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ppauper
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outlawing edison

January 31st, 2007, 2:11 pm

california wants to ban edison's invention
 
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Traden4Alpha
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outlawing edison

January 31st, 2007, 2:52 pm

This should drive hoity-toity interior decorators to a state of apoplexy, catatonia, followed by death -- how can anyone possible design a room without pretentious filament bulbs? It's the beginning of the end of civilization in California...
 
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nazzdack
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outlawing edison

February 1st, 2007, 12:17 am

CFL's are more energy efficient but they break down easily if you don't leave them "on" for hours at a time. You shouldn't flip them on & off frequently.
 
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ppauper
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outlawing edison

February 20th, 2007, 2:46 pm

australia as well
 
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ppauper
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outlawing edison

March 10th, 2007, 1:42 pm

EU bans lightbulbs
 
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Traden4Alpha
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outlawing edison

March 10th, 2007, 5:26 pm

This is typical government stupidity. As usual, their hearts are in the right place, but they seemed to have left their brains at home (they probably couldn't find these diminutive organs in the closet due to a low-wattage CFL). If they want "energy efficiency" then mandate that (or better yet place a tax that covers the estimated externalities). Mandating (or outlawing) particular technologies is not the way to handle it. In fact, in some applications, the CFL has worse total carbon emission per life-llumen-hour because CFLs do very badly if cycled on-off quickly. They may last 5,000 hours in "normal" use, but they can only handle 20,000 on-off cycles and tend to use more electricity in the first few minutes than their low-wattage rating suggests (the CFL's I've seen use 17 W steady-state, but 100 W when starting).For the record, I use CFLs for most, but not all, of the lighting in my house. They are superior for many, but not all, applications.
 
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ppauper
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outlawing edison

