The rage about incandescents is so pathetic, because they’re not even banned at all. The law requires like a 25% increase in lightbulb efficiency, which can be met with slightly more efficient incandescent bulbs. They’ll probably burn out just as fast as good ol’ incandescents, which should piss off the libruls at least a little bit.

reminds me of Scherer’s post on Swampland that compared Newt to a bully, a favorable quality for Republican primary voters. the lightbulb issue is the same phenomenon: an opportunity to beat up on weenie liberals, to make them squeal in displeasure, like taking their lunch money. it’s the psychological equivalent of a twelve-year-old stealing a nerd’s lunch money.

These are the same people who celebrate Earth Day by going out and running their SUVs on idle all day (or at least claim that they do online).

It’s a pointless, futile, and given gas prices expensive gesture, but I’m sure it proves the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor…or something.

To us this does seem petty, selfish and all the rest but to rightwingers this is a real and dangerous affront to their very being.  (I will grant that it is bullshit.) These people love their privilege - even if it is just that they were born in America, unlike those “illegals.”  They see us liberals stealing their status away from them.

Little slights like saying the lightbulb their grandpa used is not good enough seem to them like the edge of a slippery slope into the very bottom of the heap.  And they sure know it’s a slippery slope because they have been successfully chipping away at voting rights, labor unions and women’s reproductive choices for years.

This is one obsession that I honestly haven’t been able to fathom.  Because you’re right—all of this is true.  But of course it’s unbelievably self-destructive.  Incandescents are a hundred year old technology.  They are hot and inefficient.  This shit costs conservatives money directly out of their pockets.

This kind of thing makes me start to wonder if they aren’t all trying to destroy themselves.  If they don’t know perfectly well how evil they are.

“Little slights like saying the lightbulb their grandpa used is not good enough seem to them like the edge of a slippery slope into the very bottom of the heap.”

By God, if incandescent light bulbs were good enough for Grandpa, they’re good enough for us.  And it follows that the vacuum tubes in Grandpa’s radio and TV must be good enough for us too.

If we abolish the transistor (nasty little European buggers accidently discovered by Americans who were looking for ways to decrease electrical efficiency to stick it to young Al Gore) then in one swoop we’ll roll back the last 50+ years of “progress”.  No more Internet, no more cell phones, no more transistor radios playing noisy rock-and-roll music.

We won WWII without transistors!  We fought the cold war for over a decade without transistors!  If we could watch “I Love Lucy” on TVs with no transistors in them, then we can watch Republican debates that way too.  And the fact Vacuum tubes are not very efficient is icing on the cake.

Suck it tree-huggers, hippies, and moonbats!  And take a bath!...

Don’t underestimate the power of the near-psychotic fear of change. It’s pretty much what the conservative movement has been about for the last almost fifty years.

I guess it could be covered by #4, but you left out what you once said was the reason they like to invest in gold- incandescents are “old timey.”  Those lightbulbs were good enough for the Founding Fathers, they’re good enough for us!

Yeah, the outright hostility to the environment is interesting to me.  A sort of lifelong temper tantrum that the world exists.

That’s probably at the heart of this, an endless fury that the real world obviously exists and solipsism is stupid.

Point #6 is, I think, an even bigger explanation for Newt’s (current) popularity than is his racism.  The audience was just as psyched to see Gingrich go off on John King (who works in the media and is therefore by definition a liberal) as they were to see him go off on Juan Williams.  They love that he “sticks it to the liberals,” won’t back down from them, etc.

You’re right that the healthy response is mockery, but I find myself furious that a sizable bloc of American voters seems more interested in pissing me off than in doing anything constructive for the country or the world.  And then I realize that my fury also makes them happy, which makes me even angrier.  I need a vacation or something…

What happens next? I’m black so wingnuts don’t talk to me or send me the emails that the rest of you get from your the batshit wingnuts in your life. When incandescent bulbs continue to appear on store shelves all over America, what do they say then? How do they rationalize their lunacy at that point or do they just move on to something else?

I have wondered whatever happened to the “Hillary Clinton is the anti-Christ” people now that Fox News has proven that Barack Obama is really the anti-Christ. Did they ever admit they were wrong?

What happens next? I’m black so wingnuts don’t talk to me or send me the emails that the rest of you get from your the batshit wingnuts in your life. When incandescent bulbs continue to appear on store shelves all over America, what do they say then? How do they rationalize their lunacy at that point or do they just move on to something else?

Same way they rationalize believing Obama wants to take their guns away, I’d guess. It’s probably a lot like when a cat falls down and then walks off as stiffly as possible seeming to say “I meant to do that.” In public, they just do the straightforward switch that Orwell satirized with “We have always been at war with East Asia.”

@11 - reality doesn’t matter. The slighly more efficient incandescents that remain on the shelf would be evil commie librul bulbs that suck out your life essence or something along those lines.

I wonder if the (very small) mercury content of CFL bulbs were given more attention, perhaps the wingnuts would be all about them since mercury pollution pisses off the libruls?

Yea, so Conservatives never want to conserve electricity, or gasoline, or the environment, thats the dirty liberals… Huh?

I think selfishness is the best point here, if certain things are not unlimited they are not invincible He-men who eat steak all day, they might actually die and nobody give a shit plus there is no Heaven.

I almost feel bad bringing CFLs up, because it’s a distraction. Personally, I think they’ve advanced enough that you can’t tell the difference in most workaday situations. But they’re a red herring, since there is no ban on them. Just pointing out that even if incandescents were banned for everyday use, not a single Fox News watcher would even notice unless you made a fuss over it.

Honestly it must be some of what you describe. Otherwise it’s incomprehensible. It’s a bit like their angry urge for unhealthy transfats. Dude this stuff is objectively better. Even if you not only don’t believe in sustainable development, but in fact want to pollute the earth and waste irresponsibly our energy sources: It’s cheaper, it’s brighter, it consumes less, it lasts more. Sticking to the old stuff is unreasonable. Ugh.

@11: They’re the Unholy Binity. Both are the anti-Christ.

Also, the “beat up the liberals” thing. It’s just pathetic; it’s like when small dogs bark at you. They think they’re so tough! But you’re laughing at them.

The sad thing is that this more efficient technology has been available for at least a decade for incandescent bulbs. Back in school, maybe 2000 or ‘01 I was at a talk given by an R&D representative of one of the major lightbulb manufacturers, I forget which one, who was discussing their work on increasing efficiency through coatings on the bulbs, different gases, filaments, etc. I don’t remember the exact numbers she said, but it was definitely more than 25% increase in efficiency.

“Same way they rationalize believing Obama wants to take their guns away, i guess.”

Yeah, Every time I bring this up to my briother-in-law he gets all pissed off. He was sure they were going to storm his house and take all his coolo stuff.

“So still got all those guns, huh?”

“Fuck off!”

“:-)”

For what it’s worth: While I believe the tech will get there fairly soon, as of now I’m still sticking primarily with incandescent bulbs.  CFLs in particular give crappy light by comparison.  I get pretty tired of people claiming that the light given off by CFLs is really basically no different.  Look: SCIENCE!:

http://www.jasonmorrison.net/content/2009/how-do-led-lightbulbs-compare-to-cfl-and-incandescent/
http://www.roperld.com/science/electromagneticspectraoflightbulbs.htm

...LEDs are getting a lot better in that area, and I use LED bulbs for some of the fixtures in my house right now… but there still doesn’t exist an LED bulb I’m aware of that has the nice, warm quality of a “soft white” incandescent.

The other reason I so far haven’t switched most of my lights over to LED is that, at present, the technology for putting an LED on a dimmer still sucks. It goes up and down by steps, and you can’t dim it down below around 25% of it’s usual power.  I have pretty much every light in the condo on a dimmer, and while I need the full power on rare occasion, I’d say 90% of the time my lights are running at 10-20% power.  Which, of course, also uses a heck of a lot less energy.

Of course, none of this matters in terms of the conservative anti-lightbulb-efficiency crusade, because really that has a lot more to do with Damn Libruls Tellin’ Me Whut To Do than the actual lightbulbs.

