Sometimes bullshit comes in a lovely shade of green

[mcgeedo]

I was watching Discovery Channel today, idly taking in a program whose name I don't remember, that was talking about "environmental tech." The narrator casually threw out a line: "If half of the households in the United States switched just one incandescent buld to a compact fluorescent buld, it would save the equivalent of the emissions of 800,000 cars for a year."

It really ticks me off when those who want to save us from ourselves make up crap like this and try to pass it off as fact. They apparently feel that no one will fact check and call them on it, and even if someone does, the debunking won't get the same exposure. Just quote numbers, repeat it often enough and pretty soon the sheep will believe it.

[Cynthetiq]

This is noted quite succinctly by Executive Producer Chuck Lorre. If you do not watch any of his shows, check them out what's he's done
IMDB: Chuck Lorre

View: Chuck Lorre Productions - The Official Vanity Card Archives
Source: Chucklorre
posted with the TFP thread generator

Chuck Lorre Productions - The Official Vanity Card Archives
CHUCK LORRE PRODUCTIONS, #221
We have once again arrived at a moment in history where the truth can be defined as "that which you can make other people believe." The methodology for creating that belief is repetition. Say something enough times and it becomes, for millions of people, the truth. I am endowed like a stallion. This is why control of the media equals control of the populace. I am endowed like a stallion. And also why a state run television news channel is so very dangerous. I am endowed like a stallion. Now there are those who would argue this has already happened and that a certain cable news channel is actually a covert extension of our government. I am endowed like a stallion. The fact that the channel is run by a high-ranking party official, an anchor person from the channel became a White House spokesman, and another top-ranking party official became an on-air news commentator is often used to make this argument. I am endowed like a stallion. Of course, this fact would be entirely inconsequential if the oft-repeated falsehoods they attempt to imbed into the Zeitgeist were simply amusing, or at worst, inane. I am endowed like a stallion. But, unfortunately, that is not the case. I am endowed like a stallion. The heavy repetition of lies and smears for political gain are by no means inconsequential. I am endowed like a stallion. Which is why each and every one of us must use whatever resources we have at our disposal to disseminate the actual truth. I am endowed like a pony.

1st Aired: 13 October 2008

[ratbastid]

Originally Posted by mcgeedo

I was watching Discovery Channel today, idly taking in a program whose name I don't remember, that was talking about "environmental tech." The narrator casually threw out a line: "If half of the households in the United States switched just one incandescent buld to a compact fluorescent buld, it would save the equivalent of the emissions of 800,000 cars for a year."

It really ticks me off when those who want to save us from ourselves make up crap like this and try to pass it off as fact. They apparently feel that no one will fact check and call them on it, and even if someone does, the debunking won't get the same exposure. Just quote numbers, repeat it often enough and pretty soon the sheep will believe it.

Do you know that that fact is untrue? I don't. I grant you, it seems unlikely, but... I trust your gut reaction skepticism even less than I trust somebody quoting numbers. Just because you said, "Oh, come on!" when you heard it doesn't necessarily make it a lie.

[Baraka_Guru]

This is featured on the Energy Star website:

Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs

If every American home replaced just one light bulb with an ENERGY STAR qualified bulb, we would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes for a year, more than $600 million in annual energy costs, and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of more than 800,000 cars.

I'm not very numerate, but I did some crunching. They say these bulbs use 75% less energy than incandescent bulbs. There are around 112,000,000 households in the U.S. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) If they were to replace even one 60W incandescent bulb with 13W fluorescent bulbs (which offer equivalent lumens), it would mean 5,264,000kw in energy savings. Calculate that per hour.

Here, I found 100 cubic feet of gas is equal to 28 to 31 kWh (kilowatt hours). So, 1 kWh is equal to at least 3 cubic feet of gas.

[edit again]

Now, if a household can save 47w per hour, isn't this equal to 0.141 cubic feet of gas per hour?


This is around 16,000,000 cubic feet of gas saved per hour in the U.S.

