Slashdot Mirror
Activists Seek Repeal of Ban On Incandescent Bulbs
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Daniel Sayani reports in New American that Senator Mike Enzi plans to introduce legislation to reverse the ban on incandescent light bulbs which is scheduled to go into effect January 1, 2014. 'CFLs are more expensive, many contain mercury which can be harmful even in the smallest amounts, and most are manufactured overseas in places like China,' says Enzi. 'If left alone, the best bulb will win its rightful standing in the marketplace. Government doesn't need to be in the business of telling people what light bulb they have to use.' Faced with a phaseout, some consumers are stockpiling incandescent bulbs, although a poll by USA Today indicates most Americans support the US law that begins phasing out traditional light bulbs next year. Despite some consumer grumbling, they're satisfied with more efficient alternatives. 71% of US adults say they have replaced standard light bulbs in their home over the past few years with compact fluorescent lamps or LEDs and 84% say they are 'very satisfied' or 'satisfied' with CFLs and LEDs."
Good, those CFLS suck in cold weather (10+minute warmup) and at drying out slightly moistened electronic bits without damaging them as a heat gun/oven would.
This is another example of whackos in government run amok. Why not let consumers decide what to buy and for what purpose? During the winter I leave a small 40 watt bulb on in my well house to prevent the pipes from freezing...it gives out enough heat and it's perfect for that application. Now I will have to get a space heater causing me to burn even more electricity even when turned on the lowest setting.
This is absolutely idiotic...for government to ban a specific appliance. Almost as idiotic as banning people from owning and smoking a plant!
>CFLs are more expensive, many contain mercury which can be harmful even in the smallest amounts
Don't suck your CFL's, then.
Will they forbid those, too?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Because LED lighting will own the market in a few years.
incandescent light bulbs illegal, only criminals will have incandescent light bulbs.
Gives a new meaning to "keep your government out of my bedroom".
I've found that unless you have nice clean power, CFLs don't last any longer than regular bulbs. Not everyone gets 60 Hz pure sine, 120V+-1% to their house. Older wiring, older part of town, etc. I rented an apartment that had me replacing CFLs once a month (until I realized it was the apartment and not a fluke and switched back). You still can't beat 4 bulbs for $.99.
...hello globe shaped lighted Edison screw socket heaters!
CFLs have way too many problems, especially reliability in colder climates. Yes we're talking about indoor use, but in the winter I keep it around 21 celsius, not 30. I've had nearly half the CFLs I bought die within the first six months.
I'm looking for places to get LED bulbs insteads, CFL just isn't worth the trouble.
Is there any good LED bulbs brands/models that anyone recommends? Or recommends not buying?
Incandescent bulbs are widely used for heating. For example in bread proofing boxs, small animal tanks and lava lamps.
What exactly are we supposed to use now?
Evil people are out to get you.
Most energy efficient technologies are actually an economic net win. After an initial push the government doesn't need to be involved. I see the government involvement in this sort of thing as more a swift kick to the economy to push it out of a local minima, and that's how it should stay.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Because consumers are stupid - that's why.
Sen. Enzi has interests in utilities and natural gas and coal mining. Can't imagine why he'd care if people used less energy-efficient lightbulbs.
Slippery slope. Today it's light bulbs, tomorrow it's thoughts.
I'd like the freedom to make bad decisions, please. Let me use inefficient light bulbs, drive around without a seat belt, and smoke cigarettes outside the office.
There's no reason to force people off of incandescents. If we can find more value in fluorescents we will. It does no good to save pennies a year on energy if we're paying dollars in quality of life. We'll all be using LED bulbs soon, anyway. Much easier to get the colors right there.
By that, I mean there are still places they don't cheaply fill in for incadescents. Like dimming or being able to come to full brightness quickly (for closets, bathrooms, etc). At least, those're the problems I've had with the bulbs I put in about 4 years ago when I bought my house.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I don't think I have had a CFL replace an incandescent bulb and last as long as the claim. Thankfully I get them at Costco who lets me trade them in for replacements.
Also, the light quality isn't that great.
Sure, they save some eletricity... but I'm not sure I am saving money.
here in the north the heat from the bulb is more than welcome.
Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
Don't get me wrong, I love LEDs. I think all equipment should be littered carelessly with LED indicators.
But I just can't stand either LED or CFL lighting. The light that either of these globes give off just isn't as nice and comforting as a good ol' incandescent globe. It's cold, harsh, and monochromatic.
I for one will be stockpiling incandescent globes if Australia ever legislates against them.
There are far better ways to promote specific technologies than to ban others. I know that many people will prefer the older tech, and forcing consumers is not a constitutional or even sensible way to achieve energy use goals. My mother is a water color artist, and is concerned with the ban because cfl and led lighting does not provide a natural reference for color like incandescents do. While she does penny pinch and has every light in her house as a cfl, she would like to use an incandescent while painting. She could plug in an electric heater and leave it on all day if she wants, so what's the point of banning the bulbs again???
And as this 2007 Slashdot story points out:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/07/02/26/1916211/GE-Announces-Advancement-in-Incandescent-Technology
Governments should mandate efficiency standards, not technology. I'm a bit on the free-market side myself, let the best bulb win, but not with absolutely no ground rules for that fight. If government were to truly stand back and let the market decide everything, cost would almost always win out and we'd have a proliferation of coal power plants and inefficient gas cars lacking almost every kind of pollution control system.
Government's role is to set the standard, in this case, so many lumen per watt, or however they want to word it, and then let the industry innovate the best technology to meet that goal.
Enzi's an idiot, and his reasoning specious. ("Oh, no, Chinee right burbs!") But I agree with his goal.
Banning incandescents is unhelpful and unnecessary. There are places where they're the only solution. Not many, but a few.
As people install CFLs, demand for incandescents will fall, because they last for a years. (Except in those situations I mentioned in the past paragraph.) It would be nice to push people to do that just once, and finally get them over the "the color wash is slightly different from the one I grew up with so I hate it" excuse. I know I haven't bought a light bulb in years, and probably won't for some time.
Still, I don't like forcing people. While light bulbs are a contributor to climate change, they're not the biggest part. It was just an easy, visible one, leading to an easy, ham-handed attempt to force people rather than persuade them.
Mind you, if I'm right, we should already be seeing demand for incandescents fall, at least if not for the confounding factor of hoarders. (Many of whom are doing so because anything a liberal tells them is good must, by definition, be bad. Which is precisely what Mike Enzi has been telling them for years.)
Memo to America: STOP FIGHTING FOR LIGHT BULBS. ... http://youaredumb.net/node/1713
You know what's awesome? The omnipresent, lurking dread that we're all going to die, or at least collapse as a civilization, because collectively we are too stupid to change. And not only are we too stupid to change, we're too stupid even to let people make us change for our own good. It might be global warming, it might be peak oil, it might be running out of fucking lithium for all I know. All I know is, we're clearly too stupid to change, and no matter what eventually dooms us, that'll be the root cause.
Fandroids hate facts.
I stockpiled a load of 100W ones. The new bulbs have lots of advantages - cheaper to run, so ideal to leave on as a security light, last longer, etc, but although I've replaced about 75% of the lights in my house with CFLs, I absolutely had to stockpile the old ones. The reason? It's simple. CFLs give me a headache. I can't sit underneath one for more than about 10 minutes without getting a headache, so it's fine to have one in the bedroom or bathroom, and it's not too bad in the kitchen, but I'm in the lounge or my office I need a regular incandescent light. It's not a problem for everybody, but sufficient numbers of people are similarly affected that I think it's outrageous the government can legislate such stupid big brother dictats.
Then there's the fact that they're sold massively below cost to get them adopted. Here, you can often find them for less than 10p per bulb at retail, and nobody is yet really worrying about the environmental costs of disposal because people aren't really throwing them away in any numbers yet. This will be a major problem in a few years though.
Finally, the usual arguments that the old bulbs are less energy efficient is pretty much redundant. As I mostly use light bulbs during the winter evenings and for a short period on winter mornings, I'll have my heating on anyway. Who cares if 90W of the 100W bulb is emitted as heat - it's making my house warmer. There's even a company in Germany trying to get round the ban by selling "heating globes" that happen to emit light and happen to look exactly like an old lightbulb.
Afterall, it's quit energy efficient to do that particular job.
Someone actually start importing it as heat ball.
Even if people made rational economic decisions, the market price of electricity doesn't reflect its cost to society. The difference between the social cost of consuming power and the price individuals pay for electricity is huge. Utilities are (for the most part) regulated monopolies. Governments can't raise electricity prices because such a move would be economically unpopular. Instead governments have to keep prices artificially low and then find different ways of reducing consumption. There's no real market for power. But people don't make rational economic decisions. They subordinate long-term rewards for short-term savings.
In the winter the old incandescent lamp has an efficiency nearing 100% because you use its heat too.
Why should anybody tell me to use CFL, harder to manufacture and dispose of and in this case less efficient?
A state wants to preserve environment? Then just factor in the environmental impact of stuff, and add it as tax or whatever. If using something hurts the environment make us pay in advance for the damage. It's a big paradigm shift, but the alternative of half assed measures or fake measures like carbon credits will just continue the current trend which isn't looking very good.
And if you care for people factor in the social impact of low wages. Then, with high prices for transport and country exploiting their people having their stuff taxed, we will have finally fair competition, and may the best win.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
From the summary:
CFLs are more expensive
Really? Around here (Tucson, AZ USA) CFLs at Home Depot are less than a dollar each in four-packs (It was something like $3.60/4 bulbs.). I'm not sure if they're more expensive than incandescents (as I've not priced incandescents in years), but they're certainly inexpensive enough that any price difference is trivial.
All of mine have lasted for years, give off less heat (less AC needed in the summer), and produce satisfactory light for reading and everyday indoor tasks. I don't do indoor photography or anything that requires super-accurate color rendering, but I'm not noticing any deficiencies in the light with just my eyes. With modern ballasts, they don't flicker and reach full brightness within about 5 seconds.
Short of extreme environments (outdoor lighting in Montana, oven lamps, etc.) and specific purposes (e.g. photography lamps, completely sealed enclosures, garage door openers, security lighting), I don't really see a purpose for incandescent bulbs.
