Via Instapundit, who's been pushing these damned things, which is just fine for people who are able to take it. Let me make my contribution to environmentalism by using dimmer switches, turning off the lights when I leave the room, getting up at dawn to use more natural light, and sitting in nearly dark rooms at night when I'm not reading something on paper.
I hate this fluorescent oppressiveness -- the bullying and the light itself.
ADDED: I bought an LED reading lamp, by the way. It sounded great in the catalogue description, but it is absolutely impossible to read under. It's not bright enough, and if it were, the color would drive you insane. Some crazy blue.
MORE: A literary reference, from "A Glass Menagerie" by Tennessee Williams:
Look, Mother, do you think I’m crazy about the warehouse? You think I’m in love with the Continental Shoemakers? You think I want to spend fifty-five years down there in that - - celotex interior! with -- fluorescent tubes?! Honest to God, I’d rather somebody picked up a crow-bar and battered out my brains -- than go back mornings! But I go! Every time you come in yelling that Rise and Shine! Rise and shine!! I think how lucky dead people are! But I get up. I go! For sixty-five dollars a month I give up all that I dream of doing and being ever!(Copied from my old high school script.)
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47 comments:
If you think it does, I'd like to find the thing that you like to do that I don't care about and force you to go without it because it's no trouble for me to do without it.
Hey public school kid, no stories in school! Here's a nice, informative book on the history of math.
Something like that, anyway.
I don't like those bulbs, either. They ruin the appearance of art and photos on the wall, and they make my eyes hurt. I have them in the kitchen because they're really bright and last a long time (my kitchen ceiling is 12 feet high, and I hate changing the bulbs). But they're ugly.
Word!
Also, that is the best-worded criticism of casual bullying I've ever heard. It's almost as though it could be transposed onto larger social debates!
I've never noticed a difference in the light, so we have almost all compact fluorescent bulbs at our house. But, still...right on! Totally agree with the sentiment.
Careful there - some of the more assertive global warming alarmists might cause your house to rapidly oxidate by furtively and liberally distributing accelerant while you are gone if you keep this up.
And, once they're in charge, you'll be off to summer re-education camp.
We have some bulbs which I can't tell the difference (once the light actually turns on) from normal incandescents, except maybe they're a bit less harsh.
We have some that remind me of nothing more than a bus station bathroom.
The ban is (literally) stupid for all the reasons that government regulation tends to be stupid: Demonize something, ossify it, fail to reflect the world.
Already incandescents are getting more energy efficient.
Mmmh bright lights.. I like the brighter variety for reading and working, helps keep me alert. I agree though, lighting is entirely a personal preference..
tim: damn the alarmists, damn them!
hehe
Even if you don't like how they look in your main living spaces, you can still assuage your inner environmentalist by using them for your front porch light, your attic, your basement, and other locales where the quality of light is not as critical.
I am at an age (50) where the amount of light is as important as corrective lenses. CF's don't work for me. My inner environmentalist is satisfied by living in a mild climate and using a swamp cooler not refigerated air. Give me light!
How are candles for that whole environmental thing? When I was in college, I kept a five-candle candelabrum in my dorm room. Came in handy when California had rolling blackouts. Lovely old thing it was, all black iron and melted wax. That's light with glow and character right there, not like this feeble artificial stuff.
I try not to be wasteful in the way I live. However, I recognize, that I can't optimize, in real-time the level of resources that I use to actually live. Nor can I optimize my every action as a fluid movement with the way live. Why must I succumb to a collectivist ideal that the habits for the way I live are bad. Why must I submit to anyone the way I live is not the way that they want me to live simply because they think that mommy earth is crying if i forget to turn that light off or if i have the faucet on 1 second longer than usual. I use what I use because I want to use them or need to use them how i see fit, not how they see fit.
This is the inherent problem with environmentalism and it's acolytes of alarmism. They want to instruct to me about the delicate ballet of usage vs. waste, resource allocation and expenditure vs. need and want. This is subjugation wrapped with good intentions. Both are bad.
gj said...
Even if you don't like how they look in your main living spaces, you can still assuage your inner environmentalist by using them for your front porch light, your attic, your basement, and other locales where the quality of light is not as critical.
Is that your opinion or a definitive statement?
