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Originally Posted by 8307c4
I would have to guess there exist many arguments concerning incandescents, so I question why incandescents are still available!
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Why not mandate? For one reason, incandescents are still the best technology for some nitch applications! Compact florescents (and even LEDs) just have problems in some applications. And for another reason, we really don't need yet one more government mandate that takes away choice and freedom!
Now, that said, I do in fact use CFLs throughout my house, because in many cases they are "good enough" and produce light for much less power usage. And I agree that many people are hooked on incandescents (possibly due to their cheap initial purchase price), when other technologies (CFLs, LEDs, etc) would be better choices. So promoting energy efficient bulb usage (when it makes sense) is a good idea IMHO.
But that promotion is already happening (although maybe not as fast as you would like) by such factors as property owners trying to save on their electric bills, and even downright discounts on the CFLs offered by say the power company. So the transition is already happening, it's just not "mandated", and it's still a work in progress...
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Originally Posted by 8307c4
It's not about bickering back and forth about the endless matter, it is about making CFL's the only option, then there is no more argument.
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And then there is also no more choice, and technology stands still. CFLs are NOT the best technology out there for all lighting. They are only the best of the currently cost effective technologies, for many (most?) lighting situations. But better technologies already exist, and their pricing will eventually cause other technologies to replace CFLs, in the same way that CFLs are currently replacing many incandescents.
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Originally Posted by 8307c4
I checked into those LED's, at a cost of $15 ~ $50 each this appears to be a wild goose chase... From what I can see these things give off anywhere from 38 - 80 and a few even 110 to 150 lumens, but keep in mind lumens are not watts, a standard 75w bulb gives off 1100 lumens and so does a CFL rated at 75 (consuming 25).
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It is NOT a "wild goose chase".
What it is, is a slightly immature (not yet developed to full commodity level) technology. In fact, the current situation with LEDs, is very much similar to the situation with florescent bulbs when they first came out! In both cases, the light wasn't what you would ideally want, and the price of the bulb/lamp was fairly costly! But prices for LEDs are coming down, and the brightness is going up. And the underlying technology for LEDs allows for power efficiencies that greatly exceed what a CFL could do, as well as "bulbs" that last several times longer than a CFL (and are also more immune to physical shocks breaking them). And as others have already pointed out, LEDs light up almost "instantly" (actually it takes a very small fraction of a second, but they still light up even faster than incandescents, much less the very slow CFL startups)!
So LEDs might very well be the lights of the future. Do to current costs (and current engineering challenges with scaling them up to very bright light) they are not the lights of today (except in some limited "spot lighting" situations), but that doesn't mean that LEDs won't play a very important role sometime in the future (as LED "bulbs" continue to both get brighter overall, continue to get close to their theoretical power efficiency, and continue to drop in price). And LEDs already (even with not yet "mature" technology) are playing an important role in some specialty situations.
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Originally Posted by 8307c4
Maybe I'm missing something, but lumens is light output, and at the very least it would appear we need 4-500 lumens per bulb... Really I'd prefer 6-800 but either way I don't see myself buying no 150 lumen bulb.
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What you are missing is that LEDs are naturally easier to engineer when you only want a little "spot light", and are much harder to engineer when you want a lot of light. So they are still "not ready for prime time" as your main lighting source. But that will change, as the engineering for LEDs is getting better all the time (the LEDs of today can do things thought "impossible" just a few years ago, and the engineering continues). So eventually, possibly in only a few years time, those engineering challenges will be solved, and LEDs may very well replace CFLs as the light of choice for energy efficient room lighting. And even now, with not all of the engineering challenges met yet, LEDs are replacing both incandescents and CFLs for certain lower lighting "spot lighting" tasks (fridge lights, car lights, some reading lamps, many flashlights, etc).
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