If you are using an electric heater in your house, then it doesn't matter if your light bulbs are radiating a lot of non-visible energy. Power is power, right? The light bulb is only less efficient than the heater if the heater is a pump that actually dumps cold air outside. And of course if you have a gas heater, that's more efficient than using gas to centrally generate then distribute electricity.
It seems to me that turning light's off when leaving a room doesn't make much sense in the winter either, except for extending the life of the bulbs.
The thing I hate most about CFLs is how bad they make colours appear. They are especially bad for photography. Their spectrum is not continuous and has several spikes. This makes colours appear very unnatural and is practically impossible to fix a photo taken under CFLs. Incandescent bulbs have a continuous spectrum that makes colours more natural and is relatively easy to compensate for the yellow cast with white balance in photography.
I'm a TV & Film editor by trade, so I easily notice sub-second motion and flicker. The flicker and the "bad color" of CFLs bugs the hell out of me. I can immediately notice when a room is lit by CFLs vs. good old incandescents.
I'm all for doing what we can to reduce power consumption, but for me CFLs are not a viable option. I have a hard time working around them. I haven't tried LED light bulbs yet due to them being relatively new on the market... maybe that will be a way to go, but I don't think the incandescent light should be banned wholesale.
Government is getting carried away with banning things. *reaches over for a ma huang herbal supplement and a clove cigarette* Oh... wait...
Maybe a added power consumption tax would be appropriate, but not an outright ban.
Web hosting that doesn't suck!Dreamhost
My first CFLs lasted about three years before giving up. Before then they progressively lose their strength and take time to get whatever brightness level they max out at. They are hard to find light that looks "right" as coated bulbs can do little to compensate. They also are horrid in out door situations (low life mainly) and any where vibration can get to them, think garages either in or near the openers.
So far my three LED lights are just awesome. Good light dispersion and instant on. I have not tried any where the bulb is mounted horizontal, I have a few fixtures in the ceiling like that, but they do work well in my ceiling fan light fixtures and in bathrooms where the lights are pointed down. Haven't found a replacement for the globe lights that frequent bathrooms, I might end up ditching the fixtures.
Incandescent bulbs still have better variety in spectrum but outside of that I can think of only a few specialized uses their secondary effect; heat; warrants keeping them. OK, cost is their major benefit - at least up front cost.
I am all for keeping them on the death list as I hope it kicks LEDs makers into high gear. We can hope that Wal Mart decides to get behind LED lights like they did for CFLs, they seemed almost responsible for their overnight abundance and price drop. Having made such a big push on those bulbs I hope to see the repeat.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Not even opinion.
LED lighting is an absolute joy, significantly less energy hungry, many MANY times smaller, last longer, and probably cheaper in some cases.
And more so now than previous times since we have much better diodes for producing more uniform light spectrums.
The only problem though is "heatballs", lightbulbs that are also used legitimately for:
Keeping some food warm in eateries.
Used in some artificial fireplaces for producing heat as well as light.
Keeping some types of animal areas lit and heated.
Decorative. (lava lamps)
Will there be replacements for these uses? Or are we going to get a mess of separate heating elements and LED lights?
I guess some research should be done to see if these heating elements+LED is more efficient than plain old incs.
If anything, they should change the light bulb socket standard and new bulbs to prevent incs being used for lighting. Then just sell them as heatballs.
Wrong? Yes, but incandescents are very wasteful for lighting, too much is lost as heat.
As for the future, improvements in quantum dots could lead to even better lighting, flexible lighting at that.
The issue with CFLs is not about choice but environmental and electricity generation issues. You are free to spend your money in whatever you like, but here in Venezuela the government created a replacement program where you would trade in your incandescent light bulbs and also get new CFL as long as you brought the damaged CFL, and it has been wildly successful. They replaced around 50 million light bulbs and saved 1750 MW of electricity. Fighting against a law like that is not about fighting for freedom of choice, it's just fighting for irresponsible behaviour.
Really, I'm not sure why people are so passionate about the matter. I've been gradually switching my fixtures over to CFLs anyways, I'm fine with going that route - especially now that dimmable CFLs are more readily available. And the "made in China" bit is a red herring; even the slashdot article that is linked to by that admits that virtually nobody makes any light bulbs of any sort in the US either way, hence you'll be lighting with Chinese-made bulbs no matter what route you select.
I can see the side of the argument that wants to see less government intervention, but at this point fighting legislation with more legislation seems like a waste of time and money.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
He's assuming that the best product will win through market acceptance - but it's fairly common for sub-par products to beat out the "best" products due to various factors such as cost, and amount of advertising. Think about it - how else can you explain American domestic beer? People buy it by the boatload even though it's swill.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Well it can't be that difficult to get around the ban for devices that use the technology for heating by just making the devices emit in the infrared instead of visible light. Like say painting the bulb black for instance?
How the Hell will that work with a CFL? Thomas Edison had it right . . . he invented the light bulb, with Lava Lamps in mind. One smart inventor, he was .. ..
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
CFL vs LED vs incandescent is completely irrelevant on an energy conservation or greenhouse gas argument.
HEAT is the problem. We spend 60% of our energy creating or moving heat. Which is ironic because around 70% of the output of our power stations is "waste" heat which is normally dumped.
Space heating.
Water heating.
Air conditioning.
Cheap, high quality, high performance, easy to use insulators would make the single largest difference to world energy consumption after District Heating and Cooling are installed.
Think aerogels, but cheap and easy.
Deleted
Besides the higher cost, the mercury content and being made in China (which is probably true of most incandescent bulbs today too), there are other drawbacks.
At least one poster has cited reliability. There's fine print on most CFLs warning of reduced life if placed in an enclosed fixture. There are no such limitations on incandescent bulbs.
I've had a half dozen go bad during the past few years. None were in an enclosed fixture. I don't recall ever going through that many incandescent bulbs. One made a snap-crackle-pop noise when it went out and it's base was too hot to touch, raising concerns of the fire safety of these products.
The power factor of CFLs is about 0.44 leading. The power company must supply the vars for this free. They can only charge us for watts and can't charge for reactive power. Incandescent bulbs have a power factor of nearly unity.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Seriously, judging by the comments I wonder how many people actually read the article. This paragraph should put people's doubts at rest: "He expects all Americans would back the law if they knew it does not ban incandescents but simply requires them to be more efficient. So the old-fashioned 100-watt bulb, which U.S. companies cannot make after Jan. 2012, will be replaced by a halogen version that produces the same light, as measured in lumens, but uses only 72 watts of electricity."
I have a couple of rooms in my house that have dimmer switches installed. CFLs (even the dimmer compatible ones) just don't work well. We get a loud buzzing noise coming from the bulbs and from the actual dimmer switch. Guess I need to join the stock up gang.
http://heatball.de/en/
Happens to be a heating device that conveniently fits into your standard E-27 lightbulb socket. As a waste product, it also gives off a bit of light.
I for one cannot stand standard CFLs. They throw white balance of my photographs completely off with their spiked spectrum. Now, I've replaced most lights in my home with Vivalite's full-spectrum 6000K color temperature lights (so they resemble sunlight), and I'm reasonably happy with those. I still think your old tungsten wire is next best thing - it has continuous spectrum, even if the spike is somewhere around 3000K (orange).
Anyway, I guess I'll be stockpiling some lightbulbs before they get phased out in the EU as well.
Republicans will always be backwards idiots.
...a lot of things. LED bulbs don't actually illuminate a room . They do a great job of illuminating a direction. Think of a laser beam. That's great when what you want to see is the LED bulb, but it's terrible when you want to see the rest of the room. And diffusers just don't work on point-source lights.
CFL is even worse. Talk about a cradle-to-grave problem. They simply consume so much terrible stuff in manufacture and disposal that saving a few watts of power is insignificant in the long run. And of course, as the post suggests, you need a hazmat team to clean up a broken lightbulb.
But more than anything, wasting electricity is a good thing. We live in a capitalist society -- which has many advantages. The biggest one being that innovation comes from necessity. Saving 10% on your electricity bill makes the cost of electricity go up. Consuming 10 times as much electricity breeds innovation and makes the cost of electricity go down -- substantially.
Does anyone have any suggestions on brands of CFLs to use that give off "good" light? Every one that I've tried gives off a harsh, dead light. That may be perfect for a horror flick, but not for my house. I would love to make the switch, but I'll be hoarding too if that's the sort of light given off by all of these things.
They make the plastic bits out of that biodegradable shit. And then they fall apart before the bulb burns out. Literally, they just crumble when I touch them after less than two years.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
I am an energy-saving enviro-zealot, but I hate the spectrum of CFLs and LEDs. I am in the UK and have been subject to the anti-incandescent bulb legislation, and have become a fan of the Osram hybrid bulbs, which are the size (and socket format) of a traditional incandescent, but contain a lower-power halogen bulb. Check out the Osram Halogen Eco Classic series http://www.osram.com/osram_com/Consumer/Home_Lighting/Halogen_lamps/Product_overview/Screw_bases/HALOGEN_ECO_CLASSIC/HALOGEN_ECO_CLASSIC_A/index.html
Sorry y'all, this is not intended as Spam or Advertising! I am a regular here, and just sharing my personal preferences....
Where are my mod points when I need them!?
Shiny. Let's be bad guys.
I have had many CFL lamps fail in a matter of weeks or DAYS in some cases. I think many are just cheaply made; they go out, you hit them, they come on for a while. Color temperature is not always appropriate. Also you are not supposed to use them in an application where you flick them on, leave them on for a few seconds and then turn them off. Many applications are like this: closet light, basement light, fridge light. Some take a few minutes to reach full brightness although this improves with age. Also, use outdoors in frigid weather is a problem. I have changed most of my house lights to CFLs, but there are some decorative candelabra-base fixtures where you can't use them. Be aware that any electricity savings will necessarily be countered by rate increases so we're not doing this to save money, just electrons.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
I see the CFL = Mercury thing all the time and frankly it's avoiding the fact that the power savings from replacing an Incandescent with a CFL mean you take less power, burn less coal and release less mercury into the air.
