There's been a lot of chatter and speculation on the fate of Sarah Palin, why she resigned, and generally a lot of "What the hell is going on?" discussions. In a short post on the subject, Josh Marshall at TPM pointed out something caught by one of his readers in an op/ed at foxnews.com:
"She should also lead the nation's mothers to oppose mandating replacement of incandescent light bulbs with the new mercury poison gas bulbs."
In an otherwise unsurprising op/ed about how smart and awesome Sarah Palin is, Peter Ferrara's one-off comment about "poison gas bulbs" left me flabbergasted. Is there a conservative anger toward CFLs? I guess if you don't believe in global warming and think that CO2 can't be bad for you because it's "a natural byproduct of nature!" then I suppose you might not like a mandate for CFLs. In the reality based world, however, the potential benefits are immense.
I ran a few numbers based on Department of Energy and census figures and the numbers involved are truly astounding. I know this information is available elsewhere in various forms, but I thought it might be nice to have a quick breakdown of what kind of difference we're talking about. I used the figures form a 1999/2000 report from the Department of Energy and the 2000 census figures (pdf) because they're the most complete I could find in a reasonable amount of time and they're for the same time period. I based the figures on coal power production because a) I live in an area essentially entirely dependent on coal for power production, and b) over 50% of the energy produced in the United States is from coal. I chose the 100 watt incandescent bulb and its 33 watt compact fluorescent because they're pretty common and they make the math easier.
According to the DoE report, the average output of CO2 from coal fired power plants is 2.095 pounds per kilowatt hour. The total production of CO2 from power generation for 1999 is just shy of 5 trillion pounds (4.939 trillion). If an average household uses 1 incandescent 100 watt bulb for 12 hours a day total - not outside the norm if my household and those around me are any indication - they would generate approximately 918 pounds of CO2 from running that bulb for the entire year.
(100 watts * 12 hours * 365 days = 438,000 watt/hours) / 1000 = 438 kilowatt hours.
438 * 2.095 = ~918 pounds.
If that same household were to replace the traditional incandescent bulb with a compact fluorescent, they would produce only approximately 303 pounds of CO2 per year, a savings of about 615 pounds.
(33 watts * 12 hours * 365 days = 144,540 watt hours) / 1000 = 144.54 kilowatt hours)
144.54 * 2.095 = ~303 pounds
That's a significant savings for 1 household both in CO2 emissions and the cost of buying that electricity. Where it really gets interesting, though is when you take into account the total number of households in the US doing the same thing. Actually, in this case, it would be 51%, because that's how much electricity was generated from coal in the US in 1999. According to the 2000 US census report, there were approximately 105,500,000 households in the United States, if 51% of them are getting their power from coal, that means 53,805,000 households. If each of those roughly 54 million households switched just one lamp from incandescent to fluorescent, they would reduce carbon emissions by over 33 billion pounds over the course of one year.
53805000 households * 917.61 lbs = 49.372 billion lbs per year for one incandescent bulb
53805000 households * 302.81 lbs = 16.293 billion lbs per year for one fluorescent bulb
49372006050 - 16292692050 = 33.079 billion lbs saved per year
That's the savings of replacing one 100 watt bulb with a 33 watt equivalent in 51% of the homes in the United States. Imagine the amount saved if every bulb in every home were replaced. The figure would be astronomical.
I realize that these numbers are a bit fuzzy and don't represent the sort of accurate model that the DoE or a climate scientist would project, but I think they reasonably illustrate the sort of impact that those crazy little twisty bulbs can produce if deployed on a large scale.
Ferrara referred to these CFLs as mercury poison gas bulbs because they contain trace amounts of mercury used to light the lamp. Handled incorrectly, and by that I mean breaking them, they can release these small quantities of mercury into the air, or ground in the case of improper disposal. I use them exclusively in my home and I work in an industry in which I handle fluorescent and mercury-vapor lamps on a regular basis, so I have a bit of experience with them. I can tell you that they're a hell of a lot more robust than the average incandescent bulb, which contains some nasties as well, and unless you're in the habit of regularly using your light bulbs as pinatas, the likely-hood of you or your family getting exposed to mercury is pretty low. When compared to the other toxins that are in your home in various bottles, appliances and other knick-knacks, it's a bit of a surprise that CFLs are where someone would chose to make a stand, especially with their obvious benefits. It's actually ironic, when you think of all the conservatives that look at people who advocate environmental protections as dirty hippies that these demon bulbs would suddenly catch their attention.
But, then again, no one said it had to make sense.
Updated: Fixed the spelling of fluorescent. My spell checker was screaming at me when I put it in the first time, for some odd reason and insisted on changing it. I should learn to listen to myself and not the computer.
Second Update: Fixed some typos, thanks rigger.
Hopefully 3rd and Final Update: Stwrilley crunched the numbers on mercury released by burning coal and by smashing a CFL. It looks like each family in America would have to smash about 37 CFL bulbs per household, per year to get to roughly the amount of mercury generated by coal power plants. I don't have 37 light fixtures in my house, and I end up replacing about 5 to 6 CFLs a year since 2006.
Update 4: The Updatering: The link to the Fox News stupid.