Daily Mail rebelling against phasing out of traditional lightbulbs

[bellyscratch]

Anyone heard about this?

Apparently the Daily Mail don't like the fact that the traditional 75w and 100w lightbulbs are being phased out of Britain by 2012, to make sure that only environmentally friendly one are sold. So they're giving away 5000 traditional ones away.

I still don't understand why anyone reads this paper. They just want everyone to hate each other and destroy the planet.

[Killfacer]

Bizzare, was there an explanation as to why the would do this?

[Socialist Scum]

I bet it's something stupid. "The shape of the bulb is one of our greatest traditions! It's the immigrants who want the change! SEIG HEIL!" :rolleyes:

[bellyscratch]

They give an explanation here (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1107290/Revolt-Robbed-right-buy-traditional-light-bulbs-millions-clearing-shelves-supplies.html)

Their arguments are that they think the eco-friendly bulbs are bad for you health, the old lightbulbs are traditional, and you cant use eco-friendly bulbs with dimmer switches (which i think is incorrect).

Oh and btw, theyre giving away 25000, not 5000 as I said earlier

[Jazzratt]

I love how they say stupid shite like:


The low-energy fluorescent bulbs can trigger skin rashes, migraines and epilepsy.

Without bothering to provide any evidence whatsoever.

As for the dimmer switch thing, that's a complete fucking fabrication.

[Pogue]

I bet it's something stupid. "The shape of the bulb is one of our greatest traditions! It's the immigrants who want the change! SEIG HEIL!" :rolleyes:

LMAO literally

[Jazzratt]

I bet it's something stupid. "The shape of the bulb is one of our greatest traditions! It's the immigrants who want the change! SEIG HEIL!" :rolleyes:

:lol: Well you're sort of right, they cite European legislation as the reason for the change (which is correct). So it seems this is part of their stupid "the frogs and krauts are destroying this great nation by straightening bananas and being politically correct!" campaign.

[Hit The North]

Originally posted by Vanguard1917
Of course, the only people who will benefit from this so-called "attempt to save the World" is the middle class wankers who own it in the first place. The traditional lightbulb, which uses far more energy and disintegrates after three weeks is the best friend for workers in the power industry and those who live by their manufacture.

Once again, the eco-green-capitalist conspiracy is attacking the working class and you lot have fallen for it.Made up in anticipation... ;)

[Vanguard1917]

I still don't understand why anyone reads this paper. They just want everyone to hate each other and destroy the planet.

As opposed to a nice intellectual newspaper like the Guardian, a leading columnist of which explicitly welcomes rising unemployment and homelessness on the grounds that it will help save the eco-system?

It's very easy to stick one's nose up at readers of the 'gutter press'. But it's not exactly like the alternatives are filled with impelling radicalism now, is it?

[Jazzratt]

One thing that doesn't get mentioned too much about these "environmental bulbs" is that they contain the neurotoxin mercury.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7431198

So do thermometers, and those get shoved up people's arses, so on balance the risk is minor.

[Dean]

Anyone heard about this?

Apparently the Daily Mail don't like the fact that the traditional 75w and 100w lightbulbs are being phased out of Britain by 2012, to make sure that only environmentally friendly one are sold. So they're giving away 5000 traditional ones away.

I still don't understand why anyone reads this paper. They just want everyone to hate each other and destroy the planet.

The libertarian creeps also have some of this paranoia floating around. Pretty ridiculous.

[spartan]

Stupid conservatives always make a fuss when there is change.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

So do thermometers, and those get shoved up people's arses, so on balance the risk is minor.

Actually, mercury thermometers are getting rarer by the day. They are being replaced by electronic and galinstan thermometers. Mercury thermometers are outright banned for medical use in most countries and medical professionals suggest replacing them with something else in the home.

Besides, there are hardly as many thermometers as light bulbs in the world, nor are they disposable. There won't be million of thermometers thrown into the trash only to bust open and leak mercury into the water ways.

It's not really a valid comparison at all.

