How Green Are Low Energy Light Bulbs?

We have been conned into abandoning the traditional incandescent filament light bulbs, (I believe their manufacture is now illegal?) with the introduction of so-called Low Energy Light Bulbs. These are far more complex to manufacture, more damaging to the environment when broken or otherwise disposed of as they contain mercury and consequently are significantly more energy intensive during manufacture and disposal. "But they use less energy during operation" the politicians and manufacturers cry. Do they really? Lets examine the situation when a light bulb is in use:

When do we use light bulbs?                            When it's dark!
When is it dark?                                                When the sun's rays are blocked by the earth (at night)
                                                                           or by heavy cloud.

Ah hah! The sun's rays are blocked; this means not only the light rays are blocked but the heat rays are blocked too!
So, not only are we getting less/no light from the sun, we're getting less/no heat too.
How do we compensate for lack of heat? We turn on the heating which uses energy.
With high energy light bulbs, what happens to the energy that isn't given out as light? Yes, it's given out as heat. So we don't need to burn as much energy in our heating systems.

In other words, during typical use of light bulbs, we tend to have the heating on also and so the total energy used to produce light and heat will be the same whether we use high energy light bulbs or low energy light bulbs. Now where is the advantage with low energy light bulbs? They cost more in energy terms to both manufacture and dispose of, they're an environmental pollutant and they don't produce a pleasant light. Moreover, you have to switch them on well before you need them because the light output takes a long time to reach maximum.

The above rant relates to Cold Fluorescent low energy bulbs, not LED bulbs, although much of the argument also applies to LED bulbs. The latter have claimed lifetimes of 50,000 hours but whereas this may be true of the LEDs themselves, it's not true of the electronics necessary to drive the LEDs. I've had 2 LED bulbs die due to the electronics going into "violent flash" mode which makes the bulbs unusable.