Via Instapundit, who's been pushing these damned things, which is just fine for people who are able to take it
More precisely, he has been encouraging their use, but is against mandating them.
That is the best-worded defense of pissing in someone else's well that I've ever heard. It's almost as though it could provide a reason for not caring about how anything you do affects other people!
Why should the things you like to do that have a material impact on the environment everyone else has to live in be subject to criticism? First it was "No Dumping" signs, then catalytic converters. They took the lead out of our gasoline, and now they actually want us to use . . . high-efficiency electrical appliances! We must stop this tyrannical imposition upon our righteous self-indulgence before we are actually forced to see our neighbor's children grow up in a safer, healthier, and cleaner world!
I'm afraid that the flourescent vs. incandescent bulb issue is mostly "feelgood" environmentalism that like "recycling plastics, bad, evil plastics!!" addresses at best a trivial energy or oil use.
Why?
Attacking other heavier uses is unpopular. It is more economical and efficient to burn plastic with other garbage that recycle it, but "Cause Environmentalists" don't like the truth not matching the "purity" of their recycling credo.
Most electricity use is motors, heaters, ovens, refrigs, industrial usage, and AC. (Cooking 1 12 pound turkey in an electric oven consumes more electricity than the savings of switching household lightbulbs over a year.)
Electricity is the most amenable energy source to non-fossil use. More nuclear plants, less technologically illiterate people proudly showing their "green purity" of their 10,000 ft2 air-conditioned house right before they go to a Pro-immigrant rally to add another 30 million electricity consumers.
Also, radio uses as little as 1/35th the electricity of having a TV on.
These are the same soulless puritanical knuckleheads who'd ban foie gras. Vegetarians, I bet. Squatting on bare straight-backed chairs in their orthopedic shoes, choking down thirty-seven-grain health bread with sunflower seeds and echinacea, trembling, trembling with rage at people who actually enjoy food. Trapped in their own bleak joyless hell, with nothing better to do than force their sick masochistic devotional habits on the rest of us who are still alive.
Actually, that comparison is grossly unfair to real masochists. They may seem a bit weird, but they're having fun with it, they're accepting of others, and they keep it private, too.
I prefer the guy in Catch-22 who tried to prolong his life by making himself miserable so that time would seem to pass more slowly. He was honest.
KTK,
You're pissing in my well, retard. Go play Savonarola someplace private, where nobody has to watch.
I'd like to find the thing that you like to do that I don't care about and force you to go without it because it's no trouble for me to do without it.
Bingo.
How many movies do we really need? Really, we can do without 90% of Hollywood. Because, you know, I don't go to movies much.
And fiction. How many resources are wasted on pretty little books with make-believe stories in them? Away with them!
I've got some CFs around, depending on need (wow, what a concept). My desk lamp is a 23 watt CF and it's like sunlight. Some rooms that require just low background light I have CFs (or just plain Fs) in.
But yes, it's the typical left-liberal-socialist trope about how society would be soooo much better if we just behaved like they want us to.
KTK said...
That is the best-worded defense of pissing in someone else's well that I've ever heard. It's almost as though it could provide a reason for not caring about how anything you do affects other people!
Why should the things you like to do that have a material impact on the environment everyone else has to live in be subject to criticism? First it was "No Dumping" signs, then catalytic converters. They took the lead out of our gasoline, and now they actually want us to use . . . high-efficiency electrical appliances! We must stop this tyrannical imposition upon our righteous self-indulgence before we are actually forced to see our neighbor's children grow up in a safer, healthier, and cleaner world!
I love well worded sarcasm. Good on you, sir. However, let me point out to you that no matter what anyone does or how they live their lives, they will impact someone or something regardless of said change. Even so, we live in an open ended system, for the most part, that can, for the most part tolerate our ways of live on an individual basis.
Also, since they've taken the lead out of your gasoline, they have since then replaced it with something called MTBE (Methyl tert-butyl ether) and at least in California has become an ecological disaster that has gone unreported and has been swept under the rug by the environmentalist lobby because they are the ones that pushed it's particular use but were woefully underinformed on it's effects with respect to ground water and soil contamination. The stuff is all over the place and has polluted California and just about any other geographical location that has accepted it's windage that has carried this stuff.
