Joe Molner in the comments;
The Porchlight Projects in Ontario and Alberta are currently handing out free energy efficient light bulbs for citizens ostensibly to help lower the use of electricity to light up porches across the provinces.
The sponsors are:
Alberta Energy
City of Medicine Hat
EnCana Corporation
EnWin Utilities Windsor , Ont.
The Ontario Government
Ontario Power Authority
Ontario Trillium Foundation
Admittedly the project is a commendable and worthwhile and even educational, however I find some hypocracy swamping at least the Ontario portion of the project PORCHLIGHT.
You see, my little twist in beauty is MADE IN CHINA!
So the next time I see that liar Premier McGuinty stand up and bemoan manufacturing jobs going off shore from Ontario, someone should remind him to stop buying stuff for Ontario from CHINA!!!
There is a rather long and somewhat technical article
on CFL strengths & weaknesses available here:
sound.westhost.com/articles/incandescent.htm
cal2, many Calgary office buildings designed in TO or Van, have to keep lights and fans on coz there isn’t enough heating inside!
cal 2 – The Phantom -Mary T – My experience exactly.
The hanging light over the kitchen table contains six small type bulbs.
Two weeks ago my wife replaced them with CFL’s.
Bad move.
The slow dim light emitted from complete darkness is annoying beyond telling.
Sadly even at full light output the six bulbs do not create comparable light to the former six small incandescents.
I may have to resort to my photo dark room with the pull chain overhead incandescent to do (see) the crossword.
Quite right, JM. Efficiency improvements have never resulted in reduced energy consumption. They have always resulted in increased production. Fuel efficiency in cars in the 1980s were taken,not by lowered fuel consumption but by making vehicles larger and driving more. Efficiency doesn’t reduce energy consumption, it drives productivity, and it’s not a paradox at all, except perhaps in the eyes of Greens who persist in misunderstanding basic economics.
Wonderful. Maybe some of the savings will be used to apply some of the “Debt Retirement Charge” from the old “Ontario Hydro” that I am charged every month. From what I understand not one dime has been spent from this charge to actually retire this debt.
We should finish paying off the old “wonderful” ideas before we embark on new ones. It will slow us down and possibly encourage good decision making.
It is the very logic of globalized neoliberal free market capitalism that has led to a decline in the Canadian manufacturing sector and resulted in our CFL bulbs (and much else) being manufactured overseas. Reduce costs, maximize profits, open up new markets, etc. etc.
It’s rather strange to hear someone here defend vociferously the wonders of the market, and then in the very next breath, complain that everything is now made in China. The two are intimately connected.
I am wondering if any of these CFL’s have been tested for lead paint.(everything else we seem to get from there has it). Also, if you can get incandescent bulbs from the the U.K. (that would be Britain for tory_watcher)they run on 220 and have a much thicker element in them but give off the same amount of light. I understand that they work perfectly fine over here and last for friggin’ ever.
Tory_watcher sez:
” perhaps you might revisit one of the basic premises of capitalism, to which I certainly subscribe, which is that you build products that people want to buy or you will not be in business for long.”
Ok the gloves come off….first you seem to have no concept of industrial productivity, operational economics or trade economics or the forces at play in the Chinese industrialization and trade agenda….I hear the mumblings of text book economics from you and not ground level experience.
Having dealt with Pacific rim and Chinese electronics industry for 28 years I think I have some insight on Chinese industrial production.
China has not embraced capitalism as practiced domestically in the west…the plan is not to fill demand but create demand…China has embraced a form of product “dumping” with an eventual monopoly agenda. They cannot compete ethically with better developed and quality producing western competitors right now so they sell purely on vastly undercutting western domestic production with ridiculous production advantages like abject labor costs, no environmental or product liability and low tax burdens….they price so cheaply industrial consumers ignore the quality because they can get 5 Chinese widgets for the cost of a domestic one lowering costs so they can under cut their competators. Once the domestic widget producers go insolvent and leave the market in the face of this dumping China widget co. will charge what they want as there is now a sole source for widgets ( or 9industrial chemicals or passive components or any other OEM focused commodity).