But it does kind of bug me when the issue of light quality is brushed off as “CFLs are A-OK!”

I’m glad the video mentioned LED bulbs at the end.  I really wish CFL’s weren’t being pushed so much right this moment when we’re so close to consumer grade solid state bulbs.  The whiny outcry when people who grudgingly replaced their incandescants with CFLs are told they should replace their CFLs with LEDs is going to be wicked annoying.

The funny thing is, you do hear about the mercury thing, but I think it’s presented less about worry about mercury per se as some kind of statist catch-22—you crack the bulb and suddenly your house is a Superfund site, because of some story where a woman broke a CFL and freaked out because someone gave her advice suitable for a much larger mercury spill.

One thing about florescent lights is that they are filled with mercury - not exactly the salve for our beloved ecology. My other grievance with them is the ridiculous claims that they will last for years longer than incandescent. I have to replace bulbs at our film vault facility and I can attest that they don’t last any longer - they do cost more though.

This is also an instance of govt. ‘picking winners.’

Back before I realized there was no actual ban, my only “worry” was the application where you needed a clear bulb, like in outdoor house lights because the bulb is visible… well of course there is no ban so thats not a problem but I have discovered some types of LED’s, they are the undimable type, that look alright outside plus they are only 2.5 watts, little less bright than an incandescent but the color of the light looks better to me for an outdoor light.  This is 2.5 watts vs. 60 watts, its really amazing when you think about that plus you consider this is new technology thats only going to get better.  I put a couple of these indoors also in places like basement stairs because I can leave them on all the time and not have somebody fumble for a light switch, sounds wasteful but 2.5 watts is hardly nothing for the increased safety.  Also, I can go cup them in my hand after burning all day and they are hardly warm at all, an incandescent and maybe even a CFL would be too hot to touch much less hold.  I’ve also been experimenting with the higher wattage indoor dimmable types, the are usually coated white and 7 watts, there is a lot of color variation so I’m trying to figure out what looks good where.  There are higher wattages also, it kinda exciting really when you think about what they will be able to do with this technology.

@Comment #23: KingElvis on 01/24 at 11:19 AM

This is also an instance of govt. ‘picking winners.’

Is that a problem?

This is also an instance of govt. ‘picking winners.’

No, it isn’t, because the government doesn’t care if your light jobs are CFLs or not: the only mandate is that lightbulbs must be “as efficient as standard X.” it just so happens that CFLs were the first to come on the market meeting that standard at a reasonable price.

“light bulbs” not “light jobs.” darn autocorrect!

I once had a lovely conversation with a libertarian who claimed that light bulb manufacturers were lobbying against the new regulations. Five minutes of Google Magic revealed to me that the light bulb manufacturers were in fact extremely in favor of the regulations (hello, it’s an opportunity to sell more expensive products!), and that it was the energy companies that were lobbying against it. But we all know that energy companies are always looking out for the public interest.

This is also an instance of govt. ‘picking winners.’

The government didn’t “pick” CFLs. The government mandated new efficiency standards for lightbulbs. CFLs came out as a simple means of meeting those standards with existing technology. But please, tell us more about how the free market will lead us to the most efficient solution.

light jobs

Sounds kinky.

Lets end the “debate” about the “free” market before it starts, and save ourselves time & energy.

In reality, every energy industry is subsidized by the government * which has been “picking winners” in the markets since time immemorial and will continue to do so into eternity. Some industries, generally those which have been subsidized by the government the most, like to claim that when governments subsidize other industries the “free” market is being “distorted”. Some people may even believe this argument, but I have no patience for it.

* “Fossil fuel subsidies dwarf clean energy subsidies; Obama wants to eliminate them”, Grist magazine, 23 Sept. 2009.

The funny thing is, you do hear about the mercury thing, but I think it’s presented less about worry about mercury per se as some kind of statist catch-22—you crack the bulb and suddenly your house is a Superfund site, because of some story where a woman broke a CFL and freaked out because someone gave her advice suitable for a much larger mercury spill.

Maybe because I’m in Canada, but yeah, the only loud controversy I’ve been hearing re. CFLs is of the “what if they break” variety and the mercury issue. And that comes from liberal/environmentalist folk like my mother, who’s envisioned having to call in the Biohazard team if and when.

My house is at about 50/50 incandescents and CFLs. So far no apocalypse.

What happens next? I’m black so wingnuts don’t talk to me or send me the emails that the rest of you get from your the batshit wingnuts in your life. When incandescent bulbs continue to appear on store shelves all over America, what do they say then? How do they rationalize their lunacy at that point or do they just move on to something else?
Comment #11: serious bette on 01/24 at 10:29 AM

I was told that they’re still allowed to sell bulbs they have in stock even if they’re incandescent but then when they’re gone, they’re gone.  Or that you can buy incandescents manufactured in other countries, just not the US.

This makes me think of the slacktivist post about evangelicals believing that Proctor and Gamble was a satanic cult:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2008/09/08/false-witnesses/

Mostly, its just a signifier of being in the “in” group, just like wailing that Obama is going to take your guns. On some level they all realize it’s bullshit, but it’s a way of marking their territory. When someone says something about the government “mandating” that we all use CFLs or that their going to come take away all your guns, what they’re really saying is “I hate that black, Muslim, Kenyan usurper who makes me feel like God’s chosen, white, male patriarchs aren’t calling the shots anymore. Where do you stand?”

Also, the light bulb rule applies to lights ranging from 40 to 10 watts. So you can keep the awesome 19th century technology and rewire all of your light fixtures to allow 200 watt floodlights! That’ll really piss off the liberals! And the nightlight that mommy plugged in to keep away the gubmint monsters at bedtime can still use the same bulbs.

This reminds me of bikeshedding, where people spend an inordinate amount of time arguing over the most trivial thing because they can understand simple things like lightbulbs.  I believe this is a symptomatic of people for whom politics is something they only play attention to when they are riled up by demagogues, such as ‘tea partiers’.  Do fellow Pandagonians have any other examples, or am I out on a limb?

On the mercury issue, the actual content is in the mircogram range, and is entirely vapor, meaning that after cleaning up any glass shards from the bulb, the mercury will disperse in a short time in a well ventilated room. You don’t need to get the full HAZMAT team in to clean up vapor; that type of action is for spills of liquid mercury, which can get down into the cracks in the floor and evaporate very slowly over time, giving the room a consistently elevated mercury level.  Depending on the local source of power, use of CFLs (or any more efficient bulb) will likely cause a reduction in mercury pollution by burning less fuel (coal especially, but oil and gas both contain low levels of mercury, and thicker residual fuel oils can have relatively high levels of mercury), and the mercury emissions from utilities are more likely to impact local health due to the type of mercury emitted. A good portion of the mercury emitted from utilities (about 60-70% from the studies I’m aware of) are either ionic or paritculate, which will settle out of the atmosphere and into soils and waterways where it is consumed by bacteria, converted to methylmercury, and builds up in the food chain, e.g. all the fish advisories. Elemental mercury usually stays in the atmosphere for a long time before settling out, and is still a problem globally since it will also build up in the food chain, just more likely someone else’s food chain. Some of this will be mitigated once the federal utility air toxics standards kick in over the next 3 to 5 years, but then there is still the bigger problem of greenhouse gas pollution, which I won’t get into now; sorry for the digression.

I don’t have a problem with the government mandating increased efficiency, and I agree with their reasons why, but I’ve stockpiled incandescent bulbs nonetheless, because almost all of my lights are on dimmers, and I just can’t use the standard CFLs.  I think they make a dimmable version, but it’s ridiculously expensive and not findable locally.  Plus, I put CFLs in the two non-dimmable fixtures in my apartment (foyer and bathroom) and they both burned out significantly more quickly than they should have (10-year lifespan my ass).

But I still think the laws are good, and when I whittle down my stockpile, I’m going to invest in some dimmable LEDs, skipping the whole CFL-thing entirely.

