CFL's can produce light a lot closer to the blue spectrum than any incandescent light can and for less money and they hands down last longer. Any photographer will tell you that incandescents tend way more to red, ever take a photo indoors with a film camera (using daylight film) and get that nasty yellow cast to your photos, that's because incandescent light is nowhere near daylight temperature. Today we don't have that problem because digital cameras automatically white balance for the light in the room. I agree with you that LED bulbs are da bomb but so far I have yet to see a LED bulb that is on the cheap side that can produce light close to daylight spectrum, I know they exist but they are generally a sort of panel setup not something you plug into your lamp and very very expensive. So for now, if you need near daylight color light and can't afford a few grand for a professional setup cfl is it.

A friend had an indoor garden using cfl, he had blue for one cycle and red for the other (grow vs. bloom) the plants did well without spending three grand for something like a mercury vapor tech bulb which needed an expensive ballast and sucked a lot of power and made a LOT of heat as well. I think by noise he means the ballast may make "noise" on the circuit which only some very sensitive equipment would be bothered by. In the old days computer techs would tell people not to plug into a circuit with any device that pulled a lot of amperage when it first started up, that included AC units, compressors (as in your refrigerator or a shop air compressor) or vacuum cleaners because that startup usually caused a sort of brown out and then a surge which could damage circuitry and something that created noise in the circuit might affect the shape of the sign wave in the AC current also possibly causing a problem. Tech has grown past a lot of those issues.

Many years ago I recall watching a PBS science show (possibly a NOVA) that investigated how fluorescent bulbs in the workplace could be causing fatigue to people who work under them all day long. While you cannot consciously see a fluorescent bulb flash (incandescent is a heated element while fluorescent tech is a gas that gives out light when it is excited by the small amount of power supplied by the ballast thus the flashing) subconsciously your brain can see the flashing and that could lead to fatigue. The solution for that issue was a ballast that created a faster update but the bulbs were pretty expensive, I do not know the current state of fluorescent tech as to if the new stuff out right now updates faster than the old ones did.

There is a growing belief that some folks are more sensitive to magnetic fields than others and it could cause health issues. Remember those stories about farmers with AC transmission lines over their farms who claimed their cows stopped giving milk? There have also been some reports that people who live near maglev train tracks complain of constant headaches and depression, our brains are electrical why would it be such a stretch that we could be affected by magnetic fields? In Europe there is growing support for an illness called EHS or electromagnetic hypersensitivity syndrome. People with this issue need to live away from all magnetic fields some are so sensitive that even the alternator in the car causes them discomfort, you may say baloney...well no one believed that fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome were real either for quite some time. Ever have an MRI and wonder why you felt so exhausted afterwards? MRI uses one heckuva strong magnetic field to literally change the magnetic field in your body to create the images. Don't laugh off the idea that some folks could be adversely affected by magnetic fields there may be something to it but I really doubt a couple of cfl bulbs could be an issue but who knows. Remember when cell phones came out, some folks said having them so close to your brain might cause brain tumors and the use of a headset was strongly encouraged. Well somebody also said that when we turned on that new gigantic collider in Europe that we'd open up pinhole singularities all over the world and end our existence too. The point is that we don't know everything.

While it's been shown that plants have at least a simple nervous system (nothing like we have) I'm sort of doubting any negative effects from a cfl bulb. Plants like light and proper soil salinity and water salinity, if they don't get it they don't grow as well and that's that.