I applaud the act, more people should move to using more efficient lightbulbs. Plus you can avoid all that annoying searing-of-your-flesh of sensation when you turn off the bedside lamp half asleep and you touch the lightbulb cover.

I will be more than happy to switch if they balance flourescent light to tungsten or daylight. Because as is, flourescent is about the ugliest light on the planet and I will take a fine over seeing everything in green shift.

Yes, I'm selfish.

Daylight CFL bulb

I have a bunch of those. VERY bright to look at and not the brain numbing effect of the "regular" Fluorescents.

Another reason I'm happy to be far away from the madness that is California.

Hell yea, I'm down.

Oh yes, heaven forbid you live in a state that's trying to be progressive when it comes to the environment.

Seriously, a lot of fucked up shit happens in California, but this isn't part of it.

KINO FLO

Fluorescent bulbs come in many color temperatures now. These are not the linear fixtures you find at your local Wal-Mart that we're talking about.

We aren't quite there yet, but LED-based home lighting will probably hit a comfortable price point and lumen output within the next ten years, and they'll be a good choice as well.

Some are available now (for instance, here is the Crane CC Vivid Plus, but light output is still too low (60 lumens vs. the 800 lumen ballpark for a 13 watt fluorescent), and color temperature is rather harsh.

These are made up of 36 discrete 'white' LEDs, and I'd imagine if a monolithic fabrication technique of suitable device yield could be devised both electrical and lumen efficiency would increase. Coupled with changes in home infrastructure (for instance, imagine LED-based drop ceiling tiles using engineered support stringers for their + and - DC power bus connections, and bringing them out to a big supercapacitor fed from roof-mounted solar cells) the operational costs of home lighting would drop significantly, and generated greenhouse gases to very low values (essentially, only that from the energy used to manufacture the devices, and certain chemical fumes that may be manufacturing by-products).

Ran some numbers for these CC Vivid Plus 'bulbs' - the 120V model uses 2.5 watts, and can be used with conventional lamp dimmers, but, at 24 lumens/watt, is much less efficient than a typical fluorescent which does 50 to 60 lumens/watt, and costs a lot more at $45 a pop. Most of this efficiency loss must be due to converting 120 VAC to a lower DC voltage, because their 12 VDC model uses only 0.6 watts for the same lumen output, - this works out to 100 lumens/watt.

Don't know if it is a good idea to ban incandescent blubs outright, but it makes a lot of sense to encourage these less polluting (and ultimately, cheaper for the home owner, when life cycle cost is taken into account) alternatives.

In a word, BULLSHIT!.

Early bulbs used a carbon filliment that turned the inside of the bulb dark. These were replaced by metal coatedf filiments without this problem.
20 years after Edision got his patent, the more efficient tungsten filliment became standard,
You might argue that these were minor refinements. Okay. Consider halogen filled incandescent bulbs:
Halogen incandescent's are almost twice as efficient as standard bulbs, and run twice as long.
Halogen bulbs with an infrared reflective coating are more efficient than flourescents.

I'd call those "major modifications."

Florescents are way slow to warm up, are negatively affected by temperature, and have a variety of other problems that remain unresolved.

I think if they are going to "ban" things, they should make sure that there a fully equivalent alternative.

And are they still using mercury?

Please, not even for a visit.

There's a bright idea!

Wakka Wakka Wakka!