Posted on 12/19/2007 1:18:19 PM PST by truthfinder9
They may lower your bills, but don't really do much for C02:
The U.S. Energy Star program says that if every home in America replaced one normal light bulb with a fluorescent...it would be equivalent to taking 800,000 cars off the road. Sure, that sounds like a lot, but it's less than 0.1 percent of registered cars worldwide. Plus, transportation accounts for only about one-fifth of global emissions anyway.Just the increase in the amount of coal that China will burn by 2020 will send as much C02 into the atmosphere as 3 billion Ford Expeditions, each driven 15,000 miles a year.
An Inconvenient Book: Real Solutions to the World's Biggest Problems, p. 7.
I don’t care about their “green” aspect. Fact is, I can put them in and not worry about changing them for 5-7 years.
I used some a long time ago; and they didn’t help lower my electric bill. But they were more expensive.
Save your money. LEDs are the future.
Exactly. I replaced every bulb in my house with these new soft-white fluorescents last year and it’s such a relief not to keep buying the other kind over and over again.
I think they’re helping fill landfills with plenty of mercury.
hope they are brighter than these ice-cream cones
Actually, I have them in my backyard where I have outdoor lighting. There are 7 15-watt bulbs that emit the light equivalent of an 80 watt incandescent bulb. In total, they consume about as much as a 105 Watt incandescent light bulb, so I don’t worry about flicking the switch and lighting up the backyard in the summertime.
I’ve put them in my street lamp and outdoor porch lights too. They also last a long time.
With regard to my garden lighting, I had no choice as the housing and cover is plastic - incandescent lighting would have quickly overheated the whole thing melting the entire housing...
Just this week I bought 3 for a fixture that’s like 15 feet off the ground - change’em once and forget for a long time - works for me. Also can get more lumens/watt which helps because a light that high disperses very quickly.
Maybe so, but they are not the present. I installed them in my Veranda and they are so dim, we never use them. The faux candles on wall sconces are far brighter and the light doesn't have that creepy bluish haze to it.
CO2 is garbage: alarmist nonsense. These energy-saving bulbs are great though - save me a lot of time climbing a rickety step-ladder!
I placed a few of these things in non-crucial parts of the house (bedside lamp, garage). The bedside lamp had a noticeable buzz/hum. The garage lamps was not as bright as the incandescent bulbs they displaced.
My sister-in-law gets headaches from regular fluorescents (die to flicker). When she visits next month I’ll see if she gets them from the screw in kind.
I agree that LEDs are the future if they can scale them up enough to truly light a room.
“Save your money. LEDs are the future.”
Probably, but the $/Lumen output ratio needs to plummet dramatically.
They give off horrible light but when you put them in hard-to-reach places, it’s wonderfully convenient not to have to change them as often. And you can leave a hall light on without affecting the bill much.
I am not worried about the environment. I want people to start conserving energy because energy (gas, nat. gas, and oil) are getting expensive, and I think it’s bad for the economy. I like nuke plants, I like like hydro, I want a plug in electric car/hybrid that runs of nuclear power, I want a wood stove (any ideas on how to fit one into a smallish living room?). I want to spend less on energy, without overspending on more efficient stuff.
“The bedside lamp had a noticeable buzz/hum.”
Hm...none of my lamps exhibit this. You must either have a bad bulb or perhaps the wiring in your lamp should be looked at.
You don't hear much about that from the "greens", do you? Nope. It will come back to haunt us. Environmentalism will kill us all in the end. We will all die freezing in the cold, I have no doubt.
You know that slimy mucky stuff that runs out of the bottoms of landfills?... Don't drink it.
Are there any good dimmable compact fluorescents out there?
It helps my indoor plants.I leave it on 24/7 and the plant next to it is constantly sprouting new offshoots
All valid points, that’s why I say wait.
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