[mikelepore]

Every light in my house except for closets and stairways is on a dimmer switch. If they stop selling incandescent bulbs I'll have to replace most of my light switches. Replacing each one requires about four dollars and five minutes. (Don't forget to shut off the circuit breakers.)

[bellyscratch]

Every light in my house except for closets and stairways is on a dimmer switch. If they stop selling incandescent bulbs I'll have to replace most of my light switches. Replacing each one requires about four dollars and five minutes. (Don't forget to shut off the circuit breakers.)

You can get eco-friendly light bulbs that are compatible with a dimmer switch
http://www.guardianecostore.co.uk/guardian/product.aspx?productid=17521

[butterfly]

Besides, there are hardly as many thermometers as light bulbs in the world, nor are they disposable. There won't be million of thermometers thrown into the trash only to bust open and leak mercury into the water ways.

This is why I hold reservations... one bulb has the potential to pollute 80,000 litres of water from memory.

[Vanguard1917]

It's not really a question of which bulb is more polluting. The real question is, why do we need light bulbs at all? The sun setting is Gaia's way of telling us that it's time to sleep. Who are we to question mother nature's will? Look at the tribespeople of the Amazon jungle and the rest of the 1.5+ billion people who live without electricity, and see how happy they are with their green and sustainable lifestyles, burning animal shit for fuel and sitting in the dark.

[Jazzratt]

It's not really a question of which bulb is more polluting. The real question is, why do we need light bulbs at all? The sun setting is Gaia's way of telling us that it's time to sleep. Who are we to question mother nature's will? Look at the tribespeople of the Amazon jungle and the rest of the 1.5+ billion people who live without electricity, and see how happy they are with their green and sustainable lifestyles, burning animal shit for fuel and sitting in the dark.

Or y'know you could use the long lasting bulbs that work out cheaper. Although I suppose false economy is great for the working class because it boosts big business or whatever.

[Vanguard1917]

I think most people, working class or otherwise, have better, more worthwhile things to preoccupy themselves with than the shape of their lightbulbs.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

I think most people, working class or otherwise, have better, more worthwhile things to preoccupy themselves with than the shape of their lightbulbs.

Actually, constantly replacing energy-guzzling incandescent bulbs adds to one's financial burden.

[Vanguard1917]

Actually, constantly replacing energy-guzzling incandescent bulbs adds to one's financial burden.

At around £1.20 for a pack of six (link (http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.100-8146.aspx)), i don't think it ranks too highly in the list of costs to distress oneself about.

Sure, make light bulbs more efficient. But i'm not going to join into any eco-crusade of turning minutiae aspects of daily life into religious rituals.

[Red October]

At around £1.20 for a pack of six (link (http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.100-8146.aspx)), i don't think it ranks too highly in the list of costs to distress oneself about.

Sure, make light bulbs more efficient. But i'm not going to join into any eco-crusade of turning minutiae aspects of daily life into religious rituals.

Eh, a penny saved is a penny earned. The mercury content worries me, but it only makes sense for people to use more efficient, longer lasting lightbulbs. What's the problem with that (other than the mercury, of course). A product or machine doesn't have to destroy the earth in order to be good, and you don't have to be a ridiculous hippie to not want the earth to fizzle and die.

[which doctor]

Am I the only one who hates the obnoxious bright light these CFL bulbs put out? I feel like I'm in a psychiatric ward when I turn 'em on. It's the worst when you're not expected it either; you turn on the switch expecting to get the soft yellow glow of the incandescent bulb, only to find yourself suddenly bathed in a sterile white light.

It would be nice if they at least put a yellow or orange filter on CFL bulbs.

[mikelepore]

You can get eco-friendly light bulbs that are compatible with a dimmer switch
http://www.guardianecostore.co.uk/guardian/product.aspx?productid=17521

Thanks for that news. They didn't exist yet as of the time when I learned electronics.

[mikelepore]

Am I the only one who hates the obnoxious bright light these CFL bulbs put out?

I have pine wood walls and ceilings in my house. I have some directional track lighting fixtures that I aim at the walls and ceilings, and the room gets illuminated with the reflected light. It looks more pleasant than using the direct light.

