Seeing the Light: LEDs

The Climate Change hoaxers are a relentless bunch. I’ve covered their rantings in previous TPD blogs such as Inconvenient Truths Revisited and Electric Cars are a Scam, so I won’t bore you with repeating their nutty narrative again. Suffice to say: They are (religiously, fanatically) obsessed with the idea that human society needs a major energy reset, and they’ve identified carbon – in all its forms – as Enemy #1.

Never mind that the element, carbon, is the building block of life itself.

It doesn’t take a genius to spot the Marxist fingerprints on the “climate agenda.” It’s a great mechanism for pitting people against each other (“oppressors vs. oppressed”), for redistributing wealth, for societal disruption and control, and so on. You’ve really got to hand it to ‘em for cooking up a scam of this magnitude.

I digress. The Marxist angle on Climate Change is a topic that’s probably best saved for another day.

What’s on my mind at the moment is not related to the origins or psychoses of Climate Change ideology. What’s on my mind is how we’re all now suffering the real-world effects of allowing lunatics to be at the helm.

Winds of Change

There are a number of things – “technologies,” really – that are being introduced and pressed upon us in the name of combating “Climate Change.” Electric cars, industrial-scale wind and solar “farms,” carbon capture and sequestration schemes, sea wall construction projects, the Internet of Things, and so on. These are all massive undertakings that are occurring at a financial and physical scale that’s beyond most people’s capacity for reckoning.

But amongst these juggernauts are some seemingly innocuous, yet ubiquitous technologies that have been quietly embraced, absorbed into everyday living.

Case in point: LED lighting.

Bright Idea

Used to be, a lightbulb represented the epitome of simplicity, and a “lightbulb moment” described a creative spark, a useful invention coming to life.

But those days are gone. Something has caused the lightbulb filament to burn out.

Now, LED lighting is everywhere. It has replaced traditional lighting, across the board. It’s in our homes, offices, schools, grocery stores, flashlights, toys, holiday decorations, headlights and taillights, and street lights. It’s beaming at us all day from computer and mobile phone screens. It’s literally shining up our asses, via the exploratory ends of colonoscopes. There’s simply no avoiding it.

Try to find a good, old fashioned incandescent lightbulb somewhere these days. You can’t. It’s as if they never existed. They’ve been scrubbed from the official record.

Move over, Thomas Edison. There’s a new kid in town.

This is all by design, of course. And the full changeover to 100% LED lighting has occurred with whirlwind speed – in less than two years.

The justification for the changeover that’s been provided to Joe Public has been a simple one:

“Households that replace every lightbulb with LEDs will save, on average, $200 per year on their electric bill. Sure, LED bulbs are more expensive than old-fashioned bulbs, but you’ll save money in the long run because LEDs never need to be replaced – they’re basically designed to last forever!”

But, just to make sure Joe Public didn’t try hold onto any antiquated, Edison-esque ideas about lighting, the following was added to the rollout mix as well:

  • In March 2023, the U.S. Department of Energy stared penalizing all sales of incandescent lightbulbs. Threats of fines over $500 per illicit bulb were introduced.
  • Supplemental messaging along the lines of this was injected into our thought-space: “Using LED lights is an act of eco-consciousness, because LEDs use up to 90% less energy than incandescent bulbs. Multiplied across millions of home and business installations, this means we’re eliminating the emissions of millions of metric tons of carbon. You can do everything exactly as you always have, but you’ll be greener! It’s a simple, good-citizen thing we can all do to combat Climate Change!”

Touch of Grey

I don’t know about you, but when the government starts to mandate things in the name of Climate Change, I get a funny feeling in my gut. And my little voice starts chattering.

I would certainly agree that LED lightbulbs consume about 90% less electrical energy than incandescent lightbulbs. It’s easy to measure, so I’ve done so.

Let me clarify: I’ve measured the electrical input, in Watts, of various “label equivalent” light LED and incandescent lightbulbs. And I’ve also measured the temperature at various locations on the bulbs and bases. It’s clear that incandescent lightbulbs generate more heat – so that must be where a good part of the energy is going. But I haven’t measured the output – I’ve only subjectively seen that there is indeed visible light emitted. There is, of course, tons that I could say regarding the “quality” of the emitted light of LEDs versus incandescents – but once again, that might be a topic best saved for another time. For now, I’ll just comment that, to me, LED lighting is not nearly as pleasing to the eye as the light produced by good, old-fashioned bulbs. There’s something a little off about LED lighting, regardless of its “warmth” or “coolness” (meaning its color signature). It’s as if LED-illuminated objects are somehow duller, greyer, less tethered to reality.

