Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
Washington Post, Sept. 8, 2010;
The last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the United States is closing this month, marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison’s innovations in the 1870s. […] What made the plant here vulnerable is, in part, a 2007 energy conservation measure passed by Congress that set standards essentially banning ordinary incandescents by 2014. The law will force millions of American households to switch to more efficient bulbs.
United States Unemployment rate, Aug. 2010;
How many unemployed Americans does it take to screw in a CFL?
Our household’s stocking up on incandescents, since CFLs are crap bridge technology and high-powered LED bulbs aren’t yet cost-effective. We also use halogens, which, even though they’re really just a riff on incandescent tech, aren’t included in these mandated phase-outs.
We’ve probably got five years’ worth of incandescents around, by which time the LEDs are hopefully cheaper and brighter…
I have only one question to ask Al Gore and all the other phony eco twits.
Even if we go along with the theory … How will we know when the planet has been saved?
There really is no answer to that question, but I will toss out couple of the most honest answers I can think of.
Answer 1. We will never know for sure so we will need the continual diminishing of the human presence on the planet until we have achieved the living standards and population base of the 10th century.
Answer 2. The planet doesn’t require it’s life forms to save it from anything. It is a ball in space and doesn’t have anything at stake, really!. However, some ‘special’ people who believe they know how to best run an entire planet and all it’s species simply want to take a shot at controlling it … forever.
Now, what kind of answer will Al Really come up with? Or any of his minions and other eco despots. Go ahead, take a shot …
I do not pretend to be an expert on climate modelling, but I do know one hell of a lot about electrical engineering and lighting.
CFL bulbs are one enormous scam, and given that the earth-is-warming crowd peddle them as necessary to save the planet from doom, I can only assume that the global warming movement itself is a scam.
The question ladies and gentlemen is simply this: why are human beings so easily duped?
Or perhaps the question is this: why have human beings allowed governments to become so powerful, and have allowed them to be so thoroughly hijacked by special interest groups, that nearly every aspect of our lives is now under the government’s control?
The economics of incandescent bulbs aren’t so obvious in colder countries.
Incandescent bulbs generate more heat than CFL’s. In a warm country that’s a bad thing, for not only do you need electricity to generate that heat, you need electricity to remove it.
But in Canada, heat is a good thing for 9 months of the year, for it reduces your heating bill. And in the summer, people don’t tend to have the lights on as much anyway.
Of course electricity is a more expensive way to generate heat than natural gas, but where electricity is generated using hydro or nuclear generation (or bird blenders), it’s also greener.
Someone should do a study on this. Maybe they have.
not to worry democracy matters not. the word is out
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/09/08/years-setbacks-looks-world-leader/
With you rabbit. I live in eastern Ontario and my beloved incandescent bulbs provide a nice ambience on these chilly September evenings. Don’t have to fire up the dreaded oil furnace. I have the pig tail lights in all rooms except my living room (where I like to keep warm and read). I installed them a couple of years ago (on promises they would save me hundreds) but have never seen a savings on my ever increasing hydro bill which seems to be going to build chinese windmills and snow covered solar panels.
Where all all the pig tail lights made for GE? China if I am not mistaken. Thanks Barry, Dalton etc. In the midst of a recession they send more jobs offshore. Sure that is helping with the unemployment rate (or as we call it Canada the employment rate). Kinda like Dalton’s bird grinders being built in China also.
Where did we find these guys? A torch is a good source of heat…
start one of those CFL’s on your front porch at -30c ,
This is a clown show.
Are there other companies making these bulbs? They are the only ones i will ever use, the other ones (the twisty bulbs) are bad for the environment.
A black market will develop.
For example , Indians will sell Incandescent light bulbs along with cigarettes in their little kioskes on the side of the highway.
Impending ice age…..
Hole in the ozone (ban CFC’s)…..
Glo-bull warming……
Y2K scam…..
“Green” products…..
Pretzel light bulbs……
Invent the next scam and you too could be jetting around the globe and fine dining with the likes of the one-world government crowd.
I think it was Kate that once said we need gulags for all of the eco doomsayers. I agree.
It is really weird watching a country attempt to destroy itself legislatively. Of course, Canada is no better; our politicians are sending us down the drain at the behest of a pack of wild-eyed environmentalists who lie, distort, and plain fabricate information.