[Vanguard1917]

Here's a good article from today making the point that the focus on light bulbs, and emphases on the need to regulate household energy use in general, serve to shift attention away from the government's responsibility to create 'a bigger, better and cleaner electricity supply for the twenty-first century' in order to prevent future energy shortages.

-------

Monday 12 January 2009
The CFLs are on, but nobody’s home
The mad green war on light bulbs won’t save much electricity - it’s about enforcing moral rectitude in the home.

James Woudhuysen


Rarely has an edict from the European Union had such a quick, strong and controversial impact.

The EU has decreed that traditional, incandescent light bulbs, which have low energy efficiencies, should be phased out: 150-watt ones became extinct last year; 60-watt ones will die in 2010; and 100-watt bulbs – the bestsellers in Britain – will be consigned to Europe’s past in September this year.

Next, in an attempt to be greener earlier than its continental counterparts, Her Majesty’s government has established a thoroughly voluntary scheme for retailers to phase out 100-watt incandescents… ASAP. The effect of this indirect compulsion has been, ironically enough, to build a surge of demand among British shoppers for incandescents, because people don’t much like their newer rivals, compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs).

Standing here in a West London branch of Ryness, a chain of lighting retailers, you get a good idea of the pros and cons of incandescents and CFLs. You can also compare them with the technologies that America’s General Electric has decided to concentrate research on, light emitting diodes (LEDs) and their organic cousins (OLEDs). And you can do this in the knowledge that this Ryness outlet sold out of all its incandescents in just one day last week.

The Daily Mail says that ‘Britons’ are in revolt about ‘their beloved light bulbs’, and that the newer replacement bulbs are dangerous (1). By contrast, a spokeswoman for the UK Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) decried those who have criticised CFLs for their poor quality of light output. Last summer, the reassuringly named Light Bulb Pepsi Challenge, run by the government’s Energy Saving Trust at British shopping centres, had found that ‘the vast majority of people could not tell the difference between the light provided by the different bulbs’ – or so the Defra spokewoman said (2).

Who to believe?

Talking to Gary Deller, a well-informed salesman at the Ryness shop, it’s clear that both CFLs and LEDs still have a way to go before they can match the quality of light provided by conventional bulbs. The conventional sort is inefficient, and nobody can be against better energy efficiency by itself. The newer sorts are more efficient. Right now, though, CFLs often provide a ghostly, Addams Family hue, are slow to come on, and can’t be fitted or dimmed everywhere; they aren’t lights, but darks.

For their part, LEDs take no time to come on, and, unlike CFLs, contain no mercury. However, while they’ll last an impressive quarter of a century, LEDs today cost about £13 if you buy them online – a lot of money to spend just to make the usual very modest savings in energy and money over the coming years.

The new kinds of lights will no doubt improve. But the pace of innovation in lighting has been very slow.

To bring light to the gloom, in every sense, is one of the key faculties of human beings. So to understand lighting in the twenty-first century, we have to get behind the deservedly humble light bulb.

The wrong end of the telescope

First, the whole discussion about this bulb or that bulb is like looking at a problem through the wrong end of a telescope. What’s more important than any particular kind of light is society’s ability to keep the lights on.

Right now, that ability is, in the case of Britain and many developing countries, rather in question. At the end of last year, a House of Commons committee on business and enterprise issued a dire warning. One passage is worth quoting in full:

‘Generating capacity equivalent to nearly a third of current electricity demand will be made redundant by 2020. It will need to be replaced. We believe that in the current economic climate there is a high risk that the energy companies will not be able to raise the finance necessary to build this. It is the government’s job to ensure security of supply. Just as the government has been quick to respond to the crisis in the banking sector, it must now take action to ensure investment in new capacity takes place as planned. A reasonable level of profit by the big energy suppliers will be a precondition of this investment taking place. The situation is now very serious and we believe that a simple trust in the market’s ability to deliver without any intervention will see us facing an “energy crunch” in the medium term. The social and economic consequences of such a “crunch” would be disastrous.’ (3)

In short, Britain is set to be closing quite a number of power stations, and is more nervous than ever about building new ones.

