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Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs: Proceed with Caution (Think Twice before Discarding Incandescent)
American Thinker ^
| 09/22/2010
| Peter Wilson
Posted on 09/22/2010 6:52:01 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The Cambridge Energy Alliance is going door to door in North Cambridge, Massachusetts next month, handing out free compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) in return for "inefficient incandescent bulbs." Well, they're not actually free. The
Cambridge Energy Alliance is "sponsored by the City of Cambridge," so I guess that Cambridge taxpayers are footing the bill. The event is part of Bill McKibben's 350.org "global work party" on October 10, 2010, which is a really excellent date because you can write it as "10/10/10."
CFLs use around 30% of the energy of an incandescent bulb, and everyone should switch over, so the argument goes. Even if you agree with Bjorn Lomborg's recent judgment in the
Wall Street Journal that "direct carbon cuts [are a] woefully ineffective" means to address global warming, CFLs save you money. Lighting accounts for 10% to 20% of residential electric use, so if your bill is $100 a month, changing every bulb in your house would lead to a savings of as much as $14/month. NSTAR recommends changing 25% of your bulbs, which would amount to a savings of $3.50/month. This assumes you get the bulbs for free; otherwise, you have to subtract the higher cost of the bulbs from your savings. Okay, you will probably spend the $3.50 on a Starbucks mochachino, not a transformative life experience, but why throw away free money?
And yet if CFLs are so great, why does the Cambridge Energy Alliance have to organize volunteers to give them away?
The modern breed of environmentalist tends to have a statist faith in government. Average citizens cannot be trusted with economic decisions that require balancing immediate costs and long-term benefits. Consumers therefore need wise government to mandate the use of CFLs, through legislation like the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 or through taxpayer-funded giveaway programs.
Many people, however, don't like curlicue light bulbs, and not because these people are uninformed, shortsighted, or on the payroll of Big Carbon. The list of objections is long, but here are a few:
- CFL manufacturers claim that a 13-watt CFL emits the same amount of light as a 60-watt incandescent, but it doesn't seem to work that way in the real world. I've been in CFL-lit hotel rooms where I need a flashlight to read my dog-eared copy of The Road to Serfdom.
- Warm-up time: it takes up to 5 minutes for a CFL to reach full strength, which may be related to the point above (why CFLs seem less bright). My friend has installed them in a hallway where illumination is needed only for the thirty seconds it takes to navigate the staircase. Not ideal when Grandma visits and can't see the skateboard on the stairs.
- Few CFLs last for their advertised lifetimes of five years or more. Many people report replacing them after one year, making those return on investment numbers a bit less rosy. Using them in ceiling fixtures, on dimmers or timers, and for less than fifteen minutes per use reduce their life.
- CFLs contain mercury and should be returned to a hazardous waste center for disposal. Studies assume a 25% recycling rate, with the rest going into landfills. (The Westinghouse website recommends recycling only when disposing of "a large quantity" of fluorescent tubes and doesn't mention how to dispose of their CFLs.) According to a 2008 Yale study, burning coal to supply electricity to incandescent bulbs emits more mercury per bulb than a CFL contains, but regions that rely on cleaner fuels like natural gas experience greater mercury contamination with the introduction of CFLs. Why would environmentalists advocate to bring a toxic product into every home?
- Cleaning up a broken CFL doesn't require a haz-mat team, but you have to take significant precautions to avoid mercury contamination of living areas.
- Manufacturing CFLs is labor-intensive. No CFLs are made with expensive U.S. labor; most are made in China, where hundreds of factory workers in CFL plants have been hospitalized for mercury poisoning. The last major light bulb factory in the U.S., a GE plant in Winchester, VA, closed earlier this month.
- CFLs require six times as much energy to manufacture as incandescent bulbs, not to mention -- if you're concerned about such things -- the carbon footprint of shipping them from China.
- CFLs appear to cause migraines and epileptic seizures in a small number of people. Other health risks are being studied.
- CFLs work poorly in cold temperatures -- as a wintertime front porch light, for example. In cold climates, the heat of incandescent bulbs is a useful -- if inefficient -- byproduct.
- CFLs degrade the quality of the electric current (so-called "dirty electricity" with uneven sine waves) on a circuit into which they are plugged, causing problems for other electronic devices and possible health hazards to humans.
Given all these potential drawbacks, it seems questionable to place all our chips on this one solution to more efficient lighting. A new generation of more efficient incandescent bulbs is on the horizon, and LED bulbs show great promise. CFLs make sense for some applications, but at best they will be a transitional product.
The
precautionary principle "states that if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the
public or to the
environment, in the absence of
scientific consensus that the action or policy is harmful, the
burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking the action." The compact fluorescent light bulb is a rare case where this principle makes sense.
TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: cfl; electricity; energy; fluorescent; green; incandescent; lightbulb
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To: 1951Boomer
There have already been schools evacuated because of CFL breakage, pending cleanup.
Won’t be long before kids figure this out.
21
posted on
09/22/2010 7:05:40 AM PDT
by
MrB
(The difference between a (de)humanist and a Satanist is that the latter knows who he's working for.)
To: SeekAndFind
Plus they look really ugly in decorative fixtures. We use the candelabra bulbs in those, and the three-way in the reading lamps.
22
posted on
09/22/2010 7:06:14 AM PDT
by
nina0113
To: MrB
Thanks. didn’t know that. The cashier at the dollar store where I buy them had not heard they were being phased out. Maybe this news has slipped by a lot of folks.
To: SeekAndFind
Two of those curly monsters broke soon after being put into the socket. They don't just break, but shatter into thousands of pieces, that takes a vacuum to pick them up. Even so, I found pieces in other rooms in my house.
They cannot be used in many lampshades and ceiling fans/lights because their either don't fit, or look stupid. Nearly all the bulbs I bought, burned out in less than a year. They are a huge, dangerous waste of money.
24
posted on
09/22/2010 7:06:37 AM PDT
by
Jaidyn
To: concerned about politics
Tungston is radioactive ~
25
posted on
09/22/2010 7:07:05 AM PDT
by
muawiyah
To: 1951Boomer
I’m with you on those two reasons — they are butt-ugly and I am sick and tired of the State telling me to do ANYTHING. Plastic bags, incandescent bulbs, cholesterol, french fries — I am going whole hog on ALL of them.
Just in spite. It’s my own little one-person Tea Party, every day in every way.
26
posted on
09/22/2010 7:07:54 AM PDT
by
bboop
(We don't need no stinkin' VAT)
To: 1951Boomer
RE: Foreseeing this idiocy, I have been hoarding the old-fashioned light bulbsmainly because I detest those horrid-looking, wormy new spiral ones
Isn’t there a law that all homes and businesses should replace incandescents by CFL by a certain date? ( I forget when ?).
How would you like some bureaucrat sending you a letter or knocking at your door gently ( or roughly as the case may be ) reminding you that you are breaking the law ?
Not saying that I agree with this, but that a law like this even exists ought to cause people ( including the Tea Party movement ) to go up in arms.
To: SeekAndFind
CFL's are an enviromentalists' boondoggle.
There needs to be some money-following to find out who's getting rich on CFL's, and any connection to them by the clowns who passed this ridiculous law banning incandescents.
I'm buying up incandescents as fast as I can afford and putting them back for later. I will not buy a CFL. My electric co-op recently left two CFL's on everyone's doorstep; I took them back to the office when I paid my electric bill and told them no thanks.
I think the lamest thing I've seen is a house where they replaced all of the outside floodlights, with 60-watt CFL's...it wasn't even bright enough to attract candleflies.
CFL's are - IMHO - a scam to sell CFL's. Think of the concept: "Now, how many light bulbs are in America? If we could get a law passed to out law them all, we could make a fortune selling replacements. Yeahhhh, that's the ticket. Never mind that the mercury in them is ten times worse on the environment than the addition electricity used by standard light bulbs...but we just won't mention that ok?"
CFL's - or spaghetti bulbs - are as big a hoax as global warming...probably bigger. Other than appeasing the environuts, there are not significant reasons for switching.
It will be like the tobacco thing...they make it almost impossible to find a place for smokers to light up, quadruple the taxes, run anti-smoking campaigns out the yang-yang...then millions of people quit smoking, and the same nanny-staters that bitch about smoking, are now bitching about the loss of tobacco revenue in taxes.
If everyone cuts their power usage in half, the electric companies will be crying the blues about the loss of income,as they will still have to maintain the generators, power lines, and customer service; that generator in the coal fired plant, or hydroelectric is going to be running whether we use CFL's or incandescents. Their operating expenses will go down very little, but their income will go down a lot.
It's the "be careful what you ask for" scenario.
Spaghetti bulbs are for meatballs."
28
posted on
09/22/2010 7:09:03 AM PDT
by
FrankR
(obama can only be what WE allow him to be.)
To: Mr. K
I started replacing all my incandescents 10(?) years ago as the incans burned out. Where I live the power is unreliable and is out several times a week for a nanosecond to a few minutes as transformers on power poles blow and the voltage varies a bit constantly. The incans were lasting from a couple of weeks to a couple of months. Since I started the replacement I have replaced one(1) CFL. I have no problems with them in cold weather (It seldom gets below 40F here) and they seem as bright as the incans they replace. They mostly take a second or less to come all the way on. I have a stash of incans because there are, indeed, some applications where they are better and because the government outlawed them.
