Lubos Motl here wrote up a piece on this story about 2 German engineers who were busted for attempting to bring environmental contraband (incandescent light bulbs) across the Climate Berlin Wall. Last year the EU banned the 100-watt bulbs as the start of an incandescent light bulb phase-out that will take place over the next years.
I’d like to add a little more to what Lubos has written already. I myself have a stash of about 50 pieces. This story was brought up last week by another blog or two, but it got by me.
As Lubos points out, Germans behind the Climate Berlin Wall now have to smuggle in the things they want, just like East Germans had to do before the political Berlin Wall fell.
Recently, the two German engineers quickly sold 4000 of the climate-killing bulbs as “heat balls”, and so they ordered up another 40,000 pieces from China. To get them through German customs, they declared the bulbs as “heat balls” – miniature heaters that could be powered by a standard fluorescent light bulb fixture.
But the German government got a whiff of the scam and ordered customs officials to seize the shipment at the Cologne/Bonn airport. The German online Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) reports here on the story. According to the FAZ, customs officials confiscated the “dangerous” shipment. The FAZ writes:
Engineers Siegfried Rotthäuser and Rudolf Hannot wanted to get around the EU bulb ban, and thus argued that the 100-watt heat balls produced mainly heat, and were not lamps.
The heatball satire resonated well with the general public. Within just a couple of days, the first batch of 4000 pieces of miniature heaters were sold out at the handsome price of €1.69 ea., whereby Rotthäuser even promised to donate 30 cents for each unit sold to projects that protect the rain forest. Due to the media buzz, they soon had orders for another 40,000 units.
But the government officials were not amused. On Tuesday customs officials received an advisory from the local Cologne government, Department 55, Product Safety and Explosives, on the 40,000 heating units.
Rotthäuser found out that customs officials had been put under “massive pressure” by the Department of Environment to stop the shipment. The Department of Environment responded, writes the FAZ:
According to information from the local authorities, customs did not confiscate the goods, moreover they simply ‘suspended’ their release until samples of the seemingly dangerous goods could be examined. Now a Cologne defense expert will soon determine that the heatballs contain no explosives, but indeed do light up.
The 2 entrepreneurial brothers say they would welcome a debate on the sense of the bulb ban. The newly government-prescribed energy saving lights are far more dangerous for the environment because of their mercury content.
Never mind though – government leaders think customs officials need to focus their time and resources on the really dangerous stuff like incandescent light bulbs, and less on terrorists and real explosives.
You can buy electricity here if you can pay the outrageous tariffs, but you are not free how to use it. A devaluation of the currency.
BTW, the German state should stop running those climate-killing synchrotrons like DESY – each one consumes about 1 GW. Now that would be a REAL step backwards and appease the environment agency for a week, until they demand more.
There is a really important and direct challenge to basic freedom exposed in this article.
Two minutes ago (figuratively speaking) these bulbs were perfectly legal and everybody used them in Germany, so no problems.
Now some apparatchik has decided because of an absolutely fallacious fiction (Man Made emissions=Global warming) that CO2 emissions need to be controlled.
One of the mad ideas (more insane than some) was to force Europeans to use ‘energy efficient’ light-bulbs, these provide piss poor light, and if they are used in the traditional way in domestic use (ie, being regularly switched on and off), CFL bulbs endure, a fraction of the time of incandescents (incandescents also heat the room – making us tweak the heating thermostat – so no saving in energy!).
So in the ‘European area of free trade’, a couple of likely lads import proper bulbs and make a killing, the authorities do not like this, it pisses on their ‘save the world parade’ and it’s very naughty to have nice light bulbs, which actually illuminate a room…..OH NO! they say, “we cannot allow this!”
WTF? Is going on?
All of the illogical thinking going on is (as you’ve said PG)is dissonant rubbish but is symptomatic of the ‘NEW ORDER’ in the EU.
Britain joined on the promise of open borders and free trade…..OPEN BORDERS?………FREE TRADE? It is becoming, what we all knew it would become, a totalitarian state, there is no freedom in the EU and entrepreneurial business innovation is stifled and nipped in the bud because of political dogma.
As Mikhail Gorbachev so astutely observed (post 1989 – paraphrasing); “You have rid yourselves of one totalitarian Socialist Bloc in the East and replaced it with another totalitarian Socialist bloc in the West!”
How true is that?
I wonder what are German doing in the teaching of chemistry in the schools.
Pakistan’s monsoon this year was only 5% above average, according to Madhav Khandekar, former IPCC expert reviewer.
http://climaterealists.com/?id=6698
UN issues sever climate warning to heat up Cancun.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/11/severe-climate-warning.html
There severe warning comes when NH and SH temperatures are dropping like crazy and most of the NH land masses are covered by snow before the official start of winter.
http://www.snow-forecast.com/maps/static/europe/next3to6days/snow
In the mean time it is raining new all time an all state snow and cold records: http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2010/11/23/cold-in-montana/
http://www.iceagenow.com/Record_Lows_2010.htm
Take to the Streets
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ing8xH3Qj-k&feature=player_embedded
Carbon Dioxide is “dangerous” and causing warming. The modern electric bulbs contain harmless mercury… 😆 😆
The entire green doctrine is based on pure propagandistic arguments and bizarre policies without any logic or reason.
First of all ask yourself why we should ban a perfectly good and cheap source of light if the same politicians who banned the 100 and 75 Watt/hr
light bulb have planned for a big scale introduction of electric vehicles.
Driving such a vehicle 12.000 miles per year acquires 3Megawatts/hr
of electric power into the batteries.
At the power generation source, due to transport losses the required amount of energy is 11 Megawatts/hr/
If you calculate the real efficiency of an electric vehicle compared to a modern gasoline or diesel powered car (38 mpg) there is absolutely no advantage in favor of the electric car.
On the contrary. An electric car is extremely expensive, the coal generated power is much more polluting than the modern clean burning car engines and there is no need for massive government subsidies
(tax payer’s money) to promote the introduction of electric cars.
All the arguments to introduce electric cars are false and the ban of the light bulb completely crazy.
So what’s left is the peak oil argument.
Well, that is BS as well.
It is well known that the USA has 3.65 trillion barrel of oil available at a very acceptable exploration costs of 10 US dollar per barrel.
In the mean time we have developed new drilling techniques that allow us to tap into the vast (really vast) reserves of shale gas, available at lower prices compared to coal.
For this and other information please read this excellent article from James Delingpole.
Peak Energy, what peak energy!
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100064709/peak-energy-what-peak-energy/
And now address your Government and your local power utility with this knowledge and tell them you demand fair energy prices.