Fluorescent Bulbs Are Known to Zap Domestic Tranquillity; Energy-Savers a Turnoff for Wives

George Monbiot, in his book "Heat" (which I think becomes available in the US this month) says, "On a return flight from London to New York, every passenger produces roughly 1.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide: the very quantity each of us will be entitled to emit in a year once a 90 percent cut in emissions has been made."

"These factors tend to be left out of the discussion." because a market based economy has no way to incorporate these externalities into the market price. Great fortunes have been made in the extractive industries because, in part, the demand for their product is higher than it would be if the extractors had to pay the full social costs of extraction.

However, as long as coal is plentiful (and cheap) it _will_ be used and anyone who thinks otherwise is hopelessly naive. If it becomes economical to capture the CO2, convert it to CO and use it as a chemical feedstock to make plastics, gasoline, etc., West Virginia and eastern Kentucky will soon be flatlands just like the western forests disappeared to clear cutting. The best one can hope for is to ameliorate the effects and maybe reducing the CO2 emissions will save the new flatlands from inundation or, at least, delay the flood.

John Prine wrote "Paradise" about 35 years ago (at about the time CFLs were introduced*) and environmental damage in W. VA and eastern KY predate mountain top removal. Little has changed (other than the Peabody coal train moving on to other flatland coal fields in Ohio, Illinois, Wyoming, etc. and our use of coal accelerating - more than half our electricity is coal-based and that percentage is increasing) despite all the wailing and gnashing of teeth by "environmentalists".

Anyway, I think you will find that it was a federal judge with a lifetime appointment and no need for campaign funds who ruled the EPA and Corps of Engineers have no authority to block mountain top removal.

So far, higher gasoline prices have made no dent in the number of miles driven by Americans. It remains to be seen whether the higher food prices caused by the idiotic subsidies for corn-derived ethanol will wake anyone.

*mentioning CFLs keeps this HA related - ;)

So true. It seems that knowing that the US, China and plenty of other countries will be burning coal until the sky is black, we had best do what we can to "clean the tailpipes." That's where the government *should* be coming in (and may, in time) giving incentives to the private sector to do massive, A-bomb level R&D on the problem. The trouble is that there are few incentives left since plant owners have extracted big tax breaks for years to the point where I doubt anything short of a transfer straight from the US Treasury would motivate them.

We've split the atom, reached the outermost planets, cloned complex creatures and much, much more. It's just not conceivable we can't solve a problem like removing the worst of the pollutants from smokestacks of the world's power plants. I remember a time when you couldn't stand behind a car without getting knocked out by the fumes. Now you can stand behind most cars and smell nothing and see nothing but a little water vapor at startup.

The recent "war on terrorism" has set back nuclear power considerably, and although new plants are coming on line, they're in old locations where permit battles have already been fought and won. Nuke power doesn't solve the waste problem, either, it just transmogrifies it into another kind of problem.

The world will eventually turn to the sun for that reasons and I hope that when the solar train gets moving that the advances come as rapidly as they did with PC's. I also hope that the sky isn't too dim and murky by then to generate any electricity. Imagine the effect of the X trillion dollars the Iraqi escapade will cost put into solar rebates. Lots of coal plants would become museum pieces.

-- Bobby G.

Worse, still, IMHO, is that those 1.2 tons are emitted at very high altitudes where they apparently are able to block a large amount of sunlight reaching earth.

I was amazed at how surprised scientist were to learn of the effect of jet exhaust on the amount of sunlight reaching the earth. That was only 6 years ago, so there's a lot more to learn. The jet exhaust, might, paradoxically, be a good thing. One scientist in the interview posited the planes might have actually been slowing global warming by reducing the sunlight reaching earth and robbing the greenhouse engine of some of its potential fuel. That's just a reminder of the complexity of the problem.

In the end, it will probably turn out that it's a big change in plankton levels that is changing the CO2 levels in the air, in the same way such changes are thought to have altered the atmospheric balance hundreds of thousands of years ago.

I'm still planning for the next house to have as much solar power as practical, even if it isn't economical at the moment. It's the only power source that doesn't pollute (except at the manufacturing/recycling phase) and that I don't have to worry about falling into terrorist hands.

