I don't have the scope of experiences to frame an argument from the perspective of "the greater whole of the US population" concerning the use of a CFL vs an incandescant bulb.
I can only offer my personal experience, and personal reasoning.
At first, I did not like CFLs for a few noteworthy reasons:
1) they didn't use very good phosphor coatings, with poor phosphor persistence, which when coupled with my astigmatism, led to constant migrane headaches from the 60hz flicker.
2) because the phosphor coatings inside were poor choices for use in a constant illumination source, the light spectrum produced was decidedly unbalanced in favor of naked UV light, balanced with horrid greens and blues. I percieve color very well, and prefer a spectrum more closely matching that of natural light wherever possible. Until recently, CFLs did not provide either of these.
Up until recently, I used Reveal GE incandescant bulbs, even though they were quite expensive, and energy hogs.
In revent years, GE and pals have released "natural light" approximating CFL bulbs, with persistant phosphor layers. I have since switched, and haven't looked back.
The only remaining problem with CFL technology is the ecological footprint of refining the phosphor powders themselves (produced from rare earth elements that are rely on refining and processing techniques that are beyond merely harmful to the environment) but also require gassified mercury inside the tube itself to produce the high intensity UV light needed to excite the phosphor.
LED light sources could possibly alleviate this problem, using high output UV LEDs in place of the electrically excited mercury gas inside the CFL. However, the manufacturing processes for UV LEDs are still quite energy intensive, and require very pure materials to synthesize. This is why the costs of LED lighting systems have historically been so prohibitive. A coiled length of tungsten wire is downright primitive in comparison, and far more predisposed to mass commercial manufacture.
Unfortunately for LED technology, they themselves also rely on the petrochemical industry quite aggressively, as the "plastic part" outside the crystal diode itself is comprised of epoxy resins. This makes the recyling capabilities of the materials involved in LED manufacture suspect from the get-go, and sometimes the formulation of the diode itself contains toxic heavy metals as well.
Currently, I use CFLs, and I believe that they should be theoretically easier to recycle, once adoption hits critical mass, and mass recycling of the materials involved can benefit from economies of scale, since they have reached a level of quality that meets or exceeds the light characteristics of incandescant bulbs, and consume considerably less power, and last much longer.
The recylability of LED based lighting will have to improve tremendously to overcome their current shortcomings. When they do, and their directional lighting biases are balanced out using a diffusing phosphor, I will consider making the switch.
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Topic: Bay12 Election Night Watch Party (Read 837780 times)