Just because the security researchers claimed that the data is "proprietary" doesn't mean it is. Since I am on one of the collaborations mentioned, I can say that none of it is in our case, and all of it was *intended* to be public, so the fact that they found that it was available wasn't exactly a shock.

"Small things add up" is one of the worst fallacies uttered by people trying to be environmentalists. *Some* small things add up and others don't. You have to actually do the math, not just claim that people should do anything and everything that intuitively seems like it's "green".

Case in point, this whole argument about light bulbs is bordering on silly because lighting now constitutes only 11% household energy usage (on average, in the US): http://www1.eere.energy.gov/consumer/tips/m/home_energy.html . And many people use more energy driving their car than is used in their household, not to mention indirect source of energy usage such as the electricity that goes into making consumer products. Splitting hairs over whether or not someone is saving an extra 1% of 11% of minority of their energy budget is foolish.

Things that save more energy for the typical person than *any* decision about lighting, in increasing order of savings:

* Line dry your clothes instead of using an electric dryer (50% more savings)
* Insulate your house properly
* Drive 55 instead of speeding in the typical fashion
* Don't fly (2x the savings)
* Don't air condition
* Don't eat meat
* Drive car with good gas mileage instead of a typical car
* Commute via any method other than driving a car by yourself (10x the savings)
* Don't drive at all (15x the savings)
* Don't have another child (100x the savings)

Things that save more energy than any nuanced decision about lighting, such as CFL vs. LED:

* Unplug unused devices with bad transformers when not in use
* Turn your computer off at night
* Lower your thermostat by 1 degree in the winter or raise it 1/4 of a degree in the summer
* Wash your clothes in cold water
* Leave sufficient air space around your refrigerator

In contrast, people trying to save energy without doing math hold up "every little bit helps" and suggest things with absurdly tiny savings like:

* Always let hot food cool on the counter before putting it in the fridge (0.1% the savings of incandescent vs. LED/CFL)
* Dust your light bulbs (0.5% the savings under certain assumptions left as an exercise to the reader)

Good luck finding a hundreds of such things that can "add up" to significant savings, which will still be only a tenth of the difference between commuting to work by car or public transportation. People do a few of these, not hundreds or thousands, then they feel smugly confident that they are good green citizens and drive their car one extra mile, totally wiping out their savings.

Worse, people make lists of "small things that add up" that *waste* energy, like suggesting that you use your computer for an hour to do some task rather than using a single sheet of paper. The only redeeming fact about these is that the wastes are typically tiny, just like the savings above.