BLAHAHAHA!!!

God, if you read that Freedom of Choice comment thread, you'll see some hard core lunatic fringe.

You'll get my incandescents when you pry them from my cold dead hands!

I gots me some syndrome that makes it like Gitmo for me!

Big gubbment gots to stay outs O my lives!

WTF??? Where do these loons come from? You'd think we all lived in 1800's Deadwood, rather than a small rock with almost 7 billion people on it. Grow the F up, things ain't what they used to be. Adjust, or leave (the planet that is).

Oh, and for anyone with a true medical condition, no problem, you get your incandescents.

Oh wait, I forgot the ever-present:

Dems gots mercury in dem, it'll kill ya and the EPA will declare your house a Superfund site!

:/

O_o That interesting...

But seriously I could tell the difference just from the youtube video. I don't think I have a medical condition, but I just can't stand fluorescent lights... they give me headaches and are unsettling to me. I like true light (or w/e they're called) LEDs better, because they're a lot more like incandescents in the way they produce light, no flickering. I'd like to see a plasma bulb IRL too. =P

I'm glad that's sorted... but deep down I think we all know the Hummer drivers are stockpiling high energy bulbs to protect their right to do as much environmental damage every minute of their lives.
So... if a Luddite is someone who fears technology; isn't it about time we had an appropriate name for people who have an irrational fear of green technology...

I want incandescent bulbs - waaaaaa!

I want cheap energy - waaaaaaa!

Time to grow up and choose.

I use the traditional ones. Here in Finland we have temperatures down to -25 degrees celcius during winter, and all the excess heat is off the heating bill. CFL's create recycling problem and chemical hazard when accidentally broken on kitchen floor.

My next generation of lighting is definitely LED-based, even if I had to build them myself.

This article does not address disposal of CFLs into landfills. Many of the big commercial and street lights are mercury vapor too. However, it is my impression that CFL manufacturers are striving to reduce the amount of Hg in each bulb, which is a good first step. I worry about Hg from coal burning power plants as we...

Anonymous, could your name actuall be Artie? :D

Awesome, I want to move to Finland. Coincidence? =P If you can harness the heat from incandescents (like in cold weather) it might offset the thermal efficiency and mercury in CFLs because they're not toxic and giving off heat is a benefit. =P I agree, LEDs are better.

R N & Jikki,

The heating effect of incandescents would only be beneficial in the winter, so you'll have to swap them out in the summer. And they would only be beneficial if electric resistance heating was cheaper than combustion heating. While I have heard of electricity and propane costs being on par in some areas, you're mostly going to lose money by offsetting your conventional heating source with inefficient incandescents.

Half my house is LED now (other half is CFL, my only incandescent is in the oven) and I agree that they're going to be the way to go in the future. In 8 years I haven't broken a CFL and I take them to the florescent drop-off at the recycling center so I'm not worried about the mercury. I'm sure I get more mercury from midwest power plant emissions and lake trout than I would from a CFL.

I think Jikki missed the point. This study basically showed that people who "see" a difference are likely lying and just have some shtick against CFL Gorebulbs. Get over it. It's light, you use it, so use less electricity while doing it. If you don't like the color of CFLs, then try getting outside more because you are apparently more used to the hue of incandescent bulbs than sunlight.

The Finland example is poor.

If you keep incandescents because they help heat your house, than you are heating with electricity which was likely made from coal which is far worse than fossil fuels. Just because it's heat from a light doesn't make it sustainable or free ya know.

Well, Finland gets a lot of its electrical power from nuclear, and if I recall correctly, nearly no coal. But that's beside the point.

I would assume that most all of the efficiency lost in incandescent bulbs are due to heat, so in general during a cold winter, it may not actually make a negative impact (and now that I think about it, the heating might actually be produced more efficiently than from fossil fuels/natural gas). I'm not advocating using incandescents, but I do find it an intriguing idea/observation. Indeed one should then change them out in the summer, but then one might as well just get LEDs. =)

As for andy's comment, I don't have anything against the concept of "Gorebulbs," but seriously I can tell the difference and I think it's because CFLs produce light by oscillating/pulsing. I can't stand CRT monitors or TVs either; I think it's just me.

...but I like LEDs as a nice compromise between the two, and the technology is still being neglected by the mainstream market, and by this bill.

Belief in the superior light quality of incandescents is a bit like belief in religion: some people will cling to their beliefs in spite of all the scientific evidence in the world. I think these people (from rural PA?) are basing their preconception on the flickery fluorescent tubes in their cafeteria at work, or 10 year old CFL's, which really did suck.
The new ones look great and the mercury won't hurt you unless you eat it...20 times.

Yes, but most people don't even know what time the sun hits the front of their house or office!!! So they are not paying any attention to their ambient light situation!
(I KNOW this because as a photographer I have had to phone literally hundreds of locations in advance to ask them - and they usually have NO IDEA!!!!)

I actually like CFLs because you can choose the color of light. It has only been recently that cool blue and bright white bulbs for incandescents came about and they aren't nearly full spectrum.

You'll pry my full spectrum CFLs out of my cold dead hands!