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GE Closes Last US Light Bulb Factory
pickens writes "The Washington Post reports that last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the US is closing this month, marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison's innovations in the 1870s. What made the plant vulnerable is, in part, a 2007 energy conservation measure passed by Congress that set standards essentially banning ordinary incandescents by 2014 but rather than setting off a boom in the US manufacture of replacement lights, the leading replacement lights are compact fluorescents, or CFLs, which are made almost entirely overseas. GE developed a plan to see what it would take to retrofit a plant that makes traditional incandescents into one that makes CFLs but even with a $40 million investment the new plant's CFLs would have cost about 50 percent more than those from China. 'Everybody's jumping on the green bandwagon,' says Pat Doyle, 54, who has worked at the plant for 26 years. But 'we've been sold out. First sold out by the government. Then sold out by GE.'"
GE needs to team up with Cree and retrofit their factory for making the next generation LED bulbs.
This is a great solution to the 'too many patents' problem in a story earlier today. No lightbulbs means no ideas right?
Yes, it sucks that the market for candles disappeared but you have to adapt and compete. If you can't make CFLs competitively, then you lose your job. It's that simple.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Ah, the good old US government, not only reducing US jobs but also reducing consumer choice in something as simple as choosing what type of light bulb you want.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Like all other companies, you move with the demand, not bitch at moan about the state of life. CFL's being made over seas? So what, make them here, get govt grants, stop fucking moaning. And no I don't want a horse buggy whip.
OK, how exactly were they "sold out by GE"?
The plant wasn't profitable currently, was going to be made obsolete by law in a couple of years, and was not even remotely profitable to refit to producing the CFLs.
So they should just pay people to work for the heck of it?
It's easy for stuff to be 50% less in a factory town where works are just meat and they work super overtime with no overtime pay. Also over seas it costs less to pay off / bribe gov into looking the other way over them breaking over time and worker rights laws.
GE is looking out for themselves. Making light bulbs overseas is cheaper, so they do it without one bit of shame. Which is fine, they're a corporation, their duty is to their shareholders. If their shareholders want profits, they have to do it cheaper.
The US government has duties to the citizens. Unfortunately this can put some citizens out of sorts, because the needs of the whole may be different. Sorry, but it happened with the buggy whip makers, it'll happen with the light bulb ones.
Hopefully these employees are getting retraining, education, and whatever other resources they need to find jobs. You can certainly differ over whether or not the restrictions of light bulbs are appropriate, but we can't just throw our hands up and do nothing. If you have better ideas, please give them instead of just offering criticism.
I would rather hear dumb ideas than just hearing that you think all ideas are dumb.
Sold out by anyone who buys whatever $x is cheapest, regardless of where it's made. I would prefer to pay 2-3 times as much for American made products but often times, I don't have that choice. You can blame GE or Walmart, but I blame you.
In the manufacture of physical things it's very hard to compete with companies operating in other countries that have less worker protections, less environmental protections, and non-existent employee benefits.
Either we stop buying from manufacturers located in these countries or we push our legislators to prohibit the import of items manufactured under these conditions.
OR
We lower our standard of living to a 3rd world standard to "compete". Is throwing away your standard of living worth cheap light bulbs?
-ted
I loath CFL lights. They don't last ANYWHERE near the reports say they will. Yet the power LED on one of my computers is still happily running (after 24 hours a day for 10 years).
And LEDs don't require you to use a hazmat suit to pick up pieces if you break one (since they contain Mercury).
UPS Sucks
It's easy for stuff to be 50% less in a factory town where works are just meat and they work super overtime with no overtime pay. Also over seas it costs less to pay off / bribe gov into looking the other way over them breaking over time and worker rights laws.
Yet you buy those products without hesitation from that factory town -and thousands of others like it- every time you shop. But it sure is nice to be self-righteous on the Internet isn't it?
"It's easy for stuff to be 50% less in a factory town where works are just meat and they work super overtime with no overtime pay. "
The reality of competing with cheap workers will require a reset so our workers become cheap. Productivity is high with few workers, but if more workers are to have jobs, they will have to work for less, live less well, and be like the rest of the world.
The main reason the US did so well for so long was it was the "last country standing" after WWII, which was the best thing ever to happen to the US economy.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison's innovations in the 1870s.
In other news GE has sold their buggy whip division...
This is not sad news except maybe for the employees who work there. Incandescent bulbs are a technology which has seen its day but it's day is pretty much at an end. They'll continue to be manufactured for some time but not by GE. Anyone who would expect GE to continue to manufacture an obsolete product with rapidly dwindling market share is a moron. The growth opportunities in lighting are with newer technology such as CFL and LED lighting. This is not something to shed a single tear over. Sentimentality in a situation like this is just bizarre.
Just efficiency levels. You can choose any technology that meets that efficiency standard.
When energy costs and availability affect our way of life and security so much, using a statism to attack a move as logical as this just doesn't make sense.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
So where is this boutique light-bulb shop that you purchase from? You know, the one where you pay a premium to ensure your product is made locally. Oh, you don't buy from these shops because they don't exist? So you make your own light bulbs? No? I have to agree with you that it's nice to be self-righteous on the Internet.
Edison is a dick.
In 3 to 5 years when all the CFLs start dying, there will be a huge furor over the mercury they contain leeching into landfills.
Coincidentally, at the same time LED bulbs will become cheap enough to replace them. The pitch will be "Sure they're $5 to $10 each now, but they'll only get cheaper, and they last for 20 years!" Sound suspiciously like the CFL pitch.
"The Washington Post reports that last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the US is closing this month, marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison's innovations in the 1870s.
Debatable about the innovation (read some of the comments)
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
if the plant is unprofitable, it is supposed to die off in a market that provides alternatives (competition) that are more cost effective or are much better quality, something somewhere must give.
it's the same thing as with copyrights, patents and other gov't dictated regulations, gov't messes with economy by laws, by taxes, by subsidies, by bailouts, by stimulus, by copyrights, by patents, by creating monopolies, by setting interest rates, by passing wage laws, by creating moral hazards with FDIC, Freddie, Fannie, medicare, CHIP, fixing food prices and subsidizing food producers, etc. etc. etc., everything gov't does is against economy in specifics and in general. No surprise economy is shit.
You can't handle the truth.
Ah, the good old US government, not only reducing US jobs but also reducing consumer choice in something as simple as choosing what type of light bulb you want.
Because god damn it I should have a RIGHT to burn as much energy unnecessarily as I want. I have a RIGHT to be an irresponsible, planet destroying, jackass who clings to obsolete and inefficient technologies. How DARE the government force me to utilize a less polluting, longer lasting technology. [/sarcasm]
Choice has costs that go much beyond your consumption preferences. I like old cars but there are reasons modern cars have modern pollution controls. If you can't behave responsibly, eventually others are going to get annoyed at your selfish behavior and you might not like their solution. Incandescent bulbs consume more power than available substitutes and that has national energy policy implications that are much more serious than your annoyance that you have to use a different type of light bulb.
