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Dimwits: Why 'green' lightbulbs aren't the answer to global warming
The Daily Mail ^ | 13th March 2007 | CHRISTOPHER BOOKER

Posted on 03/14/2007 5:08:22 PM PDT by fanfan

They have to be left on all the time, they're made from banned toxins and they won't work in half your household fittings. Yet Europe (and Gordon Brown) says 'green' lightbulbs must replace all our old ones.

Every day now we are being deluged with news of the latest proposals from our politicians about how to save the planet from global warming. We must have 'a new world order' to combat climate change, Gordon Brown proclaimed yesterday. We must have strict 'green' limits on air travel, proposes David Cameron, so that no one can afford to take more than one flight a year.

A fifth of all our energy must be 'green' by 2020, says the EU, even though there is no chance of such an absurd target being met. We must have 'green' homes, 'green' cars, 'green' fuel, even microchips in our rubbish bins to enforce 'green' waste disposal.

Have these politicians any longer got the faintest idea what they are talking about? Do they actually look at the hard, practical facts before they rush to compete with each other in this mad musical-chairs of gesture politics?

Take just one instance of this hysteria now sweeping our political class off its feet: that which was bannered across the Daily Mail's front page on Saturday in the headline 'EU switches off our old lightbulbs'.

This was the news that, as part of its latest package of planet-saving measures, the EU plans, within two years, to ban the sale of those traditional incandescent lightbulbs we all take for granted in our homes. Gordon Brown followed suit yesterday, saying he wanted them phased out in Britain by 2011.

No doubt the heads of government who took this decision (following the lead of Fidel Castro's dictatorship in Cuba) purred with selfcongratulation at striking such a daring blow against global warming.

After all, these 'compact fluorescent bulbs' (or CFLs), to which they want us all to switch, use supposedly only a fifth of the energy needed by the familiar tungsten-filament bulbs now to be made illegal.

Among the first to congratulate the EU's leaders was UK Green MEP Caroline Lucas, who claimed that 'banning old-fashioned lightbulbs across the EU would cut carbon emissions by around 20 million tonnes per year and save between e5 million and e8million per year in domestic fuel bills'.

Who could argue? Certainly one lot of people far from impressed by the EU's decision are all those electrical engineers who have been clutching their heads in disbelief. Did those politicians, they wondered, actually take any expert advice before indulging in this latest planet- saving gesture?

In fact, the virtues of these 'low-energy' bulbs are nothing like so wonderful as naive enthusiasts like Ms Lucas imagine them to be. Indeed in many ways, the experts warn, by banning incandescent bulbs altogether, the EU may have committed itself to an appallingly costly blunder.

It is a decision that will have a far greater impact on all our lives than most people are yet aware, presenting the UK alone with a bill which, on our Government's own figures, could be £3 billion or more.

The result will provide a quality of lighting which in many ways will be markedly less efficient. Even Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor who put forward the proposal, admitted that, because the energy-saving bulbs she uses in her flat take some time to warm up, she often has 'a bit of a problem' when she is looking for something she has 'dropped on the carpet'.

But even more significantly, because they must be kept on so much longer to run efficiently, the actual amount of energy saved by these bulbs has been vastly exaggerated.

So what are the disadvantages of CFLs over the traditional bulbs we will no longer be allowed to buy? Quite apart from the fact that the CFLs are larger, much heavier and mostly much uglier than familiar bulbs - and up to 20 times more expensive - the vast majority of them give off a harsher, less pleasant light.

Because they do not produce light in a steady stream, like an incandescent bulb, but flicker 50 times a second, some who use them for reading eventually find their eyes beginning to swim - and they can make fast-moving machine parts look stationary, posing a serious safety problem.

Fluorescent CFLs cannot be used with dimmer switches or electronically-triggered security lights, so these will become a thing of the past. They cannot be used in microwaves, ovens or freezers, because these are either too hot or too cold for them to function (at any temperature above 60C degrees or lower than -20C they don't work),

More seriously, because CFLs need much more ventilation than a standard bulb, they cannot be used in any enclosed light fitting which is not open at both bottom and top - the implications of which for homeowners are horrendous.

Astonishingly, according to a report on 'energy scenarios in the domestic lighting sector', carried out last year for Defra by its Market Transformation Programme, 'less than 50 per cent of the fittings installed in UK homes can currently take CFLs'. In other words, on the Government's own figures, the owners of Britain's 24 million homes will have to replace hundreds of millions of light fittings, at a cost upwards of £3billion.