An interesting effect of all this light bulb stuff is that when you have an application where you want a bulb that produces heat, they are much harder to find.  We use them for our chickens.  Some people use them for small furry, fishy or reptilian pets.  Some people have specific heat lamps in their bath rooms and such.  I found that a bit odd.  It’s not like those are “light bulb” per say so much as specialty heaters.  They are still around, just harder to find.

My kitchen fixture required two new bulbs this weekend, so I bought some CFL’s in fancy “DAYLIGHT” strength. Holy mother of FSM, I cannot get over how much more I can see in my kitchen, and that’s with only one third the bulbs replaced. The store dude was gonna sell me on some LEDs, but they were out of the ones with the candleabra base.

Science!

@DPM.  There’s a company called EarthLED that makes what they claim are fully dimmable LED lights.  At least some of their products also seem to have a near-incandescent light quality to them, though I have some reservations…the most important of which is that many of these lights don’t have the high lumens output of your typical incandescent.  The bulbs cost quite a bit, so I probably won’t try them until I burn through my stock of incandescents.  Have you tried this brand out at all?

Thank you as well for the link.  I’ve been one of those people who occasionally gripes about the light quality of CFLs.  While I try to do the responsible thing and use them as often as I can, I also have very acute color vision which is offended by the way they make everything look washed out and lacking in approprite depth (particularly when it comes to my wall art and crafts).  Some of this is just a matter of acclimatization, I think, but in any case there’s no way anyone can claim the light quality is the same.

#19 Mark, thanks for making my day. I know it’s petty but I do enjoy it when a liberal turns the tables and pisses of a wingnut with tiny things like logic.

We’ve been using CFLs for a few years, since back when you had to search for them.  We do change them less often, overall, but it isn’t hugely significant.  I too am awaiting quality inexpensive LEDs.  Proper diffusion coatings should provide whatever light quality one wants from either CFL or LEDs, but they aren’t necessarily going to be cheap or readily available (unless high demand pushes them that way).

I have CFLs in most of my fixtures with no significant problems—the recessed fixtures in the bathroom come on more slowly, which doesn’t bother me, and for some reason the gigantic 3-way lamp bulbs tend to need frequent tightening, which sorta does.  In the winter, I miss the ambient heat of incandescents a bit, but summer’s a lot longer here and energy bills are high enough then thanks to a/c.  The soft white bulbs from Home Depot are slightly peachier in tone than a standard yellow incandescent, but that suits me fine.

Generally, I find that CFLs last 1-2 years, minus a couple of duds.  But I live in a smaller house and don’t turn lights on & off constantly, so they should hold up pretty well.

Yea, so Conservatives never want to conserve electricity, or gasoline, or the environment, thats the dirty liberals… Huh?
I think selfishness is the best point here, if certain things are not unlimited they are not invincible He-men who eat steak all day, they might actually die and nobody give a shit plus there is no Heaven.

I’ve been saying for a while that so-called conservatives only want to conserve entrenched (and usually unearned) privilege.

@progrocker, dammit, you’re right.  I forget how much of conservatism is signalling group membership through self-destructive rituals.

The good news is that CFLs are a transitional technology down to LEDs, which just goes to show that the government did a good job by setting the target and letting our delightfully well educated and trained engineering work force figure out how to make it happen.

CFL’s are pretty cool, but this sounds even cooler.

“Solar Lighting: Piped Daylighting Systems”

Illumination of Buildings using Light Pipes

The development of efficient light pipes for transporting solar light over distances of many meters offers the possibility for providing high quality natural daylight to the interior, or core, spaces of multistory buildings. If these piped daylighting systems are designed into the buildings from the beginning, costs can be kept under control and the normal difficulties can be minimal.

It would just get light in your house when the sun came out. You’d also have normal lights of course.

No, it isn’t, because the government doesn’t care if your light jobs are CFLs or not: the only mandate is that lightbulbs must be “as efficient as standard X.” it just so happens that CFLs were the first to come on the market meeting that standard at a reasonable price.
Comment #26: Tyro

Acknowledged. This is more like auto fuel economy regulations or minimum standards for food safety considering that incandescent bulbs have technically not been ‘legislated out of existence.’

There is a valid concern from a disability perspective about lighting, but with LEDs lights emmitting a clean white light instead of the painful horrible yellow-purple of CFLs, I think the issue has been solved.

As a artist I personally can’t stand CFLs for their ability to fuck up color representation, so I’ll get LEDs instead. My problem solved.

We’ve been going through something similar on a local level here in my little area of San Luis Obispo, CA.  The SLO Waste Management Board recently voted to ban plastic grocery bags in the county, a policy that’s been implemented in several communities across the land, I know, but it was “enlightening” (sic) to watch wingnut heads explode at the libruls’ move to deny their constitutional right to use a goddamn plastic bag if they want to. 

Every element of the blueprint presented above was on full display in every forum through which the wingers found an opportunity to vent: public hearings, man-on-the-street television interviews and, most of all, the newspaper comments section, where the number of comments (close to 800) dwarfed any article ever commented upon before and consisted primarily of teabagger primal screams about government overreach and the loss of freedom (to use a fucking plastic bag if they want to).

The liberals who weighed in on the topic (yours truly included) went heavy with the mockery, which only served to further enrage the teabaggers.  It was a beautiful thing:

http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2012/01/11/1903626/plastic-bag-ban-san-luis-obispo.html#storylink=misearch

98 percent of CFLs don’t get recycled, which is as good a reason as any to oppose their widespread implementation.  This country has enough of a problem with mercury in its waterways.

R.T., I thought the disability issue with CFLs was flickering, rather than colour. Though I guess LEDs would fix that issue as well. (To be honest, I’ve never noticed it with the CFLs. The older-style fluorescents in our kitchen and laundry room, however, flicker noticeably to my eyes. I hate it ><)

My largest gripe with our CFLs is that they take a little bit to hit full brightness. I have a three-way bulb I probably turn up higher than I need to because of that, since it always seems too dim at first. It’s minor enough to live with though, so I still buy CFLs when we need to replace an incandescent bulb.

Another catch-22 that anti-efficient-lighting people like to cart out is this story: essentially, traffic lights that use LEDs have problems in wintry climes because they don’t emit enough heat to melt snow, which obstructs the light. Old, inefficient, heat-emitting incandescent bulbs didn’t have this problem. But this is more of a “aha, gotcha, dirty hippies” conservative talking point than an actual reason to not use CFLs or LEDs in most applications that don’t require the bulb to emit heat.

Recently there was a segment on NPR noting that the new Easy Bake ovens no longer use incandescent bulbs. And they cost more because of it. I’m sure someone could spin a conspiracy theory about how CFLs are now destroying the innocence of children by forcing them to abandon the ages-old tradition of lightbulb-based cuisine in favor of high-priced snobbish heating elements that glow like the hellfires of eternal damnation and are the illegal immigrants’ preferred incendiary device at their frequent English-language-book-burning parties that spring up spontaneously outside of the emergency rooms they’re clogging.

Over the last month I spent about $120 on Phillips LEDs. They look funny when off, but the light is great and they are dimmable to about 25%.

It’s a lot of money for 4 bulbs, but I’m told they’ll pay for themselves in 4 years. And somebody has to be the earlier adopter.

http://www.homedepot.ca/product/12w-led-a-dimmable-soft-white/926038

Honestly, I can’t disagree with much you say here, but….

You really can’t see the difference in the quality of light between the two kinds of bulbs?

@Comment #52: Proboscidea on 01/24 at 02:17 PM

Another catch-22 that anti-efficient-lighting people like to cart out is this story: essentially, traffic lights that use LEDs have problems in wintry climes because they don’t emit enough heat to melt snow, which obstructs the light. Old, inefficient, heat-emitting incandescent bulbs didn’t have this problem.

It is like a right wing Zeno’s Paradox. To get from point A to point B, you have to cross and infinite amount of intermediate points. But, you can’t move infinitely far. Therefore, movement is impossible.
Q.E.D.

Maybe this could be codified as “The Hexagon of Wingnuttery”, which lends itself to graphic presentation.

Also, ‘spinner’ type drinking games and video editorials: eg “Let’s look at the….”  SPIN!!!
“PETTINESS aspect of the {insert current rw obsession}!”