33% less.
The GE bulbs would be 50% more than the Chinese bulbs or 1+1/2, or 3/2. But that means that the chinese bulbs would be 2/3 the cost of the GE bulbs. 33% less.
But.. that's the manufacturing cost, and doesn't necessarily reflect the retail price - even with the same per-unit profit, that would not require the product to sell in *stores* for 50% more than the chinese bulbs.
Further, CFL's are pretty cheap. I'd pay 50% more for one made in the US. I'd like to have had the option.
Heck, I pay 100% more to get stuff from the local Farmer's Market instead of who-knows where. I don't do that because it's got an "organic" sticker on it, either. I do it because I like the idea of locally supplied foods and products.
There's a limit, of course, but I weight my buying decisions such that I'm willing to pay a bit more for things depending on who made it. I think a lot of people do that.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
So, what we need is for everyone else to be at war again, and we can sell them second-rate weapons and supplies?
That really sheds new light on our current foreign policy....
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
This is just a symptom of the operating focus for GE. They no longer have a consumer interest. There are several companies working on high efficiency Halogen bulbs using IR reflective coatings to reflect heat back against the filament. In addition there is a significant amount of work updating the tungsten filament itself, basically sputtering the wire to texture it. GE has put little effort into updating their manufacturing technology, just milking it for profit. I recently swapped my 75 Watt PAR 30 lamps for 48 Watt lamps with the same Lumen output. Philips brand, though I have no idea who manufactures the coated capsules for their bulbs. The light output is excellent quality. Most of my general purpose lighting is CFL, modern CFL is very good, but I find that direct tungsten is more comfortable for reading, and these high efficiency Tungsten bulbs are very nice. Certainly less efficient than 18 Watt CFL, but much better than the 75 Watt Halogens they replace.
I am not going to fault GE for their shift in focus to commercial, that is just the way it is.
So that's 1/5th of all the energy used in residences.
That's not minuscule.
Your last argument is ridiculous. Every bit counts, just because one thing isn't done doesn't mean another thing done isn't useful.
And by they way they ARE mandating better fuel standards. The CAFE (required fuel economy average of cars sold) goes up 2.5mpg next year (first raise in a decade) and will go up another 4.8mpg over the next 8 years.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
'Everybody's jumping on the green bandwagon,' says Pat Doyle, 54, These bulbs are far from environmentally friendly or “so called green” and is another example of how foolish laws attempting to “manage” people’s behavior create more long term problems. Each bulb contains about 5 milligrams (mg) of mercury, a toxic heavy metal that can interfere with the development of children and unborn fetuses and may cause a wide range of health issues in adults, including brain, kidney and liver damage. Large commercial users of fluorescent lights are required to recycle, proper disposal of CFLs, but not home owners. Huh?????? Let’s just assume that 7 million people in NYC dispose of one bulb a month, that is 35 Kilos of Mercury introduced into the environment each month in NYC alone. If I have my numbers wrong I am sorry, it has been awhile since I have done those types of calculations, regardless the amount of Mercury is not insignificant. I personally would rather live with the consequences of the incandescent lamp for a while longer.
I think a ban is a horrible choice. Why not just add a tax on them?
That way, anyone who had some reason for wanting one could still get one - and who knows why you might want one (art/aesthetics? heat (especially in odd/cold installation environments)? plain old preference (I mean, it's not like there isn't much worse environmental choices that aren't banned)?).
Use the tax on some environmental endeavor, and set it high enough that the net outcome is environmentally positive.
There wouldn't need to be as many produced, but production could slow over time rather than stopping immediately.
Everybody wins.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
I happened to be in New Zealand when they closed their last light bulb factory. At the time I honestly didn't think it'd ever happen here. This should send a chill down everyone's spine. Picture this scenario, 5 or 10 years from now China is likely to demand we stay out of their conflict with Taiwan just as they invade Taiwan. If we try to get involved China threatens an embargo. So what? Have any idea how mush of our essentially already come exclusively from China? Already most clothing and electronics come from there and now you can add light bulbs to the list. If they cut us off we go back to candles and they probably make most of the candles.It would take 5 to 10 years of hard work right now to start making most of our essentials again and it'll be far worse in 5 or 10 years. Can you go 5 years without buying new clothes? Other countries make them? Not enough to offset China. Cheap blue jeans could go for $500 a pair. People have no idea how dire our situation is and that's not even considering the debt we owe them. The majority of that debt has to be refinanced in the next two years. What if they refuse? The future of this country is already in the hands of China and it will get much worse before it has any hope of getting any better.
It's easy for stuff to be 50% less in a factory town where works are just meat and they work super overtime with no overtime pay. Also over seas it costs less to pay off / bribe gov into looking the other way over them breaking over time and worker rights laws.
Yet you buy those products without hesitation from that factory town -and thousands of others like it- every time you shop. But it sure is nice to be self-righteous on the Internet isn't it?
You, sir, are an idiot, and are expressing more self-righteousness than the GP. At least he is acknowledging the problem, which is a major step in the right direction. You just want to feel a degree of moral superiority which, from your comment, I don't think you deserve.
... you're decades too late.
... you'll understand soon enough when we can't even afford to keep the lights on anymore.
Now, you might have had a point before all those factories went overseas, before the transfer of technology and manufacturing to third-world countries was largely complete. Yes, if we'd voted with our dollars back then, back when it might have made a difference, things might have turned out differently. Hell, if we'd stuck to our guns and insisted that the Feds do what they could to protect domestic industries from predatory practices by foreign manufacturers (and I do not mean the way they "protected" our electronics industries from Japan) we might have stood a chance. Unfortunately for your high horse, the "Buy American" mantra doesn't mean squat when you don't have any way to actually buy American. So get off the soapbox
The GP is right, and unless we make efforts to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. (even if that means a degree of protectionism that many proponents of the "Global Economy" might find objectionable, as if competing with third-world industrial economies on their own terms was ever a good idea) the problem is going to get worse. Eventually, of course, America will have no significant industrial capacity of any kind, At that point, just to maintain what little we have left, we will be reduced to the likes of Nigeria and certain Middle Eastern countries who are selling off their natural resources, selling them to nations who understand what it means to create wealth. That used to be us, we used to be the nation that made everything for everyone, but now we've put legal shackles on anyone who is still trying to accomplish anything, and call it "progress". I don't think most of you understand what "service economy" really means. I know some ex-third-worlders who would be happy to explain the difference between that and "manufacturing economy." Doesn't matter
You want to get worked up about how our industrial leaders sold us out with the collusion of U.S. government officials who made backroom deals with China, I might back you up. But the American consumer no longer has much choice in the matter: it's buy Chinese or go without. So blaming the consumer at this point serves no purpose.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
The good ones last 10000 hours even if switched on and off regularly - compare to 1000 hours per incandescent. They are 3-5 times more efficient. A 20W CFL is MUCH brighter than a 60W incandescent for example. The best of all, they are available in daylight white instead of urine yellow which is the only available color for incandescents.
