Among the exceptions are:
- southern hemisphere at xmas: Australia may be one of the few places in which using more efficient bulbs may help because a large amount of energy is used for air conditioning and very little for heating.
- exterior lights; these do not heat in any obviously useful way.

Most analyses of the savings from high efficiency bulbs that i have seen ignore the savings from parasitic heating.

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/santa-klaus-takes-on-global-warming

I had cause to try to deal with the CSIRO a few years ago. Pretty much a sheltered workshop.

George E. Smith (16:02:18) :

“As for that free (one day) thermo-nuclear energy; as they say the energy of the future; and always will be.

Better hope it never happens in your lifetime; unless you really want to see this planet get screwed up by too much energy consumption. today’s “global warming” will be peanuts compared to a thermonuclear future; just fancy; extinction by slow Hydrogen bomb.”

Really. I hope you are kidding. BTW Google “Bussard fusion” The fusion future may be about to happen. Only it isn’t “thermo” “”

Not kidding at all Mike. Atleast now with apparent energy shortages and increasing demand an rising costs, people are at least somewhat concerned about energy efficiency.

If we suddenly had an essentially limitless source of energy that was cheap; the world would go hogwild, and wasteful, and at some point, our global total usage of the ultimate fossil fuel, would start to put a real climate change burden on the planet.

I have no problem with the concept of the present world population being elevated to a decent standard of living and healthy living at that; but the complete removal of any limits to human population explosion, would eventually doom this planet, as far as humans are concerned.

In the clean, green, PNW we use only renewable hydroelectric power for our Christmas lights.

Oops, forgot, it seems hydro is not clean, green, or renewable in Washington State. It got left off the list when the watermelons mandated what types of power were to be considered sustainable.

You have to DAM rivers to create Hydro – and DAMS are just plain wrong.

Beware the path of the Heretic. You’ll burn one day! Burn I tell you! – mark my words…

As usual, New Zealand’s off the map – but it might have shown a light or two glimmering in the major cities.

Never fear, the the image Anthony used was cropped by an anti-New Zealand zealot.

The link on the image, http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020810.html takes you to the “Astronomy Picture of the Day” and a link to a 2400×1200 pixel version. Both include Hawaii to New Zealand in all their 2002 glory.

evanjones (22:09:27) :

I notice that most of the places without lights are hellholes I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemies.

Ah, spoken like a true Hew Yorker. :-) On a ski trip to Vail I went up the chairlift with one of them. He couldn’t wait to get back to civilization and away from all the nothing around Vail.

After noticing all the hellholes, then I look at all the dark. After all, I do own a nice small telescope. Living in the northeast US, dark is a precious commodity and our eyes are drawn to places like the Adirondacks in New York, the White Mountains in New Hampshire, and wonderfully delineated “Crown of Maine.” The latter is a bit of an astronomical hellhole – any light there (up or down) is blocked by pine trees.

And then there’s Canada. They still have lots of good dark and is fairly nearby.

New York City is enough to drive an astronomer mad. Hmm, James Hansen has an astronomy degree, perhaps he just needs more dark, comets, and nebulae. Orion is gorgeous this time of year.

However, NZ cannot compete with the magnificent building-high Christmas light decorations in Hong Kong, bordering both sides of the harbour. Unfortunately this year the general amount of decoration is less than it used to be. Hard times or apathy? It’s difficult to tell.

Season’s greetings to all.

– Annette – who has enjoyed an unseasonally warm Christmas day in Hong Kong.

Its par for the course.

” …..The major way in which blue lights (LEDs aren’t any different from any other blue lights) exhibit vision difficulties, is that the human eye is highly chromatic aberated…..”

Thank you for your clear explanation of my observation about blue (LED) lights. It’s a pleasure to read a well thought out and reasoned comment.

Yep. Record cold is “weather” and record heat is “evidence”. Amazing, that, isn’t it?