Posted on 09/23/2010 11:58:18 AM PDT by American Dream 246
In this case, four. You don't count Zer0.
Zer0, like a stooge, is standing on a chair holding a CFL. On each corner of the chair is one of his staff raising Zer0 up to screw it in. Zer0 puts it in the socket and they start turning the chair. Zer0 calls down, “I think it is in!” They yell up, “No we need to keep turning.” This is what they are doing to the country. They are using Zer0 to turn the bulb. All he has to do is hold the bulb. They will turn and turn and turn until Zer0 yells down, I think it is in!” They continue turning until . . . . . . . CRACK!!!!!! The bulb is broken.
. . . .The country is broken and must suffer the toxic consequences.
And there you got me. I grabbed a statistic for the amount of mercury in oil, which is low because of refining. We burn a lot of coal--you've got the better statistic--and its over a 1000 times higher than the number I found. Thanks.
I think you math is wrong.
1 Ounce = 28,349.5231 Milligrams
So, every 5,669.90463 CFLS (at 5mg each) would add 1 Ounce.
So 1,000,000 CFLs would add 176.3698096 ounces (1,000,000 / 5,669.90463).
And a billion CFLS (annual sales are what?) would add 100 times that.
The questions are really three. Concentration where they are dumped, degree of that concentration being carried beyond the location where dumped, by water - becoming part of the water table, and what constitutes a toxic (PPM) level should that happen.
Oh I agree my math was wrong. I was working on micrograms when I shoulda been working in milligrams.
My bad.
You are correct ... except that a billion CFLs would be 3 orders of magnitude more HG than a million — 10e9 vs. 10e6.
Plus you have to add in all the waste from mining and processing that much HG from ore. All in China.. Yikes.
Just two....
Interesting that the greenies don't know that 10-10-10 is fertilizer (10% N-P-K)
Elemental mercury has very little availability in the environment, until biological action turns it into the far more poisonous methyl mercury. The bulbs don’t contain free liquid mercury like they used to, however; they contain solid metal elements that hold the mercury as an amalgam until the heat of the bulb’s operation causes it to evaporate into the bulb’s glass tube (i.e. the bulb “warms up.”) Then when the bulb is shut off and cools, the mercury condenses back onto the elements and gets absorbed again. This cuts down on the amount of mercury that can get loose from these bulbs if they are later broken.
Well, the AGW scam certainly is exactly similar to the “old fashioned” type of fertilizer!
Thank you for the info.
The doc’s at the VA are going to hook me up to an EEG and trigger a seizure just to see what is going on inside my brain housing unit.
“Plus you have to add in all the waste from mining and processing that much HG from ore. All in China.. Yikes.”
Yes, a lot IS mined in China; but the U.S. mines tons of coal for power generation as well.
However, it is incorrect for the CFL pushers to claim that CFLs do NOT make a net addition of mercury to the environment. They do. No matter how efficient they are, their efficiency does not change one speck of the burning of coal for power; so whatever CFL’s contain in mercury does become a net addition to the environment.
Also, I believe that getting rid of the mercury in the coal burning process will be easier to achieve with technology than the big brother regime that would be required to keep CFLs out of the landfills.
Sorry for the late reply. I would disagree with your assertion. You claim that reducing the amount of electricity we use for lighting won’t cause us to burn less coal in power plants. This is true on it’s face. We aren’t about to shut down any power plants because people switch to more efficient lighting. Instead, if we use less electricity to achieve the same amount of work, (work in this case being light,) we are going to lower the rate at which demand increases. This means that we will open fewer new power plants than we otherwise would need. Some of these power plants that we won’t open would have burned coal. That’s where the savings comes from. Obviously, using technology to find cleaner ways to burn coal and other fossils is very important as well. In the long run, plant technology is the most important thing as far as mercury pollution is concerned.
“In the long run, plant technology is the most important thing as far as mercury pollution is concerned.”
That was my final comment as well.
But, I do not discount the possibility for technology to greatly lower or remove the mercury now emitted from coal burning plants (which you seem to either not appreciate or believe in).
As agreeable as your argument is, it is not the argument of the pushers of CFLs. Their argument pretends that CFLs REDUCE the mercury added to the environment NOW. They don’t.
Last year, I switched from timer controlled halogen landscaping/outdoor lights to warm bright LEDs. It's now a utilization difference of 585 W vs 88 W. The low voltage light systems were already LED. Awaiting more progress/variability/costs of home use LED lights
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