Regular fluorescents are even better - the tubes last over 20000 hours (there are tubes that last 100000 hours) and you don't need to replace the driving electronics when the tube runs out. You can pick the most suitable driving electronics too - dimmable, instant start or pre-heat start, etc. Furthermore, they are up to 7 times more efficient than incandescents. LEDs have potential but they still have horrible color rendition.
It should never be underestimated what a small change in energy demand can do to raise/lower prices (for all of us). Remember when the recession hit, and energy demand went down a few percent, and oil prices shot down 40%?
Also - thinking of each consumer making their own choice only affecting themselves is not accurate when you're in a market where your neighbors poor choices make it significantly more expensive for everyone.
What I don't get is this: if China can produce CFLs at half the price (which doesn't surprise me), then why couldn't they also produce incandescents at half the price? In other words, why hadn't the plant closed long before the advent of CFLs?
What I'd like to know is why GE clams USA made CFAs would cost "twice as much" as those made in China, while the China CFC king wants to open a factory in the USA because US customers WANT USA made CFCs and says USA made CFCs "will only cost about 50 cents more then Chinese ones". Why the huge price disparity between his and GE's?
Now the Euro-Eco-Nazis are forcing incandescents off our shelves here, the best alternative that still meets Greenie-Gestapo rules is halogen-encased filaments in a secondary (traditionally sized) glass envelope. I've bought plenty, similar colour temperature, no fluoro-nonsense. Guess what, they all have 'GE' stamped on them. Made somewhere else, of course.
I don't understand, what makes CFLs so popular? They're more expensive to produce than LED based lights and are much more harmful to the environment, as well as being a lot less efficient. Why didn't GE look into converting production to LED? Instead they just decided to give up? If I were employed by GE or were one of their investors I would definitely be upset.
You mean live like the 3rd world? I think not. Tariff the lopsided traders until their trade balances ours. Most of the "evils" of tariffs that right-wing economists state are false or exaggerated. Lopsided trade creates tons of its own problems.
Table-ized A.I.
Any country which makes and enforces a minimum wage law will effectively cause all exportable labor-intensive jobs to move elsewhere. Simple economics, people.
The Web is like Usenet, but
the elephants are untrained.
We've all been duped on the CFL lights. I think they are dead-even with incandescent lights as far as "carbon footprint"; here is why: I switched all of my bulbs to CFL about 2 years ago. I have had 4 of them "burn" up. They get really, really hot, emitting that burnt electronics smell and go out.
Regular filament bulbs:
Glass and metal
CFL bulbs:
A little mercury vapor
glass
phosphors
printed circuit board
resistors
capacitors
metal
solder
transformer
Ok, the CFL save some energy, but they sure add more pollutants (the circuit boards and mercury) to the system WITHOUT the long-life promised.
So this can cut energy usage in the US by about 1.75%.
And you say it doesn't count? That's a lot of energy.
Passenger cars use about 14% of the energy in the US. You would like to increase fuel economy average in cars 5mpg. This would reduce that energy use about 15% (5mpg out of 32mpg). That's an energy reduction of 2.2%.
So you ridicule one mandate as trivially small and suggest one that is only 25% larger as the real answer? Especially when the lighting one can be much more easily implemented as it is much easier and cheaper to replace light bulbs than to replace your car.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
This is just a symptom of the operating focus for GE. They no longer have a consumer interest. There are several companies working on high efficiency Halogen bulbs using IR reflective coatings to reflect heat back against the filament. In addition there is a significant amount of work updating the tungsten filament itself, basically sputtering the wire to texture it.
If it's those thick textured glass bulbs that screw into a regular socket? I've found they don't last long. Suppose to give a natural color though.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Dear oh dear.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,509669,00.html
You really should consider actually arguing the issue instead of trying to substitute other arguments instead. Especially if you aren't even going to look at those.
Changing the temperature in your house requires you adapt to a new lifestyle. The regulators realize (correctly) that people will resist this. But when changing lightbulbs, you still get light, the same amount of light. You don't have to change your lifestyle, just change your bulb.
As to your idea of hammering people who use more energy with higher rates, they already do.
http://www.pge.com/tariffs/tm2/pdf/ELEC_SCHEDS_E-1.pdf
You get your first N kWh at one rate, your next M at a higher rate and anything beyond that at a much higher rate. So if you run all your electricity-sucking appliances, you do pay higher fees.
This policies are on top of that level of encouragement to save energy. And they're really not onerous.
You are making blind arguments instead of getting informed. You really should consider reversing these two things.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Not to mention producers will have to lower prices to reduce the cost of living for those workers. That will inevitably happen anyway as the corporations economically devastate their own market for the sake of short term returns. Unemployed people don't buy much.
ap.
Anybody know where I can get good 800-1000 lumen LED bulbs, that fit in regular A19 socket with 4" clearance (too many are 5" or more tall, and don't fit in many fixtures), and don't have a fan and heatsink?
Try here: http://www.earthled.com/
Home Depot is also starting to stock LED bulbs.
The assumption that increasing the efficiency of light sources will decreae energy use for lighting is nothing more than that -- an assumption not based on any actual evidence. There is some evidence that increasing energy efficiency actually increases energy use because energy becomes a cheaper input.
See:
http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm/5176/Energy-Conservation-and-Future-Energy-Demand
and...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
Actually what needs to happen for America to stay competitive with China is for an oppressive fascist authoritarian government to seize power and subsequently squelch all dissent as party loyalist pillage the country. Then we would be apples to apples the same as China and that future doesn't seem to be too far off.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be-T J
It is also all in the name of "being green", but how much more polluting are the overseas factories, and the cargo transports to get all those bulbs back over to the U.S.?
it will be won without a single shot as the usa wont be making anything .....
When the light bulb in my oven finally burns out, I wonder how well the CFL I replace it with will perform?
Anyone?
It's a 1.75% savings in total energy.
The CAFE standards to not apply to commercial trucks. And adding 5mpg to commercial trucking is not realistic.
You also say "gas-powered vehicles", comercial vehicles are generally not gas-powered, they're Diesel-powered.
Electric cars would be nice, but we're not there yet. We're not even close. As we both mention, so much of our transport energy goes into trucking, and you can't truck things long distances with electric trucks just yet. We could run our transport trucks on natural gas, but that would more than eat up the surplus and eat into that which we use to generate electricity. Reducing electricity consumption would help with this problem.