The idea is to sell so cheap their foreign competiton dies off within the decade and they monopolize on filling the ceded markets…many time the banck of China subsidizes the industry to keep it going while it sells at such low margins…waithing, of course for the day when their client has sole source pricing power.
As it is now, they have become successful in monopolizing the production of a number of common industrial chemicals and materials…and we let them because production of these chemicals or items here has become so costly due to taxes and capital investment in hazard technology that are imposed due to environmental hazards of production…The Chinese producers have no such worries.
Most of the time the products are inferior because the raw materials are generally bought up seconds or substandard stock that top tier competitors reject…but they don’t care because they are not liable to any quality and product safety standards western producers are. China’s low taxation and vacant labor/environmental/product safety standards could be argued to be a vast government subsidy unavailable to western producers.
So your toady-boy idea that our deindustrialization is by domestic industry’s choice is as sparse on reality as most leftard economics….and the idea of western consumers making China an environmental mess is pure moonbat sophistry…they can refuse the business any time and they can decide to clean up their act at the slight expense of their profitability.
Under the current virtually open China import environment domestic small business is forced to buy the cheaper Chinese raw matrials and sub assemblies or generally goes tits up using domestic suppliers….corporate industry is more mobile and is FORCED to off shore contract production to compete with the cheap substandard junk government has allowed in here without protective tariffs or liable to domestic product liability standards.
….this is a result of domestic regulating, taxing and social program/labor liabilities making domestic products expensive…then they (government) open the gates for cheap foreign products…yeah that’s right, in a nation that claims a Keynesian centrally regulated economic ethic, when major disruptions in the economy or productivity take place there is usually only one way to point the finger….and it isn’t at those in the private sector trying to survive as a domestic producer in spite of being milked like cows by collectivist imbiciles in government who are detached from the concerns of private sector producers.
In the case of the Canadian electronics industry Liberal import policy killed it in a matter of 5 years
FTA saved us from industrial productivity collapse by opening US markets but nothing can protect domestic industry from the unfair competative advantages of Chinese substandard productivity “dumping”.
Take a scan of the Canadian manufacturers site and learn something….before you trust that made in China defibrillator.
And when millions of these mercury bulbs end up in landfills our ground water will be contaminated with mercury. What will McSquinty do them? If these bulbs are not treated as toxic waste we will be in big trouble.
I too am stocking up on incandescent bulbs. Harper has mandated the mercury bulbs be the only thing used by 2012.
Nothing wrong with compact flourescent lighting George …but a sylvania domestic made lamp will last years and give more light per watt rating and longer service life(8K hrs.) than the Chinese crap.
By the time the incandescent ban hits LED technology will have a mass produced lamp that gives the equivelent 100 watt incandescent light from 2.2 watt current draw….50,000 hrs service…Half the cost of a CF lamp…good old North American engineering will fill the need…China will of course ignore the patents and make their normal shoddy replicas.
WL Mackenzie Redux: They cannot compete ethically with better developed and quality producing western competitors right now so they sell purely on vastly undercutting western domestic production with ridiculous production advantages like abject labor costs, no environmental or product liability and low tax burdens….they price so cheaply industrial consumers ignore the quality because they can get 5 Chinese widgets for the cost of a domestic one lowering costs so they can under cut their competators.
All of the above may be true, but none of it is incompatible with the logic of free market capitalism.
China’s low taxation and vacant labor/environmental/product safety standards could be argued to be a vast government subsidy unavailable to western producers.
But neoliberal economists would argue that such labour and environmental standards in the West (the lack of which you interestingly call ‘subsidies’ in China) constitute undesirable state influences that hinder private industries’ ability to compete in the global marketplace? The entire push for deregulation within N. America is premised on the fact that such externally (i.e., government) imposed constraints on the market are harmful and should be abandoned. The key difference with China is that it simply never bothered imposing such constraints to begin with.
corporate industry is more mobile and is FORCED to off shore contract production to compete with the cheap substandard junk government has allowed in here without protective tariffs or liable to domestic product liability standards.