So, while you may be pining that we, who wish to live our lives the way want and everyone else be damned aren't letting your children live in a cleaner, healthier, and safer world, then might I remind you that the current world you live in is the cleanest and healiest you and your children have ever lived in. Maybe not the safest, but then again, what level of health and safety are you trying to attain and at what cost? If you are thinking that the air we should be breathing is akin to pure aromatherapied oxygen with a touch of mint in it and that whenever we turn on our faucets, champaign should be flowing freely from it, then you could say that might be an honorable goal to achieve.
Now go forth, young man and make it happen.
To the person who said to use them for the front porch light, you do realize that florescent bulbs do not come on when the temperatures are freezing and are very slow to light up when it is cold outside. Kind of defeats the purpose of exterior lighting dontcha think?
In my area people use an incandescent bulb to keep the pipes in their well houses from freezing and breaking. The heat from one 75 watt bulb placed at the floor level is enough. If there are no more incandescents, then people will switch back to the old pump house heaters. Talk about energy hogs.
No one ever kept their chicken coop or rabbit pens warm with florescent bulbs either.
The law of unintended consequences will kick in and we will use more energy in manufacturing, disposal of the hazardous florescent bulb will create environmental problems and in substituting less energy efficient ways to heat specialty areas.
I'm with you 100% on this. I cannot work under fluorescent lights. They make color look like hell and they make people look like corpses. As a consequence of how they actually produce light, they also flicker and I'm convinced that a combination of that flicker and their overly intense illumination triggers my migraines. Unfortunately the classrooms in my college are lit by them- and this is in an art school. I'm going to try to lobby to have them replaced, at least in the painting classrooms.
Oh, also:
"All fluorescent lamps contain a small amount of elemental mercury (Hg), also known as quicksilver. When lamps are cold, some of the mercury in the lamp is in liquid form, but while the lamp is operating, or when the lamp is hot, most of the mercury is in a gaseous or vapor form.
Mercury vapor is a highly toxic substance, with an "extreme" rating as a poison. Even in liquid form, contact with mercury is considered life-threatening or a "severe" risk to health. Mercury can cause severe respiratory tract damage, brain damage, kidney damage, central nervous system damage, and many other serious medical conditions even for extremely small doses."
And:
"A long term hazard from fluorescent lighting is the shorter-wave ultraviolet light that escapes the lamp. No matter how well crafted, some short-wave ultraviolet light escapes from every fluorescent lamp made. (Even incandescent lamps produce a small amount of short-wave ultraviolet light.) Short-wave ultraviolet light is one of the damaging components of the suns rays that reach the surface of the Earth, which can directly damage organic tissue and trigger cancers. Short-wave ultraviolet light can also age or damage paper, fabrics and other materials."
Gaia likes nothing more than mercury! And your skin and your upholstery and your artwork like nothing more than short wave UV radiation!
Super-Electro-Magnetic Midget Launcher said...
Trapped in their own bleak joyless hell, with nothing better to do than force their sick masochistic devotional habits on the rest of us who are still alive.
LOL, great imagery, but you missed the punch line:
"Soylent Green is people!"
I had said that I refuse to get compact flourescent bulbs, but they were on my mind while browsing Target and I ended up getting a few for the hell of it. They turn on instantly and, I gotta admit, the light is better than expected. I wouldn't light my whole house with them, but they seem good for some lamps. And trust me I would've loved to post that they suck if they did.
Got one going in one hallway lamp. I tried one in my bedroom but rejected that. They made me look different in my dresser mirror and I do most of my reading in bed. I tried 'em in two other lamps and in both cases the bulbs were incompatible with the lamps. I guess you sometimes have to buy new lamps.
So, whatever, I guess I'll save 60 bucks a year with one lamp, minus the money for the bulbs I can't use yet. But I did my part! If New York City is under water in ten years, the weather'll be better than ever here in Cleveland, and we have lots of cheap housing for ya!
----
BTW, Althouse mentioned the other day that the NEw York Times never does stories pointing out the wastefulness of having newspapers delivered. Well, in Sunday's New York Times Magazine they describe some asinine luxury house of the future that is at one with nature and they imagine a day in the life of the so-very sophisticated yuppies living in it.
