UPDATE 2: 12/16/11 9AMPST It appears early reports were wrong, junkscience.com now reports that
The deal agreed to in Congress merely deprives the Department oF Energy the funds to enforce the ban for 2012. The ban is still on the books — so the DOE may very well get the money next year or the year after or who knows when.
Original post follows:
Blogging this from my cellphone.
Reports coming in from my sources say it was suspended tonight, more later.
UPDATE: from Politico –
The shutdown-averting budget bill will block federal light bulb efficiency standards, giving a win to House Republicans fighting the so-called ban on incandescent light bulbs.
GOP and Democratic sources tell POLITICO the final omnibus bill includes a rider defunding the Energy Department’s standards for traditional incandescent light bulbs to be 30 percent more energy efficient.
From The Hill –
Omnibus spending legislation greenlighted by House and Senate negotiators Thursday night blocks Energy Department light bulb efficiency standards that have come under fire from conservatives in recent months.
The legislation, which would avert a government shutdown, prevents funding from being used for the implementation of certain Energy Department light bulb standards. The standards would begin phasing in next year.
h/t to Steve Milloy at junkscience.com
I bet you have to get them from China now, so more energy used in shipping , great win for Congress.
Are the (mercury-free) incandescent bulbs still being manufactured?
Mark says:
December 16, 2011 at 1:33 am
It doesn’t matter. I prefer the CFL’s over regular incandescents. And I have really noticed a difference in my electricity bills.
I did the contrary. I replaced all my CFLs with incandescents and halogens and brought my CFLs to a collection point, even if they were not end-of-life. Now I can say, “my house is CFL free” and I love it! I enjoy of the warm spectrum in every place in my home. I asked myself how I could so stupid to believe the propaganda of the politicians. Earlier, I was a supporter of CFLs. Now, I am a strong proponent of a mercury free lighting. Now, I have the feeling that my home is again my private residence and not the territory of strange thinking politicians.
So, I have made rid of the CFLs and its disadvantages:
– The processing of cinnabar is associated with elevated atmospheric Hg emissions. Some reopened mercury mines in China have ruined the environment and the inhabitants: dead rivers, poisoned fields and ailing inhabitants.
– Any manufacturing process that employs Hg will produce Hg vapor that potentially exposes the workers. In a CFL factory in China, 121 out of 123 employees had excessive mercury levels. One man’s level was 150 times the accepted standard. (Extracts of the article of The Times on line, dated May 3, 2009: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6211261.ece )
– The quality of light of CFLs is very poor.
– Broken CFLs emit noxious gasses and particles, especially dangerous to children.
– Once in landfill, mercury in broken lamps gets digested by microbes and emitted as methyl mercury which will then be washed out through run off water and thence into the ecosystem.
– During the recycling process, the distillation requires a substantial amount of energy. If the electricity is supplied by coal fired sources, a new emission of mercury will take place.
It is a shame that governments only emphasize the profit but hide the noxious consequences to the environment and the health of the people during the manufacturing, use and end-of-life of the CFLs. For CFLs, better substitutes (regarding the environmental impacts, not regarding the individual profit) exist, what means that these lamps are obsolete.
It is ironical that the last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the United States has closed in September 2010 (Washington Post) while new factories were opened in China leading to an increase in the construction of coal-fired power plants. A clean production of lamps in the US has been replaced by a new pollution wave in this already pollution-stricken country. One knows that about 75 percent of China’s city dwellers live below the country’s acceptable air-quality standard. (http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=6000)
Our profit at what cost???
> Personally I absolutely detest CFL’s. I’ve yet to have one last as long as advertised, and they are completely useless for porch lights.
Like anything, they have their uses, but outside is not one of them. I bought a bunch of CFLs at Costco, with an instant rebate from ComEd – my tax $$’s no doubt – that made them dirt cheap. There are places in my house where the CFLs work well, and they do suck less from the socket, so it’s a win for me.
That said, I still want the option of incandescent lights for the places where CFLs are not a good choice.
And what’s with the funky pin-based bulbs? I think we have California to thank for those. I got a three-CFL, domed fixture, from Costco for about $10, including bulbs. I had it installed before I noticed the bulbs weren’t the standard screw-in, but a two-pin thing. I priced the bulbs at Home Depot – Costco doesn’t carry the bulbs in their stores – it would cost about $25 to replace the three bulbs. When they crap out, the whole fixture gets trashed. I suppose I could have just bought a few more of the $10 fixture + bulbs sets for the spares, but that seems ridiculous.