There’s no need to be alarmist about power cuts. But shortages of electricity supply in the UK are a real possibility; and what’s a lot more certain is that society needs energy more than it needs a big fuss about light bulbs.

Second, it is around electricity supply, and not around energy conservation in the home or even energy efficiency in the home, that mankind will find the best solutions to climate change – the issue that has prompted UK and EU regulators to get in a froth about light bulbs.

CO2 doesn’t come out of light bulbs. It comes out of power stations, more than anything else. State efforts to regulate what people put into and do with their homes have no rational basis. They work only to absolve the state from taking the tough, oh-so-risky decisions it should be taking about building a bigger, better and cleaner electricity supply for the twenty-first century. If you’re worried about the component of British CO2 emissions that’s initiated by lighting use in the home, the way to fix it is either to capture the CO2 emitted from coal- and gas-fired power plants, or to generate power by some serious investment in nuclear and renewable energy.

Green regulation means more intense labour

CFLs contain about four milligrams of mercury per bulb. I’ve no more wish to dramatise the danger of exposure to this than I have to exaggerate the danger of UK power cuts. Certainly it would be wrong to suggest that every consumer of CFLs will soon be as mad as a hatter (the phrase having originated in the use of mercury compounds made by hat-makers before the twentieth century). Yet as far as I can determine, carelessness with the new CFLs around the home has effects on an appreciably larger scale than carelessness with incandescents.

As it happens, most people aren’t very careless. But regulatory and voluntary schemes to bring in CFLs will ensure that the disposal of light bulbs will now become, as so often with green pipe-dreams in practice, a labour-intensive business. That’s the biggest problem with CFLs – they’re hard work.

James, the manager of the Ryness store I visited, tells me that the chain has had to pay between five and 15 pence extra on top of the basic wholesale cost of a CFL bulb to cover its polluting effects. Yet under the EU’s waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) Directive, firms such as Ryness have also, since August 2005, been given the responsibility of arranging for spent CFLs to be recycled (9). James therefore has to collect such old CFL bulbs, burnt-out incandescents and spent batteries as are returned to him by customers, and then get an employee to drive them in a van up to a recycling plant in Manchester. Broken CFLs, he adds, are classified as hazardous waste, and you need a waste management company like Biffa to dispose of them unless you know how to yourself.

So long as CFLs contain mercury, the poisoning they cause may be relatively slight, but the legally underwritten physical hassle they bring will be considerable.

Regulation has brought about a rise in CFLs. But so far that’s proved a modest innovation compared with the wider web of regulation which CFL usage is likely to bring about. How will you dispose of your new ethical light bulbs? Hardly the kind of terrifically enlightening question we want to be asking ourselves at the front end of 2009.

Already the California Energy Commission wants to regulate plasma TVs and even liquid crystal display (LCD) TVs. In the new crusade, regulation will be piled upon regulation.

Conclusion

Opposition to the EU initiative, when it is not framed in backward-looking Little Englander prose, makes much of the health-and-safety dangers of the new bulbs.

On one side we have green-leaning governments warning about the floods, droughts and increased malaria that industrialisation and man-made climate change are supposed already to have visited on the planet. On the other side we have the Daily Mail, which insists that low-energy fluorescent bulbs ‘can trigger skin rashes, migraines and epilepsy’ (10). In The Sunday Times, India Knight worries that CFLs may lead to eyestrain, and to people vegging out in front of the television rather than reading (11).

Both sides represent the side effects of technology as a threat to life, limb and general wellbeing. How edifying!

What’s lost in all this is that innovation should take priority – innovation in the efficiency, cost, durability, reliability, universality and lighting output from new-generation light bulbs, and also – more importantly – innovation in energy supply.

The opponents of CFLs forget that further product innovation is possible, even if it is slow. LEDs and OLEDs contain no mercury, have high-energy
efficiencies, and represent the future. Myself, I’ve been captivated by OLEDs since 2004 (12), and believe that brightly-lit, wall-sized OLED TVs will make a big difference to lighting in the home. But the TVs I’ve looked forward to are still in the laboratory, not the living room.