-- Bobby G.

No, it's an absolutely accurate statement. There's a big gap between "hoping to" and "really reducing" demand. As we've seen in gasoline consumption, even rising prices don't seem to affect demand the way economists so neatly predict they should. The entire focus of our efforts should be at controlling airborne mercury at the stack, not adding even more of it to landfills in a "hopeful" effort to reduce demand and thereby mercury entering the air.

You're proposing a short-sighted solution that 1) doesn't directly address the core pollution problem, 2) depends on the demand reduction staying permanent and 3) actually *adds* more of one of the very pollutants you're trying to control back to the environment. Three strikes and you're out!

I still like the EPA's weasel words: "Presents an opportunity" to reduce demand. We know, historically, that is not likely to happen. And in the meantime, the CFL Band-Aid makes the problem seem somehow under control and undermines the only credible solution.

Clean it at the smokestacks, not via hope, hype, trickling up, trickling down or "presented opportunities." The longer band-aids delay the hard medicine of emission control, the worse the air quality. In fact, keeping demand at bay might even prevent the need for new plants - but ironically those would be new plants that are cleaner and that have to face tough new plant construction rules. CFL's might keep those old, dirty grandfathered plants running far longer than they would have otherwise. None of these problems are as simple as they seem once you start carefully examining the inputs, outputs and interactions of all the pieces.

To complicate things more, many of those old, dirty plants are only brought on line to handle peak loads, like incredibly hot summer days. You can be pretty sure, from the common sense side of the equation, that it's millions of 20A air conditioners and not tungsten light bulbs causing those peak loads.

-- Bobby G.

That's a good point. It's a reminder that these problems are extremely complex, involving many factors that are often conveniently ignored so as to muddy up the waters even more and make clear analysis very difficult.

Ship the waste back to the mine sites in the empty coal cars it came in? Seriously, though, there are new technologies that make coal cleaner, but they aren't going to forced on the industry for years, if not decades. That's too late.

Perhaps "cleaner coal" would be a more accurate description. As long as the true costs are masked (the environmental damage from mining and transport, as you've noted) the cost equations are always going to be easily manipulated.

I still think it's critical to reduce, in any way we can, the noxious material that coal produces. Since coal isn't going away anytime soon and in fact is now burned in China at record levels, we need more than just nibbling at the demand with CFL's in the hopes that demand will decrease markedly. It's sad that the DOE appears to be another toothless Federal agency, existing primarily to spout the industry party line. One can only hope they're doing a better job than the Feds have been doing with spinach, peanut butter and dog food but I doubt it.

-- Bobby G.

Hmm. Mexicans usually walk back in. That means they are doing more than their part to fight pollution. :^)

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree, Bobby.

Hi:

Here's my two cents:

Coal:

It's not only the burning but also the mining that is horrifically destructive. Just visit West Virginia

CFLs:

1. Aside from using less electricity, you can get more light from a given fixture because there is less heat.
2. You should always recycle fluorescent lamps to reclaim the materials including the phosphorus and mercury.

Peace

And yet you insist that is preferable to doing anything on the demand side, such as using high-efficiency lighting.

I guess you must agree that scrubbers, which do nothing about mining and transportation, will not solve the problem.

One way to do that is to use less energy. This doesn't mean we will use less tomorrow than we are today. It means we can use less tomorrow than we might otherwise use tomorrow. CFLs are but one way to implement changes for the better.

That is what happens when an incpmpetent, border line retarded person unencumbered by ethics or even the remotest hint of honesty is given the reigns of government. Compounding Bush's unbelievable stupidity, his insatiable greed and his total lack of moral character is his incomprehensible belief that he is "God's Man of the Hour." The idiot actually believes that God has sent him to lead the world -- never mind the fact that the rest of the world thinks he's a buffoon.

What would give rise to such a hope?

Big Dummy barfed:

True and this is the point of most of the sane responses to this thread.

That is why CFLs are an important part of any conservation solution. They are simple to install and reduce electrical demand allowing both base load and peaking plants to use less fuel. Since most base load plants in the US use coal then less "noxious material" is created along the entire coal process. Will the substitution of CFLs "fix" the coal problem? For course not. But they are a simple step that could shave a few percentage points off of the coal problem.

