<p>SPIDER - try to document your preaching with reliable sources (actually any - you PREACH ideology without any sources to back up your hysterical claims). </p>
<p>I’ve been disposing of mercury light bulbs for years without problems. Cities have disposable sources for hazardous wastes. Maybe you are the lazy person who doesn’t dispose of things correctly.</p>
<p>Trust me SPIDER - you aren’t getting wise - you will never be wise.</p>
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<p>First, the article referred to a " looming federal ban on traditional incandescent light bulbs". Second, the EPA’s website says there is a ban while claiming it is not a ban on all incandescent light bulbs, just those that most people use in their houses. Here is what the EPA website says:</p>
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<p>That sounds like a ban on the sale of the incandescent light bulbs I buy.</p>
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<p>One drop of mercury can poison a million gallons of water. Drop a CFL and breath the mercury you have just poisoned yourself. Very serious and very scary.</p>
<p>[Ask</a> TreeHugger: Is Mercury from a Broken CFL Dangerous? : TreeHugger](<a href=“http://www.treehugger.com/culture/ask-treehugger-is-mercury-from-a-broken-cfl-dangerous.html]Ask”>The 7 Best LED Light Bulbs of 2023)</p>
<p>"These toxic effects are why any mercury spill should be handled carefully, including one that results from a CFL breaking. Having said this, careful handling does not mean that expensive or complicated clean-up of the spill is needed or that you should be worried about you or your family’s health, if a CFL were to break in your home.</p>
<p>This is because CFLs contain relatively small amounts of mercury – EPA estimates this amount to be 4-5 milligrams (mg) in a typical CFL. A spill of this amount of mercury is not likely to present any excess risk to you or your family. A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation shows why."</p>
<p>Razorsharp, did you read what spidey wrote? I stand by my post. 
Please re-read it and figure out what her mistake was.</p>
<p>Chemistry 101 which includes equation balancing should be a required course for anyone who is making statements about chemical hazards. I stopped reading one pro-environment book as soon as I came across a gross miscalculation. The author was off by the factor of 22.4, and then the errors snowballed from there. LOL.</p>
<p>“That sounds like a ban on the sale of the incandescent light bulbs I buy.”</p>
<p>You like to change lightbulbs often and pay high electric bills? ;)</p>
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<p>I do not believe spideygirl wrote what you quoted. I think she said
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<p>I agree that her statement is a little bit of an exaggeration, but the idea that there is nothing to worry about as dstark is suggesting is just plain nuts.</p>
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<p>I have not noticed significant reduction in my electric bill even though I only use CFLs. I am not afraid of higher electric bills, I am afraid of mercury and the damage it can do. Most people do not know that you should not vacuum up a broken CFL because it spreads the mercury. CFLs are bad news.</p>
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Does this mean that razorsharp is an “environmental extremist?” Well, probably not… :)<br>
Funny, but it seems that the mercury emitted by conventional powerplants generating the extra electricity needed to power old-style incandescent bulbs is more than that in a CFL and the electricity used to power it - combined. So even if you religiously broke every CFL you have after it wore out you’d still be putting less mercury into the environment than if you used old-style bulbs. If you dispose of them properly - or even throw them in a landfill - the mercury introduced into the environment is way lower than that caused by using old fashioned lightbulbs.<a href=“http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/promotions/change_light/downloads/Fact_Sheet_Mercury.pdf[/url]”>http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/promotions/change_light/downloads/Fact_Sheet_Mercury.pdf</a> </p>
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:rolleyes:</p>
<p>Spidey must have changed her post because the quote in my post is a direct copy and paste from her post. Even the quote you just posted has the same error. ;)</p>
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<p>It’s not mercury metal that’s really toxic, it’s the soluble oxidised mercury(I) salts, or inhalation of mercury aerosol. I ate the mercury of a mercury thermometer during SARS when I was a young teen (it broke in my mouth). Mercury isn’t really water-soluble so it doesn’t even break up into small-enough sizes to dissolve into your bloodstream.</p>
<p>parent1986 -</p>
<p>RE post 161, try not to lose your cool when you are losing an argument. Maturity is more persuasive. You can use Google to find lots of facts about nationwide problems disposing of mercury-containing bulbs.</p>
<p>Kluge
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<p>Kluge don’t be so easily fooled. Is it news to you that many of our elected or appointed officials financially benefit from coming down on a certain industry or company? I’m sure you could at least entertain the notion that some folks are profiting under the guise of protecting the environment.</p>
<p>Bunsenburner, you are correct about the biohazard/E.T. movie emergency scene/scary men in white suits metaphor. That is an exaggeration. Hyperbole. It is not factual. I will be more clear and direct, and therefore “correct”:</p>
<p>Breaking a bulb containing mercury in the home or yard creates an undesirable situation (something which needs to be cleaned up carefully). Mercury is not safe to have on our kitchen floors, or in our yards where our children play. It is certainly not something we want more of in our landfills.</p>
<p>BTW, I change my new bulbs WAY more often. They do not perform as promised, and they do not save me money. They take a while to reach full brightness, which is annoying. They look ridiculous as well. One big joke.</p>
<p>That’s a good link, Kluge.</p>
<p>I probably am an environmental extremist, just not a stupid one. If I could afford it, I would be driving a Chevy Volt. If I could afford it and it was cost effective, I would have a yard of solar panels. If they actually worked, I would have a small windmill on my property. Unfortunately, the best source of energy today is from fuels that are dug out of the ground. Stupid environmental extremists oppose drilling in American even though the effect is to cause more drilling in countries that hate us, do not have environmental standards, treat women like property, and hate religions other than their own. We should be doing everything possible to de-fund horrible nations by drilling in America and fracking is one of the best ways to try to become energy self sufficient.</p>
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“Best” by what standard?</p>
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<p>More plentiful.