One way to extend the life of I-bulbs is to use the little rectifier-discs (which I still have several but not sure if they’re still available — I got them long ago from a science-surplus website) placed on the end of the bulb. The rectifier cuts the power to the bulb by one-half, so you need a larger-wattage bulb than usual.
One 60W standard I-bulb that was “on” non-stop over my stove w/a rectifier lasted 4 yrs. Another w/a rectifier in my bathroom (on/off constantly) lasted 3 yrs.
Adding to Anna Lemma’s response to syncrodox
Wednesday, September 8, 2010; 9:48 PM
WINCHESTER, VA. – The last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the United States is closing this month, marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison’s innovations in the 1870s.
The remaining 200 workers at the plant here will lose their jobs.
“Now what’re we going to do?” said Toby Savolainen, 49, who like many others worked for decades at the factory, making bulbs now deemed wasteful.
http://americaneconomicalert.org/news_item.asp?NID=4328760
Reporting of:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/07/AR2010090706933_2.html?sid=ST2010090707038
J Napolitano what dun it. She was behind this. Had the ban gone into effect, they would have had to close the border to Mexico to prevent bulb trafficking.
john West says:
December 15, 2011 at 8:19 pm
It was a stupid idea and it’s unenforceable. Everyone I know has loaded up on incandescent bulbs to last the rest of their lives. They are cheap and are still available and plentiful….
______________________
My hubby was commenting that the price of LEDs should come down enough in 4 years to make them competitive.
The guys with the twisty bulbs wanted to make sure they got their return on investment first before the competition wipes them off the face of the earth. Sylvania and General Electric both sell the twisty bulbs.
Looks like the usual product looking for a customer and when there were not enough customers the corporations got the government to legislate the customers into existence.
So much for our freedom of “Choice” and if you have any doubt the FDA has made it very plain in a court of law:
If you have any doubts as to which side the US government is on, Joe Q. Public or their corporate campaign funders look no further than the US courts ruling that Creekstone was BARRED FROM TESTING OF MAD COW DISEASE! (BSE)
This commenter does a decent job of providing links to the rot within the USDA: http://www.ranchers.net/forum/about29636.html
Other stories I read stated the USDA was worried about “Consumer Confidence” in beef products and that was the reason they wanted NO Testing. BFD, require Creekstone to freeze samples and if there is a case of positive results notify the USDA to come and preform a second test. It is done in drug testing all the time and the procedure is codified in DOT regs.
Again the history of the consistent behavior of the US Congress is what is note worthy. Requiring low flow toilets or twisty bulbs is an annoyance but when our food system becomes fair game and the number of food borne illnesses (CDC stats) skyrocket as a result then it passes in from fraud to murder IMHO. (Yes people have died -horribly and the USDA/FDA did nothing http://www.whistleblower.org/storage/documents/Shielding_the_Giant_Final_PDF.pdf )
(These are notes from 2008 and the links maybe dead. I provide the info as ammunition to use against those who see MORE government as the solution. Prior to 1995 our food safety system worked just fine then the government mucked it up so it now favors the multinationals and not the consumer.)
A Food and Drug Administration plan to close seven of 13 field laboratories has angered some lawmakers, government workers and safety advocates… http://business.highbeam.com/435343/article-1G1-163010471/closing-fda-food-drug-testing-labs-worry-advocates
Tuberculosis Surveillance in California Cattle dropped from 10,576 in 1995 to a low of 1,425 in 1999. http://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/vetext/INF-BE_cca/INF-BE_cca02/INF-BE_cca0207-08.html
Cattle crossing facilities on the U.S. side of the border are operated primarily by private firms… at Santa Teresa, NM, Chihuahuan cattle producers [Mexican] operate both sides of the cattle port-of-entry http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/Agoutlook/june2001/AO282d.pdf
RESULTS
It is anticipated that both New Mexico and California will lose their TB “free” status in 2008 ~ AGENCY STRATEGIC PLAN: FOR THE FISCAL YEARS 2009-2013 PERIOD by TEXAS ANIMAL HEALTH COMMISSION
The USDA now reports “The number of carcasses found infected with TB is 15 times higher than in 1986.” http://www.nytimes.com/1993/11/16/us/free-trade-accord-ranchers-increased-trade-mexican-cattle-brings-rise-disease-us.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
I bought 2 cases of Sylvania 100 watters at Lowe’s last weekend. Oh well. At least they pulled their ads from that Moslem “reality” show.