What also, and much more worryingly, remains in the laboratory is the carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology with which new coal-fired and gas-fired power stations need to be equipped. On the other hand, a proven technology like nuclear power is the subject of official support in rhetoric, and official ambivalence in practice.

To introduce new nuclear reactors to Britain would be a genuine innovation. That way, you could enjoy as many kinds of lights as you liked, and, better still, never have to think about lights again. In that sense, the answer to the Great Lights Controversy is: Three Cheers for the Chandelier!



-------

LIGHTING AND CO2, BY THE NUMBERS

According to Defra, the use of domestic lighting in Britain led to nine million tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2) being emitted in 2005. But Britain’s overall emissions of greenhouse gases (not just CO2, but other gases as well) now top 600million tonnes of CO2 equivalent (MtCO2e). Now Defra says that CFLs use about 25 per cent of the energy used by an incandescent lamp to produce the same light. So the maximum CO2 savings that might emerge from complete and universal CFL use in British homes can only amount to between six and seven MtCO2, or about one per cent of Britain’s overall contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.

The general figure quoted, usually in a context that suggests enormity, is five MtCO2.

In Energise! A Future for Energy Innovation (2009), Joe Kaplinsky and I use somewhat older official figures for emissions to show that switching off all domestic lighting forever would only save about 0.6 per cent, not of the UK’s emissions of greenhouse gases, but of its CO2 emissions. That’s somewhat less than the one per cent figure arrived at above. But however you compute it, conserving energy through CFLs amounts to tiddlywinks.

For greens, by contrast, to make ‘consumer’ behaviour in the home a question of moral rectitude is so urgent that any statistical idiocy may be permitted. Thus one journalist recently declared: ‘Since lighting is reckoned to account for 10-15 per cent of UK elecricity [sic] use, a complete switch to low-energy bulbs would make a real impact on our emissions and our energy bills.’

Well, lighting does account for 10 to 15 per cent of UK residential electricity use. But large-scale UK organisations already use low-energy fluorescent lighting, and use much, much more electricity on other tasks.

Only because he wants to indict ordinary people and their search for ordinary comforts can a climate zealot make the elementary mistake of believing that lighting could account for a seventh of UK electricity use.


James Woudhuysen is author, with Joe Kaplinsky, of Energise! A Future for Energy Innovation, published on 22 January 2009 by Beautiful Books.

(1) Revolt! Robbed of their right to buy traditional light bulbs, millions are clearing shelves of last supplies (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1107290/Revolt-Robbed-right-buy-traditional-light-bulbs-millions-clearing-shelves-supplies.html), Daily Mail, 7 January 2009
(2) Lighting experts slam Mail energy efficient bulb scare story (http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2233413/lighting-experts-slam-mail), BusinessGreen, 7 January 2009
(3) House of Commons Business and Enterprise Committee, Energy policy: future challenges, First Report of Session 2008–09 (http://www.parliament.uk/documents/upload/BECReport.pdf), 11 December 2008, p10, para 17
(4) Product roadmaps - Domestic lighting (http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/consumerprod/products/lighting.htm), Defra
(5) Committee on Climate Change, Building a low-carbon economy – the UK’s contribution to tackling climate change (http://hmccc.s3.amazonaws.com/pdf/TSO-ClimateChange.pdf), December 2008, Figure 2, p xxi
(6) Product roadmaps - Domestic lighting (http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/consumerprod/products/lighting.htm), Defra

(7) James Woudhuysen and Joe Kaplinsky, Energise! A future for energy innovation, Beautiful Books, p70
(8) Rage against the lights (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/10/daily-mail-energy-saving-lightbulbs), Guardian, 10 January 2009
(9) WEEE directive (http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2003:037:0024:0038:EN:PDF), 27 January 2003
(10) Revolt! Robbed of their right to buy traditional light bulbs, millions are clearing shelves of last supplies (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1107290/Revolt-Robbed-right-buy-traditional-light-bulbs-millions-clearing-shelves-supplies.html), Daily Mail, 7 January 2009
(11) India Knight, ‘And the EU said: let there be cold, grey light’, The Sunday Times, 11 January 2009, p18.
(12) James Woudhuysen and Ian Abley, Homes 2016, special ‘Broadside’ booklet accompanying Blueprint magazine, September 2004


reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/6097/

[Dean]

At around £1.20 for a pack of six (link (http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.100-8146.aspx)), i don't think it ranks too highly in the list of costs to distress oneself about.