One of the big wingnut rage boners I noticed during first few months of the Obama administration was when the FDA was considering cracking down on the salt content in processed foods (I can’t recall if they ever set any limits or not). A few dipshits I know on facebook were moaning about loss of freedom and one was complaining about how he needs a high salt diet to live, and this would kill him(because apparently he survives on a diet of nothing but Cheez-Its and doesn’t own a salt shaker). The same thing with trans-fats a few years earlier. I guess this has all evolved into the “Michelle Obama wants to control our diet” rage boner.

I was kinda pissed that I went to the hardware store and bought a fluorescent-okay switch (even the casing said it was for fluorescent bulbs!) and when I installed it, it malfunctioned unless I put an incandescent in the circuit.  Then, my mom had gotten a pair of dimmable compacts, and it turned out they weren’t really.  They were resistant to a dimmable circuit, but they didn’t dim well at all (and made a horrid noise).  Found her a dimmable LED, but only one, and they were out when I went back for a second, so we got some incandescents on close-out.

There really are stores out there trying to screw with american consumers, giving them lamps that take forever to turn on or things which vaguely work but not quite.  Pisses me the heck off, because it gives fuel to these conservatives, even when it’s not true.

I’m on board with the artists here:  CFLs are almost painfully offensive to my eyes.  If they don’t bother you, I think that’s great: I love them in principle, and I sincerely wish I could love them in that “reality” we’re all so fond of. 

I recently worked on a renovation of a historic home (circa 1830s - total gut job).  The homeowners wanted to work as greenly as possible, but without sacrificing certain aesthetic qualities.

While the walls were down, we installed these dimmer switches, which look like old-school push button switches from the early 20th century. (Unfortunately, the existing wiring looked like some half-assed disciple of Thomas Edison had done the work himself, while stoned: unshielded wires against the old newspapers stuffed in the walls for insulation, etc.)  But the fact is that dimmer switches do not work with CFLs. The under-cabinet lighting in the kitchen posed the biggest problem, and I’m sorry to say it is still not solved.  The LEDs we installed, although dimmable, produce a very cold light, barely a shade or two warmer than incandescents.  We all hate them — except for the color-blind d00d who cannot tell the difference.

Still, I have faith that LED technology will improve (filters? coatings?) enough to sway someone like me, someone who wants to be swayed. 

One more thing:

4) Near-psychotic fear of change. They like the world the way it is, and any change is taken as a personal affront, no matter how inconsequential to their personal comfort.

While I agree that wingnuts uniformly exhibit a near-psychotic fear of change, I do not believe conservatives like the world the way it is.  At all.  Thus the obsession with the (entirely fictional) days of yore, when men were men goddammit, and women knew their rightful place.  Conservatives absolutely HATE the world the way it is. That pathological fear is triggered every time they are forced to confront the terrible possibility of change, no matter how insignificant, because that change is almost certainly going to make things even worse than they already are.  (See: “The world is going to hell in a handbasket!” etc.)

(Sorry for the text wall, y’all. Great discussion.)

A few dipshits I know on facebook were moaning about loss of freedom and one was complaining about how he needs a high salt diet to live, and this would kill him(because apparently he survives on a diet of nothing but Cheez-Its and doesn’t own a salt shaker).

Seriously, wingnut logic boggles the mind sometimes. Mandating lower salt content in processed foods has nothing to do with freedom. Because as you point out, you’re free to add all the fucking salt you want to your food. They do know that it’s physically possible to add further ingredients to already-processed food, right? I do it all the time when I’m too lazy to make my own spaghetti sauce. Throw in a few additions, and the canned spaghetti sauce becomes marginally edible!

If anything, mandating lower salt content increases freedom, because now you’re free to have as much or as little salt in your processed food as you want! It’s like if you have to make a huge pitcher of tea for a bunch of people, and you only have one pitcher. Do you make it sweet or unsweet? Obviously, you make it unsweet, because people can just add sugar to their cup. Or if you’re a wingnut, you make it sweet and tell the people who want unsweet that they’re homos.

An interesting effect of all this light bulb stuff is that when you have an application where you want a bulb that produces heat, they are much harder to find.  We use them for our chickens.  Some people use them for small furry, fishy or reptilian pets.  Some people have specific heat lamps in their bath rooms and such.  I found that a bit odd.  It’s not like those are “light bulb” per say so much as specialty heaters.  They are still around, just harder to find.

I’m not sure this is the appropriate item you want but I know pet stores stock a heating coil that screws into a regular light socket that does the same job as a heat lamp bulb without the light.  I have a few friends who use it for their lizards & a snake and it ends up working out well.  All in all heat lamp bulbs are going to obviously be scarcer but companies like sunbeam who make heat lamps I’m sure will be willing to sell bulbs specifically for that application. 

The whole light bulb ban argument is two-fold, they feel it is trivial to care about what kind of light bulb we use and then they feel it is a direct offense to their rights.  In all cases once it happens it blows over and they never speak of it again because the modern conservative movement is fed talking points and has been since Fox News came about.  Before that it was largely conservative newspapers who gave them the leads.  But as Fox shifts so do they, so now that light bulb hoarders are hoarding and what not it’s time to end the charade and pick a new faux issue.

If you’re worried about the mercury in CFLs, please, don’t be.  The amounts are so small that they aren’t going to significantly contribute to mercury contamination in any reasonable scenario.  The net environmental benefit of improved energy efficiency (including reduced mercury emission from coal-burning plants) vastly outweighs the macro-effect of CFLs in landfills.  And on a micro-scale (your house or office), unless you’re smashing cases of the things in unventilated rooms just to sniff the vapor, it’s not going to hurt you.  Break one?  Just open the window or turn on the exhaust fan and clean up the glass.  If you’re feeling really cautious, move pregnant people and growing children out of the room for a half-hour or so.

There is at least one semi-legitimate argument to be made against trans-fat bans.  Cost.  Of course, people who make that argument are looking at only a small part of the cost picture.  Compared to the cost of medical care, lost productivity from health problems, and so forth the cost of trans-fats is much higher - but the manufacturers don’t pay those costs.  They’re looking only at the ‘get my product out the door’ cost, not the overall societal costs.  If we were imposing those costs on manufacturers in a vacuum, they might have a point.  Why mandate that they do something more expensive just for the heck of it?  But when you weigh the societal benefit, it becomes clear that it’s the right thing to do.

But when you weigh the societal benefit, it becomes clear that it’s the right thing to do.

As I see it, that’s the whole point of regulations like that—they’re a way to internalize costs that would normally be external to the regulated entity.  How many of the folks who yell about regulations are motivated by the drive to keep those costs external?

@65

In the simplest terms, pretty much all anti-regulation policies are a move by corporations to internalize profits and externalize costs. They feel pretty entitled to let their costs “trickle down” on us in order to maximize their profits. Adam Smith named this as a strong indication of a self-destructive economy.

To wit:

But the rate of profit does not, like rent and wages, rise with the prosperity, and fall with the declension of the society. On the contrary, it is naturally low in rich, and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin.

That’s the real Adam Smith, mind you, not the Adam Smith of libertarian fantasy.

The anti-CFL rage is just reflexive anti-gummint regulation.  No one who has the rage really wants to hear reason on the subject, it’s just a talking point against gummint imposed standards.

I have put CFL’s where warmth of light is not an issue and where dimmers don’t control the fixtures.  For example, my kitchen has 9 recessed light fixtures, six of which are controlled by a dimmer.  I tried supposedly dimmable CFLs in them and burned through two new bulbs in less than six months.  They also produced static in radio transmission when dimmed at all.  So, back to incandescents there and CFL’s in the non-dimmable fixtures in the rest.  As I read the regs, three way fixtures can still take incandescents and so can carriage-style lights (my foyer and porch lights).  I tried CFL’s in the porch lights but they looked awful.  The new standards really don’t inhibit me at all from using the incandescents where I want them.

I expect incandescents to go up in purchase price per unit but that of the CFLs and LEDs should come down over time.