My problem is with those that introduce doubt that CFLs are a useful technology for retrofitting the millions of Edison base light fixtures that exist across the world. Fear mongering about light quality, mercury and other quibbles will keep thousands from adopting this simple method of reducing man's footprint on Earth.

A penny saved is a penny saved. Therefore a kw/h saved is an average of

8 cents saved AND less pollution created. There is no amount of rhetoric that will change this fact.

I suggest you actually take the time to read the thread before making such wild accusations about what has been said. I don't believe anyone has said that CFLs don't save electricity. What has been said is that they are not the panacea that proponents claim and that there are other steps that can save far more energy without forcing people to do what many, many millions have freely chosen not to do in the nearly 30 years that CFLs have been available and that can more directly address the problems like CO2 and mercury pollution.

Most of the distortion and fear mongering (and inflated numbers) seem to be coming from the CFL proponents not the opponents. I think forcing everyone to use CFLs may delay the apocalypse by a few weeks or a few months but far more massive changes in lifestyle are necessary if it's to be avoided all together and that's where the focus needs to be, not on marginal "feel good" empty gestures. Given that the polar ice is melting much faster than the models predicted we may have already reached or passed the tipping point so a 1-2% reduction in electricity use is inconsequential.

The problem is that most "environmentalists" long ago decided "if you can't beat them, join them" and instead of going after the polluters are now allied with them and even funded by them so they're not likely to bite the hands that feed them any more than is the EPA which, when founded in 1970, was supposed to "save the planet" but has morphed into the Enterprise Protection Agency.

Consumer Reports recently tested new "energy star" washing machines and found that unless you pay for top-of-the-line models ($1000), you'll be wearing dirty clothes, as the less expensive models don't do a good job of getting the dirt out. It sounds like the low flush toilet all over again and will likely lead to more not less energy use.

There's been insanity? Perhaps the political gridlock of the nation has something to do with the way differences of opinion are handled these days as in "anyone who doesn't think like I do is crazy." It's not the ideal foundation for compromise or even intelligent discussion.

"Could" shave. It's pretty obvious where we disagree. You hope the that reduced demand trickles up the smokestacks, I fear that the mercury added to millions of lamps will trickle down into the groundwater. We've had our national share of infatuation with "miracle" substances that turn out to be curses, from DDT to asbestos. We know mercury is bad. We've made great strides in reducing mercury contamination from alkaline batteries and dental amalgam. Why would we want to institutionalize a new source of it with the

*hope* that it reduces demand?

Why not push R&D on non-mercury high-efficiency light sources? As more and more CFL plants come on line, they'll be as hard to retire as the coal burning power plants, even if something better comes along. That model of industrial behavior is already pretty clearly established and it's precisely why we're stuck with coal plants that will run until they rust. People really need to be wary of "hair of the dog that bit you" solutions.

Why not push mercury recovery at the source so that you don't have to depend on people's recycling behavior or whether the reduced demand really cuts significant amounts of pollution? Historically, in America, if *you* reduce demand, there are probably at least two or three other people more than willing to make it up. And the mercury then still flows from the smokestacks. There's only one way to deal with issue and it's at the stacks. It's just silly to disperse millions and millions of mercury-containing lightbulbs into the environment because we're unwilling to catch the mercury at several hundred plants where it's emitted. It's the magician's classic misdirection, meant to keep Congress from imposing hard medicine on people and power plants.

I suspect I don't have to do a single thing to discourage their use. I fear that lots and lots of people have tried them, experienced one of those "quibbles" whether it be emitting acrid, toxic smoke in the failure more or just not fitting into a standard fixture, and then abandoned the whole idea.

In the spirit of *trying* hard to make CFL's work, I just bought one of the Greenlite dimmable fluorescents ($17!) that Smarthome sells. It's got 5 year guarantee, but the touted savings are only $35 per bulb, a far cry from the absolute fairytales previously printed on CFL packages. While this 23W bulb just managed to fit in my desklamp, it's 6.25" long, a full 2" longer than the 75W incandescent bulb it's replacing.