Sure, make light bulbs more efficient. But i'm not going to join into any eco-crusade of turning minutiae aspects of daily life into religious rituals.

Haha, whenever technological progress happens to conserve energy and/or the environment, Vanguard joins the forces of conservatism. Whether working class care or not about the ritual itself is not the issue. What is a concern is the waste of our labor (by making bulbs that don't last as long) and the innovation of those engineers responsible for this technology.

[Vanguard1917]

Haha, whenever technological progress happens to conserve energy and/or the environment, Vanguard joins the forces of conservatism. Whether working class care or not about the ritual itself is not the issue. What is a concern is the waste of our labor (by making bulbs that don't last as long) and the innovation of those engineers responsible for this technology.

Clearly things aren't so black and white. Read the article i just posted.

[Invincible Summer]

Here's a good article from today making the point that the focus on light bulbs, and emphases on the need to regulate household energy use in general, serve to shift attention away from the government's responsibility to create 'a bigger, better and cleaner electricity supply for the twenty-first century' in order to prevent future energy shortages.

It is true that just changing bulbs won't be a big difference if everyone leaves their lights on all the time - but this doesn't mean we shouldn't have a better bulb.


Who to believe?

Talking to Gary Deller, a well-informed salesman at the Ryness shop, it’s clear that both CFLs and LEDs still have a way to go before they can match the quality of light provided by conventional bulbs. The conventional sort is inefficient, and nobody can be against better energy efficiency by itself. The newer sorts are more efficient. Right now, though, CFLs often provide a ghostly, Addams Family hue, are slow to come on, and can’t be fitted or dimmed everywhere

Well this "well informed salesman" is clearly not so. CFLs come on just as fast as incandescents (okay.. maybe a quarter-second slower? Who gets bothered by things like this?!) and there are now many varieties of CFLs that can be fitted into track lighting, pot lights, etc and are dimmable.


they aren’t lights, but darks.

What... the... hell? That doesn't make any sense - a "dark" (if there were even such a term) would mean it makes things darker than they already are... it's not like CFLs are a black hood to put over someone's face.



The new kinds of lights will no doubt improve. But the pace of innovation in lighting has been very slow.

I've noticed this. Perhaps it is because companies want people to keep buying new bulbs all the time?

[Vanguard1917]

It is true that just changing bulbs won't be a big difference if everyone leaves their lights on all the time - but this doesn't mean we shouldn't have a better bulb.


The point is, we need more power stations to produce more electricity. The focus on lightbulbs and the regulation of household energy use, serves to distract attention from that. As the article points out, 'Britain is set to be closing quite a number of power stations, and is more nervous than ever about building new ones.'

[Hit The North]

Don't change your light bulbs, change society!

[Dean]

Clearly things aren't so black and white. Read the article i just posted.

I read it. I'm now even more convinced that this is another example of your blind contempt for the environment.

I thought this was particularly interesting:

Myself, I’ve been captivated by OLEDs since 2004 (12), and believe that brightly-lit, wall-sized OLED TVs will make a big difference to lighting in the home. But the TVs I’ve looked forward to are still in the laboratory, not the living room.

Here we come to the crux of the conflict between leftists and the technocrat/industry-fetishists. People such as yourself feel that technological progress defines revolutionary change - any sense of real socio-economic analysis is absent from your attitudes. I know a few people that are mesmerized by the electron beams, gasses and chips of our technological wasteland, and they all suffer from severe social deficiencies - much like your theories.

[Vanguard1917]

People such as yourself feel that technological progress defines revolutionary change


How have you come to this conclusion? Please provide evidence for your claim.