[dlish]

i can see your point.

but i really am endowed like a stallion

[Frosstbyte]

Originally Posted by dlish

i can see your point.

but i really am endowed like a stallion

I have no idea where that came from or what it means, but it's awesome. Thank you dlish.

Also, thanks for doing the math on that one, baraka. Seems like it could be more than mere puffery.

[abaya]

Originally Posted by mcgeedo

"If half of the households in the United States switched just one incandescent buld to a compact fluorescent buld, it would save the equivalent of the emissions of 800,000 cars for a year."

It sounds as if you have moral qualms with the idea of people using flourescent light bulbs. Whether or not it saves the emissions of 800,000 cars a year or not, we're not talking about inciting people to genocide, here. If such statements encourage people to conserve energy in any way, shape, or form, then why can't that be a positive thing? It's certainly more admirable (in my book) than marketing energy-guzzling and/or polluting products for people to consume all they want.

[mcgeedo]

Number of households in the United States, 2010 projected: about 115,000

source - http://www.census.gov/prod/1/pop/p25-1129.pdf

Carbon emission of a car, 2008 Toyota Corolla, 12,000 miles/year: 7862 pounds

source - Carbon footprint calculator | TerraPass: fight global warming, reduce your carbon footprint

Carbon emission of a power plant, Gavin in Ohio: 1062 tons Co2 per kW/year

source - CARMA - Carbon Monitoring for Action

Half of the households would number about 57,500. Replacing a 100 Watt incandescent bulb with a 25 Watt compact fluorescent bulb of the same brightness (lumens) would save about 75 Watts. The savings is about 6,296,250 kiloWatt hours, assuming that the bulb is used about 4 hours per day.

Using the carbon numbers for a fairly dirty power plant, you get 6,686,617,500 tons per year of Co2 savings.

800,000 cars at 7862 pounds per year is 6,289,600,000 tons of Co2 per year.

So there you go: Change just one light bulb in half the households and you can save the carbon emitted by 800,000 cars.

BUT!!! You have to use the carbon figures of one of the more dirty, coal-fired power plants, and you have to use the carbon emissions of a brand-new compact car. If you add a little reality, such as the average carbon per kW of US power plants... If you use the carbon emissions of a more typical car... You don't get the same rosy answer. Yes, you get a savings, but not as big as advertised. Not nearly as big.

Figures don't lie, but liars figure. That particular lie is often repeated, here for example:

http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partner...et_Mercury.pdf

[Yakk]

Originally Posted by mcgeedo

I was watching Discovery Channel today, idly taking in a program whose name I don't remember, that was talking about "environmental tech." The narrator casually threw out a line: "If half of the households in the United States switched just one incandescent buld to a compact fluorescent buld, it would save the equivalent of the emissions of 800,000 cars for a year."

It really ticks me off when those who want to save us from ourselves make up crap like this and try to pass it off as fact. They apparently feel that no one will fact check and call them on it, and even if someone does, the debunking won't get the same exposure. Just quote numbers, repeat it often enough and pretty soon the sheep will believe it.

Let's check the numbers, shall we?

US households = 105,480,101
Power savings of a Bulb = say 80 W
Be generous, and presume the Bulb is on 50% of the time.
Presume the bulb has a 10 year life expectancy
80 W * 10 years / 2 = 1.3 * 10^10 J, or 3,506 kWh
* 50 million = 1.753 * 10^11 kWh

Nuclear generates less than 17 g/kWh of CO2. So this is 2,980,100,000,000 g of CO2, or 3 million tonnes of CO2.

I'll say 200 lbs of CO2 per million BTU for coal (quick google search). So that's 5.42681444 × 10^10 kg, or ~5 * 10^7 tonnes, of CO2, or 50 million tonnes.

A car (I picked a 2 L mazda) generates about 198 g/km.
Say the car in question drives 20,000 km/year.
800,000 cars at 20,000 km/year at 200 g/km is 3,200,000,000,000 g of carbon.

Or 3.2 million tonnes of CO2.

In short, doing a quick check of the numbers, it seems to work out using somewhat reasonable assumptions.

