Friday, December 9, 2011
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Reasoning against the regulations...
The media and online arguments over the coming USA light bulb ban tend to focus either on how much of a "ban" it is, or how terrible or not the main pushed alternatives are, the fluorescent bulbs (CFLs).Understandable enough, in letting people know what is happening. But there is a lack of wider perspective.
This video interview extract from a couple of days ago by Reason.com editor Nick Gillespie (pictured) with host John Stossel on Fox TV was a welcome change:
Short enough (5 minutes), and with a song interlude, but having time to mention why great products "getting better" should be bought voluntarily irrespective of price, and the big business push behind it.
The John Stossel site (http://www.foxbusiness.com/on-air/stossel/) has more about the show, and other clips from it - it was about the "unintended consequences of big government meddling in our lives".
It also covered the oddness of regulations reducing electricity use and emissions by targeting products people like to use, and how energy efficiency regulations anyway effectively mean cheaper use and greater (wasted) use, negating supposed energy savings.
One could add that the savings involved are very small in overall terms anyway, and all the other reasons against the regulations including the tax alternative for bankrupt governments (California) as summarized in a preceding post on this blog, but it is good to see the issue widened here and there in the media.
Monday, December 5, 2011
Screwing the EU with a Condom...
Update:
Also see the more recent December blog post for someone else's witty take on this.
An earlier post described how some canny Germans were trying to get round the EU light bulb ban, by marketing incandescent light bulbs as "Heat Balls",
making use of their 90% energy consumption being converted to heat
(a much repeated fact by the pro-ban brigade, who carefully avoid saying that CFLs release 80% of their energy consumption as heat, LEDs 70%, and that their heat is internalized, giving a recognized fire risk with CFLs).
Well, German inventiveness has not stopped there....
Even before the EU ban ("phase out") started in 2009,
the well known Munich and New York based lighting designer Ingo Maurer, who has featured in many exhibitions, craftily designed a light bulb condom...
The reason for it is that even the EU Commission managed to over-do themselves in their customary nit-picking,
by banning the manufacture and import of all frosted incandescent light bulbs, Halogen or not, with immediate effect in September 2009.
Their justification was not to save energy:
There is either minute or no difference in savings between clear and frosted bulbs.
It was simply, as they have publicly stated, that they considered that those who wanted frosted (opaque) bulbs could simply choose the CFLs.
Needless to say, the frosted bulbs were the most popular type of bulb in Europe, and the ban-lobbying CFL light bulb manufacturers and distributors had nothing at all to do with this decision... :-)
Old blog coverage on Gizmodo
Ingo Maurers website: http://www.ingo-maurer.com/
Also see the more recent December blog post for someone else's witty take on this.
An earlier post described how some canny Germans were trying to get round the EU light bulb ban, by marketing incandescent light bulbs as "Heat Balls",
making use of their 90% energy consumption being converted to heat
(a much repeated fact by the pro-ban brigade, who carefully avoid saying that CFLs release 80% of their energy consumption as heat, LEDs 70%, and that their heat is internalized, giving a recognized fire risk with CFLs).
Well, German inventiveness has not stopped there....
Even before the EU ban ("phase out") started in 2009,
the well known Munich and New York based lighting designer Ingo Maurer, who has featured in many exhibitions, craftily designed a light bulb condom...
by banning the manufacture and import of all frosted incandescent light bulbs, Halogen or not, with immediate effect in September 2009.
Their justification was not to save energy:
There is either minute or no difference in savings between clear and frosted bulbs.
It was simply, as they have publicly stated, that they considered that those who wanted frosted (opaque) bulbs could simply choose the CFLs.
Needless to say, the frosted bulbs were the most popular type of bulb in Europe, and the ban-lobbying CFL light bulb manufacturers and distributors had nothing at all to do with this decision... :-)
Old blog coverage on Gizmodo
Ingo Maurers website: http://www.ingo-maurer.com/
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