Here's the math:
Take a 100w bulb and replace it with a 17W CFL - average lifetime of a CFL is about 10,000 hours. So that 83w power difference over 10,000 hours is 3 gigajoules. Coal power content is about 33 megajoules per kilogram - so that works out to about 90kilograms of coal over the lifetime of the bulb. Mercury content varies but about 10 parts/million is a reasonable average - so that pile of coal will contain about 900 miligrams of mercury. CFL's contain about 5milligrams (although there are 'eco friendly' bulbs that contain less than a milligram.
Now, there are other factors, firstly the fuel cycle of power plants isn't 100% so the amount of coal will be higher, on the other hand, in the US only about 50% of the electrical power comes from coal.
Regardless - Incandescents are *worse* in terms of mercury pollution, and anyone telling you otherwise is either misinformed or lying.
My wife is pregnant and pregnant women aren't supposed to be around mercury. So I'm actually replacing some CFLs in my house with incandescent bulbs.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Does anybody know of a good replacement for the typical 25/40 W mirror bulbs? I have not found anything other than CFL and I am not putting that in an easy to hit area..
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Hmmm, it looks like this is another (successful) troll by a Congressional Republican.
Incandescent bulbs also contain mercury as well as lead, so this is kind of a moot point.
Secondly, I do like the *intent* - to save electricity. But the quality of light from CFL's is bad, and LED's are worse. They flicker, produce less spectrum than cfl's or led's.
Thirdly, when did the term activist envelop the definition of doing what is logically right, what makes sense, and not forcing legislation that doesn't make sense down people's throats?
These new bulbs are bad for people - harmful on a health level. Imagine in 20 years how much more health issues people will have because their babies were exposed to a broken cfl bulb. And the water contamination...
I think a good compromise in all of this would be to switch to halogen bulbs. They won't kill anyone, catch fire, poison water, make us go blind, cause seizures and headaches, look awful like CFL's do, but they would save some electricity and give us the same quality of light. I don't know about you, but I am not going to buy a more expensive, inferior product.
I like the mandate to research and develop new lighting technologies - bu I don't like them throwing this down our throats, making us switch involuntarily. That's not what the United States of America is about. Politicians need to wake up to this fact - no matter what "side" they are on.
If this really bothers you, go to http://freeourlight.org/ and sign the petition.
vote libertarian
You could just buy 3000K CFL's. They're available everywhere, and indistinguishable from incandescents.
I don't respond to AC's.
Forgive the OT post, but I'm not sure where else to ask this. I'm using Firefox 3.6.13 under Linux (Gentoo) and for a few weeks now, a lot of comment posts (including this one of mine and it's parent), but not all, don't show the score after the subject and show all the comment text double spaced...it's been driving me nuts. Anyone else seeing this? I'm getting this on two different machines.
Whenever there is a disproportionate societal cost that does not appear in the retail cost, there is a reason for the government to get involved. In the case of lighting, there is an obvious environmental cost with the energy involved, but also the nonlinear costs of new generation and infrastructure needed to address demand growth once it passes a threshold where the power system can't just scale linearly to absorb it. Efficient lighting is one of the best ways to deal with that growth (cheaper and more environmentally benign than most other conservation and new infrastructure), but people aren't adequately incentivised to adopt it in the current market.
A tax would be more efficient than a ban -- giving people a nudge, but giving them more wiggle room to decide when and how to make the switch. The proceeds could be used to go back and defray changeover costs or support LED research as an alternative (or defray the deficit). Unfortunately, in our brainless political climate, the anti-tax zealots make it easier to ban incandescents than to tax them, which is really insane if you think about it.
I like CFL bulbs, and probably 80% of the bulbs in my house have been converted, but there are some applications that CFLs are actually less eco-friendly for, like areas where the lights are turned on and off frequently, like hallways, closets, and bathrooms. It would be a shame if this law actually makes things less efficient than just leaving people to their own devices... I think most people don't like spending their time changing light bulbs and are going to buy CFLs anyway.
Does anyone else experience infrared remote control interference with CFLs? I find that my satellite STB drops key presses (only about 1 in 3 get through) from its remote control whenever a CFL is switched on in the room. Turn off the light and things return to normal.
Why get a space heater....if a 40 watt bulb works, then just stick in a suitable resistor instead and be done with it. Alternately, repurpose an old thermostat and use it to control the space heater.
I'm pretty sure the constitution doesn't limit what government can legislate, except for the pretty specific clauses ensuring specific kinds of fundamental individual freedoms such as freedom of speech, association, freedom from arbitrary incarceration, and several other specific limitations on the government's scope of power. In other respects, it's allowed to be a government and legislate whatever its democratically elected legislators vote to legislate.
You are very much mistaken. The US Constitution defines what the federal government *may* legislate and then specifically states that everything else is left to the states to legislate. The first ten amendments then go on to explicitly forbid legislation, federal and state, in certain areas.
What about the energy involved in fabrication and transport of the 'eco friendly' bulb? International container ships are widely regarded as some of the worst atmospheric polluters imaginable. What about the fact that the bulb, according to TFA only lasts a fraction of the 10K hr lifetime? Please tell me I am misinformed or lying. It just doesn't seem self-evident to me. I think you are spot on w/r/t the difference in energy consumption, even if the lifetime is shorter.
LEDs; expensive, "BLUE LIGHT HAZARD" and crappy eerily shallow output spectrum.
Normal lights suck 5x the amount of energy as CFL and LEDs but are cheap and harmless and no you don't get to disregard the extra energy needed to manufacture CFLs and LEDs.
I should be able to choose the type of lighting I want out of principal and especially given crappy unproven unacceptable alternatives. I don't turn on the incandescent lights in my house very much or for that long..the amount of energy they consume is therefore trivial as percentage of my total usage.
If you want to legislate lower power consumption incentivize the proliferation of ground source heat pumps and energy efficient blower motors. Or hell if you really cared you would find a way to keep desktop computer vendors from producing computers that consume >100 watts continuous while sitting idle doing absolutely nothing.
So apparently 84% of US adults are happy with CFLs. Then again, 84% of US adults have an IQ less than 116.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
To date all the LED replacement bulbs I've bought I had to remove. they were a hostile blue color and flicker at 120hz. awful to work under, hideous to look at. Wake me up when they start making DC rectified ones for standard 120v sockets. While you can find ones that have a redder spectrum they are also very low lumen models so can't replace 90W halogens or even 50W halogens.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Yes but when an incandescant breaks in my house the mercury is not in my home. Its the good old not in my backyard syndrome.
I am old enough to remember when the government proposed banning the cfc aerosol cans as well, and people stomped their feet about it, saying why should the government be so active. CFCs actually were better because it allowed more "stuff" (hairspray, Easy Off, Pledge, paint, whatever) to get out of the can, and people complained that this was a tax on them from the enviro-crazies.
Then, the ban took place, and the then-growing hole in the ozone layer started to close, just as the scientists predicted. Now, nobody wants the CFCs back.
Using non-incandescent bulbs will substantially reduce our energy consumption, and reduce our reliance on non-domestic energy sources. If you are using a 40 watt bulb as a heat source, there are other heat sources you can find that won't burn out while you are not there, allowing your pipes to freeze anyway - - that is not a good solution/excuse.
I hear the mercury/foreign production issues on the florescent bulbs. But LEDs will likely replace them, and since big companies are busting unions with such effectiveness, I think a light bulb factory in the USA will be profitable soon.
I live in the south of New Zealand, and for 10 months of the year or more have thermostat controlled electric heating.
Any waste energy from a bulb will heat the house and the heaters will spend proportionately less time switched on. I.e. NO waste whatsoever.
Yet another good reason to let people decide - there are too many variables for a broad sweeping law like this to work.
Oh, and given this argument, all of a sudden the negative aspects of CFLs considerably outweigh their non-existent advantages. Therefore where I live CFLs have MORE reason to be banned than incandescents.
But when an incandescent breaks, the mercury release is not in my kitchen, bedroom, etc.
Oh noes!!! I get my power from a series of dams.
So, now you're misinformed and CFL = Mercury vs none... because MOST of Washington state is powered by hydro.
For some reason flourescent, LED, and CFLs especially give me splitting headaches after about 5 minutes.
It seems others don't sense the high frequency flicker that I do.
Incandescent light doesn't ever bother me at all.
So what the hell am I supposed to do in future? Just face the fact that because of this stupid legislation I have to live the rest of my life with daily headaches?
I replaced my regular bulbs with CFL's a few years ago...not because I'm wanting to save the earth or anything, but because I HATE REPLACING BURNED OUT BULBS! Darn things always blow at the worst time, and you usually can't find one, which means you steal it from somewhere else in the house, forget to buy more and then the one you swiped you'll need and won't work. I replaced them well over 2 years ago, and haven't replaced them since. When LED's come down to a semi-reasonable level, I'll swap out the CFL's to those.
Incandescent bulbs aren't being banned. All light bulbs must meet the efficiency standard required by the law. If an incandescent can do that (and apparently some can), they can still be sold.
Philips Halogena and Philips Ecovantage (respective links below), both meet the new efficiency standard without resorting to CFLs. They save a 1/3 of the power and still have all the advantages of a standard incandescent. All the defense needs to do is show alternatives exist.
http://www.amazon.com/Philips-70-Watt-Halogena-Energy-Saver/dp/B001FA07UW/ref=sr_1_1?s=lamps-light&ie=UTF8&qid=1298676895&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.com/Philips-72-Watt-EcoVantage-Light-Natural/dp/B001FA07UC/ref=pd_sim_hi_5
What about dimmers? I cannot find a CFL that works 100% properly with a dimmer switch. I have recessed can lighting in my hallways on dimmer switches and they light the majority of my house.
CFLs work fine and we don't use incandescent bulbs any longer. The cost is cheap enough and they last longer. Give it up already!
And yet if you break an incandescent in your house you're expected to just through it away... But if you break a CFL its treated as an environmental catastrophe requiring duck tape, air / heat turned off, space suits etc...
If the government thinks it has to mandate a technology to replace an existing, cheap technology because of environment concern, there's something wrong when the government then has to come out with papers on how to clean up the mercury they're forcing us to bring into our homes.
Yup, just as orange. Spend the extra money and get the sunlight ones.
While there is a great deal of variation between power sources among regions in the US. Thermal plants are less than 50% efficient and line losses are huge. Also, in cooling climates the extra heat generated has o be removed with AC so you have to pay twice for incandescent - once to heat the lamp and once to cool the room. Once you do all the math there really is a win with CFLs.