And as to your last argument. I don't see how savings 1.75% of our total energy is in any way a "totally wrong place to go". It's a good start, and we can do more from there.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
You are right, of course. I grew up in India, and I remember the days when "Made in USA" was something to be coveted when buying imported stuff. Now of course, that is not the case. I boil the story of manufacturing down to this : There was a time that the US manufacturing was so good , that the consumerism inflated. And Americans began to think it was somehow their right to work less for more and consume more and for less at the same time. That kind of thing is only possible when technology and innovation pushes the equilibrium between cost and consumption towards consumption. Americans, in short, consumed faster than they innovated, and worse still assume that they are 'entitled' to do so...and here you are.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
Last one out, please turn off the...
Bugger
Frankly, I do everything by them including reading, I can't see what your beef is. But besides that, you can use any technology you want that meets the efficiency regulations. Philips even is preparing incandescents that meet the regs!
You may already use little energy, buy using less would help. Even from you. I already use very little energy too (despite my big TV), and I also still work to save energy.
I use about 330kWh a month for my 1700 square foot house. That's about $40 worth at the inflated rates in my state.
Pro-environment doesn't mean you have to do without your home theater.
First of all, your neighbor isn't using 2kW of home theater, that's more than a regular circuit in the US will supply (1875W max). He's probably using about 200-300W of TV+receiver. Third of all, your neighbor's big TV is also regulated. Energystar and other agencies are looking to reduce power usage of TVs by 50% over the next few years. So your neighbor isn't getting a free ride while you are unfairly put upon.
Pro-environment means conserving energy. Which means not wasting it. It doesn't mean you have to do without lighting or heat or your TV.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Every watch an incandescent light blow? Yeah, pretty benign and rarely does the bulb explode. CFL's can do some alarming things when they die.
And they are required to by law.
http://library.findlaw.com/2002/Dec/19/132442.html
The high-frequency ballasts that run these bulbs have been around for 20 years at least.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Several years ago I went to buy a tennis racquet.
Before going, I decided that I would spend extra just to have one NOT made in China.
Guess how much extra it cost?
Good news: Not a penny extra.
Bad news: Because I couldn't find a single one that wasn't made in China.
End result: No tennis racquet for ME!
Unfortunately, when it comes to light bulbs, your options will be
(a) buy energy-saving bulbs from China, or
(b) save energy by sitting alone in the dark.
From Communist China, GE light bulb screws YOU!
Incandescent bulbs are very useful. They generate heat and they light reliably in cold climates. That heat is useful. This push to eliminate incadescent bulbs is short sighted.
A couple of years ago we remodeled large parts of our house. We were required by local laws to put in special sockets for special CF bulbs. Recently one went bad (probably due to mis-wiring). But we've had a hard time finding a replacement. It appears that LED bulbs are starting to take away CF market-share as they become cheaper, and stores will stop carrying many special-socket CF bulb types. If the laws had allowed regular sockets, then there'd be more choices as the technology changes because the screw-in socket is still the de-facto common standard. The lesson is that if you make laws around very specific technologies, then it will backfire as things change.
Table-ized A.I.
I don't see the problem with being 50% more expensive than Chinese CFLs. We buy exclusively German-made CFLs, which are a lot more expensive. The difference is: they actually do work for years and years, just like it says on the package. The cheap CFLs don't last anywhere near their rated lifetime - they are a total ripoff.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I will never buy any CFL bulb from you or any other company. If you want my continued business, restore your production of incandescent bulbs.
You now join LCDs on my shitlist of useless, inferior technology being forced on consumers for no goddamn reason.
I hate you all.
Love,
DoktorSeven
This is a sig. Deal with it.
China's military cannot invade another nation. If they did so, they would risk mass rioting and rebellion on their home soil. China's military is to 'keep the peace', not invade other nations.
It's about time they knocked it off. Damn GE light bulbs ain't worth a shit!
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
Sure, but only for labor-intensive things. If GE built the plant they were thinking of, and line worker labor cost was $0, what would the sales price of the bulbs be? I suspect it would still be above China. Currently, regulations require internalization of some costs (environmental issues) and regulatory costs (finance, OSHA, etc.) are much more strict in the USA. In China, they wouldn't make a $40 million plant when they could get away with a $20 million one that pollutes a little more and is a little more dangerous. So you have the capital (and associated financing) in China that is also lower, indirectly caused by the regulations (and, to a lesser extent the cost of labor).
So, I assert that the result would have been the same, even if labor was free in the US.
Learn to love Alaska
And Americans began to think it was somehow their right to work less for more and consume more and for less at the same time.
Not really, and you're buying into a lot of anti-Americanism that isn't really true. We were perfectly happy to work for what we got, and we did. We worked hard and built something significant. Unfortunately, we are in the process of throwing it all away.
What actually happened was that increasing industrial efficiency over the previous century or so made us able to make more and more product for less and less effort (and less money.) That was how we took over so much of the world's manufacturing: we could make it better, faster and cheaper. China (and perhaps India, although if you go down their road you may regret it) has essentially short-circuited that process by not worrying about industrial efficiency because they have a pre-existing workforce composed of a billion disposable self-reproducing organic robots. Contrast that to the Japanese: if they manage to remain an industrial power in the face of China's onslaught it will be because their investment in efficiency paid off. Why do you think they invest so heavily in robotics?
Like I said, for us to have tried to compete with third-world economies on their terms was a mistake, and one that we actually have laws on the books to prevent. The fact that our government failed to enforce those laws was a failure on our part, true, but not the one you think. In any event, what is currently happening to us was by no means inevitable. I don't know if "entitled" is the proper word to use: I would say "complacent". We lost sight of the fact that there were others who would like to take what we built for ourselves away from us, and that there were plenty of treasonous personalities right here that were more than willing to help.
In any event, I will agree with you that we are doing it to ourselves.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
A CFL will probably be 4 times more efficient than an incandescent. A white LED might be 2 times more efficient than a CFL. An incandescent might cost 50 cents. A CFL, a few dollars, and an LED, a few to several tens of dollars. The 'yellower' CFLs tend to be 'good enough' color spectrum and last longer than incandescents. I think that these developments in flourescents should have been researched decades ago, so the incandescent could have been killed back then.
Bad math and Jenny McCarthy-style pseudo science (with a Fox question mark no less!).
I'm ashamed of you slashdot.
Fluorescents are 3x as efficient as incandescents. Yes, the efficiency is exaggerated on the labels because the bulbs don't quite put out as much light as the incandescents they are comparing against. But even if you correct for that fluorescents are far more efficient.
Heck, to prove it, just light up a bulb and touch it. Feel that heat on the incandescent? That's wasted energy that didn't go to light. Now touch an equivalently bright fluorescent bulb, it's only a little warm.
Power factor doesn't mean it's using more power than you would think from the wattage, it means it's using more CURRENT and less voltage. Anyway, changing phase like this (low power factor) doesn't mean that the meter isn't measuring correctly. If this were true, people would be strapping inductors onto the lines in their house right before the meter to get free power.