So let me get this straight…we should hold back on technology and innovation, instead sticking with a century old product because…people might lose their job? That’s life. Should we stop progress?
Look BTJ, technology and innovation may have been behind the CFL’s, but the side effect include:
* they don’t last anywhere near their claimed lifespans.
* when (not if) they explode they apparently spew harmful lead into the space they’re supposed to be lighting. Quick, call the haz-mat team!
* they flicker causing eye strain if you sit under them for too long.
* they don’t put out enough light. Even the claimed equivelent wattage isn’t even close to the incandecent variety.
* They’re really gay looking.
It’s hardly prgress if the negatives add up to a product of questionable benifit. (read: the Toyota Prius, Chevy Volt, ethanol blended gasolines and ultra high-efficeint natural gas furnaces now written into the Buiding Codes).
If we must live without a traditional Edison bulb, I’d sooner wait for LED technology to evolve than these stupid bulbs that I admit I fell for. (They’re all gone now as I type this below my 3-60 watt daylight incan’s!)
BTJ epitomises the stereotypical troll…
just stuck his head out from under the bridge, without a clue.
CFL’s are more efficient and conserve more energy thereby allegedly saving the planet. I would like to know, however, what the carbon footprint is for shipping those CFL’s all the way from China to North America. Kind of a wash vs. locally manufactured incandescents?? Especially if you also need a hazmat suit in case one of them breaks.
http://www.epa.gov/cfl/cflcleanup.html
“they don’t last anywhere near their claimed lifespans.”
And what does? They don’t last long if you don’t use them properly…they overheat if you put them in a closed space.
“when (not if) they explode they apparently spew harmful lead into the space they’re supposed to be lighting. Quick, call the haz-mat team!”
Actually it’s mercury that’s inside..and it’s an extremely minute amount.
“they flicker causing eye strain if you sit under them for too long.”
That’s an old problem..the newer ones don’t have this problem. It’s also usually only a problem when the light is on it’s way out.
“they don’t put out enough light. Even the claimed equivelent wattage isn’t even close to the incandecent variety.”
The problem is not how much light they put out but what KIND of light they put out. There have also been improvements in this, moving the light spectrum produced into the range picked up by human eyes.
“They’re really gay looking.”
No comment…this is enough to tell me that I shouldn’t take much of what you have to say seriously.
Hey BTJ, should we stop consuming bread because it’s a century old product? Should we stop flying planes, because they too are pretty much a century old product? I guess we should all stop wearing shoes as well, because that’s a very old technology. I’ll make sure not to burn candles in my house at the dinner table, as we shouldn’t be using that old product either now should we?
On the balance, the CFL bulb is inferior to a modern incandescent bulb on many measures.
And if you live in a cold climate, in a modern well-insulated home, the energy savings resulting from using a CFL bulb are *at best* only marginally better than using an incandescent bulb.
The light from an incandescent bulb is of substantially higher quality, and that alone far outweighs the *supposed* benefits of the CFL bulb.
If the CFL bulb were a stock, the people selling it would be arrested. But when it comes to “green”, you can flog any idiotic gadget, no matter how stupid and nonsensical, no matter how fraudulent the claims of its performance, and you are in the clear.
And finally, from the point of view of architectural lighting, the CFL bulb is about as bad as it gets because it is nearly impossible to focus the light rays that are emitted from it. You cannot properly focus light rays over say a 5 meter length when they are being generated by a stupid little twirly tube. You need something that at least *approximates* a point source.
The “light” rises in the east. China literally has control of the light switch on so many levels. Cheers.
I should add as well that you cannot dim CFL bulbs, despite claims that such bulbs “exist”. Many of the lights in my home have dimmers, and they are often dimmed by an automated system. This alone can easily bring their net power consumption down to the level of a CFL bulb (even ignoring the fact that their heat helps warm my home in the winter).
BJT says “moving the light spectrum produced into the range picked up by human eyes.”
What sort of an idiotic statement is that? Do you know how CFL bulbs work BJT? Do you know what a phosphor is? Do you know how expensive good quality phosphors are? Do you know what black body radiation is?
“Hey BTJ, should we stop consuming bread because it’s a century old product?”
If there was a new, better, substitute…yeah.