If 71% of the people are buying them already, why do we need a ban on the old product? CFL bulbs won in the market, with the exception of some specific cases where CFLs are not an option. So the ban is unnecessary.
Latest study is in on the UK, Carbon Output and Energy Consumption Exploded as a result of banning Incandescent Bulbs. The study found that banning the Incandescent bulbs with subsidies for CFLs had the perverse affect of enabling people to go out and spend the money on other activities that emit more CO2 than what was saved resulting in a net increase in CO2 emissions. The example given in the study, if a home owner only took the average savings for using CFLs and purchased beer, his net carbon footprint would be increased totally erasing any benefit gained.
Heres the myth: "average lifetime of a CFL is about 10,000 hours"
What about the energy involved in fabrication and transport of the 'eco friendly' bulb?
Transport is likely to be the same cost.
Fabrication cost was already included in the cost of the bulb.
What about the fact that the bulb, according to TFA only lasts a fraction of the 10K hr lifetime?
They still last longer than incandescent bulbs. For many of us, that is the primary benefit. My electricity costs are minimal.
Please tell me I am misinformed or lying.
Misinformed. szyzyg provided facts and figures. You provided questions. facts > questions.
For those of us who raise chicks & ducklings, incandescent bulbs are used as heat sources for young animals. Obviously, LEDs & CFLs will not work.
Uh, they mean the mercury *inside* the CFL itself. Not the mercury used in manufacturing it or power it.
Drop a bunch of CFLs on the floor, and you could end up with beads of mercury rolling around. Makes for a fun time cleaning it up.
Drop a bunch of incandescent bulbs on the floor, and you only have to worry about the glass.
Now, not all CFLs have mercury inside, nor do all of them have the same amounts.
But when people talk about mercury, that's what they mean.
Compact fluorescents have truly horrible light quality compared to incandescent lighting. Unfortunately CRI (color rendering index) is not required information on light bulb packaging. As I found out the hard way CFLs are also unsuitable for most types of enclosed fixtures, due to the temperature sensitivity of the electronics. And they smell really bad when they fail.
What is needed is common sense. Incandescent bulbs are cheaper to buy because they are cheaper to make. CFLs are more efficient to use, but not to produce. If the energy costs for the productions of the parts are included than the total energy savings, while still less are not nearly as dramatic as claimed (closer to a 2 watt difference for a 60 watt bulb versus the 47 watts as implied on the packaging).
Don't get me wrong 2 watts times a million bulbs is still a lot of power savings. However, then you have to deal with the mercury and other environmental hazards and the cost. The 2 watt saving for the bulb does not offset the increased cost.
Let the market choose. Of course before the ban on incandescents, the market did choose. People purchased incandescents. If CFLs are good for the environment and good for the consumer, great, tell people how and then let them choose. Forcing them to purchase CFLs (or LEDs) in a society that promotes the free market seems ironic at best.
Do you have a coal-fired power plant in your bedroom, too? Proximity to mercury can't be ignored.
the question was posed in the poll was loaded. they include LED's in the question which totally skews the results.
Not that this sways the argument one way or another, but it is worth considering that power plants have systems in place to capture the mercury that is released in the firing process. Nearly 100% of that is captured, and then properly disposed of. That may be better than lots of 5mg pockets of mercury ending up in a landfill and then the groundwater.
many contain mercury which can be harmful even in the smallest amounts
Wow, so a single atom of mercury can harm me, huh? That's the official smallest amount.
Well, if it's philosopher's mercury I guess it could start a cascade of phlogiston releases in my precious boldly pneuma.
I put a CFL in my kid's Easy Bake oven and the damned thing doesn't work worth shit.
Have gnu, will travel.
I think you're either misinformed or lying. Last time I looked, I don't have a coal plant in my living room... Hg pollution from a powerplant is distributed throughout our rather large atmosphere (or in the ash left from the coal). Mercury from a broken CFL is in my house. That's a rather big difference, don't you think?
And 100w equivalent CFL bulbs are generally 23w, so I think you started off with a lie since it helped your agenda. http://www.1000bulbs.com/category/23-watt-cfl-compact-fluorescents-2700k
I tried using CFLs. They broke rather soon, and emitted a weird smelly smoke which I guess is the mercury vapor. The light was harsh and unnatural.
I know eliminating traditional bulbs can save a lot of power, but this isn't something I want to give up. I find fluorescent lighting unbearable. And these 47 and 60 watt bulbs just aren't bright enough to read and do work by -- I was getting terrible eyestrain until I found an old pack of 80 watt bulbs and the difference was incredible.
These light bulbs really suck. Have you used them? Has the congress used them? Try coming home in the middle of winter and start cooking dinner for your hungry and screaming 3 year old in the dim light of the CFL that takes 10 minutes to get to full brightness. Remember I won't drive 55? Another successful government sponsored campaign.
I'm all for saving electricity, but hate the false claims that the manufactures have. (i.e.18W florescent bulb is equivalant to 100W incandesent bulb - but when you replace it you'll see it's about as dim as a 40W ).
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/6110547/Energy-saving-light-bulbs-offer-dim-future.html
http://www.1000bulbs.com/category/40-watt-cfl-compact-fluorescents/
Now STFU. Why people think they won't be able to get a CFL the use 40W is beyond me.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
A day or two ago it was reported that the EPA was easing
requirements for mercury emmisions to save money for power
companies. Nice that the EPA is so worried about the CEO's
bonuses. Wish they would do their job and worry about our
health.
We should have a heavy tax on mercury emmisions and use
the proceeds to subsidise windmills and LED lights.
Lighting is very small part of my electricity use.
My eyes don't like fluorescents, and I need to make
my eyes as happy as possible (one emergency eye surgery
is *more* than enough, thank you). I've been converting
some lighting to LEDs. Most of my lights get used very
rarely, so obscessing about the 3 Watt-minutes/year that
they use is silly.
Obscess a bit less about your light bulbs and instead
obscess a bit more about the *big* energy hogs in your life.
Get out of your car and use your bicycle instead. I
haven't bought any gasoline or Diesel in several years.
Insulate your attic, shade your windows in summer,
(awnings reduce the heat load an *amasing* amount!)
upgrade windows if possible. Check the weatherstripping.
The free market is the best method of deciding things, but it can't do the job by itself.
Externalities can skew things, and a public good, such as the environment, that everyone is free to pollute to the detriment of all without paying individually.
Representing the public good is properly the role of the government.
I reccently moved into a house with all incandescent bulbs after being a long time user of CFLs. I suddenly found I was replacing 1-2 bulbs per month, and had a suprisingly high power bill. I always used to complain about CFLs, but going back to being without them, I thought would be ok, was anything but.
I now have a number of LED bulbs in several places, which while 10x more expensive at first but these pay for themselves over CFLs in about one year, almost completely moisture restitant, no mercury and can be recycled as standard e-waste. We really really badly need good cheap LED/OLED lighting, one could imagine living in a home thats 10 or more years old where all the LED lights are the originals from when it was built.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
...you are paying for watts spent.
You should be allowed to know both the lumen AND the watt count of your light bulbs and to choose according to your needs and desires.
As for "OMG! Incandescent light bulbs are being banned by the gubement!" - I say "Good riddance".
About every third one I bought in last five years wouldn't last longer than six months. Other two would follow it in couple of months.
I'm guessing everyone simply reduced their quality control to "can it be turned on" in order to keep up with the ultra-cheap Chinese ones.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Some CFLs are lower quality than others and burn out quickly.
As an investor (GE, various other firms) I can tell you that LEDs will have the majority of market share by 2020 and should fairly cheap by 2015.
CFLs are just a bridge technology that will be phased out. The oil spikes will take care of that, with energy price jumps and the CFL 1/8th energy usage can't compete with volume-produced LEDs 1/20th energy usage. They're already ramping up the production factories for multiple firms worldwide.
So, you'd be better off reducing your usage of oil-guzzling cars and trucks, IMHO, if you really are an "activist". Move closer to where you work and live in an efficient city, or your impact is between 2 and 20 times as much (suburbs and rural areas have the worst impact, due to transportation, water, efficiency, and energy use).
Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. Half your impact is heating, cooling and most of the rest is transportation.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Damn you all for killing the Livermore Light!
Mercury isn't sitting in the light bulb when it breaks and now I have to clean up mercury.
Except heater are more efficient. I.E. you can get that same amount of heat by using less power.
Assuming it was made in the last 20 years.
If you get your electricity for coal, you are putting more mercury into the atmosphere.
your arguments fail in all regards.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
100 vs 17? Are you nuts - you may as well replace that 100 with a 40 or a 60, becuase that's all you'll get out of a 17W CFL.
An what happens when one of your CFLs dies and you can't find the exact color temperature and CRI? You get christmas tree lights in red green and blue (well, pale pink, sickly greenish cast, and brilliant white-blue) all over your room. Nasty.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Redo the calculation then with your numbers - even if you reduce the Lifetime to 1000 hours the mercury from power plants is still 20 times higher.
Oh noes!!! I get my power from a series of dams.
So, now you're misinformed and CFL = Mercury vs none... because MOST of Washington state is powered by hydro.
Accounted for in:
Now, there are other factors, firstly the fuel cycle of power plants isn't 100% so the amount of coal will be higher, on the other hand, in the US only about 50% of the electrical power comes from coal.
do consider that the atmosphere you breath in Washington is exchanged with the air elsewhere.
Change the value to 23w and you reduce the mercury 'savings' to about 800milligrams - still 160times more than the mercury content of the worst CFL's
I see the CFL = Mercury thing all the time and frankly it's avoiding the fact that the power savings from replacing an Incandescent with a CFL mean you take less power, burn less coal and release less mercury into the air.
Here's the math:
Take a 100w bulb and replace it with a 17W CFL - average lifetime of a CFL is about 10,000 hours. So that 83w power difference over 10,000 hours is 3 gigajoules. Coal power content is about 33 megajoules per kilogram - so that works out to about 90kilograms of coal over the lifetime of the bulb. Mercury content varies but about 10 parts/million is a reasonable average - so that pile of coal will contain about 900 miligrams of mercury. CFL's contain about 5milligrams (although there are 'eco friendly' bulbs that contain less than a milligram.