Power factor is only an issue for the electric company, they have to adjust for it. And they are adept at adjusting for it. This is evidenced by how the electric companies are very interested in you using CFLs, my electric company sends me mail about it twice a year. If the low power factors of CFLs presented problems to them, they wouldn't do this, would they?
If you don't like bluish CFLs, get yellowish ones. There are 3 colors, one is very yellow.
I agree LEDs still have limitations. I'd like to get some for my hallway but I"m not ready to make that move yet.
Dimmers are not suitable for fluorescent or LED bulbs, each should really be dimmed with a control signal instead of a rheostat. Hopefully this kind of technology will be common in homes soon so we can get rid of the buzzing from dimming fluorescent and LEDs.
The government is subsidizing your fossil fuels significantly. You don't see it in your bill, because it isn't being subsidized by giving you money to give the electric companies to pay for electricity. We massively subsidize oil drilling and production.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=how-much-in-subsidies-do-fossil-fue-2009-09-18
Your electric bill would be noticeably higher without these subsidies and solar would look correspondingly a little cheaper.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Energy Star Skewered by Congressional Audit
In China, that outcome has resulted in a prosperous China well on its way to being a superpower, and as China becomes more prosperous it becomes more liberal.
What do you think would have happened to striking workers when Mao was still in power??
There is no guarantee of prosperity. Competition is required, and no legal construct will make that not so.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
The quality of light of the CFLs is significantly better than the old office fluorescent lights. That is not mentioned much, but people buy the CFLs, the light is fine and they use less electricity. They don't know why the CFLs are fine, but as far as they are concerned, the light works.
They make it sound like they closed down all US production. Yes, CFL's are made overseas, but most of GE's factories in the US have been converted over to producing Fluorescent lamps (the tubes not the compact kinds) along side, or entirely in absence of incandescent lighting ... well for nearly 2 decades. Frankly, I wasn't even aware that there was still a factory producing solely incandescent left, anywhere in the world, let alone in the US.
Code softly but carry a big magnet.
You need to chop up the DC and then reconvert it to a higher voltage anyway, a voltage that varies by LED (and not just by brand or model, by actual LED). DC supplies wouldn't fix this problem.
Besides, if you converted AC to DC centrally for your house, that converter would still produce heat, just in a different location.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Supply and demand. Reduce the demand and prices go down. Not just for you, but for everyone. Now some guy who must use electricity to run his respirator ends up paying less too.
Conservation has many payoffs, not just in your bill.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I'm gonna have to start hoarding good old fashioned light bulbs to sell after they've stopped making them. And to keep my antique lamps happy.
/. Dissent will not be tolerated. Think like us or perish.
I agree those sockets were a bad idea. But those are just your local laws. The laws in play here (leading to the end of this factory) only specify efficiency levels, not alternative sockets or CFL specifically.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Assuming by CA you mean California, not Canada. Look up your baseline usage. You pay higher rates above those levels. Baseline rates are set by what's needed to live reasonably (i.e. heat and cool your house) in your area.
Telling people they can't live better if they are willing to pay is considered anti-American. That's why the reasons is to get every person to conserve as much as they can in their current lifestyle instead of telling them they can't have a large TV.
There's no reason to waste power, even if you use less than average, if you can use less, that's a good thing. This is a good way of accomplishing that.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
So shouldn't the question be... Why can't the US companies start making CFLs?
What a moronic, defeatist argument. "The CFLs are now more popular, and they're made overseas." Sure, they are now. But there's no reason they can't be made in the US too. And if it's a growing market, earth to US businesses: isn't that a sign that you need to start fucking making them?
As an American I have to say this highlights the stupidity and downright laziness that's evident all around us lately. The US became the economic leader because people worked hard and got shit done. Now we are so fat and lazy that we think we can coast on the success of previous decades, as if it's inevitable that we'll continue to be at the top.
I was about to say that I was pretty certain that the one down the street from me is still producing, etc. but it seems that this article is referring to that one according to the local news sites. I drive by it nearly every day and they've been producing bulbs..guess that's about to change..
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
Um, no. It's not easier to bribe foreign governments. Cheaper, perhaps. But in the US it's easier to outright bribe politicians. You can do it in the open, because we've legalized and institutionalized the whole process. We've even been trained not to recognize them as bribes, but as "donations" or "contributions" which are somehow entirely different from bribes. The end result is the same, however: corporations just buy as many votes as they need, and can't be punished for it because they own the courts too. In China, you might be able to spend less money to get what you want, but if you're caught, you can be executed, and probably will be if the government is taking heat for your actions.
Of course, it's very American to equate "easier" with "cheaper", because in this country, you can use money to get away with anything.
All this fuss about CFL's. In the UK you can buy halogen bulbs that look like standard light bulbs but use less power. Yes they are more expensive but the quality of light is far better.
If you don't like CFL's go and buy some halogens.
the problem they face that in order to be competitive in the market would require them to reduce employee costs. Throw in the uncertainty of the new medical laws coming toward us and it just is not worth the risk. Then top it off with a employees who feel they are worth amount X but to be competitive they are really only worth Y. However they won't work for Y and any GE attempt to hire only for wage Y would load them down with not only bad press but probably problems with government goons who feel the need to set all sorts of new regulations on what they pay let alone how they operate.
We have a government which seems openly hostile to affordable business. Right now to get contracts involving stimulus funds for road building and such any company is required to open themselves to unionization, its right there in the bill. Without someone with deep pockets paying the bills; the government; how does anyone compete in the market? How long before a company which sells anything to the government, goods or services, finds itself under such rules. No, its best to offshore your workers to avoid the petty vote buying of government officials. Investment in a plant that could suddenly be saddled with new expensive work rules and what choice is there?
When the government steps in and tells you the minimums of health and wage benefits required for local workers and shows a propensity for raising those values only an insane business person would bother staying at home. We cannot be competitive when rules are setup to prevent it. Not when the rest of the world isn't hamstrung by the same.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
It's easy for stuff to be 50% less in a factory town where works are just meat and they work super overtime with no overtime pay. Also over seas it costs less to pay off / bribe gov into looking the other way over them breaking over time and worker rights laws.
It's also easy to be cheaper when the raw materials (Rare Earth Elements are used in the phosphors) are produced almost exclusively by your country, and your country is happy to restrict exports of that raw material to other countries who might try to compete with you.
A halogen is putting off 6x the light as a regular incandescent bulb, so of course it produces more heat. It's also only slightly more efficient, not "much more efficient". A halogen might produce twice the light of an incandescent for a given power input. But that still means it's still turning 80% into heat, that's not a huge difference from turning 90% into heat. So a 300W halogen is making 240W of heat, compared to an equivalent CFL which would throw off maybe 27W of heat.
