How do AGW believers decide which elements they like / dislike?

Question

The incandescent lightbulb ban will mean we all have to lead low-tungsten lifestyles...... And the replacement lightbulbs will have a lot of mercury in them.

So they don't like tungsten, which harms no one, but they like mercury, which is poisonous....... And they don't like carbon, which is the basis for all life on Earth......

How do they decide what elements they like and don't like?

Answer 1

I assume this question is 100% sarcasm.  In case it's not:

CFLs consume approximately 80% less energy than incandescents.  By relying on less energy produce by coal power plants, they also result in lower lifetime mercury production than incandescents.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mercu...

So the premise of your question is faulty.  Environmentalists do not 'like mercury'.

Don't break the bulbs and you don't have to worry about the mercury.  If you do break them, follow the EPA's cleanup guidelines.  It's really quite simple.

Answer 2

yeh, the light bulb idiocy is small change in comparison to what obama-bin lyin and the gorebore have in mind for all of us...america should have more humility, after all, how humiliated will we be when the 'bessiah' is elected president of the world...

Answer 3

Some people who accept AGW as occurring decide which elements they will believe based on the evidence (which is too much to ask of global warming denialists).

As for banning light bulbs, whilst I don't like incandescent heaters myself CFLs do still have enough problems with dimmer circuits and enclosed fittings (not to mention places that need the light to turn on instantly) that they can't replace incandescent heaters in all roles.

White LEDs look like a possibility.

As for the Mercury, there's less in a CFL than what a coal power plant would put into the air running an incandescent heater and the mercury in CFLs is contained rather than just dumped into the atmosphere (though government could do a better job with taking back fluorescent lights for proper disposal).

Not to mention that it's all based on the erroneous belief that energy efficiency is the key to stopping global warming when it was largely responsible for us deciding to burn the coal and oil that is causing it.

EDIT: You obviously haven't seen many of my answers in this section (and the reference to "coal and oil" was a more general comment on energy efficiency not electricity usage efficiency, we do burn a lot of oil, just that we don't use it for electricity very much).

Answer 4

I always love whenever a light bulb question comes up and Dana insists that a little mercury in YOUR own home is not any of your concern and you should just conform to it anyway.  And when you bring up a legitimate point of wanting no mercury in your own home, he says don't break it and you'll be fine. Well Dana, perhaps most of us are operating off common sense (sorry, I don't think you'll find an obscure article or graph from your blog measuring that statistic to refute me) when we say we don't want mercury, even in our light bulbs because anyone with kids can attest that they get into things, they play with things, they break things, they put broken things in their mouths.  So what then?  Will it still be "no big deal" when a child dies from mercury poisoning because over-zealous environmentalists got a law passed that essentially outlawed the safer, cheaper incandescent bulbs?  Probably not, because it's all for the cause, right?