Is Heat “Wasted” in the Winter?

Filed under:Church of Liberalism,Politics — posted by Anwyn on May 17, 2011 @ 7:31 am

I keep seeing this line parroted over and over in articles about the incandescent bulb shortly to be lawed out of use:

The technology in traditional “incandescent” bulbs is more than a century old. Such bulbs waste most of the electricity that feeds them, turning it into heat.

Oh, so just because a lot of the electricity makes heat instead of light, that means it’s “wasted?”

I’m No Scientist or anything, but I seem to recall a rule, the conservation of something something, that said energy doesn’t get destroyed but converted into other stuff. So isn’t it true that if your house is a little warmer because you’re burning a lot of incandescent bulbs, it means your furnace has to work less hard to bring your house up to temp? Heat is heat, no matter the source, and likewise the thermostat works no matter where the heat is coming from. This is the stupidest argument ever for government mandate of a business & consumer decision. Yes, it’s more an issue in the summer, when we don’t want the extra heat, but we burn fewer incandescent bulbs in summer, too, since the daylight hours are longer.

But no, it’s waste, waste, waste, because that promotes the rationale for dictating our light bulbs and because reporters are cookie cutters, not writers.

2 comments »

  1. I heard somewhere that in Germany, where incandescent light bulbs are verbotten, they are now selling supplemental heat balls. Of course, heatballs waste a lot of light in the process but that’s what you have to put up with if you want it to be warm. Close your eyes.

    Comment by Walt — May 17, 2011 @ 4:05 pm

  2. Heh.

    Comment by Anwyn — May 20, 2011 @ 9:36 am

Copy link for RSS feed for comments on this post or for TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

(required)

(required)




image: detail of installation by Bronwyn Lace