Dramatically cheaper than solar and wind.
Billions and billions of dollars of infrastructure already in place in the form of pipelines, tankers, gas stations, etc. Out of ground and into your tank is easy.
Preferred by most governments.
Preferred by most people.</p>
<p>Fossil fuels are not more plentiful than sunlight and wind.</p>
<p>Fossil fuels are only slightly cheaper than photovoltaic and wind power right now. [Price</a> of solar panels to drop to $1 by 2013, report forecasts | Environment | The Guardian](<a href=“http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jun/20/solar-panel-price-drop]Price”>Price of solar panels to drop to $1 by 2013, report forecasts | Solar power | The Guardian) And that’s only if one assumes no “cost” from the by-product of burning fossil fuels, or the environmental impact of taking them out of the ground.</p>
<p>That infrastructure requires constant maintenance and replacement. Ask the folks in San Bruno whose neighborhood was incinerated by a broken natural gas pipeline. </p>
<p>I agree that fossil fuels, specifically petroleum products, are “best” for mobile uses such as cars and planes. But mobile uses of energy account for only about 28% of our energy needs. The rest - including virtually all of the natural gas usage - is stationary. Fossil fuels are not “best” for stationary power production. </p>
<p>“Preferred?” Is your standard of “best” based on popularity? And if this is true, why are so many PV installations in process right now (20+ GW of new PV installations in 2011. Seems like somebody “prefers” PV.)</p>
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<p>We have more than enough fossil fuels on this continent to last us for a long time and we could access them if only politics and profiteering from the new eco-economy would get out of the way of progress. We’d have lots of time to develop better energy solutions. Reasonable products unlike the ridiculous new bulbs. Then we would no longer have to listen to absurd arguments like the one just made about new bulbs supposedly generating somewhat less of a mercury problem than old ones. Gee, what a great advancement.</p>
<p>Razorsharp - many great points made.</p>
<p>fossil fuels take geologic eras to create. Are you calling 100 years “a long time”? We’ve burned up millions’ of years’ worth of accumulated organic material in little over a lifespan. Not every ancient seabed becomes fossil fuel – anoxic conditions have to be generated, vertical mixing must be inhibited, the tectonic conditions must be right. The Marcellus shale was generated 380 mya and it took 80 my to enter the oil window, and then probably another 100 my to crack that into gas. (Shale gas has a better EROI than shale oil.)</p>
<p>It’s taking more energy to extract energy. The energy return on investment (EROI) on oil and gas production has dropped from 20:1 in 1919 to 11:1 currently; shale oil is 2:1 or 1.5:1.</p>
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<p>seriously? The petrochemical age has been sooo short. Nylon was invented by DuPont in the 1930s; that DNA, not protein, was the information holding replication was proven in the Hershey-Chase experiment in 1952; PCR (which allowed modern cloning) in 1983. In fact, greener energy as a movement only started being considered in the 1980s when the public were shocked to find out about the big hole in the ozone layer.</p>
<p>Three decades has been “plenty of time”?</p>
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Actually it got started in the 70s following the oil embargo. We have a life time of natural gas supplies available to us. None of the alternative energy sources are working today. If they were actually viable solutions, we would see the same response to them as we currently see to the Bakken reserves.</p>