Question: If a peddler of the non-scientific myth of
human-induced/CO-2 being-the-primary-driver-of global warming jumps
the shark in the woods will one of Stalin's "useful idiots" hear a noise?
"....So there you have it. Congress will soon enact legislation to
impose a tax on poor people that will directly pass to Chinese
companies, contribute to lower literacy and less personal hygiene
while making industrial policy that will increase greenhouse gas
emissions worldwide and spread a hazardous heavy metal into the
environment." That's what we're going to get with compact
fluorescents, ten years 'til they ban the incandescent lightbulb, and
that's not an insignificant point... Not one of these things is made
in America, and to fill the void left by the man of the incandescent
these Chinese factories going to be built to the tune of once a week,
and they're coal-fired.
The Chinese don't care about the pollution they're putting up. They
say, "Kyoto? (Raspberry!)." It's just typical, ladies and gentlemen,
of the American left and the environmental movement, with all these
so-called great intentions, the unintended consequences (or in this
case maybe the intended consequences). This is another one of those
circumstances we talked about all day, what is it about the American
people that make them such dolts, sponges, to soak up all this stuff?
I'm telling you, it's easily explained. If day in and day out for 20
years you are inundated with how you are destroying the planet, and
you are killing the polar bears, and you are creating global warming
and you are creating sin, anything you can do to make yourself feel
better such as one of those cockamamie lightbulbs, you'll do
it. Everybody wants to feel good. Everybody wants to matter.
Everybody wants to contribute. Everybody wants to make a
difference. Well, just remember: Hitler "made a difference,"
too. .." Continued: http://tinyurl.com/72xr4
Count on it - this will be coming to a town in the USA near you, soon
unless we are able to stop the confidence men (in politics) and the
"Elmer Gantrys" (in religion) from putting this scheme into action here:
Belgium to impose tax on barbequing to fight global
warming http://en.rian.ru/world/20070403/62999935.html
Barbecues in Belgium will now be monitored by helicopters for
compliance with a new tax. (No mention of whether the increased
"carbon footprint" of the helicopters assigned to do this extra duty
(carbon-footprint "monitoring") outweighs that of all the barbeques
in the world combind.)
~ Janice ... who knows that the leaders of the global warming
catastrophists are the same people who have been on crusade for over
30 years to rid us of the blessings of the evil civilization that
rapes Mother Gaia.
April 03, 2007
Ban the Bulb? By
<http://www.americanthinker.com/luminus_maximus/>Luminus Maximus
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/04/ban_the_bulb.html
In a few weeks the US Congress is likely to vote to phase out the
standard incandescent lightbulb within a decade. The frantic race to
see who can best appease the global warming alarmists will claim
another victim, the friendly glow of the direct descendant of Thomas
Edison's filament-based light bulb.
Why would the humble lightbulb, a staple commodity that has raised
the standard of living throughout the world, be in the bullseye? It
was the incandescent electric light bulb that abolished the tyranny
of the night. Our 19th and 20th century ancestors believed it one of
the greatest gifts of civilization because they had directly
experienced life before electric lighting changed everything. In
2002, former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld briefly reminded us of
this blessing when he commented on the satellite imagery revealing
the
<http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/dprk/dprk-dark.htm>nighttime
darkness in North Korea, but other than this brief moment, we seem to
have forgotten what we owe to Edison's first invention.
Ironically, the lowly lightbulb became one of the icons of the New
Deal, forever connected with the Rural Electrification Act of 1936.
The REA and the TVA enabled cheap electric power to be available
everywhere, even on the remotest farms and ranches. And a substantial
part of the American people fell in love with big government because
it brought this fruit of civilization, the rollback of the night, to
all Americans.
But today, more than anything else, the humble lightbulb is
altogether another sort of convenient symbol for big government-a
technology dinosaur, perpetrator of evil crimes against the
planet. Stopping the wasteful use of kilowatts by American
households in the war on greenhouse gases is the new battle cry of
the lovers of governmental control over our lives.
There are about 4 billion conventional screw-in light bulb sockets
all across America; the vast majority are in homes and apartments.
Incandescent light bulbs are in most of these sockets, with some 2
billion or more replaced every year. It is estimated at least $15
billion of electricity is consumed by these inefficient anachronisms,
and that by replacing them with more energy efficient types of
lightbulbs-primarily post-modern compact fluorescents--that $15
billion could be cut in half.
We are told that as kilowatts could be reduced, we would need fewer
nasty coal-fired power generating plants, while winning a major
battle against global warming with little pain and even less effort.
Everybody wins!
Well, not exactly. Once again, a nice-sounding theory overlooks
significant details of the practical outcomes.