In addition to this, lowenergy bulbs are much more complex to make than standard bulbs, requiring up to ten times as much energy to manufacture. Unlike standard bulbs, they use toxic materials, including mercury vapour, which the EU itself last year banned from landfill sites - which means that recycling the bulbs will itself create an enormously expensive problem.

Perhaps most significantly of all, however, to run CFLs economically they must be kept on more or less continuously. The more they are turned on and off, the shorter becomes their life, creating a fundamental paradox, as is explained by an Australian electrical expert Rod Elliott (whose Elliott Sound Products website provides as good a technical analysis of the disadvantages of CFLs as any on the internet).

If people continue switching their lights on and off when needed, as Mr Elliott puts it, they will find that their 'green' bulbs have a much shorter life than promised, thus triggering a consumer backlash from those who think they have been fooled.

But if they keep their lights on all the time to maximise their life, CFLs can end up using almost as much electricity from power stations (creating CO2 emissions) as incandescent bulbs - thus cancelling out their one supposed advantage.

In other words, in every possible way this looks like a classic example of kneejerk politics, imposed on us not by our elected Parliament after full consultation and debate, but simply on the whim of 27 politicians sitting around that table in Brussels, not one of whom could have made an informed speech about the pluses and minuses of what they were proposing.

Even if it does have the effect of reducing CO2 emissions, those reductions will be utterly insignificant when compared with emissions from China, for example, which is growing so fast it is using half the world's cement, 30 per cent of the world's coal, one quarter of copper production and 35 per cent of steel.

There was not a hint of democracy in this crackpot decision, which will have a major impact on all our lives, costing many of us thousands of pounds and our economy billions - all to achieve little useful purpose, while making our homes considerably less pleasant to live in.

Such is the price we are now beginning to pay for the ' ecomadness' which is sweeping through our political class like a psychic epidemic. The great 'Euro-bulb blunder' is arguably the starkest symbol to date of the crazy new world into which this is leading us.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Government; United Kingdom
KEYWORDS: algore; cfls; climatechange; electricity; energy; envirowhackos; eu; globalwarming
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CFLs cannot be used with dimmer switches

There is a 5 1/2" CFL which can be dimmed.

1 posted on 03/14/2007 5:08:23 PM PDT by fanfan
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To: xcamel

Ping


2 posted on 03/14/2007 5:09:33 PM PDT by fanfan ("We don't start fights my friends, but we finish them, and never leave until our work is done."PMSH)
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To: fanfan

LED lightbulbs are the answer, but they're several years away from being practical.


3 posted on 03/14/2007 5:09:59 PM PDT by flashbunny (<--- Free Anti-Rino graphics! See Rudy the Rino get exposed as a liberal with his own words!)
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To: fanfan

This is Socialism folks. Learn to hate it, despise it, spit upon it if you don't already.


4 posted on 03/14/2007 5:10:33 PM PDT by vpintheak (Like a muddied spring or a polluted well is a righteous man who gives way to the wicked)
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To: flashbunny
LED lightbulbs are the answer, but they're several years away from being practical.

I agree. The light from LEDs is getting whiter and brighter.

CFLs are very much like the betamax of their time.

5 posted on 03/14/2007 5:17:19 PM PDT by fanfan ("We don't start fights my friends, but we finish them, and never leave until our work is done."PMSH)
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To: vpintheak; Gabz; traviskicks
This is Socialism folks. Learn to hate it, despise it, spit upon it if you don't already.

I already do. ;-)

Ping!

6 posted on 03/14/2007 5:19:38 PM PDT by fanfan ("We don't start fights my friends, but we finish them, and never leave until our work is done."PMSH)
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To: fanfan

I have some of those CFL light bulbs. I never thought about global warming at all when I bought them. I do not care about global warming.


7 posted on 03/14/2007 5:23:08 PM PDT by MichiganConservative (America: Land of the sheep, home of the slaves.)
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To: fanfan
CFLs are very much like the betamax of their time.

There are applications where fluorescents make sense. There are other applications where incandescents make more sense. For other applications, sodium lamps, arc lamps, or other technologies may be more appropriate.

8 posted on 03/14/2007 5:26:53 PM PDT by supercat (Sony delenda est.)
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To: MichiganConservative
I have some of those CFL light bulbs. I never thought about global warming at all when I bought them. I do not care about global warming.

I have some too.

They suck, IMHO.

I bought them because they were supposed to use less energy, which would save me money, and because it was better for the environment.
Now that I've read this article I realize the suns-a-bees fooled me!

I do care about global warming. I hope the globe stays warm.

