, both with foresight and after seeing how it 'inevitably' turned out. The 'tech' facade of capitalism specifically doesn't want that and continually outfoxes that, on the justifiable suspicion that unimaginative conservative 'us' will say No, if asked, to every visionary new way of making lotsa money.
- CommentAuthordjh
- CommentTimeSep 15th 2022
Posted By: fostertom
Posted By: SimonDvast untested rollout of technology that has not been assessed sufficiently in terms of its wider negative environmental impact
Posted By: djhit's a free choice whether to use it
That's all very libertarian but politics means nothing if it isn't to have a big say, if not the determining say, in the conditions of our lives, both with foresight and after seeing how it 'inevitably' turned out. The 'tech' facade of capitalism specifically doesn't want that and continually outfoxes that, on the justifiable suspicion that unimaginative conservative 'us' will say No, if asked, to every visionary new way of making lotsa money.
Sorry, I've no idea what you're talking about.
- CommentAuthorWillInAberdeen
- CommentTimeSep 15th 2022
Simon, I wasn't particularly replying to your comment. However, if you feel that changes are happening too quickly, and we should stick with twentieth-century lifestyles, whilst we conduct lengthy cautious assessment of improvements from every angle, then I have to disagree - the urgency for change is too great.

It's a mistake to expect (and wait for) perfectly-formed solutions which will be so trouble-free that they will last forever. Better to switch rapidly to newer approaches, accepting that they will have drawbacks and will in their turn be replaced by something else better. Better to embrace what is doable now, and later move on from it, rather than sit around waiting for perfect solutions which will not arrive urgently enough - such as hoping that everybody else will come to like darkness!

In case I was too nuanced and you perhaps missed the point: my comment about whales and palm oil indicated that green-ism is about more than carbon emissions, although that is by far the most pressing threat to the wider ecosystem.

However I do agree that it is important part of the improvement cycle to point out problems with those "holy cow" technologies that made important contributions in their time but are approaching the point of declining usefulness - eg CFL lighting, condensing gas boilers, insulated concrete slabs, demolish-and-rebuild, triple glazing, domestic PV after the next few years, ... What else?

Tom, I have managed to resist joining the other building-related social media platforms, but I lack sufficient determination to just quit GBF!
- CommentAuthorphiledge
- CommentTimeSep 15th 2022
Posted By: WillInAberdeen Better to switch rapidly to newer approaches, accepting that they will have drawbacks and will in their turn be replaced by something else better.

Isnt that approach whats got us in the mess we're in?

Surely we'd be better throttling back on consumption and having a good think about where were going and how big a footprint we should leave behind.
- CommentAuthorfostertom
- CommentTimeSep 15th 2022
Yes it is. but -
consumption doesn't necessarily equal damage
not just footprint, also the social and political that's enabled by our helpless acquiescence to any and all new technologies.
- CommentAuthordjh
- CommentTimeSep 15th 2022
Posted By: fostertomconsumption doesn't necessarily equal damage
Consumption is pretty much a definition of damage in our present emergency, AIUI.
- CommentAuthorfostertom
- CommentTimeSep 15th 2022
Which of the four (?) present emergencies is that?
- CommentAuthorSimonD
- CommentTimeSep 16th 2022
Posted By: philedge
Posted By: WillInAberdeenBetter to switch rapidly to newer approaches, accepting that they will have drawbacks and will in their turn be replaced by something else better.

Isnt that approach whats got us in the mess we're in?

Surely we'd be better throttling back on consumption and having a good think about where were going and how big a footprint we should leave behind.

Yup, and history is so full of these examples and the disastrous consequences, especially when fuel by commercial interest.

Back when I used to design systems (human and computer systems) within large organisations, it was inevitable that when I suggested to do some research and have a good think about what we wanted to achieve I was met with cries of 'but we haven't got time for that, we need something now.' It was often like the blind leading the blind when sitting back to consider things in the round would often yield cheaper, more efficient, workable and reliable solutions - and often ones that didn't need massive investment in technology. The ones where they forged ahead would end up costing an order a magnitude more money and require multiple redesigns. But I found out that many people just like toys and that, I suspect, is driving the development of a lot of renewable tech.