Now, there are other factors, firstly the fuel cycle of power plants isn't 100% so the amount of coal will be higher, on the other hand, in the US only about 50% of the electrical power comes from coal.
Regardless - Incandescents are *worse* in terms of mercury pollution, and anyone telling you otherwise is either misinformed or lying.
You could at *least* check Wikipedia -- it's not my go-to source of choice, but it would show that your numbers are WAY off about how much mercury is released by the coal used to power incandescent bulbs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_fluorescent_lamp#Environmental_issues
You state 10ppm of mercury in coal is a 'reasonable average', however according to the USGS, the median value is 0.11 ppm. That's a rather large difference!
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs095-01/
I haven't looked at whether your conversion from ppm to weight is correct.
...but incandescents product much "better" light.
Who needs incandescent lamps? So long as they keep selling 100w Inductive heater balls that fit in standard Edison Base fixtures
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
The mercury from a coal plant isn't concentrated in your living room if a bulb breaks.
Still not a clear winner -- as others have pointed out CFL's don't survive the 10k rated hours. I get maybe 500 hrs on average. So that drops your 900 mg down to 45 mg. Scrubbers capture 80-ish % of the mercury in the stacks so the comparison is something like 5mg against 9mg. Don't forget the plastic in the CFL bases is nasty too.
"a poll by USA Today indicates most Americans support the US law that begins phasing out traditional light bulbs next year."
And most Americans are fucking retards. This isn't about which bulb is better. It's about whether you should have the choice to decide that for yourself.
I wonder if that Act will come into play. There are a significant percentage of people who have disorders that make CFLs and LEDs unacceptable. There are skin conditions, migraines and a few other painful issues. I have a fixture that has an older CFL in it and when I turn it on my eyes hurt (I don't use it often and mainly to stave off tiredness). I think a case could be made that until a better technology comes by that incandescent bulbs are medically necessary for some people. It is not a case of "the colour is a bit different so I don't like it"; it is a case of CFL's and LEDs making some people physically ill.
This is one case where gradually increasing the tax so it's no longer the cheapest bulb on the shelf would've been far better than banning the bulbs outright.
The same thing should've been done with non-low-flow toilets, old-school gas room heaters, and other things that are now illegal to sell or install.
Put a tax of 1 cent per 10 watt "excess" on all light bulbs that use significantly more energy for the same brightness than their most-mainstream competitor, which today is CFL but tomorrow may be LEDs. For specialty bulbs where there is no good competitor, there would be no tax.
Raise the tax each year until the "old" bulb costs twice what the "new" bulb costs.
Once LEDs come into the mainstream, rather than ban CFLs, slap a "mercury tax" on florescent bulbs to discourage their use in applications where LEDs are an acceptable substitute.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The big issue behind incandescent lighting is the "carbon footprint" produced in generating the electricity to power them. We can make that issue moot if we'd only move to nuclear power. I suppose some people would grumble about all that nuclear "waste" that is produced in running those plants. That is another issue we could make moot if we'd lift the ban on reprocessing fuel and build some new power plants that don't produce as much waste to run.
Another way to make this moot is to develop lighting that is more efficient and cheaper than incandescent. The summary points out that large numbers of Americans are happy with CFL light bulbs. (I'm not one of them.)
What this ban does is remove incandescent light bulbs from the competitive market. CFL and LED lighting has to now compete with the very durable and cheap incandescent. Removing incandescent lighting from the market could have some interesting unintended consequences. I can foresee a drop in quality and rise in prices for lighting, at least in the short term.
This law might also prove to be quite pointless as it does not ban the use of rough service, appliance, and other specialty incandescent bulbs. Unless the quality of other technologies suit my desires I'll keep buying incandescent bulbs for quite some time after this, it just means I'll be putting "appliance" bulbs in my bedroom light fixtures.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
[waiting for the first person to post a non-fake screen shot of today's Slashdot in NSCA Mosaic on MacOS 7]
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I use three (3) 13 watt CLF's in my office and they work great. I leave them on 24x7 because I"m in and out a lot and at a total of 39 watts they use about a kilowatt hour per day which costs me about $3.00 per month and they do help heat my house - but not as much as incandescent would.
Since I leave them on 24x7 I find there is no lag for them to come on... which is one complaint people have. Next I get at least eight (8) years (70,000 hours) from them which is substantially more than what they are rated for. But this is what you get when you never turn them off.
I find the spectrum is excellent.
Everywhere else I use incandescent. I typically get over 5 years service from each of these bulbs as well because I'm not in those rooms very often so it takes a while to build up to 1000 hours.
I expect I'll horde enough incandescents to carry me through to 2020. If I have to replace the CLF's during this time its not an issue. I like the leds... but I think I'll wait for the price to come down.
Note I keep my computers on 24x7 as well and typically get more than a decade from these components. In fact my desktop machine has been running since 1998. Since it also runs linux I rarely have to reboot.
So given that the market is now flooded with cheap chinese made crap that burns out in a year, who's maintaining a list of where to buy good CFLs?
Does anyone know of a good CFL review site for example? While longevity is hard to test for in reasonable time for obvious reasons, metrics such as ballast temperature with a non-pure-sine wave input should be indicative.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I'm not very happy with the Democrats position of government should tell you what to do, nor do I think the Republican argument of let the market sort it out makes any sense. Lightbulbs are a prime case.
Consumers are resistant to change, even if it is good. They need to be pushed towards CFL's, as in many cases they do save energy. But they are not better in every case. Sometimes you want the heat, sometimes it's a decorative look, color temperature, size and shape, who knows. For instance, I use some 10W incandescent bulbs for some applications, and you just can't find CFL's that put out that few lumens.
So what's the middle ground? I would be ok with a modest tax on incandescent bulbs, particularly if the money could be channeled to efforts to recycle CFL's, develop better CFL's, and similar work. I think an outright ban though is wrong, and would argue it should be repealed. While I am 90% CFL's, I want to keep getting some incandescents for select applications.
"'...and most are manufactured overseas in places like China,' says Enzi."
Oh what an excuse. Maybe if you hadn't given manufacturers tax cuts to ship manufacturing jobs overseas you might be making the new CFL bulbs domestically. And everything else for that matter. I also just checked the last batch of incandescent bulbs in our house; guess what, they were also made in China.
Fine arts in the states is struggling enough without the need to import bulbs. I've had teachers talk about this in the past--its almost impossible to do (quality, physical medium) fine arts under incandescent lighting.
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
What about the lamps in my ovens? Are there little CFLs or LEDs that work at 500 F?
I live in the Midwest so outdoor lights in the Winter present a problem. My work-around for the outdoor light by our back door is to just turn it on in the Fall and leave it on. So far so good. My front outdoor lights are the candelabra base bulbs shaped like a flame. I haven't seen anything suitable as a replacement for those so I bought a case of them and hope the supply outlasts me or that the technology improves.
We have a number of recessed lights in our home office, kitchen, hallways and bathroom. I've tried a number of different flood lamp shaped CFLs and have had uniformly bad luck with very slow start-up times. Particularly in hallways and the bathroom it's unacceptable. I've experimented with some LED flood lamps in the back hallway leading to the garage and they start OK with about a second of delay versus a minute or two for the CFLs, but they produce harsh bluish light that is not acceptable in an actual living area. Sooo... I've stocked up on incandescent flood lamps, too.
I definitely like the idea of more efficient lighting, especially in the Summer when the extra heat is even less desirable, but it's got to be affordable and look good. We seem to have a way to go on both counts. I would prefer to let the market decide rather than have non-technical legislators shove this down our throats, but why should this be different than other legislation?
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Don't get me wrong, I love LEDs. I think all equipment should be littered carelessly with LED indicators.
But I just can't stand either LED or CFL lighting. The light that either of these globes give off just isn't as nice and comforting as a good ol' incandescent globe. It's cold, harsh, and monochromatic.
I for one will be stockpiling incandescent globes if Australia ever legislates against them.
Wow, smart enough to post on /. but to stupid to know how to buy a fucking light-bulb.
'If left alone, the best bulb will win its rightful standing in the marketplace. Government doesn't need to be in the business of telling people what light bulb they have to use.' This statement is so full of implied propaganda and warped talking points as to be worthy of pity. We know the line. We know the lie. It comes again as does Bill O'reilly's god raising the sun (good timing by the way, too fast and we'd burn up all those corral reefs. Thats how it works right, the sun goes into the ocean and creates tides from the boiling?) Every single time since Obama was elected that he phrase "government doesnt need to tell people what to do" has been applied to every damn thing whether it should or should not be. No, see, the government DOES need to tell people what to do. If they dont, you get stupid crap like blaming a current president for a past president's action with no irony. You get stupid stuff like, a bunch of incoherent tea party protests that had no message and often lied about being racist while holding racist signs. You get a 24/7 media circus surrounding this stupidness, and not even a casual mention of the massive teacher strike. Except by the right of course, whose leaders believe its okay to shoot the protestors. And you get stupid stuff like Tennessee proposing a 15 YEAR prison sentence for practicing "Shariah Law." When you dont have the government to smack idiots upside the head now and then, you get clowns like these who can simultaneously scream that they are being oppressed, while oppressing others. My favorite example of this subtle attack happend during the "9/11 mosque" story that dissapeard without a peep after they ran out of antimuslim insults. A woman came to a town hall meeting in another place to discuss plans already approved to allow a mosque. They were against it. This one woman, she just sat down there and squeezed her christian bible to her chest. Hypocrites. The Lot of em. At least she didnt break the leviticus chapter where women arent allowed to speak. Otherwise they wouldve had to stone her right then and there.
Read the comment again, CFLs have about 5 mg of mercury in them on average.
we get it. you are a full on awg cult member.
now lets move on and please for the love of god, stop using slashdot as your propaganda soap box.
10 months of the year or more have thermostat controlled electric heating.
Thing is, going by the incandescent ban, this points out a way to save a lot more electricity than getting rid of inefficient bulbs - force you to 'upgrade' to a heat pump system. If they're nice, merely subsidize your doing it.
It should drop your electricity costs for heating by about 2/3rds, and could easily save more electricity than switching the lighting around for even a hundred homes.
