The EPA's Mercury Madness

Investor's Business Daily ^ | 12/22/11

[IBD editorial writer]

The EPA thinks it's worth spending billions of dollars each year to reduce already minuscule amounts of mercury in the outside air. So why is it trying to shove mercury-laced fluorescent bulbs into everyone's homes?

[palmer]

Of course their goal isn’t reducing mercury, but shutting down inexpensive coal-fired power plants.

[hal ogen]

There is only one explanation: The EPA is full of LIB ideologues who couldn't tell their ass from a hole in the ground. Merry Christmas!

[Notary Sojac]

The EPA is not shoving these bulbs into your house.

For that, you can thank George W. Bush, who signed the bulb ban in a pathetic attempt to make the greenies love him.

[Sacajaweau]

Remember when we all had a mercury thermometer....and no one died....(I still have one)

[Erik Latranyi]

For the same reason these criminals put MTBE in our gasoline?

The same reason they used boiling water to clean the beaches in Valdez, Alaska, thereby sterilizing the soil?

Environmentalists are stupid and cause more damage than they prevent.

[Road Warrior ‘04]

When we were kids, if we were lucky enough to find some mercury, after watching it roll around in a blob and never separating, we'd dip nickels and dimes in it. Made ‘em quite shiny and slippery! No one died from playing with it.

[vanilla swirl]

“The EPA is full of LIB ideologues who couldn’t tell their ass from a hole in the ground.”

Bingo! We have a winner!

[catman67]

Yeah, and we couldn’t wait for them to break so that we had some Mercury to play with!

[Venturer]

I naver saw an agency head who didn’t want more power and who didn’t love shoving the power they had up someone’s ass.

[rlmorel]

My brother found a full bottle of mercury in an abandoned building. We poured it onto the floor to make puddles and merged them into one big one about a foot across. Had no idea.

[rlmorel]

I posted this a few months back on CFL bulbs:

I don't have an issue with the lights themselves. If people want to use them, that is their business if they want to pay the money and a manufacturer thinks they can make money by producing them. What I take issue with is government bureaucrats taking my money via confiscatory taxes, TELLING me how to spend the money they leave me, then passing legislation to DRIVE up the cost of energy so we are FORCED to spend more money to drive our cars, heat our homes and turn on our lights, whether they be incandescent or CFL. These bastards think they are doing us a big favor because they think they know best, and are trying to twist our arms to accept their utopian crap. They think if energy costs go up high enough, their plans to harness unicorn flatulence or whatever will become economically viable.

Well I don't care to take part in their damned experiments. If my town wants to purchase LED based traffic and street lights because it saves the town money and is a guaranteed return on investment, then power to them. If people want these CFL lights in the marketplace as an alternative to make their homes more energy efficient, then I think is is fine and would never say boo to anyone so inclined. Actually, my issue is not even residential lighting. Making citizens purchase stuff we don't want and don't need is NOT going to solve any kind of energy shortage. It is the equivalent of selling carbon credits or putting a magnetic sticker on the back of a car. It is Jimmy Carter wearing sweaters and telling us to turn our thermostats down.

So to make my point that forcing all of us to use these things, have to pay MORE money to buy them (even though most of us have found they don't last nearly as long as the government says they do) Here an the original unaltered graph from Livermore Labs/DOE which I think is a very, very good graphical representation (reflecting the situation in 2009):

As shown below, I cut out a part of that graph and marked it up. Of the four major sectors, residential is the second smallest using just 4.65% of generated electrical power as shown by the graph. Government statistics say lighting consumes 12% of 4.65% of electricity flowing into a house. In the inset (enlarged) part shows the 4.65% pipeline with the red stripe on it showing the lighting share, and the green stripe showing what it would be if we assume 10% efficiency compared to CFL for incandescent bulbs. (The orange pipe leading into the box signifies the RESIDENTAL SECTOR of the energy grid and is representative of energy generated from all sources)

I didn't get this image from some anti-enviroweenie website. I made it myself after analyzing the data on the graph and government data such as estimates of how much lighting uses. And it illustrates the point I make, backed up with the government's own data, that forcing us to do this via statist legislation is basically ANOTHER camel nose in the figurative tent...BECAUSE THEY CAN.

If the market really wanted these lightbulbs, they would have made it on their own without government legislation. But, in my opinion, buying into this without a fight just exacerbates this statist mess we are in covering everything from legislation against transfats and salt in the diet to the amount of water we can flush down our toilet. Liberals think this is great because it is their pet thing that they have bought hook, line and sinker, running around screaming that we are running out of energy. Surrendering to this just invites the government to intrude into EVERY facet of our life.

I don't disparage people for choosing CFL's as a stand to take. I believe I have the data (shown graphically here) to indicate that using CFL's in houses isn't going to save us from anything. It is just a piece of do-gooder legislation that only does just that...makes guilty people feel good. I readily admit that one can make an argument for commercial/industrial building codes and so on, and I might buy into it and agree, the same as I agree with towns purchasing led-based traffic lights. However, building codes are so top heavy with bureaucracy now that I would fight against mandating these in commercial use on those grounds alone.

By my home is my home. And we have gone far too long allowing the government to dictate what we can and cannot do on our own quarter acre of land, small as it is. I am sick to death of it.

[Beagle8U]

Weren't the first ‘etch a sketch’ toys filled with mercury?

[EQAndyBuzz]

‘Environmentalists are stupid and cause more damage than they prevent.”

But their intentions are good /s

[Neidermeyer]

I saw an article about the conditions in many of the Chinese factories where the CFL bulbs were produced... Lets just say the mercury floating around was unbelievable and the people that actually charged the glass tubes got hazard pay... not enough to make up for their inevitably going insane ... “mad as a hatter” .. The EPA has no problem with shifting hazards to areas outside the USA.

[Leep]

Tuna with Mecury is delish.

[VRW Conspirator]

Bump

[Louis Foxwell]

Perhaps because their ass IS a hole in the ground into which we are obliged to pour our nation’s wealth.

[duckman]

“Remember when we all had a mercury thermometer....and no one died.”

Unless one of them broke in your rear end!

[USCG SimTech]

Sounds like when the inventor of the radar gun who later marketed the radar detector. Generate a market which has an expected consequence, having the solution waiting in the wings ready to launch. Double up on the income.