Admittedly, the bulb is more likely to be burning CH4 on the margin and not coal. And I did have the lightbulb be on for 5 years solid before burning out.

The car probably would be driven further than that, and I ended up with 50 million tonnes of CO2 vs 3 million tonnes of CO2 for the cars.

Any mistakes in my math?

What math did you do to confirm that the story was wrong? I'd like to see it, maybe I'd find a mistake in my math!

[mcgeedo]

"If such statements encourage people to conserve energy in any way, shape, or form, then why can't that be a positive thing?"

No, I don't have a problem with fluorescent bulbs. The hypocrisy of banning mercury except in bulbs kind of bothers me, but that's another topic. And saving energy is a good thing, too, and I encourage it when I can. No, abaya, I like the idea of both the bulbs and saving energy.

What bothers me is when someone outright lies by shading the figures, repeats and spreads it in an attempt to "make it true."

[Jozrael]

Both mcgeedo and Baraka said 115,000 homes. I'm not sure where you're getting that fact.

115,000,000 homes by 2010 in US. 105 mil now.

How would nearly 300 million Americans (I think its 283 or something?) fit in 115,000 homes? That's like 3000 people in one home.

[mcgeedo]

That's 115,000,000 households in 2010, per the census.gov site. Sorry for the typo.

[filtherton]

I wouldn't call it a lie, more of an estimate. Such approximations are useful in that they can impart a sense of scale to an issue. We waste a lot of energy. It's very easy to write off the impact of the decision to use a cfl because on an individual scale. It is more difficult to do it in the context of "if everyone did it" because if everyone did it, the reduction in energy use would be immense.

[Baraka_Guru]

Originally Posted by Jozrael

115,000,000 homes by 2010 in US. 105 mil now.

Thanks. I grabbed a stat that was in 1,000s.

Even using my 112,000,000 homes, I calculated the result to be equal to 16,000,000 cubic feet of gas saved per hour in the U.S.

But like I said, I'm not very numerate. If I'm remotely correct, 16,000,000 cubic feet of gas per hour seems like a lot. How much does 800,000 cars burn per hour?

[mcgeedo]

filth, you may call it what you like, of course. If they used an "average" car and an "average" power plant, I'd call it an estimate, too. But when they use a very low emission car and a very high emission power plant to make their numbers look better, they are lying. It's cooking the books, just like Enron, AIG and all the others, which seems to set off the people on this forum like kicking a hornet's nest.

Saving energy is a good thing. Just tell the truth about it. When the "greens" lie about stuff like this, you have to wonder what else they are lying about to sell their belief system.

[ratbastid]

A cubic foot is a hair shy of 7.5 gallons.

800,000 cars going 60, and getting fuel efficiency of say 25mpg will burn 1,920,000 gallons per hour. That's 256,000 cubic feet of gas burned per hour by 800,000 cars, if my math holds, which would be a first.

[dc_dux]

I assume the figures come from the EPA-DOE Energy Star program:

If every American home replaced just one light bulb with an ENERGY STAR qualified bulb, we would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes for a year, more than $600 million in annual energy costs, and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of more than 800,000 cars.

Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs : ENERGY STAR

In any case, incandescent light bulbs will be banned in the US starting in 2012.

[mcgeedo]

I'm not sure where the original quote comes from but I've found it repeated on the Energy Star website, the DOE and various others in addition to being quoted on the Discovery Channel. Always the same quote. Someone did the original math and now it's seen and heard everywhere. Surely I'm not the first person to fact check it. Surely I'm not the first person to question the assumptions that its based on.

But that's another aspect of the whole issue. My original post complained about them shading the truth. It also bothers me that people will take a quote and repeat it as fact without checking it, as long as it supports their beliefs.

[dc_dux]

I dont know if the specifics are true or not and if, or by how much, the "truth is being shaded." I assume the Energy Star program was the primary source and was subject to internal review... and the Discovery Channel and others are simply repeating it or citing it.