I don't read AC A human right
There's not actually enough mercury in CFL lamps, or even modern full tubes, to be a big deal in the rare cases they break.
Not saying that you should deliberately break them, but they're not the chemical disaster some organizations make it out to be.
For another, if you get your power from coal, the decrease in electricity generation needed saves more mercury from the air than what's in the bulb.
Personally, I always wonder where people who get the slow warming, flickering, quick dying CFL bulbs from. I'm working on 8 years with mine, and I've had to replace 2 - my bathroom one finally died after like 5 years, and I accidentally broke another.
The only ones with significant warmup times was the one in the bathroom(100w equivalent), which was actually kinda nice at night, and the ones in the garage door opener in my unheated garage. There the light they produced, even in their unwarmed state, was sufficient for the task.
I don't read AC A human right
If your power isn't clean, shouldn't you address that? It's likely affecting the lifespan of all sorts of other equipment in your home, from your appliances like washing machines to your AC system to things as simple as your vacuum to complex like your TV.
I think fixing some of that was in the 'smart grid' proposals.
I don't read AC A human right
When I read in bed, I want a nice, warm, 40W incandescent bulb and I don't give a DAMN how efficient it is. I get enough of that fluorescent crap during the day.
If they really cared about the environment and power consumption they would tax electricity itself. Tax the shit out of it unless it's from a renewable source. That would be a lot more productive than ruining my nightly quiet time.
The old fluorescent lights gave a headache and teary eyes. I don't have a problem with CFL's. People react differently to the same stimuli, if it doesn't bother you it doesn't mean that it doesn't bother anyone else.
Now, I know it is not precisely WiFi but this study is intriguing... Maybe some people are affected by WFi.
Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. - Cardinal Wolsey
From my understanding, it's a technological limitation that REQUIRES some small amount of mercury in any fluorescent light for it to operate, so even the ones made in Hungary should have mercury in them. The mercury is what's excited to emit the light, looking at wikipedia. Thing is, the amount of mercury required can be quite small, it's just that including a larger amount is cheaper than doing the work necessary to make the smallest amounts function correctly.
So, basically, I have to ask for a source on this. I did some searching, found that there are companies producing bulbs with like 12% of the standard amount of mercury, but it's still present.
If they've completely eliminated the mercury, given that it's the mercury that's producing the ultraviolet light to be converted to 'white' light by the phosphors, I'd have to wonder what they're using to replace it - and whether that replacement is actually safer.
I don't read AC A human right
They might mean that, but their argument is wrong. I would rather have small amounts of mercury inside the bulb (that usually doesn't break), than released into the air.
And I have been happy with my cfl bulbs, and plan on buying 6 LED ones once I get back to my house next month.
The only way I wouldn't have a problem with old bulbs is if a 'renewable energy' tax is placed on each one, and that money ~$5/bulb went to building solar panels and wind turbines to offset the increased power they need.
Or, your assumptions are flat-out wrong.
Not all of us live in countries that get their electricity from coal. There are other options, you know.
And if you read about the toxicity of mercury, multiplied by millions of bulbs, it does add up. Lead was very useful in gasoline, but it was still banned.
I'm confused. I asked about energy. You replied regarding cost. Facts < questions when the fabrication occurs in a country using coal-fired power plants to produce the bulbs. Moreover, not all power is generated using coal. Misrepresented facts < < questions. Sort of like our present proposed federal budget. Numbers are not facts.
Government is incapable of rational action. Some activists/lobbyists push a policy (like banning real light bulbs) either because they have some utopian dreams or they stand to profit from the action, and meanwhile other parts of the government are warning of the hazards that will result. In the real-world, some rational cost-benefits analysis would occur and a rational path would be selected, but in government you simply write more rules for all the "little people" (anybody who pays taxes and has no lobbyist or leader) in "fly-over country" (everything between LA and NYC) and establish new agencies with lots of new employees to enforce the rules and warn people that what you are forcing them to do is stupid
Just take a look at what the EPA expects you to do if you break one of these super-deluxe wunder-bulbs: http://epa.gov/cfl/cflcleanup.html
I have CFLs - I have been using them and they are great in the areas I use them. This includes the main lighting in all but the lavatory and the laundry, where the lights aren't on for that long anyway, but will probably go CFL when the existing bulbs fail. However, there are some things I still prefer incandescents for, most notably my bedside reading lamp. They are just nicer, somehow, to read by. I feel that I know how much the bulbs cost, I know how much energy I use/save by switching, and I know how much energy costs me. Given that I have this information, and am paying the bills, the choice of what bulb I use should be left to me. It shouldn't be imposed by some politician scraping the bottom of the barrel for a media soundbite.
If they want to reduce energy use, they should just tax it at the economic value of the externality they are trying to address - I will respond to the price of power whn I make purchasing decisions - they shouldn't be trying to micro-manage my behaviour. Time for me to join the group stockpiling some bulbs methinks..............
I'm sure they counted replacing any standard bulb with a CFL as part of that statistic. Yeah, my family has done that. But I'm betting the people touting that data don't include -- or care about -- the bulbs that consumers aren't replacing because they don't fit standard lamps. Those grumbling consumers are pissed off because they went to replace a standard bulb with a CFL and found that they'd most likely have to replace the whole damned lamp; the CFL bulbs are too tall. Priced nice lamps lately? They're effin' expensive. The lack of high wattage-equivalent CFLs that actually fit an existing lamp -- especially the three-way bulbs -- make them pretty bad for people who like to read and need those extra lumens. Take those things into account and, yeah, we'll be stocking up on some of the incandescents. At least until we can save up to replace lamps.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Color Rendering Index of a 99 cent incan: 100
CRI of a $39 CFL: ~70
They've come a long way, but both CFL's and LED's have a long way to go to reach 100 CRI at which point you can definitively call them better than incandescent.
I tried to convert to CFL. I bought one at the store, and tried to put it in my lamp at home. Guess what? It doesn't fit, because the neck of the CFL was far wider than an incandescent lightbulb. I had to return it.
Since then, I've kept my eye out whenever I'm at the pharmacy or other store that has CFLs; I have yet to see a single one that's actually shaped like an incandescent that will fit in my lamp (which, I should note, is a 6+ foot tell lamp from IKEA).
What am I supposed to do when Canada decides to do something similar? Buy a new lamp just because they aren't able or willing to produce CFLs in the same shape as the bulbs they aim to replace?
Okay.
Now what's the best bulb / globe for the sensor light on the verandah / porch?
It's a genuine question:
First of all, you're assuming an average amount of coal power. There are plenty of parts of the country where power output is dominated by nuclear, gas, and hydro. If you use and dispose of a CFL in the Northwest, you're contributing far more mercury to the environment because they're mostly on hyrdo power. Perhaps these laws should only apply in places that have mostly coal power.
Second of all, the mercury output by a coal plant gets distributed widely throughout the atmosphere; the mercury in fluorescent lights will end up deposited in landfills (leaching into nearby streams, and so on) -- concentrated where ever they end up breaking.
dom
everyone selling the bulbs as heaters or for "industrial use".
That maybe the theory, but the practise is that plant emissions are regulated and they have to install filters on the output - well atleast in my country. Controlled disposal of ccfls and collection of the contained mercury... I haven't heard of any such operations.
What can I say, they are! Lets dump untold amounts of mercury into our landfills, what idiots. I say ban any product with mercury,
Heh, the eskimos drink a lot of tea which neutralizes the excess mercury they consume due to their seafood-heavy diet. Maybe we could do the same!
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
I hate to break it to Mr. Enzi, but there are no longer any light bulb plants in the US. The last one closed in 2009. Even if this law is repealed it's highly unlikely any of those jobs will come back.
Seriously, don't these guys have more important issues to work out other than what kind of light bulbs we're allowed to use?
This is the most exciting news story I've read in a long time. Why?
I have a medical condition where I have seizures under fluorescent lights, including CFLs. I also live in the state of California. With the laws banning certain wattages of incandescent lights here (eventually leading to their ban), that's very bad news for me. I've written to just about every politician, called, emailed... nobody cares! The seizures I have under CFLs are so bad that I can't work, do my own shopping, etc. No, dark sun glasses do NOT help (everyone suggests it). Sometimes I can't even go outside because a lot of outdoor lights are now fluorescent and people leave them on during the day!
A ban on incandescent bulbs would prevent me from living in my own home since they're the only lights I can use. LEDs are directional and not bright enough, halogens can also cause the kind of flicker that disables me, etc.
Nor am I the only person with this health problem. After talking to hundreds of Democrats, the general argument I've been hearing is "Your health problem only affects about 1% of the population. The ban is good for 99% of us, so you have to understand." No, I do not have to understand. This ban effectively constitutes tyranny of the majority. There are other ways to cut back on energy consumption. The lights in your house make up a relatively small percentage of usage. Worst case, why not impose a tax on energy usage if a certain level is exceeded? People could stay below the level by switching to CFLs if they choose. As for myself, I don't use air conditioning or televisions, so I should be able to keep my incandescents.
"and anyone telling you otherwise is either misinformed or lying."
And that, sir, is the current definition of "Republican".
The senator is arguing against a straw man version of the legislation. CFL and LED are not the only alternatives to traditional incandescent lighting; low poer incandescents and halogen lamps both conform to the requirements of the legislation as well, and both are much harder to argue against than CFLs and LEDs.
people actually use those things for vehicle headlights!
I use an LED headlamp when I ride my bike, but some of these people use halogen lamps and it blinds me so bad I worry about crashing into a tree, or whatever.
the "Best Sensible Response on Slashdot" award. It is possible you may be the only entrant for this article
Once again, the US storms in behind good ol' Europe, I guess.
It's a pity that said Senator didn't read the law he questions, though. It mandates a _level of efficiency_, not a _technology_.
By 2014, no one will care about CFL any more, either way. LED all the way, baby.
And, with the right incentives, this might even be a net plus for the US economy _if_ they get onto the the LED train "early". As it is, we Germans seem to share the world market with Asia. Osram, Luxeon & Cree. No one else comes close.
My parents have an old house with large panes of single glazing in two of their front rooms. They'd always been cold. One winter it was -5 outside, not soo cold, but the heating was going full blast and it was *still* below the thermostat setting inside.
