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
Amy, I thank you for your reply.
I have just taken a look in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.
1. Halogen bulbs are indeed considered to belong to the GENERAL SERVICE INCANDESCENT LAMPS. I thought that halogen en incandescent bulbs were two different categories.
2. RULEMAKING BEFORE JANUARY 1, 2014: The rulemaking (I) shall not be limited to incandescent lamp technologies; and (II) shall include consideration of a minimum standard of 45 lumens per watt for general service lamps.
This means that, as you predict, halogen lamps will ultimately be excluded from the distribution in commerce. The required 45 lumens per watt can only be reached by the mercury containing CFLs and LEDs.
How did the authors of this Act evaluate the consequences of the distribution of mercury? Only on two places in section 321 (EFFICIENT LIGHT BULBS), I found an answer, but not much encouraging.
– “Not later than 1 year after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary, in cooperation with the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, shall submit to Congress a report describing recommendations relating to the means by which the Federal Government may reduce or prevent the release of mercury during the manufacture, transportation, storage, or disposal
of light bulbs.”
– “The Administrator shall develop guidelines for the use of energy efficient lighting technologies that contain mercury in child care centers in public building.”
So we have to prepare us to the worst case scenario if the Act will not be adapted in the near future!
It’s not going to matter whether or not we have stocked the preferred “Edisons.” Big govt. will find a way to prevent us using them- such as by controllable “Smart” Meters. The control freak commies aren’t forcing those unwanted meters down our collective throats for NOTHING! Soon those meters will have the ability to control every watt of energy we use, down to rationing power & mandating a certain “allotment” of usage. So why wouldn’t there be a design in the making for the commie meters to work only with the kind of bulbs the green nazis want, the CFL’s?
This isn’t “land of the free” anymore! We’ve entered fascism & totalitarianism. This is why the elite hate our Constitution… they must destroy our rights so they can control every aspect of our LIVES!
Sigh. There is no incandescent bulb ban. None. You can buy incandescents meeting the new standard at the store. They even had hearings where they demonstrated the new bulbs, look exactly like the old ones. These standards were consensus standards that were negotiated with industry, THE LIGHTBULB INDUSTRY SUPPORTS THEM AND OPPOSES THIS BILL! If your preferred news media isn’t relating that fact to you (and I noticed WUWT failed in this regard as well…) the smart thing to do would be to never trust them again.
More facts: if you power an incandescent with coal, you release more mercury by using incandescents than my using CFLs and then breaking them open. Coal contains mercury. But then, a recent post on WUWT tries to tell you that mercury really doesn’t hurt you that much anyway, so don’t worry.
Oh, plus you’re spending more money by using the old bulbs. It’s called lifecycle cost. You might do a little research.
I remember a great magazine add. On one side of the page there was a picture of a tub of margarine and the text; (loosely) Take blended vegetable oil, boil a 1000degrees C in the presence of a platinum catalyst cool and filter allow to set. To the result add, colour, flavour, stabilizer, vitamins etc.
On the other side was a picture of a cube of butter. The text above the butter simply said, take cream, add salt and churn.
The simple incandescent lightbulb made cheaply from harmless materials, glass silica iron alloys.
Or the high tech materially wasteful, mercurial, curly, fragile, expensive devices which give off a pale unhealthy looking light.
One is the pinnacle of manufacturing efficiency, dirt cheap.
The other is complex, high-tech unreliable, toxic and expensive.
Without the illusion of global warming and the tosh about carbon footprints these light bulbs would never have got off the ground…in the UK the ‘Government’ gave them away by the million…nice promotional deal for the company that was!
I watch the extreme Warmists squeal and snarl and reel and ramble in the aftermath of Durban
cluctching blindly for a new scare that will have the same hit..the same impact as the original Global Warming Scare.
The Coral Reefs are dying.(See picture of healthy reef with CO2 bubbling through it)
Great farts of Siberian methane mean imminent doom. Yawn
Mercury…that’s always a good one…fears of deformity…tie in coal and well, you’ve got the most evil stuff in the world.
Remember the very effective anti smoking campaign that listed the dangerous substances contained in cigarette smoke?
Same tactic.
Doesn’t work.
But mercury in light bulbs will find its way into the ecosystem…thanks for that Greenies…you’ve traded a harmless gas for universal mercury pollution…clowns.
