"As much as I love science and believe in the law of physiscs....."

The thing I really find really annoying about people like you is thier inability to accept when someone is actually agreeing with thier facts but try to point out there are other factors to consider before drawing conclusions.

At no time do I dispute the physics of light. Listen carefully; I beleive you are right about light energy, various wavelenghts have more energy then others. This can be seen when designing say LED lighting. To achive proper ratios of red / blue we need to take into account how much energy each diode provides and that is effected by it's wavelength.

In the case of MH vs HPS you are overlooking one very important item, MH coverts electrical energy into light energy less efficently then HPS. We see it when we compare lumens/watt of each. The "lost" lumens are not wasted in an inefficent ballast but in the inefficent bulb....as extra heat. Some of this extra heat is in the form of some "non-visable" light like IR and UV, but the MH bulb's glass envelope will be considerably hotter then the HPS.

As to the fluro tube comparison, who's overlooking the simple stuff here? This is one experiment where it is easy to prove that "color temperature does not equate to thermal temperture."
I know: "theoretically the higher color temp tube should run hotter..." but it don't. The heat differential caused by spectral differences is so slight, that spread out over a fluro tube the differences become almost unmeasurable. That's what I refer to as real world vs theoretical.

Now before you start typing your responce, I will point out to you again, I am not disputing the science you have sited more then once now. I am just trying to point out nicely to you there are other physical factors you need to take into account when dealing with real world stuff.