29
posted on
09/22/2010 7:09:10 AM PDT
by
arthurus
(Read Hazlitt's "Economics In One Lesson.")
To: trolley
I saw some LED light bulbs that look just like an incandescent bulb at the store recently. are they worth trying?
30
posted on
09/22/2010 7:09:20 AM PDT
by
dblshot
(Insanity - electing the same people over and over and expecting different results.)
To: FrankR
Other than appeasing the environuts, there are not significant reasons for switching.
I have a relative who is the epitome of a liberal that is a liberal in order to feel good about herself. That is THE major motivation behind this.
“I CARE! I’m doing something to save the erf!”
31
posted on
09/22/2010 7:11:00 AM PDT
by
MrB
(The difference between a (de)humanist and a Satanist is that the latter knows who he's working for.)
To: SeekAndFind
I have never and will never use a CFL bulb. Instead, I’ve begun replacing my incandescent bulbs with LED bulbs. Yes, currently they are expensive and not easy to come by (usually requires an online order), but the benefits are worth it. They use less electricity than a CFL, they don’t get hot even after hours of use, they don’t require a ‘warm up period’, come in a variety of styles and brightnesses, and have a usage-life of 60,000 hours. I’ve even got a pair of LED bulbs that are ‘dim-able’ flanking my garage.
32
posted on
09/22/2010 7:13:06 AM PDT
by
LoneStarGI
(Vegetarian: Old Indian word for "BAD HUNTER.")
To: SeekAndFind
I tried some of the first generation of CFLs and quickly learned that I could waste my money more easily by just throwing it away as spend it on these things.
I’ve been building a stock of incandescents in anticipation of the day that the government bans them here (which I think occurs in 2013).
LED bulbs make more sense but, the rocket scientists in Congress have already thrown their megalomaniac brain power behind the CFL junk science and won’t soon reverse their decision in favor of LEDs.
33
posted on
09/22/2010 7:13:06 AM PDT
by
DustyMoment
(Go green - recycle Congress in 2010!!)
To: SeekAndFind
During the heating season CFLs lose much of their efficiency advantage. The inefficiency of the incandescent bulbs is released as heat, which just helps reduce the energy consumption of the furnace.
OTOH, in cooling season the extra heat load must be removed by the AC, which makes incandescents doubly inefficient.
Most comparisons of efficiency ignore both of these rather important factors.
To: MrB
Goodwill, yard sales, etc., I've got quite a collection, my fav. is an old Edison shape(
like over yer' head when you get an idea) 300 watt'r that puts out a great big beautiful spectrum & BTU's too, I use it in my bedroom in winter on a dimmer(lasted for years now).
Worked for a time in theatrical lighting , so I'm quite the fan of the wonderful variety of the blessed incandescent!
35
posted on
09/22/2010 7:13:44 AM PDT
by
yesca
(..belief is the enemy)
To: SeekAndFind
I hate CFLs; I hate the light they produce, I hate the flickering and I hate the noise they make.
I have been stockpiling incandescants since they passed that silly law banning them. I have enough to keep my house in incandescants for 5-7 years depending on usage. I have high hopes that adults will be back in charge by then and get rid of that ridiculous legislation.
If I could convince my hubby to let me rent a storage space for them, I’d stockpile them and become the incandescant black market queen.
36
posted on
09/22/2010 7:13:50 AM PDT
by
Vor Lady
To: GOPPachyderm
My son and his wife used in their home and they actually burned. The bottom of the bulb got black and smelly.We had the same experience with ours. That's why we went back to incandescents.
37
posted on
09/22/2010 7:14:58 AM PDT
by
DustyMoment
(Go green - recycle Congress in 2010!!)
To: SeekAndFind
Out with the CFLs and in with the LED lights in the near future. . ☼
38
posted on
09/22/2010 7:15:18 AM PDT
by
ßuddaßudd
(7 days - 7 ways Guero >>> with a floating, shifting, ever changing persona.....)
To: SeekAndFind
I purchased cfls at subsidized prices and still lost money. In the first 6 to 8 months 55% failed costing me a cool 400 plus dollars.
After 3 years, about 10% are left but the incadence bulbs are still going strong. My cfls were Phillips, not a cheap brand.
I hate cfls now, I am converted.
39
posted on
09/22/2010 7:16:36 AM PDT
by
dila813
To: DustyMoment
The phaseout begins in 2012 with the 100 watt bulb
and ends in 2014 with the 40 watt bulb.
40
posted on
09/22/2010 7:20:09 AM PDT
by
MrB
(The difference between a (de)humanist and a Satanist is that the latter knows who he's working for.)
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