Forcing people to "live green"

[telecom_goddess]

http://www.usnews.com/money/business...e-know-it.html

incandescent light bulbs are being outlawed. Now I love those kinds of lights way better than sucky, white, soul sucking fluorescents. I understand they use more energy and what not...but damn...to FORCE people to use fluorescents is wrong

I'm basically getting really sick and tired of this whole live green movement anyway. I do the green thing by not driving....where's my reward in that .

Maybe I don't want to recycle every little piece of freaking trash I run across.

Ugh.

[Boozy]

I do the green thing by not driving....where's my reward in that

You don't have to pay gas taxes.

[insertNameHere]

Yeah In ohio one of the major power companies was going to "Give" every household 2 bulbs. And then put a monthly fee, that added up to around $21 for both over a couple years, I bought the same thing for $3. It later came out that they planned to offset the profits that would be lost by making people switch.

Lets not forget that the florescent lights have mercury in them and need to be disposed of properly, which many people won't. Then you can bring up the fact that florescent lights can negatively affect migraines.

[smileyeagle1021]

Lets not forget that the florescent lights have mercury in them and need to be disposed of properly, which many people won't.

It is getting easier to recycle fluorescent though (which will lead to more people doing it) and if we assume you are getting your electricity from a coal fired power plant (which most people do) then the reduced electrical use eliminates a lot more mercury pollution than what is introduced by the bulb.

As far as the soul sucking bit, there are now bulbs (either CFL or LED) that nearly perfectly emulate traditional bulbs.

[Dreamstalker]

I just don't like the standard fluorescent bulbs for a long period of time. In addition to the damn things just being soul-sucking, I'm one of those people who can "see" the 60Hz flicker of a bad bulb and it tends to give me a raging headache pretty quickly (if I can also hear the buzz it's about 10x worse).

Luckily the office I do temp work in now has large windows, and the boss knows my hatred of fluorescents and lets me work with the overhead light off if I have/want to.

[HYHYBT]

We have five years to stock up Though if the LED bulbs get perfected and reasonably priced, even better. They don't flicker, make noise, or take time to warm up in cold weather.

[Fryk]

Damn, Dreamstalker, I thought that was just me! I hate those flickery monstrosities, and when I tell people about the flicker, they look at me like I'm hallucinating.

[Bloodsoul]

On the one hand, how is this different from television companies no long supporting analog?

Old technology has to die eventually, it just sucks when that day comes within our lifetime after being so used to it.

(I don't even know why kind of fancy-schmancy bulb my lamp has, nor do I know where I'm going to find a replacement)

[Dreamstalker]

I hate those flickery monstrosities, and when I tell people about the flicker, they look at me like I'm hallucinating.

I don't even need to be looking anywhere near/at the light to know it's doing that sometimes. Before we got a new LCD flatscreen TV, I was also able to see our old one (CRT) refreshing at times. That was annoying.

[smileyeagle1021]

On the one hand, how is this different from television companies no long supporting analog?

Old technology has to die eventually, it just sucks when that day comes within our lifetime after being so used to it.

Along those lines... what about those poor folks who prefer a CRT monitor (either television or computer)... hey, they have much better viewing angle.
Granted there was no government intervention on that one... but the broadcast technology thing was forced... mainly (if I understand correctly) to conserve bandwidth and open up the broadcast spectrum.

[Rapscallion]

Lets not forget that the florescent lights have mercury in them and need to be disposed of properly, which many people won't. Then you can bring up the fact that florescent lights can negatively affect migraines.

This is the sort of green argument I have to deal with at work regularly. We have a mission statement (that we have one at all is a matter of regret) about ethical, sustainable, and healthy foodstuffs. We have a brand of our own including tinned beans etc. The cans are lined with plastic and the old fun stuff of bisphenol-A traces in the plastic are one of those recurring themes that I have to answer when in customer information.

I love to ask them what the alternative is, and then shoot them down. There's no commercially available alternative to the current plastic lining in the cans. Glass jars? Great idea, save for the extra weight for transport and some bugger's going to be asking about carbon footprint for that in two months time, oh and since the lid is metal it needs plasticising underneath it.

I love to tie the outraged people up in knots and asking them what they want instead. I've yet to have an answer I couldn't rip to shreds.

Rapscallion

[telecom_goddess]

You don't have to tell me about fluorescent lights giving someone a migraine. They do that to me all the time. In fact at work the overhead lights over MY head are turned down or off for that reason. And if they flicker god help me I feel dizzy and sick.

As for the tv broadcast being converted to digital I have mixed feelings about that one. The one thing is it doesn't really force people to live a certain way because crt tv's and monitors should still be workable. The light bulb thing is forcing people to save energy whether they want to or not LOL.

It just seems like the living green thing is being forced down our throats. I'm all for recycling....but in the grass roots kind of way. Passing clothes/furniture/baby items along...the whole freecycle kind of thing. Why throw something away if someone else can really use it. But making me use a certain kind of product instead of the one I prefer is just annoying to me.

[Amanita]

Count me in as another who's no fan of flourescents. I can hear the hum and see the flicker of a bad bulb too. I'm also a textile and leatherworker, and colours look different under flourescents- not in a good way. They look nothing at all like they do under normal bulbs or daylight.

[Daskinor]

I completely switched all my bulbs to fluorescent and saved about 45 dollars a month in power. And I think its a very good thing.


By default, fluorescentes have a very high color temperature. This will be signified as 6000K, light bulbs have a color temperature of about 2600K. The K stands for kelvin, as in temperature. When dealing with fire, red flames are colder then blue flames. This translate to light so lower color temperatures are more red, while hotter temperatures seem more blue. High color temperature light makes objects appear more blue. That's why your skin looks like a corpse under older fluorescent.

They now come in all color temperatures.

I personally use 3400K because I like it. they make 5000K bulbs to, that's about the color temperature of noon sunlight. (It does change over the course of the day Blue skies becoming red)

If you mix standard bulbs and CFL, use 2600K because otherwise everything looks odd.


As for the mercury, There is 5 milligrams in each bulb. Il just quote a Popular Mechanic Article

Approximately 0.0234 mg of mercury—plus carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide—releases into the air per 1 kwh of electricity that a coal-fired power plant generates. Over the 7500-hour average range of one CFL, then, a plant will emit 13.16 mg of mercury to sustain a 75-watt incandescent bulb but only 3.51 mg of mercury to sustain a 20-watt CFL (the lightning equivalent of a 75-watt traditional bulb). Even if the mercury contained in a CFL was directly released into the atmosphere, an incandescent would still contribute 4.65 more milligrams of mercury into the environment over its lifetime.

I can hear the hum of a Cathode Ray tube. The older ones I could hear. The new ones I cant. I use Westinghouse Natural Light bulbs exclusively and can not hear them at all.

[smileyeagle1021]

Something else to point out, that humming noise you hear isn't the florescent tube/bulb that you hear but the ballast... and if the ballast is working properly it is silent... most CFLs will burn out before the built in ballast starts to go bad... and if it does go bad before the bulb, then it is rather cheap to replace compared to the traditional ballast system (which is why so few places bother fixing them).