I just tried grabbing one of my fully-enclosed CFLs from my bathroom (after letting it warm up first), it didn't burn my hand. I was going to unscrew it from the socket (a trick from incandescent days, the faster you unscrew it, the less you burn yourself), but I realized I didn't need to, I could just rest my hand on it. It didn't burn my hand. This is not the case for the equivalent incandescent next to it, I had to take my hand off that quickly.
As an added bonus, I just touched the fluorescent (not CFL) torchiere bulb (55W) I use to light my room. It directly replaced a 300W halogen. It sure does get hot right at the filament, you're right about that. I didn't burn myself though as I would have by touching my 300W halogen.
You don't need a second layer of glass to filter out UV, all CFLs are already glass tubes and the phosphors are on the inside, so the photons are already filtered.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Onemore job...GW Bush was a liberal and legislated that way....glad you're happy!
-------- Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most. --Ozzy
a 100 watt light bulb can keep a water line from freezing. LED lighting is a piss poor replacement for incandescent. What next, halogen?
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
Ahh yes. Living in the Northers Plains really makes those CFL bulbs work great in January! I replaced my outside bulbs with CFL spotlights a few years ago and have since gone BACK to regulars. Any temps below 10 and the CFLs just don't cut it.
Will be stockpiling old bulbs.
So, if China declares war on us, we run out of lightbulbs.
It's so toxic, you can't handle it and need to evacuate the room for 15 minutes, not allowed to vacuume it because it will embed into the cleaning devices used to collect the mercury fragments. Yet this is the same government that says just lay duct-tape onto the spill, put it all into a sealed glass jar, and toss it into a dumpster.
FUCKING TYPICAL: put it in the environment where we see it's random effects for the next generation when someon disturbs the mercury graves.
You do not happen to know who processes the burnt out bulbs from Lowes? do you?
Unfortunately I know that they get pitched with the rest of the trash at two of the local stores (Indianapolis).
Housing: all building materials in the USA have converted to use non-cellulose products by United Nations authority to manage and protect the land and forestry throug BLM/USDA/DFG enforcable through BATFE
Land: Bureaugh of Land Management (BLM) deprives Americans of holding fee simple title of Land Patent, whereas only government organizations are allowed mineral and water rights.
Transportation: As we know everyone is realy selling something from their CAR beit prostitution or labor, the Right to Public Vehicular Travel as well as officer Duty of Movement on the Common Highways and Biways has been suspended in favor of the commercial-clause of regulation through the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) that you may own the use of the road wherever the Federal State has not paved street asphault onto the road.
Food: Just because it's impossible to grow non-genetically modified herbs and vegetables in open-air anymore, we've given favor to just export all former Organic and heirloom food enterprises in favor of open-air GMO farming. Just like Missouri removed it's asparagus industry to Chile, and the USA imports most of it's vegetables from Mexico and other countries south of the equator, there is only a short time to enjoy natural proteins from Bovine Product until China completes it's research implementations of synthetic protein steaks that will surely remove the relevancy of farmland to need any acreage for useless animals that grow slower than GMO'd synthetic meats.
Utilities: Because we know it's lawful for privileged government-owned corporations to tap into natural biosphere directly to get these resources for free, the initial cost is decided by whomever wants to set the industry in conjuction with the monopoly and stock index of their market value wholesale cost rather than cost of operation. Your placement of antennaes and solar panels may soon be taxed to improve the skyline overal image, and your ability to compost organic materials to generate small amounts of natural gas will be taxed, and your ability to grow plants to separate their oils will be taxed such as is the case with Hemp.
Clothing: Ignore the fact that Army and Military surplus and supply stores sell true American-made clothing that can be worn every day for 3 years and only fade a little while not tearing. Keep buying the foreign-imported cheap clothing that society would respect you for wearing, or get a higher-paying job to wear respectable Business clothing because we know that Jehova's Witnesses has good professional people in all those purple Suits that just spells sucess.
Education: everything taught to you from now to present will determine how you will fail. You will not even hear about these failures, because those that fail will become teachers to force everyone to listen to their theories of how to not fail while earning 2 to 3 times as much money with no incentive to fix their own failures to return to their industry.
Think you can live without government? Just try walking away, because you'll have nothing to take with you as you walk away if you are lucky to get beyond the COPS that give you tickets for anything. Wacco, Freemen of Montana in Billings, the Africka Family, and thousands more non-enfranchiesed Americans have otherwise to say.
So when incandescent bulbs go away, can someone point me to bulbs which will continue to light the inside of my oven?
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
What I want to happen is for the government to shift the emphasis on the watt to the lumen. Lighting units should have 3 figures: Watt, Lumen and Lumes per Watt. This would allow the consumer to make more informed choices regarding the purchasing of Light bulbs, as we wouldn't have all of these "100 Watt Equivalent" causing unnecessary confusion.
If reactive power were power, then the laws of thermodynamics wouldn't hold, because the power in minus the power used (emitted as heat and light) minus the reactive power would not be net zero.
And again, when the power factor drops, it doesn't changing anything about the power used, it only means you're using more current and less voltage. This does mean the electric company has to have more current available unless they can use proper capacitive or inductive adjustments to work around it. And they are good at working around it. This is why they don't mind and in fact suggest you use CFLs.
Motors cause the same problem, so A/C presents a big issue to the grid. They're already rigged to deal with it.
CFLs are 3x more efficient in lumens per watt (or perhaps a bit more). This is for equivalent amounts of light. Your argument that you need to add more light is no more valid than saying you need to add more light with incandescents.
Yes, if you replace a 90 watt incandescent with an "equivalent" CFL replacement it will be dimmer, because the marketing people for CFLs are listing bogus figures. But even adjusting for this, CFLs are still 3x more efficient per lumen And that is a BIG difference.
> Psychologically speaking, blue-tinted light is perceptually darker than reddish light even if it is of far greater brightness in terms of your actual ability to see and distinguish objects and color. And other things like skin tone are poorly perceived in fluorescent light as well, which contributes to that perception.
No it isn't. The eye is most receptive to green, which is right between blue and yellow and the eye picks up on both yellow and blue very well. Bright blues are not seen as nighttime, they in fact are seen as very bright. See mercury vapor lamps, arc lamps, metal halide lamps, an acetylene torch or even the sun.
Color rendition is a complex issue. If you get a CFL with the proper color temperature (just look at the CFL page on wikipedia), then skin tones look correct. Due the line spectra in fluorescent light, some other things may not render well depending on the CFL and the object. If you have an object which is colored through dyes, and it's trying to be green by mixing blue and yellow (instead of having any actual green reflection to it), it may look different under fluorescent light because the mix of blue and yellow emitted may not be equal on the CFL even if the overall color temperature is good. Again, note that skin is not one of these things. In general, recent fluorescent lamps are pretty good on color rendition (see color rendition index) but still are not as good as a hot radiator like incandescent bulbs or the sun.