‘Forced’ is rather an overstatement. Nike, Gap, Sony, even CFL-making General Electric, etc. are all doing just fine from what I hear. It’s not like they fought tooth-and-nail to try and keep their manufacturing sites in N. America, begging governments to enact the protective tariffs that would let them stay. On the contrary, these and other corporations were at the forefront of past lobbying efforts that paved the way for economic globalization.
Two points:
Conservatives are responsible for banning incandescent bulbs by 2012.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/living-green/lightbulbs.html
Conservatives are doing nothing to either slow down imports from China or help manufacturing in Canada. It wouldn’t be a surprise to find out that Mo Strong also has friends in the Conservative Party, since they’re economic policy is hardly different than the Liberals.
they’re = their
Here’ a good post on where electical savings can be had.www.confundrum.com-look in “Articles” under The Economy section for the post titled On Electrical Usage.Light bulbs of any kind do not seem to be a power drain.Dr. Mercury will explain far better than I.He does the math.
Iberia: Conservatives are responsible for banning incandescent bulbs by 2012.
True. And even Ontario’s plan followed in the footsteps of Australia’s (Conservative) Howard regime: 3w.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/04/25/lunn-bulbs.html
“What we require in Ontario is not more dim bulbs but a few new nuclear reactors to ensure an adequate supply of energy for our future needs.
Posted by: rattfuc at November 27, 2007 11:06 AM”
Too true, too true, Mr. Rodentcopulat. Your fellow citizens who are trusting in McSquinty’s plans for your energy future would be better advised to forget about light bulbs and stock up on candles and sweaters.
I received one of those lightbulbs a few days ago. The kid rang the doorbell, I opened the door with the dog barking, he gave me a lightbulb muttering something I didn’t understand and left.
If it wasn’t for Kate, I wouldn’t have any idea why the kid was delivering lightbulbs which pretty much defeats the purpose of the entire project, doesn’t it?
Despite all this offshore tale (I agree by the way) there is another aspect to this few recognize: Indoor light bulbs do not waste electricity.
Simply put all electricty consumed is converted to heat. During the heating season (you know the days of long nights) light bulbs simply supplement heating costs. That is, the baseboard heaters will come on less when light bulbs are burning. So I ask, why stumble areound in the dark to save electricity?
“What we require in Ontario is not more dim bulbs but a few new nuclear reactors to ensure an adequate supply of energy for our future needs.
The dim bulbs at AECL and OPG to solve the problem of dim bulbs? Be careful what you wish for.
for all the conservationists. there will be trillions not millions of these bulbs thrown out annually. that tiny amount of mercury will become a massive amout of mercury. there will be no safe disposal of these planet saving bulbs. man there are alot of dim bulbs supporting thier use.
ratfuc,
I know that there are nuclear environmental assessments going on right now in Durham and Clarington regions (east of Toronto) because they are being advertised on the radio. I also think they are setting up public debates. So I think that McGuinty may be announcing 2 new nuclear reactors either at Darlington or at Pickering (or maybe both) in his throne speech this Thursday.
A partisan harpy misdirects:
“Conservatives are responsible for banning incandescent bulbs by 2012.”
A Liberal government just spent Canadian tax money buying CF bulbs for our competitiors in china…so there is enough stupidity to go around.
I also note Harper has been trying to close the import laws to prevent Chinese dumping but he gets hissed at from across the house by the Powercorp Liberals who’s patron has big investments in polluting China.
So keep searching for some political party moral enough to defend…they all go rotten…we just have to have the sense to see when and get rid of them…like we did with the corporate croneyism Libranos
selMar: “All of the above may be true, but none of it is incompatible with the logic of free market capitalism.”
