The climate-change solution that flopped
January 29, 2009 by Mi Kai Lee
Filed under BC government, Canada government, Energy, Environment, Feature stories, Freedom, Local government, Safety, Technology, Video
The State of Maine prohibits disposal of compact fluorescents in the regular trash because they contain mercury.
Remember compact fluorescent bulbs — those light-bulb imposters that went over light a lead (or shall we say mercury) balloon? They were such a great idea for solving all the earth’s climate-change and global-warming problems that people just gobbled them up. Um, well, the promoters of the off-beat concept pretended that people bought them.
All of this of course was presumably because household electric lights were one of the biggest sources of energy consumption, and ‘encouraging’ people to adopt more energy-efficient devices would solve so many of the world’s most urgent environmental problems. It just made so much sense to tackle the big energy guzzlers first, not trivial things like transportation or computers and Internet. We have to get our priorities right if we are going to save the world.
But actually, people are not that dumb. Like 911, it may take a bit of time, but we do eventually figure things out and realize that someone has tried to pull a fast one on us.
Such is surely the case with the compact fluorescent craze. I say “craze” more in reference to the crazy concept and the crazy people promoting them than to any crazy passion for just having to have them in your home.
In fact, I know many people who simply won’t have the things in their home, and I know others who are now sending all their CFLs packing.
Compact fluorescents are complex electronic devices that require more energy than regular incandescents to produce
Why?
Well, to be honest, I think that the story of compact fluorescent ‘bulbs’ parallels the story of climate change and global warming itself. Some refer to the climate change bandwagon, like it is a political concept — not entirely resting on a foundation of truth and reality. They speculate that the climate-change-global-warming agenda is mainly to provide yet one more excuse to steal more of our personal freedoms. After all, environment is everything, so ‘fixing’ it would provide an endless supply of excuses for doing almost anything in the name of motherhood.
And so I think it’s just about the same for compact fluorescents. They come to us under the branding of ‘green’ and ‘energy saving’ and general goodness, like the innocence of babies or the naturalness of old-growth forest.
It is presumed they will be so ‘popular’ that stores will remove incandescents from the shelves because they are no longer needed or wanted. In countries like the United States, U.K and Australia they have already passed laws prohibiting the sale of old-style bulbs, we presume because… um… well, obviously because no one needs them any more, and so they need to make sure that is true by making it the law.
The problem is, compact fluorescents are a political scam. CFLs are not green, not energy-saving, not healthy, and not popular. They are being forced on people to create a market for mercury waste (similar to the fluoridation story). And they are being promoted by people who want to produce and sell hi-tech light bulbs because there is no profit in ordinary ones.
The curse of the curly lights!
When you consider the entire life cycle of this product, they consume more energy than producing and using incandescents — or at best provide no energy-saving advantage. When we count the fact that they are all currently imported all the way from China, the claim of energy-savings really starts to unravel.
Secondly, the mercury vapor sealed inside the glass tubes — where is that going to end up? And if it is recycled properly, how much energy will that take?
Thirdly — but probably the first on most people’s list — fluorescents are cathode ray tubes and they emit radiation — a great deal of radiation and charged particles. In other words, they are bad for people’s health. For sensitives, such as those suffering from environmental diseases like chronic fatigue syndrome, the health impact of CFLs can be anything but trivial.
Finally, there is the poor quality of light that these things produce. Being cathode ray devices, they do not produce a steady light. Rather, the light pulses on and off very quickly. To the eye it may appear to be continuous light, but to the brain it is pulsing. And pulsing light plays havoc with the brain and nervous system. People do not appreciate the impact of light on the pineal gland, on the serotonin/melatonin cycle, and the like, but it is very important. Our whole biological system is geared around the quality and timing of light.
Compact fluorescents are basically mercury-vapor lamps, which is what was used for years to light streets before the advent of the now ubiquitous orange sodium-vapor streetlights. Now the lighting industry is poised to switch street lighting over to LEDs, which according to lighting industry experts are a much better choice. But they don’t want householders to make the same wiser choice. Now why is that?
Current LED street lamps produce the same amount of light as mercury vapor lamps, but last 10 times longer and consume half the energy.
So there you have it. Those are all the great things people are saying about compact fluorescent ‘bulbs’, and that is why so many people are buying them that they are taking them off the store shelves, and they need laws to do so.
Still not convinced? Try going to NaturalNews.com and enter “CFL” in the search box.
And by the way, if you want a real energy-saving light bulb, look at the new LED clusters. LEDs last practically forever and consume a tiny fraction of the power of fluorescents. They are a steady light and don’t emit radiation outside the visible spectrum. Despite the initial cost of $100-and-some per cluster, I think that over their lifetime they will still be cheaper.
The simplicity, durability and long lifetime of LEDs make them way more energy-efficient than fluorescents over their entire life cycle.
Myself, I think I will go out and buy a few cases of regular bulbs to sell at a profit on the coming black market for incandescents.
Related links:
• US calls for treaty on mercury reduction
• Efficient lighting equals higher heat bills: study
The first question that comes to mind is where in the valley can I recycle toxic waste like this that cannot go into landfill?