> Fluorescent lights produce a discrete spectrum with very little coverage of the red end of the spectrum at all.
This is not true. Just look at the picture on wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_fluorescent_lamp
See the line spectra? The yellow to red area is very well covered.
> And if you have a power factor of 0.5 (not at all uncommon for CFLs), you are effectively only getting a 1.5x difference in wattage in terms of peak generator capacity.
Not only is 0.5 not uncommon, but figures close to it like 0.55 are the most common by far. But as to the latter part, again, this is all fixed by adjustments in the grid, these higher current peaks are not seen at the generators.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Lamps are not effective heaters. Yes, the heat does something, but with the bulb in the ceiling, it ends up mostly heating your attic, not your room. There's a reason that space heaters either have direct emission (IR heater) or a fan to blow the heat out into the room. And even at 100% efficiency, electric heat is not cost effective compared to gas heat (as you surely know living in Minnesota). Note also that when you use incandescents to light your driveway, the waste heat is not heating your home as the lamps are outdoors.
Yes, there are CFLs that will light quickly (before you get your finger off the switch) down to 10F. Below that, it can be dicey. If you need light to shovel your driveway, get a metal halide lamp, it's far brighter, more efficient and if you get the right one it will be lit up before your finger is off the on switch (like the headlamps in a car).
When you have concrete evidence of power companies switching to VA billing for residences, I'm ready to hear it. Until then, it's just crank junk.
> you know of any CFLs that won't trigger migraines in my wife or cause my peripheral vision to "flash"? I don't really care about the color temp, but the flickering and migraines are killer cons to CFLs.
CFLs flicker at over 20,000Hz. You can't see them flicker. Your peripheral vision can pick up flickering into the hundreds of hertz, but this is far far higher than that.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
You wanna go, huh?
Palin 2012!
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
really piss me off. It's just like the car companies. I don't give a fuck about Toyota (heh, and just look how they turned out with their unintended acceleration bullshit), and I don't give a fuck about "green" lights. What we need is good American jobs for good American people. The environment will be a moot point if we don't have anyone left who can make a living to buy things.
Yes, my car has a "bought American" bumper sticker on it. And I'll buy these incandescent bulbs until the end... or I'll be happy to buy any CFL or LED bulbs from any American companies made by American people. I might be just one person, but this is my way of fighting this Asian cancer on our country.
I'm really all for being progressive, and green, and all that shit. But definitely not at the detriment of my country and all that it stands for.
This is not meant as a troll. But I'm posting anon because I'm sure retarded mods will mark it as such. I just believe we need to support our country and everything it stands for and all that we hold dear and stop selling out to the Asian mob.
..."jumping on the green bandwagon". Just Algore acolytes like you.
Or may be particular brands. The CFLs that work the best for me are ones I bought at Home Depot. I don't remember the brand, they weren't very expensive. They turn on instantly and seem to have little warm up time. So far, none of them have failed. I've also bought expensive BlueMax bulbs, because they give a better spectrum. They work ok, but just ok. I'mve had a couple fail right out of the box, they warm up slow, and their lifespan isn't great, maybe 4 years or so. Expensive too.
There's a lot of folks like yourself that figure third-world manufacturers work with stoop labour in candle-lit shacks to outproduce the super-efficient West. It's just not so.
Any new production technology, any new machines or processes that permit manufacturers to make stuff cheaper or better can be bought and used in China or elsewhere in the world for the same ticket price as it would cost in Western countries. For an example, steel-making plants in places like Indonesia and Malaysia were built in the 1970s with the most modern process control systems available at the time allowing them to replace imports of Western steel with a locally-made cheaper product. The end result was the death of steel-making in the West, in part because there was little iron ore left to be sourced locally there. Since it costs the same to make the steel in either place the price was set by transport-to-market and it's cheaper to ship finished steel than it is to ship iron ore and process it in the West. A side-effect of this was a decrease in shipbuilding in the West as Far Eastern shipyards blossomed using modern shipbuilding techniques and design methods building lower-cost ships with cheap locally produced steel.
The same thing is true pretty much in other industries such as electronics or car manufacturing. The production lines in places like China or Taiwan use the same equipment, the same components, the same quality control processes as any business in the West does. These machines and processes weren't stolen, they weren't secret, they were commodities just like a box of computer memory, sold to a customer with cash to pay for them.
Does no one care that the quality of light emitted by CFL's and LED's is garbage? I'm willing to pay more for these technologies, but not with the dramatic downgrade in light quality.
CFLs have their problems (mercury...), but they are about to be replaced by LEDs, anyway.
But to imply that a technology that is simply too old for its time (other than in special applications like ovens) dying is somehow sad... Dunno... I has happened time and time again and it will happen again. This is a basic fact of life and we would not have our high standard of living if that were not the case. So yah, it sucks for the people working there, but that's about it. I don't see many people mourning the wood steam engine car industry, either.
Ah, another +4 insightful partisan comment voted, sorry, mod'd highly on /.
Given it was the Dems that made its favored nation deal with China and pushing NAFTA and free trade with the world, you only have your yourselves to blame for laying the American worker out. Now you've created a new subset, and you call them stupid and don't agree with how they no longer agree with the shithead policies.
You wanted us to compete with China with an unequal playing, and elevated their economy by screwing your own people. You can bitch all you want about the current economy, but without the housing boom, which was a completely false boom, there still would have been a long-term recession from 2003 to today anyways.
We cannot compete. Try to run a manufacturing business today. Just try it. I have. The raw material costs were 4x the FINISHED PRODUCT cost coming from China. iow, the damn optical plastic blank in the US, in volume, delivered, was $7 a blank. The finished product made in China, being sold at retail, complete with accessories and packaging, was $4.
I had another, fully automated. Might have worked. Problem was, by the time the insurance fees were paid out and government crap (Social Security, corporate taxes), I could barely hire a worker, and couldn't give any benefits. Most business these days survive because they are subsidized by the government, not because they themselves are a profitable enterprise. Hell, the damn raw metal costs were 50% of the finished goods cost coming in from Hong Kong and the like, and I was using discounted CUTOFFS that I was getting a huge discount on.
Another product in the pipeline died an early death, when the injection molding pellets were, oh, 110% of the finished plastic good of the COMPLETE CASING by weight of the imported product. iow, before energy costs, tooling, maintenance, and setup.
I can't run my businesses. I cannot hire workers. Zilch. Nothing. Business done, folds, doesn't get started, closes doors. So don't phrackin call me squelchy because you don't have a DAMN CLUE. You call a fascist authoritarian government that is coming--to me, it's already been here with the socialist agenda (and I blame my party for not having the backbone to reject those too when they had power).
