Energy saving light bulbs

I can't help you with regards to hot plastic bulbs as I've never heard of them.

There are, generally, three types of lights. Incandescent, CFLs and LEDs.
I still prefer incandescent light in living areas but some of the more modern CFLs are good replacement.

There are still a lot of CFLs produced that are the slightly older style and as I have sensitive eyesight and hearing I'm not too keen on them. I can see a slight flicker with them (most people can't) and I can hear them buzzing (most people can't) for quite a while as they heat up. The most modern versions don't cause that problem.

There are two general colour types of LEDs but more are available. They use even less power than CFLs.

The more efficient the type the more expensive they are to buy, but they last longer and use a lot less electricity.

With some of them it's quite expensive to replace the fittings necessary but, once again, they're getting much better in producing compatible ones.

I use incandescent in the lounge, where we spend most of our time, but I can buy them extremely cheaply. CFLs are used in our outside lights, bedrooms, office and downlight versions in kitchen, bathroom and hall. They now produce LED downlight versions of the MR16 bulb but I don't like the effect of them (reflect through my glasses ).

Here's some good info on bulbs.

Energy-Efficient Lighting: LED & CFL bulb information, including where to buy | Eartheasy.com

 

There is quite a bit of electronics in the base of them @pete as they are essentially fluorescent strip lights that have been reduced in size. If it is getting hot, I would bet that you have a capacitor failing, and would suggest replacing it sooner rather than later, and preferably stop using it at all.

LED is far, far superior to CFL and in the past 2-3 years the technology has moved on massively, to the point that they are now the sensible, reliable choice for most applications. CFL's never lived up to their hype as far as I am concerned, and were one of those things that were pushed upon us by those that think they know better, without considering the full implications of what they were pushing (a bit like the current situation with electric cars......)

 

Depends very much on the fitting - most LED bulbs have the required electronics built in, it is only those that would be used to replace bulbs that are already low voltage etc (MR14 for example) that would need a separate driver

 

I would take it one step further than that - politicians in general. As with everything else, some clever people start to make noises about what they perceive as a problem, and politicians start to take notice - then, once they have the politicians attention, they come up with a solution to cure the 'problem' and the politicians go all out for it. It is not until many years later that they discover that the solution itself caused a whole different set of problems, whilst also often not having all that much effect on the initial problem - - but by that time, the politicians who pushed it all through have been voted out and have hopefully crawled back under a rock somewhere.

We have seen it over and over again, (incandescent bulbs = CFL's full of mercury and God knows what; nice big slow lumbering diesel engines = strung out small turbodiesels that chuck out massive amounts of NOX; combustion engined cars = cars with batteries that devastate the worlds precious metal resources and burn for a week if they are in an accident) - and most of it is because they want a solution and they want it yesterday. If technology is given time to develop, the solutions come naturally (LED's, diesels with ad-blue, turbo-petrol or even hydrogen engines for example)

They will be low voltage ones (most likely MR14) which do require a driver, however one driver can feed a number of bulbs. If you have a conventional 240v bayonet, ES, SES or GU10 fitting, the LED bulbs for those come with the relevant components built into the base of the bulb (usually a capacitive dropper), and some of them are nothing short of excellent nowadays. I only have one room left to convert to LED, and the only reason it is not done so far is that it is going to cost a bit as it has three fittings of six G4 halogens which will require gutting out, rewiring and each fitting will need an LED driver to allow use of G4 LED's - all in, just shy of £100 I reckon, hence the delay.

 

When I was in Brazil in the early 80s they had vehicles using hydrogen. The gas was made from sugarcane which was an easy crop for them to grow.

This had its own problems (as FC points out) as they didn't take into account the other problems that arose from it. The main one was that bioethanol from sugarcane was cheap to produce and gave a very good financial return for the growers.

Seems good, at first but the farmers/companies decided to replace what they were growing for the more lucrative crop. Thus the wheat and other staple crops they were growing had to be grown in less hospitable and fertile areas. This meant, not only moving away from the traditional areas (near cities and towns) but they had to use more expensive fertilisers to get a good return.

On top of that, the crops and chemicals had to be transported much further distances creating more, albeit smaller, emissions.

The bioethanol burning engines also wore out quicker require more manufacturing of them!

Good ideas - not thought through!