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.

[Bushbacker1]

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.

[blueheron2]

I have these bulbs all over my house. But, the thing is they don't last as long as an incandescent bulb in many of my fixtures. Since I have been using them I leave more lights on at night for security purposes. When I first started using them around 18 yrs ago they lasted for years. Since production has moved to China the quality has gone to he!!. There are all kind of applications where you just can't use them. I've bought various brands and none are working very well.

[upchuck]

Remember when we all had a mercury thermometer

Much worse than that... I can remember mercury switches in thermostats... And "playing" with mercury. Wow, maybe I'm dead and don't realize it :)

Only the EPA could jam CFLs down our throats and then publish a 3 page guide detailing the hazmat clean up procedure should one break.

The EPA is playing an out sized role in nobama's plan for a turd-world country with him as king.

[hal ogen]

I’m in my later years now. As a child in the 50’s our dentist gaves us vials of mercury to play with at home. He got the mercury from processing the fillings material. We would make silver coins shiny, play with the stuff interminably and leave the open vials in our rooms when we weren’t playing with the stuff. I’m still here...no effects so far (fingers crossed). I think the EPA is overreacting a lot with an interest in advancing their control and influence.

[hal ogen]

I’m in my later years now. As a child in the 50’s our dentist gave us vials of mercury to play with at home. He got the mercury from processing the fillings material. We would make silver coins shiny, play with the stuff interminably and leave the open vials in our rooms when we weren’t playing with the stuff. I’m still here...no effects so far (fingers crossed). I think the EPA is overreacting a lot with an interest in advancing their control and influence.

[Will88]

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

Yes, and I remember when the stuff used to show up in the home now and then and we called it quicksilver. We'd take it and toss it from hand to hand and enjoyed the way it'd separate and come back together.

Not sure what it was used for, but mercury could be had easily a few decades back and no one became ill after playing with it.

[mountainlion]

There is a natural source of Mercury above a resort city near here and the river transports Mercury to a water system that distributes the water through the front range of Colorado. The radio adds tell to go to a website to hear the hazards of Mercury. Fishermen are warned how much fish they can eat to avoid too much Mercury. This is totally ignored by the liberal Ecotards.

[Safetgiver]

I’ve bought various brands and none are working very well...When I heard of this ridiculous ban, I immediately applied for a grant to measure the eye degradation from the years 1960 to 2050. I asked for 20 million for expenses. So far I’ve not heard from the gubbmint. They don’t care about the “chirruns”, I guess.

[sneakers]

"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!"

Best answer yet!

And Merry Christmas to you as well!

[smokingfrog]

That’s what I’d like to know.

[dawn53]

Amalgam (silver) fillings are 50 percent mercury. If you have silver fillings, you have had mercury in your mouth...and no government agency seems too alarmed. Although many dentists have transitioned to only composite fillings once the mercury issue started being discussed.

[The Theophilus]

Environmentalists are stupid and cause more damage than they prevent.

Lets make a list!

You provided two: MTBE and sterilizing Alaskan beaches.

I'll add two: Wind mills kill condors, eagles and other endangered species you would go to prison over if you even dared to touch their fallen feathers.

Criminalizing fire breaks and the removal of tinder which now results in profoundly wild and devastating fires immolating untold numbers of wildlife and burning up "old growth hardwoods".

[E. Pluribus Unum]

This way when you break a light bulb in your house they can declare it to be HAZMAT site and kick you out.

Win-win!

[asinclair]

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.

When the CFL bulbs first came onto the market, my parents were early adopters...for some lamps. Their complaint was that the quality of the light was inferior because the spectrum output was so different from the "regular" light bulbs.

Then I heard an eco-tard say that you can get florescent lights with a spectrum output that mimics the sun in the afternoon (so-called 5000-K). The problem is that the colors of the furniture in our house were selected in incandescent lighting, not florescent.

What those eco-tards also forget is that the light from a CFL is not a steady light, but flickers at 120 Hz. For most people, that's not a problem. For some, though, it causes headaches and other problems. (It's why those people don't watch movies -- the double-shutter frame rate of 48 Hz isn't fast enough. TV's flicker is filtered by the reaction time of the phosphors or the LED shutters, so people sensitive to flicker can watch TV just fine.)

As for life, I've got a pile of those damn squiggly-bulbs waiting to go to Home Depot for the bulb recycling bin. Included in that pile is one, count 'em one, LED bulb that burned continuously for more than a year and a half.

[hadaclueonce]

EPA wants to tax your farts.

Somewhere someone wants to sell you tax credits so you can fart.

[ThePatriotsFlag]

I used to “play” with it. We’d buy it at the local drug store and it would be in a little bottle with a cork. You could get it out and run it around on you hand, etc. This is pure greenie BS ... I’m 70 years old, mercury didn’t bother me!

[BitWielder1]

They invent regulation to create new problems that will require even more gov't regulation that will create more problems that will require...

You get the picture.

[Peet]

“Somewhere someone wants to sell you tax credits so you can fart.”

Uh oh. If I have to buy carbon credits to break wind, I’ll explode.

[Road Glide]

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

I wouldn’t expect it from Romney (if he’s the candidate), but candidate Gingrich (if he makes it that far) should start speaking of a “Coal Renaissance” under his administration, and a complete rollback of EVERY piece of anti-energy legislation and regulation that has been enacted during the Obama debacle.

[rlmorel]

Interesting. I mentioned that I thought the life of those things was lousy, and I had a bunch burn out. When I mentioned this on FR, there were a couple of people who poo-poohed me...

[Sacajaweau]

We also had iodine in our medicine cabinet with the skull and crossbones and "poison" right on the label. It stung awful. We put it on cuts to kill bacteria.

There we switched to mercurichrome sp???? Killed germs.

Then went to peroxide because it was fun to see it bubble.

Now??? Spit and a bandaid....