And, not to sound too dumb, but in addition to the jet fuel needed to bring these things all the way from China, how much gas will I have to burn to take it for special disposal at the end of its life?
I find it almost incredible that governments (more than just one) are pushing something with health risks like this by falsely claiming they save energy. At the power plug maybe they burn less, but in the big picture it seems they may even use more power than ordinary bulbs.
This kind of makes me wonder what sort of hidden agenda could be so important that they have to get these into our homes by hook or by crook. It all sounds kind of fishy to me.
This is strongly reminiscent of water fluoridation, its falsely claimed benefits and the health risks associated with floridated drinking water.
Why are they doing this?
For those that need further clarification or for details on how to dispose of or clean up after a bulb break, please visit the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) website – http://www.epa.gov/mercury/spills/.
And, our recommendation is to get them out of your homes and offices – now! Consider LED lights – we know they are expensive – but a few carefully placed LED lights can also make a difference in your energy consumption.
Environmental and energy costs should be taken into account over the lifecycle of a product and until recently this was seldom done.
As with many things in life there are tradeoffs to lighting choices.
Only 10% of the energy used in an incandescent bulb creates light, 90% is lost to heat. Sale of low efficiency filament bulbs are scheduled to be banned starting in 2009 in Europe and Canada and by 2012 in the USA.
According to the Environmental News Network, enn.com, and to http://www.energystar.gov, compact florescent bulbs do save significant amounts of energy over their lifespan compared to incandescents, this includes energy in their manufacture. The websites claim that the mercury produced in creating electricity (released by coal powered electrical plants and from the resevoirs created for hydroelectric generation) outweighs the mercury within the CFL. Electrical generation is also a significant source of CO2 and other green house gases.
However, CFL is at best a stopgap light source. In addition to disposal issues for CFL bulbs, it turns out that their vaunted life expectancy can be dramatically lowered through frequent switching them on and off.
Until very recently LEDs could not produce stable white light. As they aged, they dimmed and shifted colour. The new white LED technology is currently very expensive, at $50 to $100 per bulb, making them prohibitive for all but the richest households. These prices are expected to drop sharply as technology now in the laboratory allows easier manufacturing.
There is another promising light bulb in development, the VU-1, that uses an integrated electron source, similar to a TV set to fire electrons onto a phosphor-coated glass. The phosphor, upon contact, transforms the signals into bright light. The product that emerged from this three-way process is an energy efficient floodlamp; the type of lights you use in kitchens and living rooms. There is no mercury in these bulbs.
How do you measure those environmental costs you mention? Do they include health costs? CFLs are an unhealthy alternative, to the point where some people simply cannot use them, and others refuse to. We need to count the health impact of such ‘energy saving’ devices.
We also need to think hard about whether the basic principle of free choice should be abandoned for a disputed energy savings, that at best is trivial in the big picture.
And that 90% of energy that incandescent bulbs ‘waste’ as heat… so in winter that is reducing our heating costs correspondingly, right? … is this counted in the energy-saving equation?
VU-1 is a health disaster in the making, worse than CFLs. I hope it never sees the light of day.
The day they make incandescents impossible to buy will be the day I get out my kerosene lamps. And yes, they pollute but I can live with them, unlike the radiation machines you call CFLs.
And those alleged energy savings of CFLs … not only do they ignore health costs, but no one seems to be counting the cost of disposal either.
I have absolutely nothing good to say about compact fluorescents. While they are not in the class of cell phones and wifi for health dangers, they are still a definite health problem.
Apparently the lifetime of a CFL is shortened considerably by switching it on and off frequently. Sounds like these are not real light bulbs, lol, because light bulbs are supposed to be turned on and off all the time. What kind of an energy audit would not take that into account?
The responsible energy user who habitually turns out lights when leaving an unoccupied room will see their energy-saving habits nullified with CFLs, because turning them off when not in use may, in the end, actually consume MORE energy – by having to buy the things more often.
When it comes to taking care of the planet, I do not believe there will ever be a technological fix, big or small, that is more effective than lifestyle changes.
I really don’t think the CFL craze has anything to do with saving energy and that the motives for pushing them lie entirely elsewhere. They are just doing it under cover of green, but it’s not green.
Good summary of the uselessness of CFL bulbs. As someone else has mentioned, the “wasted” energy from incandescent bulbs provides exactly 3.4 BTUs per watt, and for nine months out of the year we welcome BTUs by whatever means, if not from base loads and lighting then from our heating systems. In terms of greenhouse gas emissions, in the winter we here in Ontario are running mostly on nuclear, hydro and wind power rather than the fossil fuel power generation that comes on line during the air conditioning season, but most of our homes are heated with fossil fuels, so the energy NOT given off by the CFL bulbs is compensated for by more carbon emitting heating systems. Only in the summer does the CFL bulb appear to reduce overall energy use, but then the days are longer and lights used a lot less… Certainly not enough savings to compensate for the greater embodied energy, shorter lifespan and health effects! Typical government policy, pretending to do something while ignoring the real problems,,,