Thursday, February 28, 2008

Compact Florescent Bulbs: Environmentalists on a Roll

There is finally a mainstream media story today on the OBJECTIONS that people have to compact florescent light bulbs (those spiral things that use less electricity).

Do you realize that athere are environmental and leftist groups out there for which the word "mercury" is almost as damning as "nuclear"?  (There is mercury in florescent light bulbs, and if you break one of the things it creates an environmental hazard in your house.)

The autism inspired critics of the drug companies alone go hysterical over MINUTE traces of mercury in vaccines.

Yet Congress, and "global warming" fanatics are in the process of FORCING people to use florescent bulbs, while forcing incandescent bulbs out of the maket--taking away your FREEDOM.  That is the way leftist Democrats are.

What are these radical environmentalists accomplishing?  well, they seem to be FORCING more mercury into circulaton in our environment.  The Boston Globe recently ran an article on what you do if you BREAK a flrorescent bulb.  They advised NEVER to vacuum it up, and that the best thing is probably to CUT A SQARE OUT OF THE CARPET AND THROW THE WHOLE THING AWAY.   In other words, you virtually need one of those HAZMAT  Environmental benefits:  probably minimal--cerainly not as many as would be accomplished by a few more nuclear plans--probably with LESS danger.

Radical envrionmentalists are on a roll with this "global warming" insanity. Biofuels are taking food out of the mouths of the world's poor, to the point one U.N. official called them a Crime Against Humanity. Those same biofuels are accelerating the destruction of the rainforests (another environment cause being crucified on the alter of "global warming")--a study suggesting that the result will be MORE CARBON in the atmosphere.

Meanwhle, the earth is COOLING over the past year. The four leading global temperature tracking oulets are reporting a precipitoous DROP in the "termperature of the earth". Canadian scientists are talking about a lack of sunspot acitivity on the sun possibly resulting in a new ICE AGE (see entries over the past week in this blog).

Now environmentalists are trying to infect our country with all of this mercury: on a roll indeed. GO ENVIRONMENTALISTS. You may yet destroy us all.

When I talked about the negative roll environmentalists are on, I forgot the main item. My beer guzzling brother will never forgive me. He was so upset by this item that he called me especially (he NEVER calls me) just to vent. I still think this, alone, is going to spell the downfall of the tyrant environmentalists, even more than compact florescent bulbs.

BIOFUELS ARE RAISING THE COST OF BEER. Forget taking food out of the mouths of the world's poor. My brother regards this as SERIOUS. With the amount of beer he drinks, this theatens to hurt his standard of living much more than the price of gas.  (Net effect of biofuels, of course, is likely to RAISE overall prices--as it has already rasied the price of many foods.)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have compact florescent bulbs throughout my house. The energy savings are SUBSTANTIAL and they last forever and a day.

All in all I'm not going to sweat the very rare broken bulb any more than my Mom would have torn up the carpet had she broken a thermoter when I was growing up.

Plus they are making CFL bulbs now with reduced mercury. I bought a 6 pack of 60W equivalent low-mercury bulbs for $10, but also received $5 back on a rebate.

Dan

Anonymous said...

I have mostly compact florescent bulbs throughout my house.  No, I don't sweat the mercury too much either (although DISPOSAL of the bulbs stries me as something of a problem--what I did not put in the entry is that some sanitation departments PROHIBIT puttting CFL's in ordinary trash (purport to prhobit, anyway).

My point is not that compact flrescent light bulbs are bad, but that central planning coercion is bad.  There are downsides to CFL bulbs.   We may discover that the downsides are worse than we think.  There were SuBSTANTIAL downsides to the effective banning of DDT.  There are downsides to biofuels.

My oppositon is to the religious fervor with which these things are being forced down our throats--often forcing us down one path when we should be considering many multiple paths.

Why should people be FORCED to use CFL bulbs if they don't like them?  I assure you that, while CFL bulbs may substantially affect your electric bill, they will NOT have any substantial effect on "global warming" (to the extent it is not mainly a propaganda hoax in the first place), or any substantial effect on our use of oil.  Building nuclear plants would be a much have done much more good in that area.

In short, I support cutting your personal energy bill and reducing our dependence on oil  I OPPOSE the artificial, dangerous coercion on central planning.

s usual, thanks for the comment.