I’m on board with the artists here:  CFLs are almost painfully offensive to my eyes.  If they don’t bother you, I think that’s great: I love them in principle, and I sincerely wish I could love them in that “reality” we’re all so fond of.

It’s like telling an audiophile “these cheap-ass speakers sound fine.”

Some people are very sensitive to sound, some are very sensitive to light.  I love the new bulbs on principle, but if one can’t see that’s still some ugly-ass light, one just has very ‘forgiving’ eyes.

It’ll get better.

Meanwhile, it’s a shame the “Bulb Boss®” went off the market, along with the “IQ Bulb”, both of which cleverly reduced electrical waste by the simple expedient of turning off after a period.  Great for hallways, closets, and such.  <|^(

Re the fast burning out of CFLs—Google “CFL burn out fast”.  There is A LOT of information out there about why this can happen. For example, the electronics in the bulb’s base are sensitive to heat; if you have the blub in an enclosed fixture, it will burn out faster. Do the Google and see the range of things that could cause fast burn out.  Personally I’ve had different CFLs over the last 10 years. I’ve yet to have one burn out. And they keep improving them as to light color, height of the bulb (fitting in the lamb), and the speed with which they turn out.

Re dimmers and CFLs:  There are special CFL bulbs now made for dimming.  You need a dimmer switch meant for a CFL bulb and the correct blub which is made to be dimmed.

Also:  READ the packaging. It will tell you what kind of bulb it is. Don’t just ask the store clerk. They may not keep up with information any more than you do. As someone up-thread said, maybe they are telling you the wrong things just to move product. Read the package; be as specific as you can about what you want when you talk to a store clerk.  I’m quite pleased with the CFLs I have now.

And for those of you who object on the buzzing or the color of the light. I’m sorry for you individual problem but everyone is different in this regard and maybe you won’t be able to use CFLs at all. That’s just how life is. Just remember that incandescents are still made and sold and even they are improving with regard to their energy use.

and the speed with which they turn out. = turn on

Sorry, should have done a second proofing after adding that sentence.

If we abolish the transistor (nasty little European buggers accidently discovered by Americans who were looking for ways to decrease electrical efficiency to stick it to young Al Gore) then in one swoop we’ll roll back the last 50+ years of “progress”.  No more Internet, no more cell phones, no more transistor radios playing noisy rock-and-roll music.

We won WWII without transistors!  We fought the cold war for over a decade without transistors!  If we could watch “I Love Lucy” on TVs with no transistors in them, then we can watch Republican debates that way too.  And the fact Vacuum tubes are not very efficient is icing on the cake.

Another dimension to this is how to many conservatives, anyone bringing up facts or discussing any concerns deemed “liberal” is deemed a “killjoy partypooper” or worse, a pedantic nerd.  The latter is especially bad as they’re viewed as distastefully as someone who wants to discuss/debate something highly intellectual at what most consider highly inappropriate venues….like a casual party or group of people watching a movie/program on TV where they feel their enjoyment’s being impaired by an oblivious “it’s all about their brain” nerdiness. 

Speaking of vacuum tubes, most electric guitarists actually prefer vacuum tube based amps because they are perceived to provide a warm musical sound whereas more modern solid state ones leave much to be desired in that department…..especially if you’re trying to play out in a decent sized crowd. 

Only exceptions to this are Jazz players who want an extremely clean sound and some hardcore/punk/metal players who actually prefer the harsher unmusical distorted sounds of a solid state amp.

@66:

In the simplest terms, pretty much all anti-regulation policies are a move by corporations to internalize profits and externalize costs.

It’s not exactly a policy in the lighting efficiency situation; the corporations generally want the regulation and a small and misguided (to be charitable) but excessively vocal minority is pushing back against it.  The trans-fat situation seems to be a bit murkier, but IIRC the majority of the pushback again comes from a small and misguided (to be charitable) but excessively vocal minority of customers, not so much the manufacturers and large-scale users.

Proboscidea:

By my count, it’s the fourth attempt to create a lightbulbless EasyBake; the last one was a safety fiasco barely a cut below lawn darts, so this one is designed to be similar to the light bulb model. I actually have one; it works reasonably well but it takes a fair bit of time to heat up.

exholt:

That’s all true, but try telling that to the audiophiles who use guitar amps as a reason to champion tube stereos. After all this time they still won’t admit that the sound they like is based on subtle distortion.

There is a scientific explanation for why some people are bothered by the light from CFLs and others aren’t:

It has been established[21] that the Himba people perceive colors differently from most Euro-Americans - they easily distinguish close shades of green, barely discernable for most people. The leading explanation is that the Himba created a very different color scheme which divides the spectrum to dark shades (Zuzu in Himba), very light (Vapa), Vivid blue and green (Buru) and dry colours - probably due to their specific way of life. However other explanations exist that have not been ruled out yet.

An example of the subjectivity of colour occurs in a rainbow. In a rainbow (or a spectrum of light projected from a prism), the changes between wavelengths of light are smooth and continuous; there are no breaks or boundaries corresponding to the “bands of colour” which are seen subjectively by the eye. A black-and-white photograph of a rainbow shows no band stucture at all, demonstrating that the number of bands, and the bands themselves, are phenomena added to nature by the eye and the brain. They are not objectively real any more than “hot” or “cold.”

The cone photoreceptors, which begin the process that results in the ultimate sensation of colour in the brain, are sensitive to different portions of the visible spectrum. For humans, the visible spectrum ranges approximately from 380 to 740 nm, and there are normally three types of cones. The number of colours that can be distinguished by these cones is in principle unlimited and in practice extremely large.

It’s a biological question(do we all see the same color-ed), even if you’re not colourblind, and the answer is pretty likely “no.”  For instance, see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11495112 .  Of course, as someone with anomalous tricolour vision, I’m not comfortable claiming either to he colourblind or to not be colourblind (rather than trying to explain, which is usually long and fruitless), but no, we don’t all see colours the same.

Link

Thanks, Brian.

As a artist I personally can’t stand CFLs for their ability to fuck up color representation, so I’ll get LEDs instead.

As an artist I personally can’t stand the way incandescents fuck up colour representation. Regular incandescents are too warm and daylight/full spectrum incandescents have coatings that ruin their colour rendering.

No artificial light really cuts it. The world is cruel. People are just used to incandescents. I’m sure there were people bitching at Edison about how incandescents didn’t give off the same light that gas and oil lamps did.

We’ve been using CFLs for the past five years, we don’t have any dimmers, so my only real complaint is that every company has their own separate definitions of what white, “soft” white, blue white, and daylight (among many) actually are. Thankfully we’ve only purchased one horror movie morgue, sucks the life out of the room, lightbulb. Still, many people have to experiment to find what they like and it’s not as easy as picking any old 60 watter off the shelf.

As for people always being able to tell…well… Anecdata, but I have a family member who literally stockpiled incandescents, he also happens to be an electrical engineer. He has been to our home countless times but never noticed we had CFLs until we pointed to out to him while when we caught him in the midst of clearing out yet another Home Depot of their incandescents. Whether it’s noticeable or not seems to be heavily dependent on the quality of your bulbs and the type of light fixtures you have.

Do the Google and see the range of things that could cause fast burn out.

I’ve done that.  One of the causes is cheap or otherwise crappy light fixtures, which makes CFLs functionally useless for renters and homeowners who can’t afford to update everything, in other words, the majority of Americans.

Now that I’m in a decent apartment, my CFLs don’t burn out the way they used to, but my energy usage hasn’t gone down one iota.  The mercury and Americans’ not recycling CFLs make them more trouble than they’re worth.  Encouraging people to turn the lights out when leaving a room would accomplish about the same thing, with no secondary environmental risk.

CFLs also aren’t efficient if you turn them on and off all the time, meaning that you’re better off leaving the lights on when using CFLs.  How many environmentally conscious Americans do you think know that?