It looks like the ban was NOT repealed after all:
http://junkscience.com/2011/12/16/light-bulb-ban-not-repealed/
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Blade says:
December 16, 2011 at 6:43 am
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Another clever, funny & thru-the-heart smackdown delivered. Thanks.
Since the 2007 law hasn’t been repealed, it seems to me that any retailer selling 100W incandescent will still breaking the law, even if the feds “promise” not to enforce it.
I don’t know what others have found but my experience is the “new improved non-incandescent” bulbs last only as long as incandescent bulbs and NO LONGER. But hey I get to produce more toxic waste so that is “green”, right?
To Ole of Denmark.
I’ve been forced to use the new bulbs for 4 years now. I am not getting used to them. I am getting more angry. I am also getting more broke. They do not save any money. They cost a lot of money to buy. They do not last long at all. They break easily. Most of the alternative lights mean replacing fittings. If you turn them on and off a lot they don’t use less power I am told, perhaps more knowledgable people here know if that is correct or not.
You assume that the power supply is constant. When it is not they don’t work correctly. Those stupid CFL bulbs are dim and dark, they take 10 minutes to warm up. If you want to just walk across a room and then turn them off they are less efficient than the old ones and they won’t light up much anyway, at least the ones they sell to us don’t.
I have crushed one over my head by accident as I put it in, not realising how delicate they are at first. They don’t work well in sideways vs vertical situations. Leds require me to change all my light fittings. I live an hour out of the nearest small town. It would probably cost me $2000 – $3000 to change light fittings as the call out fee from the only electrician in town is enormous. Many of the fittings in the house are for 60 Watt so I can’t use the 200 watt with a dimmer alternatives some people mention.
Ole I don’t know how old you are, I guess you are probably younger than me. I sure as anything can’t read in a room lit by a CFL from the ceiling.
The toxicity you mention yourself. To read with a CFL bulb I have to be very close to it. I have heard that it is not good to be close. Does anyone know if this is true?
squareheaded said:
December 15, 2011 at 11:57 pm
Mark and two Cats says:
December 15, 2011 at 10:36 pm
Mark, thanks for the heads up on global drifting, but those cats…
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Y’all better smile when you say that, pilgrim…
Does defunding them actually stop them from becoming active? Can Obama not just turn the responsibility for enforcing it over to another department?
Astonerii, the original 2007 law empowered/instructed the Energy Department to write and issue regulations to impose the light bulb standards (de facto ban on standard incandescents), beginning 1/1/12. The omnibus spending agreement of Thursday night bans the Energy Department from spending money in FY 2012 to do so, effectively freezing the situation. Because other government departments, unlike Energy, were not empowered to create the regulations, they can’t do it in Energy’s stead.
If the original bill had empowered the President to slect a department to issue the regulations or empowered multiple departments, then the government could legally do as you suggest under the new agreement, as long as the Energy Department stayed out if it. But it didn’t.
So once again, the Republicans, having been elected to fix the stupidity of the Democrats, have done… nothing.
Ole of Denmark says:
Get used to it…..
At first I too fumed about the government taking away my personal liberty, and dictating every minute matter of my life. Not to mention the order to go to my local Community Health Clinic for castration. Particularly since they had prohibited the use of any anesthetic during the procedure. But I’ve gotten used to it. I’ve actually learned to love the visits from my Community Minder, who comes by weekly to inform me of the latest decisions of the Central Committee about what I am to eat, wear, read, and think. The portrait of The Obama, painted on velvet, is just so beautiful on my living room wall. And no longer having to waste my time and energy making any personal decisions has given me many more hours a day to watch American Idle, and Dancing with the Czars….