I calculated that more than 10kW (closer to 12) was going out through the window glass.
I ordered a few square meters of clear acrylic sheeting which has better optical qualities than glass and spent a weekend installing DIY secondary glazing on the window frames.
Instant improvement to the two rooms. Cost 250GBP for several (8) large windows. The payback period about 3 years.
Putting commercially fitted double or triple glazing in would have cost 20k GBP with a payback period of 20 years to never, which is why they'd never bothered.
Here's the moral of the story.
1. Energy is dirt cheap.
2. Insulation is not.
What I want is something like a cheap spray on aerogel which I can spray onto (anything) the exterior of my house (solid walls). The alternative is internal insulation with all the mould and condensation problems associated.
Deleted
I don't care about minimal amounts of mercury emitted from power plants, I care about large amounts of mercury in my room when I accidentally break a bulb.
One problem is CFL's production costs far exceed what normal light bulbs cost to make (easily a factor 10). In return you get somewhere near 40% savings on the power required for lighting (40%, as lots of things aren't fixed merely by changing the light bulb).
So they only become good for the environment after a number of hours of light, and that's over a year for better models, up to 3 years for sucky bulbs. Obviously the large majority fall at least halfway on the "sucky" scale.
In reality therefore, CFL's are only good for the environment in the places where the assumption that they burn a lot more than a year holds true. They won't survive much longer than 5 years in any case (burning or not), so any CFL burning less than 20% of the time (which is most every lamp in the house except those in the living room in my house) are a net-negative for the environment.
But it's a massive subsidy for firms who claim to be green, but obviously aren't. So politicians are happy : money for cronies. Lunatic lefties are happy : another government supported industry, heavily regulated. Loony greens are happy : "green" companies "do well". Socialists are happy : "jobs are created". And everyone suffers yet again to make lunatics feel good.
Of course, real jobs are lost. The environment has to bear the increased fossil fuel usage, the athmosphere has to swallow even more CO2 (but don't worry : it's mostly emitted in China, and thus Obama can look good while destroying the environment even more), and by forcing these companies out of America, gaia can find fewer polluted creeks : they can't report on those in China or Indonesia at all.
The result is of course, very predictable. The environment does bad so "more intervention is clearly needed". CO2 increases so "it's yet again even more worse than we thought !". Jobs are lost so "more regulation/stimulus is needed". And government cronies, "surprisingly" do well so "it's all really the fault of the rich Jewish bankers in wall street !".
Lunacy is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results - Albert Einstein
In reality things are simple : energy costs money. Transport cost money. Mining costs (lots and lots) of money. People cost money. All these things are bad for the environment. So you want to do what's best for the environment ? Really ? It's simple : save every last penny you have and DON'T BUY STUFF YOU DON'T NEED. Of course, greenies have become exactly what they accuse their "enemies" to be : they're little more than deluded spoiled rich kids, who feel an irresistible need to take other's toys to feel big, and throw a tantrum if they're asked to go a single day with an last year's model of the iphone. (because apple really is the worst brand you can buy for the environment, or labor laws, ...).
As long as people prefer deluding themselves to facing the truth, things won't change, and obviously lunatics are attracted by fringe parties that want to change everything to their design. Nothing new there. Forcing others is all leftist greens have left. Green policy intents have been reduced over the years to amassing power, and destroying the environment in order to justify putting more power in their hands. Furthermore : lunatics only find fault in others, and not in their own behavior. That's why they needed 3 full airports, with expanded parking space, to put all the private jets at the latest "anti-co2" conference.
If we were to put a huge import tax on lightbulbs (and smartphones, perhaps ?), they would have to be produced cheaply inside America, under our stringent environmental laws. Now *that*
I have a freezer and an incandescent light will not turn on if it is at zero F. I have the CFL front door lights that will not start in Winter, I might agree to the change if it saves polution, but using CFL gives me no benefit for the following reason In winter, daylight hours are short, and it is very cold. CFLs do not generate heat, to displace baseboard heaters. So, there is no reduction in consumption. In summer, daylight hours are long (sundown at 10pm), so CFL use is about 1 hour per day. Not a true benefit. I would consider if LEDs were introduced that produced light at any temperature found in a home, such as room, or freezer. If it works, then lets swap out the city street lighting.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Sorry to disagree. I;ve replaced my porch lights for 30 years, every other month until I finally tried a CFL. I was skeptical with the weather swings. Guess what, after two years and -25 F in Vermont, it still is going strong. Yes a little slow to start but the light of 60W equivalent is just fine.
Please mod me 1 or troll. It's where the truth is these days, even on Slashdot. Beware the power of moderators everywh
Worldwide average mercury content in coal is 0.2ppm - that is 50 times lower than the figure you quote. Reference Pg8. or Google searches. So there is a difference, but not all that great as you project. Regardless, those are some interesting calculations you have there, thanks for taking the pains to actually analyze objectively.
I had CFLs throughout my home. My wife then broke one right in front of our 18-month old toddler. I immediately went to the EPA website and found instructions telling me to seal off the room, shut down my HVAC system, throw away clothing that came in contact with the dust, etc. It is very likely my toddler inhaled some mercury vapor, which is far more dangerous than solid mercury. Nope, I won't use them again.
And the mercury is not in the home. My 18-month old inhaled a nice bit of mercury vapor when a CFL broke right in front of him. Mercury vapor is very very dangerous compared to solid mercury. Go read the EPA's cleanup procedure for a broken CFL. I'm never buying one again.
But the above statistics are completely unrelated, and purely coincidental.
However, 100% of the people unhappy with CFL's have an IQ lower than 74, believe the Earth is flat, and that marrying their sisters should be legalised.
A lighting device should make light, and be efficient at making light.
A heating device should make heat, and be efficient at making heat.
If you want heat, get a heat lamp.
A lighting device should not make 10% light and 90% heat.
In summer, when temperatures are soaring upto 40degC and air-conditioning is running, it's ludicrous that a lighting device is generating 90% heat, which has to be removed, making the air-conditioner work harder.
China is already phasing out CFL's, and is installing LED's to all new developments, and retrofitting LED's everywhere they can.
In contrast, the USA is demanding their beloved, but only 10% efficient, incandescent lamps be kept forever.
China is the worlds largest manufacturer and gaining momentum ... America, and most of the developed world, is losing manufacturing to china.
I'm curious whether the incandescent lovers, and flat Earth society members, understand the correlation ... there is none, just a few interesting facts.
Adapt with the times.
The argument concerning mercury in CFL's is FUD, and has been thoroughly debunked many years ago - the coal burned to power a single incandescent over its short lifetime is many times the mercury content of a single CFL, let alone the large number of incandescent lamps that a single CFL replaces.
Ongoing problems like inconsistent colour temperatures, flickering, buzzing, long time to "warm up" to reach full brightness, and short life which afflicts some CF lamps is related solely to poor quality products and generally by the same poor quality manufacturers which are readily identifiable.
For no good reason, I've assumed that Slashdotters are a few notches above average intelligence ... but for the stubborn readers, I've listed, andd debunked, below the rediculous arguments I've seen above:
The colour temperature of CF lamps is not always appropriate -> Choose the right temperature lamp!!!
Electricity price rises will counter any benefit to saving electricity -> If you continue using incandescent lamps, you will pay 8-10x for the electricity used regardless, and WASTE our limited energy resources. At the very least, it produces additional pollution over the minimum required. Microfines produced by burning fossil fuels causes lung conditions - Anyone here living with Asthma?
There's fine print on most CFLs warning of reduced life if placed in an enclosed fixture -> the electronics overheat. The argument is moot, CFL's last many times longer than an incandescent lamp, and you can get CFL's with remote ballasts anyway. Use an unballasted lamp in the enclosed area, and place the control gear outside of the enclosed area.
The power factor of CFLs is about 0.44 leading -> Fantastic ... after reducing the power required for lighting by a factor of 4 or 5 (100w is approximately equivalent to a reputable 20W CFL, although I prefer a 23W), the var's is practically negligible regardless - you've gone from a unity 100W(100VA) down to a VAR of 50VA. I'm sure the utility is screaming about the extra 30W Var leading, despite reducing the power by 50W! In the total power used by a household .. maybe 3KW at any point in time, a few VAR is practically negligible. At any rate, all those VAR's leading will help to compensate for the the lagging VAR's on the power system (motors) which forms the bulk of the load on the power system. I don't know how many people turn their refrigerators off, but that's got a big motor too. How could this be considered as anything but a positive attribute?
Limited life in outdoor applications -> Buy an outdoor luminaire that protects the lamp from water & cold.
Governments s
Regardless - Incandescents are *worse* in terms of mercury pollution, and anyone telling you otherwise is either misinformed or lying.
That's all nice and good, except you're still not addressing situations where I have to replace 1 incandescent with 5 CFL's due to environmental or use conditions which are more suited to incandescent. (and you aren't including the cost to ship the CFL's overseas, either)
I use quite a few CFL's myself, but I want to keep a few specific fixtures with incandescents. We're passing laws after the trend is already away from these types of bulbs, it's just silly.
'If left alone, the best bulb will win its rightful standing in the marketplace.
So much bullshit. What magical happy land is he living in?
The dirty power in my place had me replacing at least 1 incandescent bulb a week. One fixture in particular could never keep a incandescent bulb for more than a month. CFL's however last for years under the same conditions.
I think i've still got one of the first CFL bulbs i put in... 5 years later.
Why do people care about mercury? Certainly not because it is hard to scoop up. They are worried because it can have damaging effects on health. So it is willfully ignorant to pretend that the mercury spewn out by the power plants is magic mercury that doesn't affect us.
A tiny ball of mercury in the carpet is functionally harmless. Metric tons of vaporized mercury (and awful mercury compounds) being deposited directly into the air is the opposite of harmless.
there are things like farming, growing chickens, cattle, pigs ect ect ect, they need light. regular philips 4 for a dollar light bulbs last a good while, while these new cold cathode only last about a week. mainly cause they get turned on and off and there is a large surge when this happens. not much can be done about a surge when you have 100 light bulbs in line. the clfs cant be used for chickens except for the first few days. after that you need to dim the bulbs. florescent lights cannot dim. also you have to take em all out and wash em because the dirt gets in the spirals.
all in all, until the price drops on some good lighting, regular old incandescent bulbs need to stay around.
i hear the next comment about it being only for a small section of people bleh bleh bleh...but its the small section of the population that grows the food. so unless you want food prices to be ALOT higher...there's not much of a way to really afford 10 dollar bulbs in such a quantity.
had a t storm last year to knock out about 250 bulbs...there would have to be some kinda govt help for all the farmers to switch over to the expensive bulbs.
the energy saved is a great thing. however, instead of an electric bill, your paying 2 or 3 times what you would have, at the cash register.