A few points about CFLs:

As to the mercury issue—I actually here it raised from wingnuts as their primary objection to CFLs: “you liberals think big gummint is good for the environment?  well, big gummint is forcing everyone to use CFLs which have mercury which is bad for the environment”

As to the color issue—I actually find CFLs better than incandescents because the color balance is closer to the fluorescent lights at work as well as sunlight than is the color balance of many incandescents which are too “warm” no matter how “white” they claim to be.  Thus, if I pick out my clothes with a CFL, I get better results in terms of wearing a nice color scheme than with an incandescent.

As to the lifetime issue—our CFLs don’t last worth crap.  They are always going out.  Someone above mentioned theirs last 1-2 years, but don’t they claim they last longer than that even?  Is the issue though how often you turn on/off the light? My wife is very keen on saving electricity by turning off lights the second we leave a room, so we end up turning on and off our lights a lot.  Does this impact CFL life times?

DAS, yes, that strategy only saves energy if you’re going to have the CFL off for 20 minutes or more, or if the light source is an incandescent.

The light bulb issue is interesting. Look at the response to simply requiring an increased efficiency on a few glass objects.

If one believes the Climate Change CW, we have 2 to 5 years to get on board a program to globally reduce CO2 emissions enough to keep the concentration below 400ppm, or all bets are off and we’re headed for a 7 degF temp rise. This will change life on the planet to be unrecognizable compared to today.

To meet the challenge, drastic changes in life style will need to mandated. Changes which dwarf the light bulb ban in their scope and impact.

You think voluntary compliance is going to come easy?

To me, this goes beyond pettiness to just outright toddler tantrum-throwing.  They have to prove that can say “No”, and that in fact, they can shout it.  They’re big boys and girls now and you can’t tell them to eat their vegetables or use a different type of light bulb.  To me, the whole thing just sounds like “NO MOMMY YOU CAN’T MAKE ME!!!!”  They all need a juice box and a nap and then we’ll listen when they are done being cranky and are ready to talk like grown-ups.  I swear, I’ve known 3 year-olds who were less obstructionists than this.

I say to hell with both “incandescent” and “CFL” lights.

There are only two valid forms of light:  Sunlight (and its very pale counterpart, moonlight), and lamps fueled by oil from sperm whales.

It was the introduction of electricity that led to the collapse of descent society.  If we can eliminate electric-powered artificial lighting, we’ve made a huge step forw-, sorry, um backward, which is where all good conservative people should be.

Now if we can just reintroduce coal-fueled steam-powered railroad engines, and descent passenger service, then we’ve tackled another big problem.  Then convert all ships to sail-power (or make those illegals pull oars in galleys) and we’ve got this energy problem licked…

You really can’t see the difference in the quality of light between the two kinds of bulbs?

Yesterday a light bulb burned out and I bought a CFL for the very first time, simply because I had bought a big pack of the old kind awhile and it took awhile to run out.  And I’ve heard so much on the internet about the light is just sooo different, and it’s a different color and different brightness and on and on.  And I was totally expecting something different.  And it’s exactly the same as my old light bulb.  It takes a second to turn on, but other than that I absolutely can not see any difference at all, even though I was expecting to see a vast difference.  I have to say I’m a little disappointed.  But they’re really not as different as everyone has made them out to be. 

It’s probably just a case of a bias that I don’t know the name for, but basically only people with unusual results will tend to make a big deal of it (whether in a good way or bad way).  So of all the people who use CFLs, I was unlikely to hear the anecdotes of people who saw little to know difference, because why would anyone even bother to mention that?  The few people who did see a difference were the ones who told their stories, so it skewed my perception of what to expect.  So I suspect that most people really don’t see a difference.

I put CFLs in the two non-dimmable fixtures in my apartment (foyer and bathroom) and they both burned out significantly more quickly than they should have (10-year lifespan my ass).

I think it’s a YMMV thing.  I’ve had some CFLs burn out quickly and others that haven’t burned out in I guess 2 years or so.

I use CFLs in my home for lights that don’t require dimmers.

As for disposal, my local government, the Town of Oyster Bay, has special collection days where you can bring them used CFL bulbs, dead batteries etc. for recycling.

Break one?  Just open the window or turn on the exhaust fan and clean up the glass.  If you’re feeling really cautious, move pregnant people and growing children out of the room for a half-hour or so.

The EPA recommends something a bit more elaborate.  Excerpt:

“Use sticky tape, such as duct tape, to pick up any remaining small glass fragments and powder. Place the used tape in the glass jar or plastic bag.”

Never noticed a difference in the light between incandescent and CFL, myself.

And I usta hate those long flourescent flickering lights.

CFLs came free from the local electric company at first, and whenever they show up in the 99 cent store, I buy a couple. 

They definitely last longer (since I started using them a couple years ago, I think I only had one that died early.)

I’ve also noticed that my electric bill has stayed low, even tho I leave at least two bulbs burning 24/7 in the house.

I have one burned out sitting on the counter waiting for disposal, but I’m just lazy because I believe there’s a city disposal system a block away.

Right wingers remind me of toddlers that need a nap: any excuse to have a tantrum.

I don’t know why people are minimizing what others say when they’re told that some notice the difference in the quality of light they get from CFLs compared to other light sources. Of course all lights change colors of things, its just that fluorescent lights seem to alter colors in a strange way compared to black-body radiation and sunlight.

If a person has a lot of experience dealing with and compensating for what light does to what they are passionate about they are going to have a sensitivity to what light does, no matter how minuscule to a change in light quality.

My two favorite sources of light are bounced sunlight off a diffuse surface and dim light, which allows me to do my best work in my favorite medium, digital. I can tell when my monitor is just one of, out of 256 bits times 3 channels out of calibration. It’s just a thing that intimate familiarity brings to a user of an instrument. I wouldn’t doubt that someone who plays an instrument, or uses one form and formula of paint, or always listens to music to a specific setting can tell if the thing they are familiar with are is ever so slightly off even if it’s so minuscule that others would never notice. If you have ever done gallery shows or costume work, or acting for theatre you’ll know that the light has to either be adjusted for your work to look just right, or compensate in material, color selection, and makeup for the light that will be on stage.

My experience in retail informs me that lay people can even detect the way fluorescent lights alter colors, as my co-workers and I would constantly have to walk outside the store in the sun for customers to see that the color of clothes, drapes, bedding, and other fabrics are the color they thought they were supposed to be, which the store lights alter so much that they aren’t sure they are buying items they know are of a certain color. My brick red shirt and khaki pants would always look maroon and green inside the store.

My renewed notice of what CFLs do to color is because I moved in with my father in aunt to get cancer treatment, and my monitor is fecking yellow, not because there was anything different about its color profile and settings, but after checking everything about my connections and computer I saw that the light for my room is a CFL, which past experience has informed me cause problems with the type of work I do.

—

When it comes to what fluorescent and CFLs do to people I from what I read of personal accounts it’s a combination of the almost imperceptible flickering and color. When my cancer treatments would give me migraines, I could not go into rooms with CFLs without getting nauseous and having migraines triggered, I think it was th flickering that got to me actually. I’m lucky that most of the time that I don’t get sick that way, but many have spoke up who have permanent issues I understand that it is an important issue and limiting light sensitive individuals to CFLs, which a few years ago was a honest fear in the disability community when an idea of a government ban was floatted when LEDs were an expensive, hard to acquire option, and it just creates more barriers to living comfortably and being able to work.

Hah!  The imaginary light bulb ban was actually mentioned in the Republican response to the State of the Union.

It doesn’t matter whether something benefits them or inconveniences them, because it’s really about the fight for dominance.  Something that benefits everyone is a loss, because it’s a failure of establishing dominance- if someone else benefits, they did it for their own reasons and not because you forced them to do it.  The response to the state of the union was all about how Obama/the government were trying to impose their will on people. 

On the other hand, an imaginary problem is an automatic win.  You can’t lose, because no matter what you do, you will “prevent” the government from taking away your incandescent light bulbs, or you will “keep” Obama from taking all your guns.

Sorry, R.T., but LED’s based on present technology look just as bad as better-quality CFL’s, if not worse, and probably always will. They use the same basic technique to produce a wide-spectrum light as CFL’s—excitation of phosphors by higher-energy photons—UV in the the case of CFL’s, blue-violet in the case of LED’s. Because of the this, there are actually fewer phosphors available that efficiently convert LED’s output to a useful spectrum than the more-energetic UV from mercury vapor.