While it may be dimmable, the local sense feature of the lamp module driving it no longer seems to function. With the brightest part of the bulb extending 2" beyond the reflector, the bulb casts garish shadows and produces a quality of light that makes normal deskwork impossible. I have to point the light away from me and against the wall to light the desk area indirectly. Those may be quibbles to you, but I must be a tougher customer. I consider it unacceptable lighting quality.

Now I have to add the cost of a new lamp fixture to the equation. I wonder how much electricity the forge that created that new lamp used or how much it will cost to recycle my old one? The savings from CFL's just seem to get wispier and wispier when you begin looking closely. No one's saying high efficiency lamps aren't a good idea. When the LED bulb arrives that looks, acts and lights like a tungsten bulb, and doesn't cost 1000X as much, I will embrace it. But love the mercury-based CFL with all its warts? No thanks. I suspect that in ten years, the CFL will be looked on as the

8-track tape player of our age.

It's just that you're achieving those savings at a cost of putting more mercury into the environment and at a cost of anywhere from 5 to 50 times a tungsten bulb. In addition to gambling that all the bulbs going into landfills won't be a future issue, you're also betting that the Chinese plants making those bulbs are handling the mercury they're using in an environmentally responsible way (think pet food!). You've got to wonder when a company like Walmart, with a history of social munificence just short of the Huns, decides to start hawking CFL's. I'd bet they'd get behind

*anything* they could sell where they could quintuple the base price.

-- Bobby G.

I'm not quite sure how you twisted the words I wrote into that particular contortion, but that's certainly NOT what I've been insisting. I want the government to step in to help fix the problem, because it's a situation where commercial interests just won't do it for economic reasons. Power generation is so essential to the health of the nation, and in so many ways, that it can't really be left to business to "get it right." Instead of mandating that everyone switch to CFL bulbs containing mercury, the Feds and the country need to get serious about cleaning up smokestack emissions so no matter what light bulbs we choose, they don't cause mercury to belch out at the smokestack. The CFL proponents confuse amelioration with solution. That's dangerous.

"The problem" up until your last paragraph has been: Is it a good idea to fight mercury with mercury? If you want to consider collateral issues there are certainly lots of problems with using coal for power. Yet we can all be assured that it's going to continue for decades, so we had better get to work, and quickly, to solve as many of those problems as we can as directly as we can. That's bound to produce better results, in the long run, than 6% of the population using CFL bulbs in half the fixtures in their homes hoping that small number of bulbs is somehow going to reduce huge quantities of mercury from entering the air, the ground, the water and the food chain.

-- Bobby G.

Actually, Bobby G has repeatedly insisted that CFLs create more problems than they solve. That is absurd.

No one is claiming CFLs are a panacea. They are one good step in the right direction.

Your suggestion was to ban air conditioning. That would save electricity but I suspect you'd get a bit more public resistance there than to using CFLs.

Most people don't even know what they are.

Have come from you and Bobby G.

That's a perfect example. No one is trying force you to use FCFL's. Some efforts are aimed at reducing or eliminating conventional bulbs. CFL's are but one alternative.

This is typical resistant blather. Because the problem is large we shouldn't take small steps to reduce it. It's the equivalent of telling a starving man that because food is a whole mile away he shouldn't start walking.

That's utter nonsense. The problem is that the current administration has put incompetent, industry-allied vermin in charge of every federal agency. Government scientists have been told not to even attend global conferences without permission on pain of losing their jobs. Bush has unilaterally derailed the EPA, broken the Kyoto treaty (along with just about every other, including the Geneva Convention).

It didn't morph by itself. It was beheaded by Bush.

Good stuff usually costs more than junk. The problem with CR is they only test one sample of each product. They occasionally get a lemon while the rest of the production is good. They also occasionally get one good item that's a fluke -- the rest of the units fail. For example, many years ago we bought a Tappan range, double oven and fridge after reading favorable reports in CR. All but the ovens gave us nothing but trouble. We had to replace the fridge and range in less than five years.

You make the comparison but show no facts to support it. That is misleading. You introduce doubt without reason. This is the self-same tactic used in the "Republican War on Science." (apologies to Chris Mooney).

The mercury in CFLs is capped at 5 to 6 mg per unit, depending on the wattage. Several major manufacturers currently limit mercury to less than 2 mg per bulb.

