Letters To The Editor

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August 03, 2011 - MidWeek

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More on bulbs

Bob Jones’ “Shedding Some Light On New Bulbs” is valuable, but does need a few tweaks.

First, compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs, not CFs) needn’t deliver “too much blue-end light.” The color given off by fluorescent lamps is determined by the mix of RBG (red, blue, green) phosphors. Add more red, and you’ve got warm lamps. Light color is measured by degrees Kelvin (K). Incandescent lamps deliver about 2,800K. You can buy 2,700K CFLs.

Jones implies that incandescent lamps and sunlight are about the same color. Sunlight registers about 5,000K 2,200K closer to blue than incandescents.

He’s right that LEDs are the lamps of the future. They’re improving every day and coming down in price. The County of Hawaii is about to install 1,000 LED streetlights that cut energy use in half and improve visibility and highway safety.

Mr. Jones didn’t mention economics. If you have 20 60-watt incandescents in your home burning an average of 1,000 hours a year, you’re paying $372 a year, based on 31 cents per kWh.

(That’s Oahu the Neighbor Islands pay much more.)

Replace the lamps with 15-watt CFLs and you can redirect $279 a year to your family. (By the way, incandescents burn at 450 degrees hot enough to cook steaks. Do we need more heat in our homes?)

Finally, most of Hawaii’s electricity is generated by oil imported largely from countries that don’t like us and are costing us many defense dollars.

If you want to be supporting your family instead of those countries, shift to CFLs or LEDs.

Howard C. Wiig
Honolulu

Shower tree time

Thank you to editor Don Chapman for his comments on politicians who take “pledges” making themselves beholden to special interests. It is a bad idea.

But it was his references later on to shower tree season that I really enjoyed. I’ve lived here all my life and had no idea we had so many kinds of shower trees, or that it’s Honolulu’s official tree.

Information that’s nice to know. Thank you.

Jan Gomes
Honolulu

Bogus history

Bob Jones’ column “U.S. History Myths And Legends” was shocking. To think that in school I studied many of the things he mentioned, and it turns out the teachers and text- books were wrong.

Makes you wonder what other bogus “facts” we were taught?

Linda Yee
Kaimuki

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