For being nerds, you people are sure damn stupid about human nature. Maybe that's why I'm a Republican despite supposedly being intelligent--I don't agree with my party on many, many things. I don't agree with and don't believe the shit that pours from it's ass. But I understand the nature of the emotion and the sentiments. I agree with the Dems in a lot of areas, but I don't get your sentiments at self-loathing and kicking the shit out of what you describe as the dumb, loyalists, pions instead of helping them.
Your hatred, despisement, and shit pours from your supposedly superior brains and mouths. You exported our jobs. You played favored nation. You tax like all hell so business can't get off the ground. You allow lawsuits from all comers, then cry when you get sued yourselves.
You fail under YOUR own rules.
And your post is exactly the non-constructive, wholly correct on the surface but just so wrong in how you attack and don't look at the underlying reasons why it's come to this, that speaks volumes of your party--and I'm amazed amazed, despite seeing this repeated and over and over, how many people agree with you. The finger is pointed at you, it's your policies, your fix in play.
I guess some people were happy getting paid off with rich people's money during the Clinton and Bush years, that they never learned earn their own way.
Wal-Mart and Dollar General are doing quite well, because they positioned themselves to do this well in advance.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Things that cost you more probably cost more to product. They might cost more to the environment too.
Why? No I mean really, why is the technology at it's end? Did GE shut down the plant because it wasn't making money?
GE has been getting out of the incandescent lightbulb business for some time because it is a product with rapidly shrinking marketshare that has been surpassed by for most applications by technologically and economically superior products.
Or did they shut it down because the government decided to ban a product that millions of Americans use and still buy on a daily basis?
GE is not even close to the only maker of incandescent lightbulbs and fewer people are using them every day. It's a shrinking market with a technologically inferior product. Why the hell would GE want to remain in that business? Furthermore, incandescent bulbs are still 100% legal in most places including where I live. I don't buy them because they cost more, have shorter lives, kick off a lot of wasteful heat, and frankly I have better things to do with my life than replace lightbulbs. I'm not the only person who thinks that either.
Obsolescence is the state of being which occurs when an object, service or practice is no longer wanted even though it may still be in good working order.
Buggy whips can still be purchased but they are clearly obsolete. If you read further into the wikipedia article you copied from (and didn't cite) you'll note that obsolescence is typically proceeded by a gradual decline in popularity. While technically incandescent bulbs might not be obsolete yet, they WILL become so.
Sorry but the incandescent bulb was FAR from obsolete. This is not a product that is no longer wanted,
Oh there is still demand but it's shrinking rapidly. Home Depot isn't devoting an ever smaller amount of space to incandescents because of any law. They're simply being phased out byt the alternatives.
(Can you source for me a light that is perfectly suitable for colour matching applications that costs less than $10 and isn't incandescent?).
Actually yes I can. There are full spectrum florescent lights available for less than $10. I've used them myself for photography applications.
It's a government meddling with a free market for no other reason than to promote itself as green without actually thinking about what they are doing.
I'm pretty sure the government knew exactly what they were doing.
Sorry but this IS sad news!
No, it really isn't. It is happy news if anything. I'm GLAD incandescents are going away. It's a neat technology that had a good run. Time for something better.
Buggy whips became obsolete and hence manufacturers went out of business.
And the same will happen in time with most makers of incandescent lightbulbs. It is a products which has already seen its market share radically diminish and that trend is not going to stop. CFLs and LEDs are technically and in many cases economically superior products.
The bulbs in question have become too expensive to make in US -- the demand, as I understand it is quite alive.
I'm a certified accountant. Have you ever seen a lightbulb factory? I have. They are HIGHLY automated. Labor cost really isn't a big issue in their manufacture. The volumes are so high and the equipment so long lasting that fixed costs are extremely low. They have about 200 employees at that plant which is a very low number for a high unit volume plant. GE could easily keep the factory going IF the volume demanded for the product wasn't dropping rapidly.
Cost isn't the issue. The demand IN THE US is dropping rapidly for that product. Incandescent lightbulbs are a business with NO growth potential in the US. None. Why would GE want to stay in a business that is absolutely certain to continue to shrink?
GE wanted to shut down american ligth bulb plants so they can sell light bulbs with higher prices and higher margins made overseas.
Look, I'm an accountant in my day job. Lightbulb production is HIGHLY automated. Shipping it overseas would gain little from a cost perspective. The equipment was probably mostly depreciated, labor costs are a small percentage of the total cost thanks to the automation and the margins likely were as good as ever.
But demand for incandescents (which are still quite legal in most circumstances) has fallen off a cliff. Home Depot, Walmart and Lowes are selling CFLs by the truckload for no reason more sinister than consumer demand. The growth is in CFLs and in time will be in LEDs. Why would GE want to remain in a business that has shrinking demand and a technologically inferior product?
If US companies have failed to invest in the replacement technologies (CFL manufacturing) that is a separate issue altogether.
I do agree with that. There are many that are designed for indoor or light duty work. Others, like the ones that light roads are designed to turn on even when very cold, but they take 60 seconds to do so! This is obviously unacceptable.
But the "Xenon" headlamps in cars are metal halides too, and those turn on in under a second and do it in all the same temperatures that incandescent headlamps in cars work. So now you just need to find someone who offers a similar one for home use and at a reasonable price. This may not be easy, it'll obviously be easier to stick with incandescent for now. But once you start to become unable to buy replacement incandescents (as you fear), you hopefully can find a metal halide that works for you.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Traffic Stop Lights. Yes, those energy-efficient LED lights are very bright - until the first snow / ice storm.
- CFL "soft white" is NOT equal to incandescent "soft white"
- After trying 3 different CFL temperature ranges, I've yet to find a single color that doesn't feel "cleanroom artificial"
- The delay factor is a _major_ headache (even the ones that claim to be instant-on are _not_ instant-on)
- Despite claims to the contrary, they fail just as frequently as incandescents -- I've already burned through nearly half the case and it's only been about a year.
I don't know about you guys, but if this incandescent ban is going to make them disappear in the long term, I think I'm going to start stockpiling incandescents.
Alternatively, we could just use our nuclear weapons to kill all the Chinese.
This would also have the pleasant side effects of offsetting global warming, eliminating the world's largest source of pollution, bringing manufacturing back to America, slashing our foreign debt, freeing Tibet, and securing the continued sovereignty of Taiwan. I don't see how this plan has any flaws.
But the history of the lightbulb is surprisingly an interesting one...I know snoozefest. But the amount of work that went into making the first is kinda incredible. Can you imagine the conversation Edison had demanding hair from a friend's beard (which one is not specified in the article...)
* Number of materials Edison tested to find the right filament to electrically produce light in his bulb: 1,600
* Filaments he tried: coconut fiber, fishing line, hair from a friend’s beard
* Filament he successfully used: Carbonized bamboo
Via: http://www.houselogic.com/articles/end-incandescence