I do know that using CFLs provides a significant energy savings.
-----Added 17/10/2008 at 06 : 54 : 22-----
Most electricity in the U.S. is produced by coal-fired power plants (the greatest source of greenhouse gas emissions). The problem is that for every kilowatt hour of electricity generated by a coal-fired plant, the EPA estimates that 1.43 lbs of greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere. By switching to CFL light bulbs, you lessen greenhouse gas emissions.

[mcgeedo]

You're absolutely right, dc. CFLs save energy and that's a good thing. I'm not disputing that at all.

But if it's more like 200,000 or 300,000 cars per bulb, just tell me the truth so I can make an informed decision. There's no need to exaggerate the rate of return on the real estate loan... errr, I mean the number of cars, in order to convince me.

[dc_dux]

CFLs save energy AND reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

I guess I am just not bothered by the comparison to 800,000 cars or 200,000 cars (I dont which figure is correct) for illustrative purposes.....let just say "hundreds of thousands".... Its a lot a cars!

[ratbastid]

Originally Posted by mcgeedo

You're absolutely right, dc. CFLs save energy and that's a good thing. I'm not disputing that at all.

But if it's more like 200,000 or 300,000 cars per bulb, just tell me the truth so I can make an informed decision. There's no need to exaggerate the rate of return on the real estate loan... errr, I mean the number of cars, in order to convince me.

But.... How informed does your decision really need to be, here? Would your decision be any different if that number was different? Are you really going to say, "Only 200,000 carsworth of savings!? BAH!"

In short, I have a hard time seeing what you're so worked up about here.

[mcgeedo]

"But.... How informed does your decision really need to be, here?"

Does no one else see the principle? Suppose I was trying to sell you a bunch of mortgages that I own. Suppose I inflated the potential value in order to get you to buy them?

There is little difference between 200,000 and 800,000 cars. Either data point indicates the need to save energy.

"In short, I have a hard time seeing what you're so worked up about here."

In short, I resent being lied to by someone selling their belief system. You can tell me it's just a little lie, and it's OK because it's for a good cause. That doesn't make it the truth. It makes me wonder what else, in the greens' platform, is being stretched. If they don't mind stretching the truth, maybe they don't mind completely fabricating stuff. If the truth isn't good enough to support your position, then maybe you should re-think your position.

[ratbastid]

Maybe it's just that conservation seems like a self-evident good to me, and I don't really care what evidence anybody tries to present to sway me. I'm not really in the market to be sold conservation, because I'm already buying (we started switching to CFLs a couple years ago, for instance).

Maybe if you're in the air about whether your efforts make any difference or something, I can see resenting somebody using the most favorable possible numbers to make that point (which is what happened here--calling it a stretch is, well, a stretch). But if it's obvious to you as it is to me, it doesn't really matter whether others are perhaps overzealous in their making the point.

[dc_dux]

Originally Posted by mcgeedo

In short, I resent being lied to by someone selling their belief system. You can tell me it's just a little lie, and it's OK because it's for a good cause. That doesn't make it the truth. It makes me wonder what else, in the greens' platform, is being stretched. If they don't mind stretching the truth, maybe they don't mind completely fabricating stuff. If the truth isn't good enough to support your position, then maybe you should re-think your position.

I think this provides the source data: Facts and Assumptions (pdf)

Were you lied to? I dont know.

[mcgeedo]

rat, you are arguing that the end justifies the means. Is that really what you think?

Someone made a conscious decision to use a very low emission car and a very high emission power plant when they figured out that cute little example. A conscious decision to mislead you and me. If that doesn't just frost you, then that's where we agree to disagree.

I am already persuaded that saving energy is good. Hell, it's vital. It's a subject for another thread, but we have to end our dependence on those who hate us.

I also happen to think that CFLs are the height of stupidity, in light (pardon the pun) of upcoming LED technology and the serious hazards of mercury contamination. But that's also another thread.

To wind up this thead: If you don't mind being lied to in order to get environmental issues sold to you, then we differ.