Unfortunately, thinking doesn't seem to have changed a lot sadly.
- CommentAuthorSimonD
- CommentTimeSep 16th 2022 edited
Posted By: WillInAberdeenif you feel that changes are happening too quickly, and we should stick with twentieth-century lifestyles, whilst we conduct lengthy cautious assessment of improvements from every angle, then I have to disagree - the urgency for change is too great.

I think you made up something about what I've said. I didn't say anything about the speed of change. If anything it's been too slow. The problem is rigid thinking that the solution is technological.

Posted By: WillInAberdeenIt's a mistake to expect (and wait for) perfectly-formed solutions which will be so trouble-free that they will last forever. Better to switch rapidly to newer approaches

Again, that's not what I said. Questioning and critiqueing the implementation of technology with narrow aims and measures which almost always introduces unintended consequences, is not expecting a perfectly formed solution.

I'm saying we have to re-think how we're approaching the problems and solutions.

Posted By: WillInAberdeenalthough that is by far the most pressing threat to the wider ecosystem.

Yet, interestingly, more and more research is being published that it is the other way round - that the ecosystem is the most suitable solution to our climate crisis. Everywhere we look there are micro and macro ecosystems that are far more efficient, far more sustainable, and far more healthy to us. They're also much cheaper than the technological solutions and scalable beyond the wildest dreams of the technology, yet instead we look in the wrong direction. Or perhaps it's better to suggest that our dependence on our economic thinking which seems to have permeated every single human activity as much as fossil fuels is that taking care of nature is uneconomic. Therefore it isn't viable.

So if only we took charge to really properly take care of our ecosystem as if it really was the one thing that sustains us, our populations, and indeed our lives, we might not be where we are and we might have found an alternative tool to the spade we're using to dig a yet ever deeper hole.

Indeed many of our current actions in the name of carbon reduction are already known to be fundamentally damaging to the ecosystem, yet from a political and commercial perspective, they're being primed for larger scale global rollout.

And on the other hand much of the technology being developed to reduce atmospheric carbon and carbon emmisions has yet to show its capability to do so. Yet publications very clearly show that at current levels of consumption and particularly growth, these dreamed of technologies are the only the solution.

I can't surely be the only one that sees the irony in all this?

To me, waiting to deal with problems like you suggest seems tantamount to suggesting that we spend ours and our future generations times dealing with repeated environmental crises, having to solve the problems of poorly thought out historical decisions that will no doubt increase in magnitude over time. That's just bonkers to me.

Gone way beyond LEDs now, clearly
- CommentAuthorowlman
- CommentTimeSep 16th 2022
Yes beyond LEDs, but germane, nevertheless.
Like everyone else I have LEDs in numerous guises, but I admit I've never been fully convinced of the wisdom of their massive rollout under the umbrella of energy saving.
Sure, in simple lab testing they do seem to use less energy, but when you factor in the extra manufacturing and incorporation into a plethora of stuff, much of it just for aesthetics, their energy saving tag has to be questioned. Add to that the effect they have on us as individuals where its deemed smart to illuminate the plinths of kitchen units or to permanently illuminate garden walkways just in case we need to go outside in the dark, it's further proof of the false energy saving label.
In the case of LEDs it's far too late to go back, but other technologies too are having massive detrimental effect on the world around us, but questioning them seems heresy.
Leaving aside the human psychological aspects of its use, mention has already been made of social media. In order to satisfy the need to store vast amounts of trivial conversation, and senseless, inane photographic imagery huge amounts of raw energy are needed for both housing and power consumption. Now, add to social media, crypto currencies; I saw the recent news article where they gobble up incredible energy, plus like the former, they need unimaginable computing power. Why do we humans do it?

Sorry for the rant but to add to Wills list of "holy cow technologies" and stir the s..t, Air to water heat pumps and maybe even ground source too.
- CommentAuthorSimonD
- CommentTimeSep 16th 2022
Posted By: fostertom
Posted By: SimonDits wider negative environmental impact
not to mention social and political impact - who asked the population if they wanted to be offered an addictive exploitative implimentation of social media - or even social media at all?