The following is from the EPA statement on mercury in CFLs:

"CFLs Responsible for Less Mercury than Incandescent Light Bulbs"

"Ironically, CFLs present an opportunity to prevent mercury from entering our air, where it most affects our health. The highest source of mercury in our air comes from burning fossil fuels such as coal, the most common fuel used in the U.S. to produce electricity. A CFL uses 75% less energy than an incandescent light bulb and lasts at least 6 times longer. A power plant will emit 10mg of mercury to produce the electricity to run an incandescent bulb compared to only 2.4mg of mercury to run a CFL for the same time."

What that means is that every CFL used will reduce the "mercury footprint" of the incandescent bulb it replaces. Bobby's worries have been laid to rest by science. :^)

That's already going on. Meanwhile CFLs can reduce mercury in the air. That would qualify as a good thing.

CFL plants don't exist. Lighting manufacturers set up lines to manufacture all sorts of bulbs. The plants are constantly changing their production lines as demand for various products waxes and wanes.

I worked in manufacturing industries years ago at companies making everything from carbide cutters to brushes for street sweepers to molded plastic. Machines that make bulbs and other "blown" products are routinely retooled to make other devices.

BTW, this reminds me of a funny thing that happened when I was installing a fire alarm in a manufacturing plant in CT years ago. I was affixing the mounting base for a rate-of-rise heat detector on the ceiling above an injection molding machine. I accidentally dropped the plastic base and it fell into a huge bin which was being filled by the molding machine. Climbing down from my ladder I looked into the bin to retrieve the base. There were hundreds of them in there, all exactly the same unit that I dropped. I checked out the machine and it was almost the same as ones I ran at Gilbert Plastics during a summer job as a teenager many years before. :^)

That is completely false information.

That has been answered already. Instead of responding to what you're told you repeat the same mantra.

Again, you are repeating an inappropriate analogy. You've been told this is wrong and shown why. Rather than respond to what you read you repeat the same erroneous supposition.

Once again, you are wrong and I suspect you know it. There is no single solution to this complex problem. By insisting there is and saying that we shoould do nothing else until this "one solution" appears you are burying your head in the sand. Unfortunately, the sand may be contaminated by mercury.

Once more you are repeating the same claim which has already been shown to be false. CFLs reduce the amount of mercury pollution.

That is untrue.

As more CFLs are made production costs as well as mercury content will continue to decrease.

Think fear mongering at its worst.

I have a solution to that. My family does not shop at Walmart or Sam's Club. Rather than whine about all the bad things they do, I do my part for social justice, perhaps paying a little more, to buy my goods elsewhere.

That's microeconomics. If enough people do the same thing instead of complaining about mercury while driving their SUVs home from Walmart with a package of 100 Watt conventional bulbs they can do something about Walmart.

Oh, by the way, I'd also do something political about Chinese behavior. I'd institute majjor tarriffs on everything made or assembled in China, making their goods unmarketable in this country.

You're dreaming. If the people don't care enough to fix their own behavior, there's no chance our industry-owned congress and our moronic president will do anything for us. They don't care and if you don't care enough to stop polluting neither will they.

There is no such mandate. You've been told that before but you keep repeating the same thing.

That sounds nice but it's wrong.

Bullshit! You are still ignoring the facts.

One way to reduce mercury pollution and greenhouse gas emission is to reduce demand. CFLs are a valid part of that.

The objective is to get much greater participation. I've been studying the issue and have decided to replace most of the fixtures in both my homes with CFLs. My wife, without even bringing it up, already replaced some of the bulbs in our Brazilian place.

BTW, there's an added benefit to using CFLs for many modern homes. Our ceilings are 12 to 14 feet high. Replacing bulbs in most of them requires climbing a step ladder. Due to health problems that's difficult for me at present. CFLs last so much longer that I won't need to deal with the ladder as often. I just checked and there are more than 20 recessed light fixtures. As each bulb goes we'll replace it and the others in the same room. That will reduce one difficult job on my wife's honey-do list.

Again, you're being misleading. No one said that. The plan is to use an increasing number of high- efficiency bulbs to reduce total electric demand.

The CFL's are going to outlive you, in fact, even an incandescent bulb installed today will have a longer useful life than your own.