God bless B'rer Douthat for leading a charge against those horrible compact fluorescent lightbulbs. How I hate them! They give off pale, headache-imparting light that basically reminds one of salamander vomit. I'm going to have to stockpile regular bulbs like my mom stockpiled classic Coke once the Coca-Cola company announced its ill-fated New Coke.
Naturally, Ross sees the political potential in an anti-CFL campaign:
Fortunately, there's no way the American people will stand for this. The tree of liberty must be refreshed by the excess mercury from compact fluorescent light bulbs! Maybe this will be the issue that catapults a Huckabee-Jindal ticket into the White House in 2012 ...
Oh, I am so on board...
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My local domestic engineer (aka wife) has ruled out CFLs for our abode because of their annoyingly long turn on time. I must admit she has a point. The minute or two it takes for CFLs to come up to full brightness is a big negative.
Anybody know why CFLs take a long time to come up to full brightness whereas the straight tube versions turn on almost immediately?
What about the fact that flourescent lighting is bad for your eyesight, bad for your skin, and bad for your well being. People wonder why they get depressed at work and/or do not feel well when they only have flourescent lighting and no windows. Now we have to come home to flourescent lighting as well! I cannot get one of the old accurate mercury thermometers at the store (they do not sell them anymore) to take my kid's temperature (under their arms of course, not orally)and have to use digital thermometers and get a different reading every time; but it is okay to have a mercury lightbulb in every fixture in my house. Ridiculous! Call the White House now at 202-456-1111 and complain. Dream on if you think everyone will recycle these bulbs. We can be old, cold, sick, and blind with this gov't.
The truth is that until the U.S. converts to clean renewable energy, using CFL's will put far less mercury in our environment than keeping standard incandescent lamps. Most cfl's do have a smidgen of mercury, between 1 and 4 milligrams, about what fits on the head of a pin. By comparison mercury thermometers typically have over 500 milligrams, about 125 cfl lamps worth. Many telephones, scanners, monitors, and other electronics all contain far more mercury than cfl's. While standard incandescent lamps don't contain mercury, they will use 3 times the electricity as a cfl, and cause for more mercury (and CO2) to be released by coal and gas burning power plants than improperly disposed CFL's ever would.
The U.S. EPA estimated that a coal-fired power plant will spew 13.6 milligrams of mercury in our air, to make the electricity for 1 incandescent light bulb, compared to 3.3 milligrams for a comparable CFL. That's 10 milligrams of mercury emissions prevented by using a single CFL bulb. That doesn't count increased electricity used in summer for air conditioning to offset all of the heat made by incandescent lights. If all 270 million compact fluorescent lamps sold in 2007 were improperly sent to landfills, that would only be 1/10 of 1% of all U.S. mercury emissions.
And, if you haven't found good colored ones that quick start and are dimmable, we carry them on our website.
Look at the big picture,
Chrispy
www.NewLeafAmewrica.com
BUY LED ... we can't let CFLs 'run their course'
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