Writing in Slate Ron Rosenbaum captures a widely shared (including by me) hatred of fluorescent light.

Yes, the idiots in Congress, too torpid and ineffectual to pass a health-care bill for children, have busy-bodied themselves in a bumbling way with the way you light up your world. In December, they passed legislation that will, in practice, outlaw incandescent bulbs because they won't be able to meet the new law's strict energy-efficiency standards. The result: Between 2012 and 2014, incandescent bulbs will be driven from the market. Replaced by the ugly plasticine Dairy Queen swirl of compact fluorescent lights.

From a purely environmental perspective, this move is shortsighted. CFLs do use less energy, which is good. But they also often contain mercury, one of the most damaging—and lasting—environmental toxins. Not a ton of mercury, but still: A whole new CFL recycling structure will be required to prevent us from releasing deadly neurotoxins into the water table. CFLs: coming soon to sushi near you.

The compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) are supposed to replace the incandescent light bulb. But they've got major drawbacks. As Rosenbaum sees it, the real evil of flourescents is aesthetic.

But the greater crime of the new bulbs is not environmental but aesthetic. Think of the ugly glare of fluorescence, the light of prisons, sterile cubicle farms, precinct stations, emergency rooms, motor vehicle bureaus, tenement hallways—remember Tom Wolfe's phrase for the grim, flickering hallway lights in New York tenements: "landlords' haloes"?—and, of course, morgues. Fluorescents seem specially designed to drain life and beauty from the world. Don't kid yourself if you hope Hell is lit by fire. More likely fluorescents.

Yes, fluorescents. Buzzing, flickering, able to cause epileptic seizures in the susceptible, in addition to headaches and other neurological symptoms. Let's smash all the incandescent lights and replace their glowing beauty with the harsh anatomizing light of fluorescence. The flickering tinny corpse light of bureaucracies and penal institutions.

I'm more down on them due to their distracting effect. I have enough interruptions to my concentration as things stand without the mental fatigue and distraction caused by flicker.

In the book of Genesis God did not say "let there be flickering".

The new CFLs pulse faster than their ancestors, so the flickering is less perceptible, but at some level, it's still there. CFL manufacturers may be right that the new bulbs are an improvement, but there is still something discontinuous, digital, something chillingly one-and-zero about fluorescence, while incandescent lights offer the reassurance of continuity rather than an alternation of being and nothingness. If I remember correctly, the line from genesis was "Let there be light," not "Let there be flickering."

I bought some CFLs several years ago to use in places I spend little time in. But my light fixtures in most of those places can't fit the CFLs.

Dan Neil of the Los Angeles Times shares Rosenbaum's lack of enthusiasm for fluorescents and also thinks LED lights are not good substitutes either.

As a good liberal, I’m ready to embrace, and pay for, more efficient lighting. And yet, I’m already feeling what might be called Edison nostalgia. Even a bare bulb hanging from a wire is a thousand times more bewitching, more jocund and welcoming than a CFL screwed into the most arty fixture featured in Wallpaper magazine. The light from a CFL—stark and shadowless and overcorrecting—is a scold: Why haven’t you dusted? Why haven’t you taken better care of your skin? (This is the well-known public lighting effect.) LEDs, by their very nature, produce a single frequency of light, a sliver of the visible spectrum. In the case of “white” LEDs that would replace the common bulb, they are actually a ghastly white shade of blue, and that’s why everyone looks a touch cyanotic under them. The quality of light from these instruments will get better, but they only can approximate—only counterfeit—the warm, wide-spectrum glory of a filament that radiates across the visible spectrum and beyond.

But on FuturePundit there's the obligatory "but can't technological advances solve all problems?" angle to any story. Some Turkish researchers might have found a way to make LED light more acceptable.

Topping LEDs with a coating of carefully tuned nanocrystals makes their light warmer and less clinical, a new study shows. The researchers argue this is a must for energy-efficient LED lights to make headway in the commercial market.

...

To accomplish this, Hilmi Volkan Demir and colleagues at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, coated blue LEDs with a layer of nanocrystals. These crystals are made from a core of cadmium selenide with a surrounding layer of zinc sulphide.

The crystals absorb some of the LED's blue output and emit their own red and green light. That combines with the remaining blue light to produce a soft white glow.

A New York Times panel looked at 21 alternatives to incandescents and found most of the compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) disgusting. But they liked some of the LED and halogen choices and even found a few CFLs acceptable.

Another object of excitement was the Pharox bulb (upscalelighting.com) from Lemnis Lighting, which uses a light-emitting diode, or L.E.D. This technology, which works by illuminating a semiconductor chip, is more efficient than compact fluorescent lighting. But because L.E.D.'s emit directional rather than diffuse light, they are typically implanted in flat surfaces like walls or light panels.

Not all the bulbs were met with negativity. Panelists favored the light cast by halogen bulbs (including the Daylight Plus and the BT15 from Sylvania, and G.E.'s Edison 60), which last twice as long as incandescents, requiring less energy for the production and distribution of replacements, and are therefore more efficient.

One halogen model, the Philips Halogena, was not only pleasing to the eye - "nice, soft, golden light" one panelist said - but efficient enough to meet the criteria of the new energy bill.

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The n:vision TCP Home Soft White, for example, was deemed "a warm pleasant light." The TCP Spring Light/Soft White was "almost warmer than incandescent," one person said. And the MaxLite SpiraMax was generally liked.

That LED Pharox bulb costs $59. Not exactly cheap.

Since we will have halogen and LED alternatives the death of incandescent bulbs won't force us to use CFLs. LED costs are falling and moving into wider spread use on cars. That bodes well. But as we near incandescent phase-out dates if LEDs and halogens aren't looking like acceptable and affordable alternativs you might want to lay in a few year supply of incandescents to provide more time for the non-fluorescent alternatives to improve.

Update: Brendan Koerner defends CFLs.

The irony of CFLs is that they actually reduce overall mercury emissions in the long run. Despite recent improvements in the industry's technology, the burning of coal to produce electricity emits roughly 0.023 milligrams of mercury per kilowatt-hour. Over a year, then, using a 26-watt CFL in the average American home (where half of the electricity comes from coal) will result in the emission of 0.66 milligrams of mercury. For 100-watt incandescent bulbs, which produce the identical amount of light, the figure is 2.52 milligrams.

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The last, desperate swipe at CFLs—as elucidated by the Lantern's colleague last week—is that their light is cold and dreadful. Perhaps this was true in years past, but the Lantern just doesn't see it anymore: In a recent test, Popular Mechanics rated CFL light as far superior to that produced by incandescent bulbs.

You can always try one of the higher rated CFLs and judge for yourself. But I continue to hate the workplace long tube fluorescents that I come across.