I don't think we need the Feds telling us what light bulb to use either. I've tried a number of CFLs and have yet had even one that lasts the 7 years they profess. I can't say I've seen any savings in my power bill, they just keep raising the rates. That coupled with the mercury, I just don't see how this can be better than a plain old regular bulb. I stockpiled enough regular bulbs to last me quite a while at this point. Just another part of the global warming BS.
The mercury from the coal power plant doesn't get injected directly into your living room (unless it somehow, magically, gets transported along the power line).
..is needed. Just let capitalism take care of the issue.
The idiots want to keep buying low efficiency incandescents because they are "cheaper", let them. Smart consumers realize that the "cheaper" bulb costs them 5 times to 10 times as much over 5 years. Eventually as the price of electricy keeps doubling every 4-5 years and the message trickles down to idiot consumers as well, the old crappy bulbs will rapidly die off for most uses, while people will still be able to use them outside and in their easy-bake ovens etc. when needed.
Besides, when you already have big companies like Walmart who have basically near eliminated low-efficiency incandescents from their stores (they still sell incandescents, they are just the higher-efficiency kind), the problem is 3/4 solved. In many parts of the US if it is not being sold at Walmart you are simply not going to be able to buy it.
I really don't see what a ban accomplishes, the market is going to take care of it anyway.
There is a difference between mercury being released into the atmosphere of the planet from a coal power station miles away and being released onto my kitchen floor if a CFL breaks. That is the logic people use.
This link provides an excellent overview of different lighting technologies, including incandescent, CFL and LED.
I completely agree with the author; CFLs have enough issues (low power factor, limited working temperature range, built with hazardous materials, etc.) not to merit banning incandescent bulbs altogether. Each technology has its place.
Without my incandescent bulbs how will I use my easy bake oven?!
Sure, it takes less energy to run them, and hence our carbon foot print in North America is less, but it takes more energy to make them than they ever save. They do not reduce the carbon footprint, they only transfer the carbon credits to another country that could care less about the global environment. The ban of incandescent has nothing to do with the environment, its simply a way to force a more expensive , inferior technology into the marketplace.
So I'm guessing my daughter's Easybake Oven she got last Christmas is on the fast track to be obsolete.
...Incandescents are *worse* in terms of mercury pollution, and anyone telling you otherwise is either misinformed or lying.
Or, using alternative energy. Here in the northwest US, electricity is mainly hydroelectric. So maybe I should consider this in terms of lumens per salmon?
I worry about the demise of the easy bake oven. I mean think of the children! (and tasty cupcakes)
Uh, they mean the mercury *inside* the CFL itself. Not the mercury used in manufacturing it or power it.
Yes, and that is why you need government mandates for not using incandescents: People are quite happy to pollute the entire country with dispersed mercury, because the costs of it are distributed amongst lots of other people. But in the end, it is a tragedy of the commons: everybody thinks *one more* bulb won't hurt since the harm is diffused so widely; in the end when everybody uses incandescents, they all end up with mercury-laced coal ash in the air they breathe.
I was just going on the big Hg with a slash through it on the side of the box. As it isn't a food stuff I don't think they had to list the ingredients.
ICAM, esp w/ the taxes paying for the operation of the govt and not for social change, etc. (Although I guess I'd include interstate roads and such as a function of a federal org).
But who will think of the EZ Bake oven users?!?
It's mercury vapour.
I wonder if it does actually contain mercury, but it's one of the lower mercury or amalgamation bulbs, they're just boasting the lower amounts in an exaggerated fashion?
I don't read AC A human right
Sadly I'm back in the US now so I can't go to the store to check.
Unless 0% of your energy comes from coal? Maybe that's a better angle to look at it from?
How does it look when you consider hydro, tidal, solar, wind, even nuclear power?
The lower draw of CFL's also makes a lot of alternative energy sources (such as solar) more practical simply by reducing the overall quantity of power required.
LED's even moreso.
Not to mention mercury enriches in the food chain. A pike that you *eat* can contain as much mercury than a compact fluorescent lightbulb. All from coal. Too bad the politicians never had any problem with *that*.
You can google studies for the mercury amount in fish in five seconds.
Re:The heat, I need it in the winter you don't need the extra heating.
Seriously. A very small space heater is 400W. Do you run 1kW spotlights to heat your front room?!?!
Why aren't you complaining of fracking? Or the CO2 pollution (and other pollutants) from the cars running to school?
Oh, would that be because you're knee-jerking against "green" technologies because you don't like hippies?
I'm confused. I asked about energy. You replied regarding cost.
That is because in general, energy is the biggest portion of cost. Transportation is the prime example, where most of the cost is the energy involved. Let me be clearer this time, taking that into account:
What about the energy involved in fabrication and transport of the 'eco friendly' bulb?
My guess is that transporting a fluorescent bulb is is likely to use the same energy as transporting an incandescent bulb. Key costs in transportation are weight, volume, packaging, and handling. I don't think they are much different.
Fabrication definitely uses more energy, which is why fluorescent and LED bulbs cost more than incandescent bulbs. But they save more energy over their lifetime than is used to produce them. You can use the cost -vs- energy savings equations to determine this. Ex: A bulb might cost $2 more, but save $10 over its lifetime. This means it took more energy to produce, but that energy is saved over the lifetime of the bulb.
Numbers are not facts.
ummm... oh... kay...
You forget several factors in your analysis. First, the energy cost to produce a CFL is much higher than an incandescent. Also, it’s not necessarily how much mercury is in the coal or the CFL, but how much is released to the environment. Most every coal plant has been upgraded to remove much of the mercury from its emissions. However, your home doesn't have this equipment. If you break a CFL, the mercury goes directly into your environment. The garbage dump doesn't have this equipment either. How many CFL bulbs do you think break in a landfill? That mercury goes directly into that environment.
I am strongly opposed to the banning of traditional incandescent light bulbs. Not only because they contain mercury, and proper disposal is difficult to find, but most importantly because I've struggle with Central Pain Syndrome, and severe allodynia for years. Both illness cause you to be severely sensitive to certain types of light, but they are not the only health issues to be affected by fluorescent light. Lupus, Migraines, Parkinson's, Melanoma and so many other illness are made worse by this type of lighting; not to mention that many medications also cause people to become light sensitive. Many people with CPS are like me, unable to be under any type of light except incandescent for more then a few minutes at a time. Being under fluorescent lighting for mere moments, causes me to be extremely ill for days, with the sensation of severe burns all over my body. I have begun to start hoarding light bulbs, but the reality is that I doubt that I can buy enough to last me my entire life. And I really don't think that it's fair to let others who are as yet unaffected by these illness; be forced into a world where they can't even buy light bulbs that won't hurt them, or make them sicker?
The main reason that the incandescent bulbs are being phased out is so out of this world that most people will laugh their arzez off. Sadly its true, in the 1940' s scientists found that the flicker rate in old tube tv's could be used to put someone into an alpha state that will allow subliminal messages to be implanted into peoples minds. The new florescent bulbs allow the use of a microchip to detect heat resonance, in effect all your conversations can be recorded. The flicker rate that the bulbs emit allows not only the alpha states but the implantation of emotional states. Your electrical wiring can be used as a surveillance system. If you are skeptical please research the patents involving the use of flicker rates to manipulate brain function. What I have stated above is nothing, there are literally thousands of these patents involving the manipulation of the population. Go to infowars.com, do the research, Alex Jones interviews the scientists who are trying to blow the whistle on this economic terrorism.
Mandate efficiency levels for products sold as illuminators. Let incandescents continue to be sold as heater bulbs which just happen to also glow white.
With a few more conservative assumptions, the difference in mercury emissions due to total conversion of lighting sources in all households in the US in 2010 may be closer to:
Incandescent: 360mg*20*114825428 households=661,394 kilograms. With an 85% effective scrubber at the power plant, that drops to 99,209kg. CFLs: 5mg*22*114825428 households=12,630 kg.
In total, 45% of US electricity comes from coal. 8000 hours lifespan. CFL MTBF may be something like 10,000 in lab settings. But plenty of reports of far lower lifespan out of the lab. Also take into account that, with cheaper lighting, people will use more light. Let's say 10% more (some arbitrary fraction of the difference in cost of running a CFL). And 23wCFL to 100w is a more accurate comparison. So, let's say 288mg of mercury for all the incandescent used to replace one CFL. I don't know the coal average mercury ppm, so I accept yours. With an average of 45 light bulbs per household of varying size, equivalent to 20x 100w/23wCFLs (average will rise to 22 bulbs if CFLs),
That's still a lot more mercury! Admitted. Although the coal mercury ppm is an open question. Furthermore, mercury contamination concentrated around a power plant is much easier to mitigate than ubiquitous low level contamination. Recall that CFL will surely have a much larger fraction improperly thrown in garbage or broken bulbs at home. I use CFL at home, but I do it because it is subsidized and costs less to run. I am not against CFL at all -- but I think that the ban is bad public policy. We want to reduce emissions? Increase cost of electricity. Regulate emissions at the source of power generation.
and! coal share of us electric production is projected to fall.
Light bulb ban proponents keep saying
"Hey, this is not a ban, energy efficient incandescents like Halogens
will be allowed!"
Sure it's a ban:
Any light not meeting the standard is banned,
and Halogens, like CFLs or LEDs, have differences in construction,
light output type etc as well as in costing more, compared to
simple ordinary bulbs.
The official reason that CFLs are pushed as the main replacement is to
save energy...
the less publicised reason is their profitability:
How manufacturers and vested interests have pushed for this ban,
and lobbied for CFL favors - with happy political cooperation:
http://ceolas.net/#li1ax with documentation and copies of official
communications