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Congress Voting To Repeal Incandescent Bulb Ban
Bob the Super Hamste writes "CNN Money is running as story about a bill Congress is going to vote on today to repeal the 'incandescent light bulb ban' that was put into place during the Bush administration. The bill is supported by Republicans in Congress who are claiming this places unnecessary restrictions on the market. For those of you wondering, it does bring up the standard issues of energy efficiency, mercury (in both the bulbs and that emitted by coal power), and cost of the bulbs. The bill was introduced by Texas Congressman Joe Barton."
There never was! There are new efficiency standards, which both GE and Osram Sylvania say they can meet with new incandescents. The whole thing started as a talking point for a Republican primary, and took off when the punditry caught a whiff of it and smelled red meat.
Funnily enough, setting efficiency standards for lightbulbs (which most incandescents made at the time the law was passed did not meet) is exactly what the law did. Calling it a ban on incandescents is propagandizing. (Most incandescent manufacturers now have bulbs that meet the efficiency standards.)
why not simply ban inefficient bulbs?
That is exactly what the law does.
If incandescent bulbs can be made more efficient, it'd be silly to have to repeal or modify a law later.
Some companies have in fact done just that, and they are now upset at the prospect of having the law revoked after having spent all that money to comply with it.
I'm in the same boat ... given the massive increase in cost, and the claims for bulb life ... even one or two failures basically means you've wiped out any savings for the next decade or so. Which means as soon as they start dying anywhere less than the claimed lifespan, you start replacing with old school bulbs.
They might think it, but I seriously doubt people are doing it.
I'm definitely not impressed so far with actual bulb life vs claimed.
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Starting in 2012, standars would slowly keep increasing until reaching the peak in 2020. So, that means that none should have yet disappeared, and depending on their caracteristics some of them could still be sold for a while. Anyway, that was all in TFA, but this is slashdot, so, that was expected :)
Or, you could not be an idiot, and realize that incandescents were not banned. There was an efficiency standard put into place. There are many incandescents that do meet that standard.
He's also the guy who apologized to BP for all the heat they were taking in the Gulf last year. Showing that he's no friend of rights; rather just a big business shill.
Given that the most of the country's power comes from coal it really doesn't matter anyway. If you do a life cycle comparison between the power consumed by both bulbs, the resultant mercury released by coal fired power plants and the mercury dumped into the environment by the bulb itself you will find that the CFL still comes out far better than and common incandescent.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
I thought similar until I saw the numbers. Electric heat is one of the least efficient forms there is. For homes with gas heat, relying on incandescent lamps for their heating is just wasteful. It's much more efficient to minimize electricity use by using CFLs and use more efficient gas for actual heating. When trying to cool your house the savings go way up by not having so much heat load.
Something else is all the people complaining about the cost of CFL bulbs. Even with failures, the electricity savings by using CFLs is huge. I have those light bars in my bathrooms that could either be 360 watts of incandescent lamps or, with CFLs, just 90 watts for more light output. I use CFLs everywhere that I can. The only exceptions are the oven, refrigerator, and the ceiling fans that have candelabra base bulbs and maybe those are available as CFL now.
There was a very easily noticed drop in my electric bill when I switched over - especially in the summer due to the reduced heat load for the air conditioning.
It all adds up, folks. The electric savings due to using CFL lamps is huge. That's a hell of a lot of coal and natural gas that isn't being burned and it cuts the need for nuclear.
There is a bigger picture than just that you had to pay a buck or two for a CFL instead of 50 cents for an incandescent.
Check my manufacturer? Reputable ones? Replacement guarantees? Complex ones?
Disposal guidelines? Mercury? Ballast? Warm-up? Flicker?
We are talking about light bulbs. I understand that CFLs are more energy-efficient than incandescents of comparable lumens. But they are a poor replacement in every other way. We are asking the world to waste more personal energy using CFLs than they waste on electrical energy using incandescents.
Maybe where you live that's true ... and I wish that were true because they would be more cost effective. Up here in Canada, the last time I bought a 4 pack of CFLs, it cost $10, and that was on sale of 50% off ... I'm looking on a web site for a local retailer, and two pack is $10. That's a $5 lightbulb, and I've seen them for as much as $10 each, and some as much as $15.
I've bought dim-able CFLs, and had them fail within days if not hours, so I've stopped buying them. And I'm not talking off brands, I'm talking major the companies. In my experience, the dim-able ones are complete crap. I'm not prepared to rewire my 7 year old home to put in dimmers to accommodate these things.
Now, some of the other ones I've had that have burned out have been in places where the bulbs actually see a fair amount of hours of usage, so they may have legitimately reached EOL. But some of them haven't lasted nearly as long as I'd hoped.
But, please, unless you've personally bought me some CFLs and actually paid my electric bill, please don't act like you actually know what my experiences with them have been. Because my experience has been that they cost a hell of a lot more, and so far haven't seemed to last any longer than incandescent.
I'd prefer to use them, I'm just not convinced that based on the failure rate I'm seeing, they actually save me any money in the long run. Because I pay a crap load more for them than you apparently do.
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Of couse that's not the purpose or original intent of the commerce clause. It's simply one of the many ways the Constitution has been abused and disregarded. Read the writings of the founding fathers....try the Federalist papers. Try Federalist 56. Here's one possible article about this topic specifically: http://federalistblog.us/2011/06/no_power_over_interstate_commerce.html
The current government and its traitorous Supreme Court judges have simply told you that it gives them the power to regulate interstate commerce because the want to usurp that power.
Did you know that the word "regulate" as used in the Constitution didn't mean what it means today? Back then it meant "to make regular" or "to treat evenly"; i.e. the job of the federal government was simply to make sure all states are treated evenly with regards to interstate commerce. Today, the definition has been warped to mean "to control". Naturally, that's what government is all about: power and control.
But the writings of those who wrote the Constitution make it clear what the original intent was.
...and REDUCES the amount of overall mercury in the environment, due to mercury not being released by coal power plants.
That's called living in a free market society. There was a time in China when you could only buy one kind of bicycle, and you didn't have to shop around at all. Workers' paradise, right?
Plus, there's this new thing called the Internet, which can be used to find the best deal/bulb/widget/pron to suit your needs.
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