April 16th, 2007, 12:34 pm

anyone know enough about mercury to comment on this ?allegedly, if CFL (compact fluorescent lamp) bulbs break, you have a mercury hazardQuoteConsumers in dark over risks of new light bulbsPush for energy-saving fluorescents ignores mercury disposal hazardsBrandy Bridges heard the claims of government officials, environmentalists and retailers like Wal-Mart all pushing the idea of replacing incandescent light bulbs with energy-saving and money-saving compact fluorescent lamps. So, last month, the Prospect, Maine, resident went out and bought two dozen CFLs and began installing them in her home. One broke. A month later, her daughter's bedroom remains sealed off with plastic like the site of a hazardous materials accident, while Bridges works on a way to pay off a $2,000 estimate by a company specializing in environmentally sound cleanups of the mercury inside the bulb. With everyone from Al Gore to Wal-Mart to the Environmental Protection Agency promoting CFLs as the greatest thing since, well, the light bulb, consumers have been left in the dark about a problem they will all face eventually – how to get rid of the darn things when they burn out or, worse yet, break. CFLs are all the rage. They are the spirally shaped, long-lasting bulbs everyone is being urged, cajoled and guilt-tripped into purchasing to replace Thomas Edison's incandescents, which are being compared to suburban utility vehicles for their impracticality and energy inefficiency. However, there is no problem disposing of incandescents when their life is over. You can throw them in the trash can and they won't hurt the garbage collector. They won't leech deadly compounds into the air or water. They won't kill people working in the landfills. The same cannot be said about the mercury-containing CFLs. They bear disposal warnings on the packaging. But with limited recycling prospects and the problems experienced by Brandy Bridges sure to be repeated millions of times, some think government, the green community and industry are putting the cart before the horse marketing the new technology so ferociously. Consider her plight. When the bulb she was installing in a ceiling fixture of her 7-year-old daughter's bedroom crashed to the floor and broke into the shag carpet, she wasn't sure what to do. Knowing about the danger of mercury, she called Home Depot, the retail outlet that sold her the bulbs. According to the Ellison American, the store warned her not to vacuum the carpet and directed her to call the poison control hotline in Prospect, Maine. Poison control staffers suggested she call the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. The latter sent over a specialist to test the air in her house for mercury levels. While the rest of the house was clear, the area of the accident was contaminated above the level considered safe. The specialist warned Bridges not to clean up the bulb and mercury powder by herself – recommending a local environmental cleanup firm. That company estimated the cleanup cost, conservatively, at $2,000. And, no, her homeowners insurance won't cover the damage. Since she could not afford the cleanup, Bridges has been forced to seal off her daughter's bedroom with plastic to avoid any dust blowing around. Not even the family pets are permitted in to the bedroom. Her daughter is forced to sleep downstairs in an overcrowded household. She has continued to call public officials for help – her two U.S. senators included. So far, no one is beating down Bridges' door to help – not even Al Gore, whose Academy Award-winning movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," urges everyone to change to CFLs to save the planet from global warming. Bridges is not alone. Elizabeth Doermann of Vanderbilt, Tenn., had a similar experience. After her CFL bulb broke – because the cat knocked over a lamp – she didn't call Home Depot. Instead, she did what she had always done when old-fashioned incandescent bulbs had broken. She vacuumed up the mess. Only then did she learn about the mercury hazard. "If I had known it had mercury in it, I would have been a lot more careful," she told the Tennessean. "I wouldn't have vacuumed it up. That blew the mercury probably all through the house." The warnings on the packages of some of the new bulbs are in fine print – hard to read. They are also voluntary, with many bulbs being sold and distributed with no disposal warnings at all. Charmain Miles of Toronto, Canada, had another frightening experience with a CFL bulb. Last month she smelled smoke on the second floor of her home, only to discover it was emanating from a new energy-efficient bulb. "I was horrified," she told a local TV station. "I went through every place upstairs and took out every bulb." The bulb had been placed in a track-lighting fixture. Though the bulb contained no warning about such fixtures, it turns out CFLs are not for use in track, recessed or dimmer fixtures.so when they outlaw the incandescent bulb, track, recessed and dimmer fixtures are useless ?QuoteAnd while the Consumers Council of Canada advises not to purchase any package of CFL bulbs that contains no instructions, the entire country is on a timetable to eliminate entirely the only alternative – the incandescent bulb. In fact, practically the whole world – fearing global warming – is getting ready to ban the incandescent light bulb. It started in Cuba, moved to Venezuela, then Australia, Canada and the European Union. Now individual states in the U.S., including California, Connecticut, North Carolina and Rhode Island, are all in the process of legislating an end to Edison's greatest invention. Even local towns and cities are getting into the act. The rap against the incandescent is that it uses more energy to produce light. Advocates of CFLs say they save money and energy by producing more light over more time for less money and less energy. They prefer to minimize concerns about cleanup and disposal, usually saying more needs to be done in the area of recycling. But recycling experts say the solutions are at least five years away. Meanwhile, millions of consumers and green activists are being persuaded to make the switch. "EPA currently doesn't provide a unified message to the public on what to do with fluorescent lamps once they are no longer used," admits a draft announcing plans for a pilot project by the agency. Yet, the EPA's Energy Star program is one of the major forces behind the push for CFLs. "Currently the need to recycle mercury in fluorescent lamps isn't mentioned on the Energy Star web page although they are working with the Office of Solid Waste to address this," the memo continues. "This may create confusion to the public about doing the right thing." In fact, even the memo doesn't advise what the public should do. No question about it, though. You as a consumer will be required to find certified waste recycling centers to turn in your dead and broken bulbs. The American Lighting Association has some ideas. It has created a list of five considerations that should be weighed by all legislative bodies considering bans on incandescent bulbs. The association of American manufacturers and retail outlets suggests any such legislation include the following provisions: a lumen per watt energy efficiency standard should be established rather than a ban on a specific type of product. It should include a 10-year goal halogen bulbs should be exempted incandescent bulbs 40 watts or less should be exempt collection and disposal plans for mercury-based CFLs should be made prior to any ban; persuade consumers through education rather than coerce them through limiting choicesGovernments may indeed be promoting a kind of lighting that is itself nearly obsolete. Fluorescent lights are nothing new. They've been around for a long time. And while they may save money, some say the public hasn't chosen them for good reasons – including, but not limited to, the mercury issue. Some experts predict the next generation of lighting, though, is LED lights. They are made from semiconductor materials that emit light when an electrical current flows through them. When this form of light takes over, all bulbs will be obsolete. Your wall tiles can light up. Curtains and drapes can light up. Even your dining room table could be made to light up – at exactly the level you want. That's what is ahead in the next decade, according to some in the industry. Nobody promoted CFLs as aggressively as IKEA. Not only does the retailer sell them, it also provides one of the very few recycling centers for the burned out bulbs. But even with a plethora of recycling centers, how will the public view the prospect of saving up dead bulbs and transporting them to recycling centers? And how about the danger of breakage in that process? "The industry is currently aiming at totally mercury-free CFL lighting, but this is still five to 10 years away," admits IKEA. Those who really care about this problem right now are those involved in the waste industry. "Most agree more energy-efficient light bulbs can significantly curb air pollution, but fewer people are talking about how to deal with them at the end of their lives," explained a page 1 story in the April 2 issue of Waste News. It goes on to explain "there is no plan to address air and water pollution concerns that could develop if consumers improperly dispose of the mercury-containing devices."
 