[dc_dux]

Originally Posted by mcgeedo

]To wind up this thead: If you don't mind being lied to in order to get environmental issues sold to you, then we differ.

Where is the data that supports your claim that you were lied to...or they "used very low emission car and a very high emission power plant" (rather than averages from the fact sheet I posted above)?

I still havent seen it and cant get that upset about it.

-----Added 17/10/2008 at 07 : 55 : 12-----
And I agree with you about CFLs and LEDs!

[mcgeedo]

"Where is the data that supports your claim that you were lied to"

Obviously I wasn't at the meeting where it was decided to lie. I honestly don't know who originally did the calculations; the quote seems to appear verbatim all over the net.

All I did was look up some credible sources for information. The links are in one of my previous posts in this thread. I even chose sources that would be acceptible to, or sourced by "greens," such as "Carbon Monitoring for Action." I then did the calculations myself. It isn't rocket science. To get near the numbers so often quoted, you have to choose low emission cars, and high-emission power plants. If it's a true statement, then it should be repeatable with publicly available information (a part of what is sometimes called "the scientific method").

[Rekna]

What is the definition of household? Do we count people who have multiple homes more than once? Do we count renters?

In an estimation like this being off by a factor of 2 or 4 isn't a big deal. You are assuming you know how they came up with their numbers but in reality you don't. Please find the constants that they used and prove that those constants are invalid.

[mcgeedo]

"What is the definition of household?"

I used the number in the column labeled "households" in the US Census Bureau website. :-)

I agree with you, Rekna, that estimates can often vary. That's why I did the math myself. The fascinating thing is that my calculation is astonishingly close, within a few percent of the public statement, as long as you choose parameters suitable to your end goal. It does vary by factors of several if you choose more typical parameters.

I have no idea where they came up with the parameters that they used. Without knowing who did it, there's no knowing what or why they chose. It would be nice if we coukd find the source and question them, but that doesn't seem likely. The best we can do is try and reproduce their conclusion with credible, publicly available information. That's one of the problems with unsupported claims that get distributed across the net. They take on a life and truth of their own because they're diffuclt to counter.

What would you use to make the calculations? Or do you even care to?

[Willravel]

Saving the Earth isn't a good marketing strategy unless it's tied in with "and we'll save you a ton of money". I've seen the same thing for years. Sure, some people say they're trying to be ecologically responsible, but the lion's share of consumers are simply cheap bastards. I learned this the hard way.

Slave labor? Most people don't care. Save the Earth? Most people don't care. Sewn from human skin? If it's on sale, they'll sell like hotcakes.

It's the main reason I left marketing.

[Yakk]

Did you misquote the original source? I don't see where it said "if you replace the bulbs for a year" -- I presumed it was counting for the lifetime of the bulb, not over the year.

The over the year qualified the car emissions.

That is why I generated a number that was 20 times greater than the car emissions, leaving lots of room for a miscalculation.

In short, there are somewhat reasonable assumptions that make the claim accurate. And given the vague wording of it, saying that it is ridiculous in that case seems... disingenuous.

[ratbastid]

Originally Posted by mcgeedo

rat, you are arguing that the end justifies the means. Is that really what you think?

I'm not in the slightest arguing that the ends justify the means (although generally I will say that an iron-clad belief that they don't is religion, not logic).

I'm saying that for me and my life choices, the means are meaningless. I don't need ANY math to convince me to go CFL. Well, actually, the math that mainly convinced me was the difference it would make in my utility bill, and I did that figuring myself. This particular campaign is at best an interesting tidbit of data, and not at all something that will influence my actions.

I think it's pretty naive to think that a campaign to get people to do a particular something should use something other than the most favorable, dramatic, impactful statistics they can justify using. I'm a little suspicious, given that ecology is typically on the other side of the coin from your usual positions, mcgeedo, that you're operating with heightened suspicion here, suspicion you might not bring to a campaign for some other change in public behavior. Feel free to tell me I'm off base, but I'm still suspicious.

