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I Love Contrarian Comments, Two Recent Readers Share Theirs

Posted by Sean | Posted under Announcements | September 28, 2008

Everyone likes when people agree with them, but too much agreement is unhealthy.

“If two people agree on everything, one of them is superfluous”
- source?

“If two men agree on everything, you can be sure one of them is doing the thinking.”
- Lyndon Johnson

Anyway, here are two recent comments that 100% blindsided me with their logic.

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On Do Your Future Real Estate Commissions Count Against Net Worth?, UncommonAdvice said:

There is an easy way to get round this - never sell. Just make sure the property stays rented for ever, and remortgage to take equity out every couple of years.

Now… I honestly don’t know if this is 100% serious. Why add major risks — and potentially lock in larger losses — to avoid minor fees? I don’t think about real estate with the same fire as ecommerce. Maybe thinking like this makes sense in certain situations?

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On Should I Replace My Light Bulbs With Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs) Today, Rudy said:

“As someone who sells light bulbs for a living, I am constantly bombarded with questions about how much energy is actually being saved by using compact fluorescents and whether they live up to all of the hype that they receive. It seems to me that a lot of the negative things said about incandescent bulbs and their energy usage is borne out of a poor understanding of basic physics. The law of conservation of energy states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, just changed from one form to another. So many people speak of incandescent bulbs “wasting” energy as though they are defying the laws of physics and destroying energy. I live in a fairly cool climate and during the winter I use an electric heater to heat the particular room that I am in. If I use an incandescent bulb and 90% of its energy usage is for the production of heat, then it is simply generating heat that I would have to generate anyway with my 1000W heater. It’s June here and we are still dealing with cold and rainy weather, so there is a significant portion of the year where the heat energy produced by incandescent bulbs indoors is useful and not “wasted.” For me, it is an obvious choice given the mercury content and poor light quality that comes from compact fluorescents.”

Now… this assumes that I want heat as much as I want light. No way. My situation is largely the opposite. I want to minimize heat for six-plus months. So this only intensifies my love for CFLs. Maybe my tradeoff between electricity, heat and light would be different if I lived in a very cold environment.

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p.s. - thanks for sharing, enjoy the links.

p.p.s. - I love my non-contrarians, too… it takes all types to make the world to ’round…

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2 Comments so far
  1. Dawn September 29, 2008 1:47 pm

    I got the exact same comment from Rudy on my blog where I posted about cfls and linked to you. I will say this though - I saw a $10 decrease in my bill last month after switching! That is huge - and it was summer, so I wasn’t looking for heat at the time. Though he makes some good points, I’m really glad I made the switch.

  2. David Carter October 5, 2008 8:31 pm

    Actually Rudy is wrong. It would still be more efficient to use your heater and CFL instead of your incandescent lightbulb. I just learned this in my thermodynamics 2 class.

    He was partially right that the bulb will be heating up your home, but for every 1 unit of electricity (the portion of the lightbulb used to heat), you are only getting 1 unit of heat. With your heat pump, you can actually get more than one unit of heat for every unit of electricity. This is because the heat pump takes heat from the outside (which is cold but does have some heat in it still) and brings it inside.

    Nowadays, the COP (coefficient of performance) on most heaters is around 3. Meaning it would still be better to get a CFL. Because you can generate the heat more efficiently with your heat pump.