This is Alpha, the first-born, when he was 2YO.
This is Beta, the second-born, when he was about 2YO.
This is Gamma, the third-born, when he was about 18MO.
Ban the Ban, Part 2
Dec
6
2011
I wrote about the ban on incandescent light bulbs before, and I’m still against it. The difference between then and now is that now it is affecting me.
The big “downside” about incandescent bulbs is that they produce a lot of heat. But guess what? I already use electricity to heat my house, so it doesn’t matter to me. Can those of us with electric-resistance baseboard heat be exempt from the ban? Now that my light bulbs put out less heat, I have to use more electricity to generate more heat to replace the missing heat.
…and don’t get me started on the demise of the Easy-Bake oven. You’ll be waiting forever to get a CFL to bake anything.
…and pity the poor residents of the chicken coop during the winter, huddling under a CFL that produces no warmth.
I hear incandescent light bulbs being decried as “inefficient”. They are not inefficient – they just multitask. They are good at producing heat and light together. Why is that so bad? What if someone wants both heat and light?
Old-fashioned light bulbs are not dangerous and shouldn’t be regulated by the government. Did the government ban gas lamps to get people to switch over to electric lights? As Americans, we have the right to lights, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Actually, CFLs are more dangerous than incandescents. Does an incandescent bulb contain toxic substances? CFLs do. You can’t just throw a CFL in the trash if it breaks or dies. I would rather use more electricity than contaminate the land with more mercury. But I’m not getting that choice anymore.
The main reason I want to be able to keep buying normal light bulbs is for their dimmability. I have several rooms with dimmers. Standard dimming circuits kill CFLs. I know I could buy new equipment and get dimmable CFLs, but the bulbs are $5 each. That’s over 10 times the price of a regular bulb. Plus I would have to buy a new dimmer switch and install it. All that work, and for what? No tangible benefit for me. (Yes, the CFLs would use less electricity, but the initial cost is so high that we’ll probably move into a new house before we would get the payoff.)
I saw the writing on the wall and started putting CFLs in the house a couple years ago. On my own. Without being mandated.
Why?
Because it made financial sense to do so.
I compared the price of bulbs plus the cost to operate them for CFLs and incandescents and saw that CFLs had to last about 10 or 11 months in order to recoup the purchase price. So as long as they lasted over a year (which they did), I would come out ahead financially.
But only for non-dimmable bulbs.
Next government action: sanctioning the sun because it produces heat in addition to light and is a major contributor to global warming climate change.
Now the slaves and the officers were standing there, having made a charcoal fire, for it was cold and they were warming themselves; and Peter was also with them, standing and warming himself.
John 18:18
This little article thingy was written by Some Guy sometime around 6:48 pm and has been carefully placed in the Current Events category.
December 7th, 2011 at 4:56 pm
RE Dimming CFLs
Ghastly light – not like the incandescents that just get warmer!!
RE Incandescents are not inefficient – they just multitask
Very true
That is why the early ban on 100W bulbs is so dumb.
Energy efficiency is not the same as performance efficiency, or efficiency in relation to construction and constructional cost.
It so happens that the earliest banned 100 Watt
bulbs are particularly effective in delivering bright light at low cost – the CFLs and LEDs are difficult to make bright, especially omnidirectionally with LEDs, and always at a higher price for the bulbs.
100W bulbs = same price as 60W or 40W bulbs.
Yes, “90% heat” – but it is research proved to be useful in temperate climates,
http://ceolas.net/#li6x
and detractors always “forget” to mention that 80% of CFL and 70% of LED energy consumption is released as heat, though internally, to give a proven fire risk with CFLs,
as also referenced on the website.
December 7th, 2011 at 5:00 pm
PS What chance of an Epsilon there on the left ;-)
They’ll all turn out leaders of their college fraternities no doubt
(all those beta kappa thetas etc out there!)
December 8th, 2011 at 12:58 pm
We’re both good with 4 kids. I thought about calling #4 Omega instead of Delta, but that would be asking for trouble.
And I must remember to stock up on 100W bulbs before January.
December 9th, 2011 at 8:46 am
Omega sounds good too…
but yeah, what if one did follow that ;-)
RE stocking up,
not sure where Cedarville is,
but Canada delaying ban 2 years, Texas allowing manufacture locally (though none yet as far as i know)
http://freedomlightbulb.blogspot.com/2011/11/canada-delay-to-2014-its-official.html
December 31st, 2013 at 6:19 am
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