“Should we stop flying planes, because they too are pretty much a century old product?”
No they are not. The airplanes of today have gone through extensive improvements.
“I’ll make sure not to burn candles in my house at the dinner table, as we shouldn’t be using that old product either now should we?”
Not to light and heat your entire house, no.
“On the balance, the CFL bulb is inferior to a modern incandescent bulb on many measures.”
Care to expand on that?
“And if you live in a cold climate, in a modern well-insulated home, the energy savings resulting from using a CFL bulb are *at best* only marginally better than using an incandescent bulb.”
Huh? it doesn’t matter where you live, or what the climate is…the energy usage of a CFL is constant and so is the energy usage of an incandescent. The CFL uses WAY less.
“And finally, from the point of view of architectural lighting, the CFL bulb is about as bad as it gets because it is nearly impossible to focus the light rays that are emitted from it”
So don’t use them in your art museum then. For most practical purposes they work just fine.
“(even ignoring the fact that their heat helps warm my home in the winter”
Hahahahaha…right.
“What sort of an idiotic statement is that? ”
Why is it idiotic?
“Do you know how CFL bulbs work BJT?”
Ya, they draw energy through a gas. The reason for the claim that they don’t emit enough light is that the light produced doesn’t fall within the range of visible light (by the human eye), not because they actually don’t produce much light.
Has anyone noticed that the Neo Commies have a habit of pushing ideas that cost more with no benefit. These silly bulbs – actually halogen are better – Bio fuels organic farming and the one that hurts mommy gia the most shipping more jobs to China.
I think BTJ should go home and get his shine box.
BTJ you are out of your depth. But what I find amazing is that people like you swallow everything the government tells you. You appear to be a product of a bad educational system that no longer encourages people to think for themselves, or question the world around them.
If you want to fill your home with crappy inferior lighting that is your choice. But for God’s sakes learn to think for yourself. Enough said.
CFLs (for general household use, at least) are stupid, and so is effectively banning incandescents.
That said, I see no reason at all to make common lightbulbs in the US.
Comparative advantage and all that; I want all sorts of low-grade, not-especially-skilled mass production of commodity items done wherever it’s cheapest.
I’m neither a hippie nor a protectionist, is the thing.
(Oh, and BTJ?
“Light” that we can’t see is irrelevant to issues of home lighting.
Just like we don’t count the IR light that an incandescent bulb produces as “light”.
Saying “it makes lots of light, we just can’t see it” is kinda completely missing the point.
You also don’t get to say “CLFs are really efficient” [Because they don’t turn so much power into heat…] and then pooh-pooh the idea that those very hot bulbs help heat the home.
Either they’re making significant “waste” heat by being inefficient at making light or they’re not; you can’t have both at once.)
“BTJ you are out of your depth. But what I find amazing is that people like you swallow everything the government tells you. You appear to be a product of a bad educational system that no longer encourages people to think for themselves, or question the world around them.”
Rather than writing a bunch of statements and claims…why don’t you do both of us a favor and give some content behind your bs…what exactly have I said that appears to be the product of ‘government’ and the educational system? What am I wrong about…specifically, and why? What are the correct facts?
“”Light” that we can’t see is irrelevant to issues of home lighting.
Just like we don’t count the IR light that an incandescent bulb produces as “light”.”
I was merely clarifying an issue. The problem is not that a CFL doesn’t produce enough light period, but only the light we can see…which has been improved, and is likely easier to improve than trying to increase the total light output.
“Because they don’t turn so much power into heat.”
Actually they produce MORE heat than an incandescent, but it’s spread over a larger surface area (screw shaped fluorescent has way more surface area than incandescent bulb). They are more energy efficient because it takes less energy to heat the gas which produces light, than to heat the filament in an incandescent to produce light.
“then pooh-pooh the idea that those very hot bulbs help heat the home”
It’s an absolutely ridiculous idea…they don’t heat a damn thing except the 1 cubic foot of air surrounding the bulb. They likely provide less than 1% of your home’s heating requirements.
“Either they’re making significant “waste” heat by being inefficient at making light or they’re not”
You’re confused my friend. They don’t waste lots of energy through heat, they just require more energy to produce light.
Sorry, fluorescents don’t technically ‘heat’ gas to make light, but run an electrical current through it.
LED’s are hard on my eyes.