:-)

9 posted on 03/14/2007 5:29:03 PM PDT by fanfan ("We don't start fights my friends, but we finish them, and never leave until our work is done."PMSH)
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To: MichiganConservative

"I have some of those CFL light bulbs. I never thought about global warming at all when I bought them."

Me either. I have a 12' high ceiling fan I got tired of changing light bulbs in.


10 posted on 03/14/2007 5:32:08 PM PDT by L98Fiero (A fool who'll waste his life, God rest his guts.)
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To: fanfan

"Now that I've read this article I realize the suns-a-bees fooled me!"

Yeah, lighting your home is generally not the expensive part of your electric bill anyway. With CFL some folks are tempted to buy larger wattage bulbs as well. Best I could tell the savings would be negligible.


11 posted on 03/14/2007 5:36:34 PM PDT by L98Fiero (A fool who'll waste his life, God rest his guts.)
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To: fanfan

" mad musical-chairs of gesture politics "

And guess who's gonna end up standing all the time?
Standing in that dump full of mercury.


12 posted on 03/14/2007 5:38:18 PM PDT by Son House ( The Presidents enemies, are my enemies.)
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To: fanfan

I've changed over virtually every bulb in our home and cottage to these bulbs. I think they are great and we have had a substantial drop in our electric bills...which is why I put them in. They also last much much longer than the old bulbs. It is true that they take a few seconds to come up to full lumens, but you get used to that.

By the way, there are a number of varieties which will work with dimmers.

The EU regulations are the usual socialist crap one expects from Eurocrats, however. If someone told me I had to use these bulbs, I'd go buy all the old ones I could find, but that's just me (I suspect that will be the attitude in Greece. When the government says "yes", the Greeks tend to say "no" on general principle!).


13 posted on 03/14/2007 5:38:46 PM PDT by Kolokotronis (Christ is Risen, and you, o death, are annihilated!)
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To: fanfan

Luckily we use 110VAC @60hz instead of the 220VAC @ 50hz they use. Less flicker noticable from the bulbs.

I use them around the house. The 5000K temp bulbs though since soft white looks so horrible. It saves a little energy and lets me stick more wattage in a fixture to make a room brighter.


14 posted on 03/14/2007 5:41:24 PM PDT by Bogey78O (VDSL2 FTW)
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To: fanfan

"CFLs are very much like the betamax of their time."

Weren't beta players technically superior to vhs?

To me CFL's are like going from 8 tracks to cassette, instead of going all the way to CD's. They're an improvement but not the greatest thing out there. But the best thing needs time to develop and come down in price first.


15 posted on 03/14/2007 5:41:35 PM PDT by flashbunny (<--- Free Anti-Rino graphics! See Rudy the Rino get exposed as a liberal with his own words!)
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To: fanfan; All

About 12 years ago when I could first buy the CFL's that fit in my lamps and wall sockets. I replaced all the bulbs in my house. There was an immediate $10 a month reduction in my electric bill, and the bulbs lasted about 5 times as long as my incandescent bulbs. I figure I saved at least $1200 the first ten years. Now that Home Depot has the really inexpensive ones, I probably save even more.

A few years ago I became interested in a different way to save energy which was very doable and survivalist friendly. That is using straw bale construction for house building. Although vehicle energy uses about 25% of our energy. House and building demolition, construction and heating and cooling use something like 50% of our energy. The British estimate that house heating and cooling uses about 28% of their energy. Thus saving energy with the right housing is more efficient than saving vehicle energy.

We have got to stop making the Arabs rich at our expense. There is lots of interesing info on Straw Bale Construction on line. If you are interested you can also click my article on the subject at
http://ecobusinesslinks.com/straw_bale/straw_bale_solar_sustainable_development.htm


16 posted on 03/14/2007 5:43:18 PM PDT by gleeaikin
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To: fanfan; leda

From what I read of the article, the author is an uneducated idiot. JMHO.


17 posted on 03/14/2007 5:44:23 PM PDT by patton (In spit of it all...)
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To: patton

Where the warm cuddles are
The light travels slower
As it shifts down to yellow


18 posted on 03/14/2007 5:47:13 PM PDT by leda (The quiet girl on the stairs.)
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To: patton

yep! lol!

yer stalking me ;)


19 posted on 03/14/2007 5:48:35 PM PDT by leda (The quiet girl on the stairs.)
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To: fanfan; Abram; albertp; AlexandriaDuke; Alexander Rubin; Allosaurs_r_us; amchugh; Americanwolf; ...
Libertarian ping! To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here.
20 posted on 03/14/2007 5:49:33 PM PDT by traviskicks (http://www.neoperspectives.com/Ron_Paul_2008.htm)
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