Also if these things were meant to last like, for ever. How come there’s not one to be seen from the first crop I bought several years ago. (my natural curiousity often leads to dismal purchasing decisions!)
~Sigh~ But there is, well there was (and will be again in 9 months) an incandescent bulb ban. Perhaps you meant to say that they just didn’t call it an ‘incandescent bulb ban’? But wait a minute, they also didn’t call it an ‘alcoholic beverage ban’ either. By your interesting logic, we had no prohibition. Yes, the snakes that slither around the halls of Congress used their usual obfuscation when drafting this Orwellian nonsense. Somehow they just knew that they would rope in a bunch of volunteer trolls to show up at the bottom of stale blog threads to spread their sycophantic propaganda on the virtues of twisty light bulbs for Oceania.
Since the electrical generation is a constant in both scenarios (coal burning at distant ‘source’ power plants) your thought process must assume that CFLs use less power at the local ‘target’ locations thus causing less coal back at the distant ‘source’. However, as usual with the AGW cult, unintended consequences are ignored. In the first scenario (incandescents used at the local ‘target’) the mercury was confined *only* at the distant ‘source’ location. In your scenario, less coal (and less mercury) is used at the distant ‘source’, but large quantities of mercury are now *moved* to the local ‘target’ locations. Like near baby cribs, food stocked kitchens, kids bedrooms, dining rooms, schools, hospitals, etc. God forbid if CFLs were ever actually used in the same quantities as incandescents, because then these large quantities of mercury would instead become hugely massive quantities moved to the local ‘target’ locations.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, why don’t you buy a case of CFLs and toss handfuls of them onto the floor of the US Senate or your kids school cafeteria. Care to calculate the extra energy that will be required to power the vehicles used by the increased number of hazmat teams required to respond to every broken bulb (not to mention their union salaries and pensions) throughout the country, and the entire world? Compare how many light bulbs you had break in your lifetime versus how many fires you have had. We’ll need more hazmat teams on call than firemen.
Of course the ‘CFL is better’ scenario also falls apart for other reasons, among them is the myth that American homes with the handful of light bulbs that they require are somehow the true source of consuming vast amounts of electricity. Far more is used for optional decorative lighting and spotlights, and flood lights on buildings in the cities, street lamps, signs, billboards, sidewalks, sports stadiums, casinos, ad infinitum. Going after the homeowner who might be using a handful of Edison bulbs to read and write is stupid beyond words. But knowing the fascistic tendencies of modern socialists, the urge to reach into the home and issue dictates and ultimatums is irresistible. When the day comes that Paris, Las Vegas and NYC go dark, maybe we’ll consider doing the same.
The reason Edison bulbs are cheap and simple is because they are – cheap and simple. A pure resistive circuit that runs off installed mains wiring, without any control circuitry or step-up transformer, self-contained in a cheap glass bulb is as simple as it can possibly get. As I described above, the fact that the warm glass heats the surrounding air is not a problem when the heat is useful, resulting in 100% efficiency, which surpasses all other ideas in lighting. The drastic consequences of blindly following the AGW nitwits can be illustrated by answering the following questions. What happens when millions of these glowing space heaters are removed from homes across the planet? Where will the replacement heat come from? You see, the heat that you call ‘wasted’ is already factored into the larger equation that addresses the home energy budget big picture. The answer is that millions of thermostats will get nudged up to compensate, resulting in more oil being burned at the home, and this is inefficient in itself because the home heating forced air ducting doesn’t just warm the spot where that evil Edison bulb used to reside. Unintended consequences again.
Besides, how can anyone take seriously the ludicrous twisty bulb which by its own idiotic design causes some photons to be lost straight back into the glass itself! Doh! Similarly, with LEDs having almost laser beam directionality, any useful dispersion of its photons requires refractory coatings which also eat up some light. So there is waste in *all* designs, none are perfect! The challenge is to use bulbs where they are best suited. We do not require some government ignoramus to lecture us on where to place what type of light bulbs. Well maybe you do, but leave the rest of us the hell alone, thank you very much.
Lastly, let us not forget that at the root of this fascistic, state sponsored ‘transition’, is the lobbying of such companies as GE, who stand to make a fortune in conveniently supplying the new mercury hand grenades. That huge sum of money needs to be added to the cost benefit analysis and suddenly the ‘cheaper to use’ CFLs and LEDs aren’t so cheap anymore. But if you have already been snookered by the AGW hoax, I guess these last two details are way too inconvenient to consider.