Of Lunatics and Light Bulbs

MSNBC had a story that stated, curiously, that people were just too dumb to buy into mercury-laced compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) and instead were still bitterly clinging onto the Thomas-Edison invented incandescent light bulbs.

While CFLs seem harsh on the eyes to many people and may pose disposal problems, they use about 80 percent less energy than incandescents and last up to 10 times as long. Lighting comprises about one-fifth of the typical monthly electrical bill. A typical household could save $10 to $50 a month by switching all incandescent bulbs to CFLs or LEDs, according to industry and consumer sources.

If every American home replaced just one incandescent bulb with one CFL, the corresponding cut in greenhouse gas emissions would equal the amount of pollutants produced by more than 800,000 vehicles, reports Greenzer.com, a shopping site that caters to the environmentally conscious. What’s more, CFL technology is slowly improving: some CFLs now can be used with dimming fixtures.

The utter nonsense of the above snippet notwithstanding, the comment section after the story had some excellent rebuttals to the story, expressing concerns with safe disposal of the mercury inherent in CFLs, CFL's inability to work efficiently as outdoor lamps in cold climates, their inability to work in dimmer-switch controlled fixtures, their inability to throw off natural light, and others.

Then came the reaction by this smarmy circus clown (a/k/a Puddleduck)

We don't always have the option to buy anything we want to use.

Seems like the same people who complain about buying oil from our enemies, are the same ones who want to keep buying more foreign oil and drilling for more oil here, so that they can hang onto their inefficient appliances.

(Yes, I know. It's such a pain pouring that gallon of gas down the back of my refrigerator--ed)

I guess that raising MPG standards for vehicles and raising efficiency standards for A/C, refrigerators, water heaters, etc., was an unnecessary intrusion into our lives and freedom, too. These rules are saving us millions of barrels of oil, per day, that we are not buying from our enemies.

I wonder if "Puddleduck" will make that same speech in the mirror when not so far down the road she has to plug in her government-approved and mandated electric car?

But here's where "Puddleduck" gets my blood REALLY boiling (emphases mine):

Unfortunately, these people are the reason that these kinds of laws have to be passed. Voluntary compliance doesn't seem to work with business or with the American people, even when compliance is in their own best interest.

If you want to try to be a patriot, then why not do something that doesn't take a lot of effort and helps this country with her energy crisis, instead of whining because one of your choices to create more pollution is being taken away from you?

To which I retorted,

We wouldn't HAVE to buy oil from our enemies if environmentalist whackos didn't have politicians in their hip pockets who prevent us from harvesting oil from our own lands (of which we have PLENTY--check out the Bakken).

We wouldn't have to buy mercury-laced CFLs if G.E. didn't have politicians in their back pocket that would MAKE us buy them, so that GE could make a boatload of money, and so that enviro-whackos could feel some sense of smug superiority in having their will imposed on others, and in the process feel like somehow they're going to control warming or cooling of the earth, even though we have no more control over the earth's climate than we do the rising and setting of the sun.

You ascribe authority and omniscience to some almighty governmental bureaucrat or politician who wouldn't know his backside from a hole in the ground as some kind of expert, just because they're elected or work in an EPA office; without any thought as to whether they either know what the heck they're talking about in the first place; or worse yet, whether they're feeding a bunch of BS to mushrooms in the dark so as to line their own pockets and/or prolong their power and control.

But go ahead, sheeple. Keep on trusting Big Brother to determine what is well and best for you, and to wipe your behind when you need it. Never. I mean NEVER--think for yourselves.

Some people's kids.