Oh yeah, don't get me started on that one! I'm having enough of a rant as it is!!!
- CommentAuthortony
- CommentTimeSep 16th 2022
Simon, re ponding, this is where there is a pool of light under each streetlamp rather than a more even distribution of the light
- CommentAuthordjh
- CommentTimeSep 16th 2022
Posted By: djh
Posted By: fostertomconsumption doesn't necessarily equal damage
Consumption is pretty much a definition of damage in our present emergency, AIUI.
Posted By: fostertomWhich of the four (?) present emergencies is that?
Sorry, I don't how you're splitting up the concerns? I mean the anthropogenic emergency. Too many people using too many resources in too inefficient a way leading to too bad consequences for our planet: climate, insects, other wildlife, people, etc etc. You name it, I'll include it.
- CommentAuthordjh
- CommentTimeSep 16th 2022
Posted By: owlmanSure, in simple lab testing they do seem to use less energy, but when you factor in the extra manufacturing and incorporation into a plethora of stuff, much of it just for aesthetics, their energy saving tag has to be questioned.
I'd be interested to see a comparison of the resources devoted to the manufacture of LEDs, fluorescents and incandescent lamps, especially given their different lifetimes. Do you have one? Your message seems to be about the usage of the devices, rather than the devices themselves. I think it is extremely important to differentiate the two.

Sorry, I read the rest of your post but it doesn't seem to contain any facts.
- CommentAuthorfostertom
- CommentTimeSep 16th 2022 edited
Posted By: djhthe anthropogenic emergency
That's a great umbrella term - did you just invent it? - as you say it includes everything. Incl the Covid sub-emergency - anthropogenic not meaning created in some spooky lab, but extruded from the jungle by man's pressure on ecologies, many more to follow, perhaps the way that human population will get whittled down, the old and infirm first, babes next, leaving todays teenage bulge to get older and wiser hopefully 'together'.
- CommentAuthordjh
- CommentTimeSep 17th 2022
Posted By: fostertomCovid sub-emergency
I wouldn't call 'the Covid pandemic' an emergency or sub-emergency or anything like that. It was simply a natural event that occurs every now and then. We seem to have dealt with it better than the 'so-called-Spanish flu pandemic' and hopefully will deal with the next one even better.
- CommentAuthorfostertom
- CommentTimeSep 19th 2022 edited
"every now and then"? The pace of emergence of novel diseases is hotting up. "natural event"? - in proportion to human disruption and encroachment on eco systems and animal habitats.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/emerging-infections-characteristics-epidemiology-and-global-distribution/emerging-infections-how-and-why-they-arise
Covid isn't the first recent (just the first to seriously hit 'the west') and won't be the last. Good luck to this future.
- CommentAuthorphiledge
- CommentTimeSep 20th 2022
Seem to recall David Attenborough commenting on covid in the last year or so and saying "every animal keeper knows that if you keep too many animals in too confined a space, then disease inevitably breaks out"
- CommentAuthorCliff Pope
- CommentTimeSep 21st 2022
<blockquote><cite>Posted By: djh</cite><blockquote><cite>Posted By: fostertom</cite>who asked the population if they wanted to be offered an addictive exploitative implimentation of social media - or even social media at all?</blockquote>Err, every supplier of such services? AFAIK you have to sign up to social media, it's not like they force you to have an account! Not that I wouldn't be happy if somebody made it all disappear, but still it's a free choice whether to use it.</blockquote>

So a bit like heroin then? No one is forced to sign up, so it's perfectly safe to offer to children.
- CommentAuthorfostertom
- CommentTimeSep 21st 2022 edited
Yep, there's a deep contradiction in society/politics -
on the one hand demands - 'libertarian' for freedom to make our own decisions, and 'democratic' for sovereignty to vote for society-wide decisions (or rather, rarely by direct-vote for the decisions themselves, but for politicians delegated to make decisions for us);
and on the other hand, demands for 'protection' (by the politicians) from each other and from our own weaknesses.

New dominant technologies are introduced under the 'libertarian' principle, and are often designed and intended to affect society deeply - but aren't subject to 'democratic' decision, either by direct-vote or by our politician-delegates of whichever colour.
Then, too late, come demands for politicians to protect us from the effects of such un-chosen technologies - both from the deliberate exploitation they often contain, and from our own individual weakness in adopting same - either not seeing the harm they're doing to us, or falling for deberate bamboozlement and and getting addicted anyway.
- CommentAuthordjh
- CommentTimeSep 21st 2022
Posted By: Cliff PopeSo a bit like heroin then? No one is forced to sign up, so it's perfectly safe to offer to children.
Fine by me. I believe legalising drugs and licensing their sale is a better policy. If social media isn't being licensed properly, that's a different problem.

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General: LED - too good to be true