In fine print footnotes on page 86 (you might need a magnifying glass) it mentions: "It takes thousands of trees to print a Sunday paper."
Right before they describe the refidgerator of the future (a conveyer fridge where you can only take your food out of a teensy slot and it'll look a mess behind glass for all to see), and the WorkOut Generator (you have to log time on a treadmill each morning to keep batteries charged up), and the LAwnDrawer (if you wanna chill on the lawn you gotta pull out a mobile turf surface).
I don't know about all that stuff. But I'm glad they mentioned how I can easily save thousands of trees. :)
I have three in use at home (kitchen, family room, bedroom). They seem to do the trick, but I would not use them for art. I think one of my art teachers said that if you take a 100w bulb and a florescent light and have them together it is really close to natural light.
I actually like CFLs.
However, the local lefty enviro-dipshits here in California managed to make it a law that houses have to have either a dimmer switch (for the primarily room light) or a built-in fluorescent in every room. Since built-in fluorescents are simply not an option (they lower the value of my home) I ended up being forced to put in dimmer switches in every room -- which, of course, rules out using CFLs unless I want to blow a lot of money on the kind that actually work in dimmer switches (and the flicker from dimmer-switch CFLs bothers me anyway).
The long and the short of this is that, thanks to "environmentalists", I am now using more power -- and doing more harm to the environment -- than I would have been if they'd just fucked off and let ME pick the option that works best for my house. Socialism in action.
Even if I were to concede that it is worth our legislators' efforts to reduce the energy we consume lighting our homes, that isn't an excuse for these ill-conceived incandescent bulb bans. It's too technology specific. After all, GE and Philips are working on high-efficiency incandescent technologies that will be competitive with CFLs. Shouldn't we be able to use those bulbs?
When technology is concerned in particular, laws should deal with the problem without prescribing a specific solution. Whether that is a limit on car emissions, light bulb power usage, or whatever, let the technologists figure out the best way to get there.
Of course, even that philosophy doesn't always work. In its infinite wisdom, our government mandated a reduction in energy usage for washing machines. The end result is basically the elimination of inexpensive washing machines that actually perform well. According to Consumer Reports, no 2007 model year washing machine under $1000 earned a "very good" rating!
Way to watch out for the little guy, DOE.
I bet Althouse is tetrachromatic. That would explain a lot.
We must stop this tyrannical imposition upon our righteous self-indulgence before we are actually forced to see our neighbor's children grow up in a safer, healthier, and cleaner world!
Hey whatta you know...Laurie David reads your blog...
mcg said...
Way to watch out for the little guy, DOE.
Environmentalism in it's current and abberant form isn't about the little guy. It's about mandating and making you do want they want you to do because the envirokooks think and claim to know that they know what's best for you and how that knowledge interacts with the environment. The little guy always gets screwed when these types of causes infiltrate down to the average persons level.
It just doesn't stop at washing machines. It's cars, it's the gasoline you buy, it's the energy star mantra, it's the biodegradeable plastics, it's the ethanol, it's this, it's that. These idiots and their idiotic ideas have infiltrated into the fabric of our society, then they further inject themselves into your life through political and legislative means. It's one thing after another and the little guy always gets screwed because they think their answer to a problem that really isn't one and is self-correcting is about changing the way you live your life to suit their aims and makes them feel better about it.
I really hope they feel better about screwing with peoples lives like they do because I've seen the devastating affects of these type of propaganda on societies all over the world, especially africa.
Requiring CFLs reminds me of the requirement for low flow toilets. If you built a house at the beginning of that mandate, you got lousy toilets. There are three from my house,two first gen, one second gen, that are now landfilled, and another second gen is just about ready to be junked - bad seals that cannot be repaired. Gen three seems to be OK though. Thanks, Uncle Sam.
As to CFLs, they are a good idea for closets - here, its the building code, because incandescent are fire hazards in smaller enclosed spaces. I see someone has posted about mercury in the bulbs. A back of envelope calculation I've seen suggests that the mercury not vented directly to the atmosphere from a coal burning power plant (due to CFL's increased efficiency) is several times the mercury that might - might - be vented from a CFL. I have a lot of CFLs and T12/T8/T5 bulbs. If you buy the cheapest (aka cool white), then you may not like the light. Buy warm white with a color temperature of 3000K. For reading, I like MicroSun lamps which are metal halide arc lamps. They are about 4X as efficient as incandescent. Some sources claim they have a very good color rendition index, others claim they are not so good. All I know is that they work for me and I voluntarily bought a few - no need for nanny/ninny government to force me to do so.