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ppauper
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outlawing edison

April 18th, 2007, 1:58 pm

QuoteOriginally posted by: ppauperanyone know enough about mercury to comment on this ?allegedly, if CFL (compact fluorescent lamp) bulbs break, you have a mercury hazardAccording to the pro-CFL gang, a CFL contains about 4.5mg of mercury, which they dismiss by claiming that if an incandescent bulb is powered by coal-fired electricity, more mercury is generated.Of course, that mercury isn't in your house, and not all electricity is coal-fired.......Meanwhile:(i) almost all CFLs are manufactured in China because twisting the glass is labor-intensive(ii) GE plans to have a line of low-energy incandescent bulbs by 2010. This is interesting: why ban incandescent bulbs if that happens ?
 
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quartz
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outlawing edison

April 19th, 2007, 11:43 am

On the matter I fully agree with Traden4Alpha: what's so difficult in mandating efficiency directly?But just wanted to note how it's not Edison the inventor, there even were previous patents, and lots of other people had done it before... It's just like granting to Bill Gates the invention of operating systems.
 
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Cuchulainn
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outlawing edison

April 19th, 2007, 12:31 pm

QuoteIt's just like granting to Bill Gates the invention of operating systems.I agree. But Bill was at the right place at the right time and that's when the light bulb went on. A spark of genius.
Last edited by Cuchulainn on April 18th, 2007, 10:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
 
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ppauper
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outlawing edison

July 30th, 2008, 1:38 pm

looks like another of algore's asinine ideas is going the way of the dodoQuote Yay: Gorebulbs could be rendered obsoleteSome smart guys at Purdue have found a way to make efficient LED lighting cheaper to manufacture. Which could have some seriously awesome side effects: …since about 1/3 of U.S. electricity is used to produce light, this is major. “If you replaced existing lighting with solid-state lighting, following some reasonable estimates for the penetration of that technology based on economics and other factors, it could reduce the amount of energy we consume for lighting by about one-third. That represents a 10 percent reduction of electricity consumption and a comparable reduction of related carbon emissions,” said Timothy D. Sands, professor of Materials Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering states at Purdue.From what I’ve seen of LED lighting, it doesn’t flicker and make me tired the way CFL screwbulbs do. Plus it doesn’t have a bunch of toxic mercury inside it that no one really knows how to clean up if you should break one
 
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farmer
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outlawing edison

July 31st, 2008, 11:21 am

So that's what that awful bulb was in my office when I moved into this place. I was too lazy/busy to change it, but I was worried/embarrassed what guests might think if they walked in there and suffered that awful light.The color of the light suggested there was something wrong with this home's owner. Like he couldn't afford a real light bulb, or he had stolen the bulb from some customs checkpoint where they need that light to see fungus on imported fruit, or something. Or he was trying (and failing) to save six cents a month because either A) he really needed the six cents and had already taken the step of everybody sharing a single fork at dinner, or B) he had fallen sucker for some dumb fad or other.It's like if a guest noticed there were two different colors of ketchup in your ketchup bottle. Something is off.
Last edited by farmer on July 30th, 2008, 10:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
 
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farmer
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outlawing edison

July 31st, 2008, 12:27 pm

QuoteOriginally posted by: ppauper…since about 1/3 of U.S. electricity is used to produce light, this is major.Whatever. Maybe 1% of the money I spend a month is electricity. And I would guess 90% of that is air conditioning. So .1% of the money I spend a month is on lighting, lol. There is a word for someone who gives a fuck about the cost of electricity for his home lightbulbs: A sucker. A sheep. Or maybe gullible?The problem is, all that money you save on lighting with your dumb-ass twisty bulbs, you end up spending 500 times that on Britney Spears perfume, Dallas Cowboys umbrellas, giant novelty foam hands, pet rocks, spray-on car wax, Ipod jewelry, and that crap they sell in catalogs on airplanes.Maybe you can wear a giant gold Mercedes medallion; to prove to people how hip you are when you are outside your house where they can't see your dumb lightbulbs.
 
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farmer
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outlawing edison

July 31st, 2008, 12:33 pm

How could I leave out Big Mouth Billy Bass.You hear the lightbulbs are pretty cool. But you know what? Big Mouth Billy Bass is also pretty cool, so there is a negative net savings from your mob mimicry.
 
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TraderJoe
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outlawing edison

July 31st, 2008, 12:55 pm

Just another angry American .
Last edited by TraderJoe on July 30th, 2008, 10:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.