Black Flag, at the risk of defending Republicans, I think that’s a little harsh. Better (in my view) to blame those Republicans who went along with the original de facto ban in 2007 than those who did their best (not that all of them did) to repeal it or block enforcement of it in 2012. In ban itself was buried in a huge energy bill, and quite a few members voted on it without even knowing about the light bulb provision (I freely grant that is no excuse, but it is a result of the fact that govt has grown so large that bills are thousands of pages long and written in a manner that is nearly incomprehensible — and yes, some of the same members who voted for it share meaningful culpability for that, too). SOme who did know now see the error of their ways. One of the strongest backers of repeal was one of the strongest propoents back in 2007. Back to 2011: more than a majority of the members of the House did vote for a full repeal in 2011. Although that bill did not pass the House for technical reasons, had there been hope in hades of it getting through the Senate the House would have voted again and passed the repeal. Since the Senate wasn’t going to even vote on it, let alone for it, the House opted to do the one thing it knew the Senate would find harder to resist — attaching it an appropriations bill. This was done successfully, by which route it ended up in the omnibus, and the Senate/Democrats tried to get it out, and Republicans stuck to their guns, and the Senate/Democrats decided it wasn’t worth fighting for — for now. So Republicans doing “nothing.” IMO, no. They did something bad and then they did something good — though the good has yet to be enough to fully erase the bad. Just my opinion.
John Cooper says:
December 16, 2011 at 9:24 am
Since the 2007 law hasn’t been repealed, it seems to me that any retailer selling 100W incandescent will still breaking the law, even if the feds “promise” not to enforce it.
The ban is not on selling non-exempt incandescents, but on manufacturing and importing them.
Meanwhile, there are many exceptions: http://donklipstein.com/incban.html – with links to
the actual legislation.
I’m personally very fond of CFL’s, and use a lot of them, BUT, I am very thankful that this reprieve occurred! It’s about freedom of choice. It’s my choice to use CFL’s, and the choice of others to use incandescents. If I value the ability to make my own choice, I must therefor support the right of others to make their own, free from the meddling of nanny state bureaucrats.
Since it hasn’t been mentioned above, supposedly CFLs release phenols, naphthalene and styrene. It is recommended that: “They should not be used in unventilated areas and definitely not in the proximity of the head.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/8462626/Energy-saving-light-bulbs-contain-cancer-causing-chemicals.html
From Wikipedia re: fluorescents: UV light [“small” amounts from fluorescent light!] can affect sensitive paintings, especially watercolors and many textiles. Valuable art work must be protected from light by additional glass or transparent acrylic sheets put between the lamp(s) and the painting.
I’d been wondering what the hell was causing the green color to fade in some interior light exposed roman shades I’ve got, especially the still exposed to interior light, folded up sections and edges as compared to the covered up sections, since the shades are mostly folded up. I went almost totally fluorescent about 30 years ago – the shades are 20 years old. Maybe it’s the fluorescents?
I’d also read from a professional photographer that they can fade photographs if not protected.
Statement of ACEEE Executive Director Steven Nadel on the “Light Bulb Provision” in the Omnibus Federal Appropriations Bill (12/16/2011)
It is unfortunate that some members of Congress have inserted a provision in the federal appropriations bill seeking to derail implementation of lighting efficiency standards enacted in 2007 and signed by then-President Bush. Contrary to misinformation being spread by some lamp standard opponents, the standards do not ban incandescent lamps, but merely require incandescent lamps to be more efficient. Five manufacturers are now producing and selling efficient incandescent bulbs that meet the standards. With the new budget provision, the law is still in effect, but the Department of Energy cannot spend money to enforce it. Law-abiding companies will follow the law. (http://www.aceee.org/blog/2011/12/statement-aceee-executive-director-st ) (Sentence is emphasized by me.)
What are the names of these five manufacturers and how have they succeeded to meet the imposed lighting effeciency standard for incandescent bulbs?
Rick, the incandescents that meet the standards in their early years are halogen incandescents such as Phillips’ EcoVantage. The pro-banners have consistently pretended nothing will change much because halogens remain legal in the early years. Wait for them to explain to confused consumers that halogens aren’t the same as the common incandescent the public is used to, or that these halogens themselves ultimately get run afoul of the standards (which continue to tighten until 2020) and you will have a long wait.
CHANT IT FROM THE ROOFTOPS!
SPREAD IT EVERYWHERE!
HELL NO, WE WON’T CHANGE!
WE DON’T WANT YOUR COMMIE BULBS!
HELL NO, WE WON’T CHANGE!
WE DON’T WANT YOUR COMMIE BULBS!
HELL NO, WE WON’T CHANGE!
WE DON’T WANT YOUR COMMIE BULBS!