[mcgeedo]

Yakk: The original source was a quote spoken by a narrator on a TV show. I understood it to be for a year. Here's one written version of the quote:

"If every American home replaced just one light bulb with an ENERGY STAR qualified bulb, we would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes for a year, more than $600 million in annual energy costs, and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of more than 800,000 cars."

I understand this mean for a year, based on the references to "annual" energy costs a d lighting 3 million homes for a year. Still, I can get very close to the quoted number with judicious choices, and quite far from it with more reasonable choices. I read into this one thing; you read into it another.

rat, I'm certainly not a big proponent of tree-hugging nor do I accept the Gospel of Man-Made Climate Change. I do feel strongly about energy independence and conservation is a viable aspect of that.

[filtherton]

Originally Posted by mcgeedo

filth, you may call it what you like, of course. If they used an "average" car and an "average" power plant, I'd call it an estimate, too. But when they use a very low emission car and a very high emission power plant to make their numbers look better, they are lying. It's cooking the books, just like Enron, AIG and all the others, which seems to set off the people on this forum like kicking a hornet's nest.

Saving energy is a good thing. Just tell the truth about it. When the "greens" lie about stuff like this, you have to wonder what else they are lying about to sell their belief system.

Lies, damn lies, and statistics and all that. It might not be entirely representative of average values, but that doesn't make it a lie. It's not cooking the books like Enron, AIG or any of the others. Those companies committed fraud or were managed incompetently and the net result was the devaluing of massive amounts of innocent people's investments.

The only folly in estimates like these is perhaps reading more into them than you should. Now, in some sense that's the point: certain people are meant to read more into it than they should, because they are the portion of people who only respond to things like this. These people don't do the math themselves. For the green movement to have any impact it will have to be able to effectively reach these people.

It's pretty standard stuff in the field of mass persuasion known as advertising. One of the main PR problems of the Environmental Movement has roots in its member's naive notion that all it takes to change people's behavior is telling them about dire consequences of that behavior. Anyone familiar how humans actually act can plainly see that this isn't the case.

There will always be people who respond to dire consequences, but there will always be people for which the consequences aren't necessarily all that interesting.

The green movement is offering a product and that product is concern for the environment. If it succeeds in changing people's behavior toward the environment it will in large part be due to the fact that many environmentalists have come to understand that when it comes to getting people to do what you want, there are many lessons to be learned from Madison Avenue.

Certainly there are folks who take advantage of "green" connotations to sell us things we don't need. But that's capitalism. That's caveat emptor. Oddly enough, the only folks who seem complain about it are the very same folks who are most ardent proponents of capitalism and also most insistent that people who don't exercise personal responsibility deserve what they get. I'm not quite sure what to make of it, but it seems a bit contrived. American capitalism works because people are easily duped into doing things they didn't initially want to do. What's wrong with the green movement taking advantage of this fact?

Besides, anyone who take the time to do the math will still see that significant energy savings would ensue if people switched to CFLs en masse.

Look at your reaction: you don't doubt the energy saving properties of CFLs, you probably didn't before you heard this statistic (I have to admit that I don't know you). If you had just taken their word for it, you'd still be impressed about the energy saving properties of CFLs.

It's a win-win. Anyone who wouldn't use CFLs just because they did the math and found the stat misleading probably wouldn't use CFLs anyway.

[Rekna]

Do your estimates include the costs of manufacturing, shipping, advertising, storage, etc? An estimate like this is going to be wildly inaccurate. I'm going to again stress that being a factor of 2-4 off isn't a big deal at all.

[grumpyolddude]

Originally Posted by dlish

but i really am endowed like a stallion

Me, too. Mostly in the ears and teeth, though.



Sloppy fact-checking is a distressing trend. Especially if it drives folks to the opposite end of the spectrum. CFL's won't save the world. They have environmental issues of their own. I've been switching, though, because they will help reduce my electric bill, which leaves more money for dirty, filthy petrol for my vehicles.

[clavus]

Originally Posted by dlish

i can see your point.

but i really am endowed like a stallion

HA! The first time I read that I thought it said "endowed like a salmon."