Maybe I’m just a natural-light / campfire-light / candle-light kind of guy, who prefers getting his light from hot things like the sun, burning hardwood, and glowing incandescent filaments. But, I’m going to guess that others have experienced the same, slightly unsettling illumination oddities with LEDs. For example, which of the following lighting segments shows the “real” kitchen?:

Answer: Maybe none of them. Or maybe all of them. (All three are the same kitchen, but photographed with different LED lighting.)

Anyway . . . it’s my suspicion that the wide-sweeping LED rollout has nothing to do with energy savings. That’s because I don’t think the Climate Change crazies at the tip-top of the pyramid give a rip about the environment. I think they have other things in mind.

Let’s say, just for fun, that the Climate Change narrative is completely bogus, that it’s been created and promoted by neo-Marxists who could care less about “the environment,” and instead want to monetize carbon for the purpose of global wealth redistribution and/or significantly reduce the total human population on Planet Earth. Or whatever. That being the case (hypothetically speaking, of course), why would there be such a massive, orchestrated push on replacing lightbulbs, of all things?

Closer Look at LEDs

If we take a close look at an LED lightbulb, we’ll soon realize that it’s not really a lightbulb at all.

Yes, sure enough, it’s shaped like a lightbulb. It screws into a regular socket. It emits visible light (of a certain quality). But, in fact, what we’re actually dealing with is one part of a computer-controlled electrical circuit that’s more akin to a “lightbulb simulator.”

Without even diving in to how LEDs work, you can probably attest to the inherent “electrical circuit component” nature of LED lightbulbs, based on your personal, day-to-day experiences with them. You’ve likely noticed how they can be glitchy in the presence of other electronic devices, how they can buzz and flicker due to electromagnetic interference, how they sometimes seem to experience “color shifts,” or how they can go haywire for no apparent reason at all. (Have you ever tried to connect an LED light to a dimmer switch? Now, that’s a special treat!) You may have also noticed that LED lightbulbs certainly do not last “forever.”

There are more than a few creepily exploitable issues that come into play when we recognize LED lights for what they really are. Two prominent issues have to do with color shifting and communications.

It is well known that blue-shifted visible light (the shorter wavelengths of light in the visible spectrum), is overstimulating and “clammy,” and it can negatively impact emotions and mood. More specifically, blue-shifted light can disrupt our circadian rhythm by inhibiting melatonin production, and can trigger depression via its impact on the function of neurotransmitters, such as serotonin and dopamine. So, the questions become: If an evil supervillain had the ability to control people’s emotions from afar, would he do so? |and| Are LED lights an effective enabler of such evil ambitions?

As for communications . . . Although it may not be broadly known to the general public, there is an established wireless communication protocol, called Visible Light Communication (VLC). This data exchange method uses light emitted by LEDs to deliver networked, mobile, high-speed communication similar to Wi-Fi, leading to the term “Li-Fi.” It can be used as a standalone solution, or as a supplement to Radio-Frequency (RF) and cellular network communication. With Li-Fi, a common, household LED lightbulb essentially serves as a router, enabling data transfers, with speeds (at current technology levels) up to 224 gigabits per second. Li-Fi technologies are currently receiving heavy investment from multiple players (any guesses as whom they might be?!), with market forecasts predicting an $18 billion influx (40% growth) over the next four years. The questions here are similar to above: If an evil supervillain had the ability to send and receive information directly to human brains from afar, would he do so? |and| Are LED lights an effective enabler for the continued “hacking” of our lives?

Citing both examples above: Do we really believe that LED lighting has been rapid-force-fed to us to combat Climate Change? Or can we imagine that there might be ulterior motives?

Phil’s Two Cents

Up above, I mentioned my little voice.

One thing that my little voice keeps mentioning is to do with our old buddy, Al Gore. Remember how Gore was pushing compact fluorescent lightbulbs alongside his award-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, back in 2006, when the public propaganda campaign for Climate Change was first spooling up? (Of course, back then it was called “Global Warming,” but that’s neither here nor there.) Anyway, as you may recall, compact fluorescents enjoyed about 15 minutes of acclaim before suddenly disappearing from the marketplace. My little voice can’t help but wonder if all that was a public acceptance trial run for what was to come, a little psychological acceptance prepping for the great lightbulb replacement wave that’s now crashing down upon us.

Another thing my little voice keeps repeating, over and over, are variations of the old riddle:

“How many ______ does it take to change a lightbulb?”

If we fill in the blank with “narcissists” then the answer is: “One. He holds the lightbulb, and the world revolves around him.”

If we fill in the blank with “evil supervillains,” I wonder what the answer might be?

– “Phil”

TPDcast.com

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