There are newer technologies (e.g. OLEDs, quantum dots) that will make it easier to replicate the black-body spectrum of incandescent bulbs and sunlight. LED’s are inherently narrow-spectrum devices, so producing a broad-spectrum light will require the mixture of dozens of different colors, and thus the cost of doing this with semiconductor-dice LED’s is prohibitive; eventually we’ll be able to make thousands of LED’s of arbitrary colors with a process not too different from inkjet printing. Or some other technique will arise. But LED bulb replacements for now and over the next few years will be based on crystals (“dice”) formed from Indium Gallium Nitride exciting a phosphor.

That said, LED’s do have other good characteristics, of which no use of mercury is just one. They are potentially more efficient than CFL’s (a good thing, and not just for energy use, since InGaN light output drops as it heats up), longer-lived (though beware of phosphor degradation with the cheaper ones—they may light for 25,000 hours but they’ll grow dim and bluish long before that). They are easier to make dimmable, and work well in cold weather. But if you truly are sensitive to the spectral misdeeds of CFL’s (rather than just think you are), they probably aren’t going to fix that.

I love having the CFLs in my home studio because it’s a lot closer to the florescent tubes I worker under in every educational facility I studied at. Further more, fabric or paper doesn’t change color between the store and my work table as much with the new lights. Color work under incandescent was always a risky venture.

R.T.

No one has “minimized” your experience. Some say they notice a definite difference in colour, some don’t and some notice but get on with their lives because they don’t find it to be a big deal. Everyone has different experiences, yay!

That said, going on and on about how you have to calibrate you monitor just does not impress me. I don’t believe CFLs are so hard to work with, because guess what, I have to deal with the same shit and it is not a hardship. Lots of other people who work in the arts also don’t find them to be a hardship, they just adapt.

As someone who gets photosensitive migraines, new CFL bulbs are not the problem. Flicker can be a problem IF it is in the perceptible range BUT that’s not the case with CFL’s. People who complain about not being able to use CFL’s on the internet is almost funny because obviously there is something wrong with either their light bulb, their light fixture or their wiring as chances are their computer monitor is flickering at the same rate or lower than a properly working CFL and is also backlit by a fluorescent.

I get migraines from old ballast type fluorescents myself as they have a “flicker rate” that is at the edge of perceptibility about 60-100 flicks per second, meanwhile CFLs “flick” at minimum 10,000 per second aka no where near anyone being able to perceive it.

If we throw logic out the window and suggested that people could get migraines from the CFL flicker rate, good luck with those LEDs because they flicker at the same rate. There has actually been some LED backlit TVs that had some very visible flicker problems because they basically didn’t program the LED to cycle fast enough.

That’s all true, but try telling that to the audiophiles who use guitar amps as a reason to champion tube stereos. After all this time they still won’t admit that the sound they like is based on subtle distortion.

I’m perfectly happy to admit that. Plus, Rule of Cool. My valve hi-fi system is awesome - and it glows. I don’t give a flying fuck if its THD is an order of magnitude higher than an equivalent solid-state amp.

98 percent of CFLs don’t get recycled, which is as good a reason as any to oppose their widespread implementation.  This country has enough of a problem with mercury in its waterways.

No, it’s as good a reason as any to push for better recycling.

atheist @ 24 - that is another instance of “wasteful” government spending on tech developed by/for NASA being transformed for general use.  Hollow dielectric waveguides for moving sunlight from a simple dish collector on the the exterior to the interior of underground living quarters on Mars (about 1990 @ UIdaho as a project for NASA’a Ames or Cleveland Research Center).

MiddleageLiberal @ 68 - we have a huge insect problem.  One of the disadvantages of living near a conservation area in New England is that those areas tend to have seasonal pools/ponds, swampy areas or both, especially if they are also watershed areas.  We have been using the CFL with a yellow filter covering, and they really do reduce the amount of insects attracted to the poarch lights and provide a less glaring light for a softer atmosphere.  I wouldn’t want to try to read or work by that light, but it’s fine for finding the way safely up the drive and walk to the poarch or the steps from the back onto the deck.

exholt and BrianX - I thought with amps et al, it was because the tubes are analog and solid state is quantum.  That may ctually be the issue most people have with the light produced by CFLs and why it can be helped with filters and coatings that break up, shift and or diffuse the light.
I have to agree that incandescences are what we are used to, not what provides the cleanest light.  If you are an artist, you know the incandescents are already fucking up the colors.  Nothing but natural light avoids that as yet.  Some full spectrum bulbs of various types come close, but yeah, hypatia is right.

You deserve a medal hypatia for not letting lighting bring your life to a halt and you can adapt to problems while obviously I must be incapable.

Please talk down to me more, especially about world being cruel.
—-
On an aside what’s your favorite medium and what art do you like to create?

I like painting in general but find watercolor and ink to be very attractive on bright hot press board.

Do you do figure drawing or painting? I prefer soft pencils and blenders to charcoal for drawing in general and I work negatively, using a eraser to carve out form from a blob of dark. I work similarly on the computer to create a greyscale image before doing all the color work in glazes over that.

I like sculpting negatively too.

But comics are my passion, and I like straight black and white pen and brush books, and painted books without black linework.

What #97 R.T. said.  Minimization is minimization, hypatia.  Ironic that posting on THIS website hasn’t alerted you to that.

next up, hypatia tells Asbergergians to learn some social skills.

Fluorescent light is good for some things, but I am surprised that I haven’t heard anyone chime in on halogen light when they have serious illumination needs. I’ve relied on halogen desk lamps for almost 20 years, and it’s what I use when I need to look closely at something on a written page. It’s a great replacement for incandescents and falls within the federal efficiency requirements.

Flourescent work lamps are things I’ve preference for lab work and looking at electronics.

R.T., that’s one of the paradoxes of being a creative artist, heightened sensibilities(visual in your case, primarily aural but some visual in my case) that aren’t shared by the majority of the population will mean that many people won’t know what your talking about because of this lack.

It’s like Amandas’ food photography, when I see it it grates on my nerves a bit, but she’s never displayed any interest in improving her skills, there’s no reason why she should, and it’s a minor thing compared to all she does for Truth and Justice on this blog.

I can well understand your reaction to colors and certain visual stimuli, there have been cases where perfect pitch in some people was so pronounced that if they heard a piece of music in a different key that it had been written in,(which is known as transposition), it would sound completely different to them than the piece in its’ original key.

I don’t suffer from migraines, but I’ve had enough headaches of other kinds and durations to know that what I have experienced (I rarely get them now, thank Loki) were/are picnics to what people with your affliction have to go through sometimes.

What #97 R.T. said.  Minimization is minimization, hypatia.  Ironic that posting on THIS website hasn’t alerted you to that.
next up, hypatia tells Asbergergians to learn some social skills.

Seriously, fuck off.

To point out that R.T. actually does have to adjust to incandescents and that other people have adjusted to fluorescents is not the same as suggesting that people with Asperger Syndrome should act exactly like everyone else despite a congenital anomaly.

That’s sloppy ass argument bullshit.

Furthermore, I never said that R.T. could not see a difference between fluorescent and incandescent nor did I tell them they had to suck it up and use fluorescent. R.T. is free to stockpile 50 years of incandescent to do their artwork by.

If disagreeing and pointing out that many don’t have this problem is an ultimate sin? Well, congratulations you just created the perfect argument stopper to anyone disagreeing with anyone else ever.

So next time some anti-vaxxer claims that vaccines are dangerous because their child had a one in a million adverse reaction we aren’t going to disagree right? Because disagreeing would be minimizing.

Which goes to show I can throw specious shit up on the screen to. Which is also kinda funny because pretty much no one on this blog would have a problem telling anti-vaccine mothers to just get over it. How selective we are.