>> I qualified my assessment with “ethical capitalism” as practiced in civilized nations and civil societies….in that regard, we do not have state run/owned industies conspire with state owned banks to undercut prices to almost insolvency just to destroy global competition then reap the ill-gotten fruit of sole sorce monopoly…we have anti trust and anti-monopoly laws for a reason…because the natural source of aggressive unethical capitalism is monopoly…this is the same natural course of secular statism…monopoly on power…so we have constitutions limiting power…similarly we make anti trust laws limiting combines and the concentration of wealth and productivity in a few hands….the Chinese model has no such ethics….so western capitalism is at a disadvantage.
“The entire push for deregulation within N. America is premised on the fact that such externally (i.e., government) imposed constraints on the market are harmful and should be abandoned. The key difference with China is that it simply never bothered imposing such constraints to begin with.”
.. I think I said that…and yes the lack of regulation in the Chinese model amounts to a competative advantage. Now I have large libertarian leanings but I have never advocated total deregulation…industry must meet community living/health standards and be a responsible corporate citizen…no one advocates going back to industrial revolution robber baron oligarchy with hand to mouth existance for workers…or the costly polluting that was created.
Besides technical industry needs skilled labor and skilled labor is now mobile to the best work environment.
I say we just require the same standards we impose on domestic producers on import producers…same safety quality and product liability standards…if the products don’t have the approvals of international product quality/safety/reliability standards bodies like UL/CSA/ISO/NSF/IEEE etc…ban the import or tariff it into to domestic price ranges.
The Chinese and India have hooked themselves into a real pending economic crisis… their totally unregulated unethical industrial capitalization is creating vast toxin control and pollution problems that is killing their people…but they don’t care because their leadership are immoral depopulationists who feel the more who die off sooner the better for the rest….however the ones who are first bto go are in the industial heartland cities and are skilled labor so this will impact productivity….then the class A toxins they are rampantly spewing into their oceans and rivers will eventually contaminate ground water supply…and their smog will impact other nations who will embargo until they get a handle on their polluting.
In the long optics, unethical capitalism and irresponsible industrialization will implode on itself because it is not sustainable
In light of the fact that 98% of transplanted organs come from these polluted anti-popultionist environments, you may think twice about that bargaiun basement Chinese Kidney…no idea what it’s filled with 😉
WL Mac, re. impending Chinese crisis, I smell the same thing. You can’t give stuff away forever, particularly when you are trying to build an industrial infrastructure from nothing.
Look what we have right now. The Canadian dollar at par with the USA for the first time in 30 years, based on metals, oil and a lot of currency speculation.
The Euro at all time highs based on pure currency manipulation and speculation from China and the Arabs.
The American dollar at an all time low to the Euro and the Yen. Cause, stupid lending practices from the big banks and stupid STUPID management of the Big Three car companies. (Could GM be run by bigger morons? I doubt it.)
What’s going to happen from that? First, Europe is about to join Japan in a nice recession. Just in case anybody is wondering why the Frogs elected Sarkozy, its because their economy is taking a dump.
Second, I’m pretty sure (but not 100% yet) that the US economy is going to have a recession pretty soon.
With the whole of China’s market in recession and orders cut dramatically, anybody think China’s economy is going to be growing at 10%? Its going to crash hard and burn. India won’t, because they aren’t a 100% crooked central planned Commie-ocracy with their eye on world domination.
Where’s Canada in all this? Screwed, unless we get a major shakeup in taxes and government interference. When I say major, I mean like taxes cut in half or more with no capital gains tax, just for starters. Because why? Because everything we buy is made in China, and everything we sell is going to be CHEAP on the open market. We either recoup all the manufacturing we sent to China, Mexico and North Carolina, or we’ve got nuttin’.
Fun eh?
OWG, quite right, there are 5 milligrams of mercury in CFs. That’s a kilogram of mercury for 2 million bulbs. That’s a landfill that just became a contaminated site.
CCON, there will be no new reactors at Pickering. There’s no room on the site. The available sites in Ontario are at Darlington and Bruce. Bruce Power has already filed its application (last February), and its environmental assessment process has begun. The one for Darlington has yet to start.