Althought I like CFLs in general I noticed the following.
- The colder it is outside the dimmer the CFL will be. I live in Winnipeg and we had a 2 week cold snap where tempature were close or below to -40 Celcius at night. My outdoor compact florecents did not even turn on. When the tempeture rised a bit they restarted working. My LED Christmas lights worked without problem all winter.
- I bought an “instant on” CFL light for a pot lamp and it is located next to a regular indecent. From the begining, it never turned on quite as fast but after one year of use it is getting slower to turn on and flickers occasionally but the illumination looks identical.
- For rural house owners the apparently the power fluctuates more and I was told this reduces the life of the bulb. Plus if there outside the wind will make them vibrate reducing the life even more.

I’ve just published a useful analysis of the Total Cost of Ownership of incandescent vs. LED lights at: http://www.newstarget.com/021840.html

There, you’ll see why incandescent lights are so expensive in the long run. Lighting your house with an incandescent light bulb is like driving a car that gets one mile per gallon.

Many thanks,
- Mike Adams

The greenhouse gas argument is being overused. Look what’s happening to the tropical forests in the name of growing “carbon neutral” biofuel. Deforestation is accelerating, and environmentalists are looking the other way. It is a disaster. Beware of the greenhouse gas argument to justify anything and everything.

The reality is we are not going to reduce greenhouse gasses enough to make a difference - and instead of asking the Chinese to clean up the particulates, etc., we are handing them something prohibitively expensive - eliminating CO2 emissions - that they will simply refuse to do. This sudden anti-CO2 mania reminds me of the fuel cell car fiasco - environmentalists demanded this ideal but technically impossible solution, delaying the introduction of electric cars by at least a decade.

To the extent CO2 mania accelerates the cleanup of genuine air pollution - of which CO2 is not - it will be beneficial. To the extent CO2 mania destroys our rainforests and bestows tyranny upon the masses, it will be costly, if not catastrophic.

My wife and I have these “Bright Effects” bulbs throughout our house, except for a couple of 3-way CFL’s in our bedside lamps, and we love them. They produce very pure, clean light, no flicker, and no buzz, and we’ve yet to replace a single one since we moved into this house just over 3 years ago. We’re both extremely picky about light color, flicker, etc., so I can’t imagine someone finding fault with them on that basis.

As for taxing instead of banning incandescents: No problem. The tax should be high enough to make up for the fact that people who choose incandescents are creating more GHG emissions that everyone will have to live with. Enough, for example, so that every incandescent bulb will produce enough revenue to give a low income household two free CFL’s, or offset several times the extra CO2 emissions.