Also R.T., please check yourself. When I stated the world was cruel, I was suggesting the world was cruel to all artists, including myself. It was not a ‘you can’t handle it’ comment. It was an ‘I hate that there isn’t a perfect artificial light source, why is there no love for those hunched over easels and drafting tables’ comment. Most of us struggle because most artists would prefer to work by natural sunlight. I know this particularly well, as I live in an area of the world where the weather is pretty much shit from October to April.

A few points, in no particular order.
White LEDs are fluorescent lights. The LED itself emits blue tending toward ultraviolet. In most white LEDs, the chip is coated with a fluorescent coating that emits broad-spectrum white light. Recently, some manufactures of lamps are using “remote phosphors” where the phosphors are coated on the inside of (typically) a dome, which helps with the problem that LEDs tend to be nearly point sources.

CFLs simply do not flicker like conventional fluorescent lamps. A very small number of people can actually detect flick of conventional fl lamps because they produce, in North America, 120 “pulses” of light per second (60Hz power line frequency, one pulse per half cycle). CFLs typically produce a minimum of 15000 pulses per second electronically, but phosphor persistence (continued glow when arc current has dropped to zero) integrates the pulses even before they get to your eyes. Electronic ballasts for conventional tubular fluorescents behave the same way. A CFL on a “phase angle controlled” dimmer blows this all to hell. Some designs of CFL can still “translate” line frequency into brightness modulation.

The color quality of light from CFLs depends on the mixture of phosphors used to convert the ultraviolet energy of the mercury arc to visible light. The phosphors that produce be best color rendering tend to be more expensive. I personally absolutely detest “warm white” fluorescents. In Japan, the taste runs toward much higher color temperature than in North America.

CFL “power factor” is often terrible, though some designs are much better than others. Poor power factor removes some of the benefit of lower power consumption. You can’t easily compensate for poor power factor of this sort (current is drawn in narrow pulses) like you can for old conventional magnetic ballasts for fluorescents.

Incandescent lamp life is dramatically influenced by voltage. At a minimum, the life will change by the ratio of (design voltage of the lamp divided by applied voltage) raised to the 12th power. This means that if you line voltage is 5% higher than the rated voltage of the lamp, the lamp life will be about 56% of what it would be at nominal voltage. CFLs are vastly less sensitive to this effect.

CFLs that are slow to come up to full brightness are probably “amalgam” lamps (more common in Europe). The tiny amount of mercury required for the arc is mostly amalgamated with another metal, forming a solid, when the lamp is cold. As the lamp heats up, mercury vapor is released from the amalgam. When the lamp cools, the mercury becomes bound again. This improves the safety of lamps, at least when they are cold.

The biggest problem I see with both CFLs and LED lamps is that there is a large need to be able to shove them in existing holes - screw ‘em into sockets intended for incandescents. This is a nearly insoluble problem in existing buildings. With new construction, use of DC power at perhaps 48 volts (for LEDs) and a very different approach to dimmers is possible, and would bring advantage in performance on all fronts.

Up until recently, the light source in LCD monitors has uniformly been cold cathode fluorescent lamps. LEDs are now being used. CRT monitors were, and are, without exception, fancy fluorescent lamps (no arc - blast the phosphors with an electron beam).

I don’t know why people are minimizing what others say when they’re told that some notice the difference in the quality of light they get from CFLs compared to other light sources.

I don’t know if you are referring to my comment specifically, but I did no such thing and it’s disingenuous to accuse me of it.  I’m sure plenty of people can easily tell the difference, and some of those that can tell the difference are legitimately bothered by it.  But I also think that being able to easily see the difference is not as widespread as we think it is.  It doesn’t meant that we should dismiss your concerns.  It only means that a previous commenter shouldn’t be so incredulous that some people actually exist who can’t tell the difference.

Well, I just pressed a key and had a comment that took me half an hour to compose evaporate!

Sorry for reiterating what others had already said - I didn’t read ALL the comments.

DAS, in very brief answer to your question about turning a CFL on and off a lot - yes, it can shorten the life a little, but not dramatically. Heat is the number one enemy.

We do actually have various levels of phasing out/banning of incandescent bulbs in the UK.  There was, you guessed it, a lot of whinging and moaning, and tales of people stockpiling, then we got the fuck over it.  Change just bothers some people, then when the new thing becomes normal, that’s the thing they don’t want to change. 

The shit you are seeing in the US is way above that though, and not even for a ban.  It can only reasonably be explaining as culture war.

The problem with ‘I can tell!’ people is that I can totally choose different LEDs and CFLs and get a different light and I can fool them.

And you get all this crap about black-body radiation being different than fluorescent.  That’s crap.  Each element or compound makes a different spectrum.  The spectrum of sunlight is therefore different than various incandescent sources.  It is not ‘more similar’, merely that you can make more dissimilar light with fluorescing technology, because there are less compounds that are involved in making the light.  And since there are less, you can totally change them easily and generate a broad choice of colors.

So yes, you can end up with crappy lighting or good lighting.  I have some wonderful golden LED lamps that give me about 54 lumens per watt, omnidirectional, while I also have a terrible LED lamp that gives me about 80 lumens per watt, directional.  They’re wonderful for their purpose.  They’re not good to replace a 100 watt bulb with since I’d need ten or more of them to even approach the lowest incandescent.

PS, the on-off is not an issue.  Unless you’re turning it on and off once a second - and even then, it’s dubious - you’re not going to lower its life to where an incandescent is cheaper to operate.  If you really are turning it on and off alot, choose LED.  Vibration?  LED.  Cold?  LED.  Not any of those?  CFL.  Only place incandescents still prevail is heat over a hundred degrees. 

And no, the mercury isn’t the kind that’s a big problem unless you’re planning on eating it; the vapor condenses very quickly when exposed to atmosphere, hence a white powder or crystal around the bulb pieces.  You don’t need to run away unless your face is in the way.

An amusing well-written post…
though, since people spend half their lives under artificial lighting,  a choice seems fair enough,
especially since overall society energy savings are a fraction of 1%
(Dept of Energy stats and surveys etc referenced http://ceolas.net/#li171x)

It is a ban, given EISA phase two 45 lumen per watt end regulation after 2014,
which effectively bans also the touted Halogen replacements, themselves different anyway in light quality and cost.

Why did light bulb companies seek and welcome this ban?
Why WELCOME being told what you can or can’t make?

Light bulb companies profit from reducing lifespan and/or increasing price:
(http://ceolas.net/#phoebuspol  onwards)

1. GE, Philips, Osram etc manufacturers already cooperated to keep
lifespans down - lookup the “Phoebus Cartel”.

That is why even today the standard incandescent lifespan is 1000 hrs.
Recent German research (Peter Berz, Helmut Höge and Markus Krajewski)
shows that a special 1000 hr lifespan committee punished those who
manufactured any longer lasting bulb.
Communist long lasting bulbs were blocked from Western markets: East
German NARVA tried several times.

General Electric was guaranteed that none of the other major
manufacturers of incandescent light bulbs would enter the American
market.
When the agreement began, General Electric had a 90 percent market share.
When it ended fifteen years later, General Electric still had a 90
percent market share.
When some cheap Japanese bulbs appeared, General Electric got Congress
to slap a tariff on imported incandescent bulbs, and the price
advantage disappeared.

2. Then, GE, Philips, Osram manufacturers via their lobbying associations
(USA NEMA, EU ELC) sought to ban the relatively cheap unprofitable
incandescents in favour of expensive alternatives, more profitable
despite a longer lifespan
(lab tested CFL/LED lifespans don’t correspond to real use)
The switchover profitability has been acknowledgedby US GE and Philips
executives, and by Osram CEO Goetzeler

Overall,
one should not of course blame companies for seeking profits.
However, it is also wrong to unnecessarily accede to their wishes.

Unfortunately,
all this is driven as a Republican-Democrat thing

Agree that there is unnecessary hysteria whipped about about “them squiggly bulbs”
All bulbs have advantages - none should be banned.
Light bulbs don’t burn coal or release CO2.
Power plants might.
If there is a problem - deal with the problem.

Everyone can see the advantages of saving energy.
But light bulb regulation is a token “seem to be doing something” way to do it…