I have no problem using CFL's. In fact, I was using fluorescents in my lamps back in the early 1990's, so I guess that makes me super-virtuous or something. But recently all the CFL manufacturing seems to have moved to China. There used to be a brand that wasn't made there, but now they are. I, alas, don't buy products made in China (yes, that makes shopping a challenge), so the CFL's I bought on clearance at Walmart from what appears to be the last batch not made in China are probably the last ones I'm going to be able to use.
I don't like being given simplistic solutions to complex problems. What if the CFL's give me or family members migraines? What if I need a different type of light? What if. . .? And what if all these mercury calculations fail to account for the scale of the use of CFL's and their careless disposal? Somehow I have suspicions that in 10 or 20 years we'll get around to considering the what-ifs.
It's very easy to solve. Just tax the incandescent light bulbs. People will buy less of them, but if you really want them - you can still get them (you just have to pay more).
You don't want to ban them.
It's like those stupid laws that limit how many gallons you can have in a toilet. Screw that crap - I want my toilet to FLUSH god damn it.
"It's like those stupid laws that limit how many gallons you can have in a toilet. Screw that crap - I want my toilet to FLUSH god damn it."
Yes, I never understood those stupid toilets. One often has to flush them several times to completely evacuate the waste, which defeats the purpose of water-saving toilet. But of course, Germans were pioneers in the field of turd examination.
And, by the way, I've tried several different color temperatures of CF bulbs, but found them all to be ugly. Most of the bulbs in my house are the neodymium glass variety. I love the light from these bulbs. The company makes a CF bulb, but I haven't tried it because of my other problems with fluorescent bulbs.
Ugh, remember in Joe vs. The Volcano, how dreadful and dead the fluorescent lighting made everyone look, draining the life right out of them? That's exactly how those things make me feel.
And don't even get me started on the low-flow toilets or showerheads. Bad, bad conservation idea. The author is right, in that it does end up requiring probably twice the amount one would have used otherwise for function or force.
I hate corporatocracy that creates the consumerism and a product, and then overrides the consumers' choices by partnering up to sell yet another product on a mass scale by supporting environmental regulations. It's all about greed.
I have noticed for a long time how the plastics industry is not regulated in any way, it seems. Packaging is getting increasingly smaller and denser. If conservation is so important, then why are the products allowed to be packaged such? It drives me crazy -- five bite-sized breakfast bites in a package, mini Ozarka water bottles whose caps do not come off for refills, less than 16 oz. of lunchmeat that comes in a disposable plastic container with a lid rather than a cellophane package? Why does plastics packaging go unchecked? It's because the big companies can charge more money for fancy packaging.
I would gladly forfeit fancy packaging before the natural daylight glow of an incandescent bulb and my higher water flow. Ask us consumers where we want to cut corners.
"you do realize that florescent bulbs do not come on when the temperatures are freezing and are very slow to light up when it is cold outside"
A colleague told me the same thing after I had been happily using a CFL as my porch light here in tropical New England for years. It's a little slow to come up to full brightness when it's bitterly cold, but we tend to turn on the light at sundown and then off at bedtime.
Looks like the perfect time for C.S. Lewis to step in:
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. "
dave™©: given your paltry blog traffic, that's a good question for you to ask. You might try asking nicer next time.
Dieting tip - prepare and eat all your meals under cool white fluorescents. The pounds will just melt off!
There are plenty of areas I wouldn't use CFLs in, but behind a frosted or colored lens, in closets, in tub/shower stall fixtures, you bet. I also use a lot of regular fluorescents in valence indirect lighting.
Palladian, when the thugs from the Ministry of Efficiency show up in their pleather jackboots and Sam Brown belts, I'll defend your right to neodymium glass incandescents until , uh, until I need to take a nap or something. Good luck with that.
There was an interesting discussion of CFL's in January over on Megan McArdle's blog. Unfortunately, the links no longer work, so here is the executive summary of what I said about our experience with compact flourescents:
They suck.