Energy conservation lobbyists conveniently overlook the obvious fact
that household lightbulbs are primarily used at night-exactly
opposite the time of day in which utilities experience peak load
demands for daytime heating, air conditioning and commercial
lighting. Peak load shedding is what is most necessary for taking
coal fired power plants out of commission.
Reducing nighttime lightbulb consumption of kwhs will do almost
nothing to shave peak demand. Moreover, with non-peak kwhs reduced
at night, utilities will now have fewer revenues on which to earn a
return on their invested capital. Utilities must build up their
physical plant to meet the peaks, and the capital to finance that
equipment has to be paid for 24 hours a day. Thus, utilities will
have to raise rates on the remainder of the kwhs we use for
everything else, from washing machines to hair dryers to computers.
Household power used by lightbulbs is actually dwarfed these days by
major appliances and high tech consumer electronics- such as wide
screen TVs, computers and video games along with internet servers,
the biggest energy hogs besides cars and trucks.
And since the new CFLs produce inferior light compared to
incandescents, we'll need more of them to read, shave, comb our hair
and brush our teeth. Assuming literacy and personal hygiene are
still hallmarks of civilized life after the global warming alarmists
are done with their crusade to rid us of the blessings of the evil
civilization that rapes Mother Gaia.
By banning the incandescent lightbulb Congress will forcibly remove a
staple commodity from the marketplace, replacing it with products
that are far more expensive, less reliable and more hazardous,
notably the much ballyhooed compact fluorescent lightbulb (CFL).
CFL lightbulbs have been around for well over a decade. Only recently
have they come in enough varieties and flavors to capture about 10%
of the available sockets. But they are still at least 5 times more
expensive than regular incandescents, which if replaced in their
entirety would cost consumers an extra $4 to 5 billion at the cash
register. No doubt millions of Americans will enthusiastically
embrace this new technology and be willing to pay extra to get it.
But millions more will not fare so well. This ban will be a tax on
poor people and the silent majority-retirees on fixed incomes, single
working parents, low wage earners working double shifts or two jobs
along with the average Joes and Marys who live each week
paycheck-to-paycheck. They don't have cable TV to watch the Home and
Garden channel, and can't afford to replace their functional if drab
table lamp fixtures, much less employ a green ideology-toting
residential lighting designer.
For these Americans, burdens come in large packages. Relief arrives
less often, and then in small envelopes, such as reduced inflationary
pressures on staple commodities like lightbulbs and all the
necessities of life purchased at low prices from Wal-Mart. Of course
Wal-Mart is yet another enemy of the trendy affluent class that wants
to dictate how the rest of us lead our lives.
And guess where the extra purchase prices for these CFLs will wind
up? In the pockets of Chinese manufacturers, because not a single CFL
is produced in the US.
And it gets worse. As Chinese manufacturers add enough manufacturing
capacity to produce ten times as many CFLs , they will need several
new coal-fired power plants to run the new factories. This comes on
top of the already breathtaking pace today of construction in coal
fired electric power plants in China - at a clip of one new plant
every week. Don't even think about asking about what kind of
pollution control will be operating on those Chinese plants.
A tax on poor people in the US so the Chinese can add more coal fired
power plants. Now there's a bright idea.
There's even more to this story: one more dirty little secret that
the greens won't tell you about.
CFLs contain mercury. You didn't know that? Just a drop you say? How
about up to 5 milligrams per lightbulb. If all 4 billion incandescent
sockets were filled with CFLs we'd have 20 billion milligrams of
mercury spread around every single US household. By the way, 20
billion milligrams is nearly 50,000 pounds.
That 50,000 pounds of mercury amongst 300 million people, if
indiscriminately thrown away, will eventually find its way to your
favorite landfill and public drinking water supply. Knock over a
table lamp and shatter a CFL in your house, and you have a toxic
waste situation on your hands right in the living room, bedroom or dining room.
On the other hand, at least half of all mercury emissions from coal
fired power plants currently is captured by scrubbers, and clean coal
technologies promise to eliminate 2/3rds of what remains. Not so for
CFLs-- which can't operate without mercury.
So there you have it. Congress will soon enact legislation to impose
a tax on poor people that will directly pass to Chinese companies,
contribute to lower literacy and less personal hygiene while making
industrial policy that will increase greenhouse gas emissions
worldwide and spread a hazardous heavy metal into the environment.
Ban the bulb is a no-brainer , only this time the empty-headed variety.
Luminus Maximus is the pen name of a longtime observer of the industry
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/04/ban_the_bulb.html April 04,
2007 - 11:51:44 AM EDT
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Received on Wed Apr 4 12:44:34 2007
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