In addition to almost burning the house down with the cheesy magnetic ballast units I bought for the basement, my wife had an Althousian reaction to the glare/color, compounded by migraines induced by the flicker. My wife had almost three months of straight migraines after I installed the CFL's. You really don't want to know what that was like.
We found most indoor units only lasted about three times as long as the incandescents they replaced, NOT the 10,000 hours advertised. Outdoor units last forever, but heat, even modest heat, degrades inside lights. I spent $600.00 on the damn things, and they were all shot within a year and a half. They have been proven in our experience to be LESS economical than the incandescents they replace.
I also wonder about the energy budget to manufacture them. They are obviously more resource- and energy-intensive to make than incandescents, and if they die within a year, we have a lot more chunks of plastic, glass, wire, and toxic chemicals to dispose of than we otherwise might. I've read that, based on good research data, the average lifetimes of the CFL's mean that they indeed save significant energy overall, and, because they save burning coal, the toxic load will be reduced as well. It's just that, somehow, the averages didn't work for me.
In addition to my own experience, what I've read in technical sources say that CFL's are "capable of improvement." Perhaps they're better today than they were a few years ago, but I'm unwilling to find out.
Being a gadget sucker, I'm all eager to try the new LED bulbs. My wife says that if they resemble the CFL's in any way, she will personally tear each and every one of them out and put them through my coffee grinder. From what Althouse says, I'd better wait a bit if I don't want a little something extra in my Mocha Java.
According to Consumer Reports, no 2007 model year washing machine under $1000 earned a "very good" rating!
My front-loading high-efficiency washer is the worst purchase I ever made. It simply doesn't get clothes as clean as my trusty 20-year old washer did before it finally kicked the bucket. Plus you actually have to periodically remove and clean the soap dispenser. WTF, who wants to have to *clean* an appliance that's supposed to clean things?
Low flow toilets and shower heads are a curse and I am convinced they result in more water usage than their supposedly wasteful ancestors.
knoxwhirled -low water usage is virtuous, even if you are dragged, kicking and screaming, into it. My new kilobuck HE toploader is apparently susceptible to surges and brownouts. I have a whole house surge protector, but would need at least a line conditioner to also cover brownouts. Wunnerful, might as well get a big UPS...
Theo: I don't know what CFLs you tried, but the GE ones they sell at Target don't flicker at all. I'm not really pushing them, but the new ones are surprisingly good.
knox: Plus you actually have to periodically remove and clean the soap dispenser. WTF, who wants to have to *clean* an appliance that's supposed to clean things?
That's obnoxious but you only can blame the people who designed that particular model. My Bosch HE washer keeps its soap thingie clean on its own, and it's a vast improvement over my previous washer. The only design flaw is that the damn thing beeps for like 15 minutes when a load is done. I paid way too much for that thing to be NAGGING me to tend to my clothes. But that has nothing to do with it being high efficiency.
Mine's a crappy Whirlpool.
Loved the Glass Menagerie reference! "The warehouse is where I go to work, not to know things about people!"
Odd, I have a Whirlpool and it works quite well. Definitely better than my previous toploader. It's weird how variable these experiences can be.
Rev, re this:
"However, the local lefty enviro-dipshits here in California managed to make it a law that houses have to have either a dimmer switch (for the primarily room light)..."
I assume that's part of the building code, right--i.e. that the planning dept won't sign off on plans, or the building inspector on the occupancy permit, until they're in--and NOT that they're doing random warrantless searches of homes to ensure they are in compliance? Because if it's the latter, how about you and I start a black-market business bringing in Plain Old Lightswitches from the Free World and selling them to homeowners for do-it-yourself retrofits? :-)
Pogo,
Nice quote from Lewis!
LoafingOaf: The CFL's were mostly Philips, with some nondescript, magnetic-ballest cheapos thrown in for a stairwell, part of the basement, etc.
We have several dimmers around the house, including the dining room, and I think my mistake was buying dimmable CFL's. They definitely flickered, especially at low levels. In addition, even when I could see no flicker, they drove my wife crazy.
It's nice to know CFL's have gotten better in the past five years since I put mine in. Thanks for the recommendation. I may try one or two out, but only in areas where I hang out and my wife doesn't.
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