Community Newsletter: Q&A forum: Environmental impact concerns of consumer electronics

Mankind should balance himself in order to take better decisions that will balance his environment. People should dive deep within themselves and experience the silence there. This will help them to be connected to their environment on a very deep level so they will treat the environment better and help save the earth.

what freaks. who cares about the environment. I'm gonna get my mustang gt out of the garage and roll up next to the priuses and floor it

ar u just going to use ur computer for email, myspace, surfing, small programs(like word, itunes, etc.), then just get a small computer, get like a 2.0 Ghz single core processer, 512 mb of ram,

or do u want performance like me, i have a Dell XPS 410, (their med. gamer) and am running Windows Xp Pro and Ubuntu 7.04, their going to consume lots of energy, nothing can really be done for my situation

PS(the above also doesn't apply if ur using CRAPPY @#$@! Windows VISTA, if this is case just forget about being conservative, theres no way those power hogs can be saved)

XP is also good,recently,put it in to hibernate( I am using Vista Transformation Pack 8.01)and powered off accidentally at mains and re powered on then pressed computer button once and it come back to my desktop,proving that the onboard battery was supporting the OS.

Your post is correct about the state being saved to the hard drive, but it CAN cause a battery drain due to improper settings.

Both my Lenovo Thinkpad T61p and my dad's T61 were causing VERY SIGNIFICANT (from say 65% down to almost 0% within 1-3 days) drain on brand new batteries while in hibernate w/Vista. Apparently, w/Intel's on-board LAN hardware, there are all sorts of wake on LAN settings and the defaults were to allow wake on LAN (I believe w/a magic packet). I fixed this by finding ALL those settings in various property panels and the CMOS settings and setting them to disabled.

This surprised me since I'd never had this issue w/previous laptops.

Rebecca,
In the first place, your fears and concerns are based on false information. Rather than worry about how much destruction all of us are causing by leaving our computers running all day long, - mine runs 24/7 and I have no guilt whatsoever - you really should do your own research into the problem and not rely on information that is filtered down to you from people you do not know. Including me.

For example, try this. Figure out how much electricity your computer uses in one months time if you ran it 24/7. Your answer should be in either dollars or killo-watt hours. Now, figure out how much electricity your hot water heater uses in a months time. And as before, either in dollars or killo-watt hours. What you will likely find is that if you would turn off your hot water heater and stop using hot water for any and all reasons then you would save far more than enough electricity to run all of your electronic stuff and never have to turn it off and yet keep the same or smaller carbon footprint - whatever that is. Are you willing to do that? I'm not and we don't have to take cold showers just to not feel guilty about leaving our computers running.

Rebecca, with all due respect, you have bought into one of the biggest scams to date. Nature is not that fragile and the whole of mankind will never have the where-with-all to harm her. Popular belief says that the dinoasurs were wiped out all over the world by some catastrophic event almost overnight. Yet big momma Nature didn't feel a thing and just kept right on rolling along. One can use many words to describe Nature. Fragile is NOT one of them.

If you want to persue this further, please feel free to write.

Fear not and think - just think for yourself,

jakejr7
jakejr7@numail.org

Who in the world convinced you that we could experience a 30 meter rise (100 ft) in sea levels? Even if we do see a substantial rise in sea levels, enough to flood NY, New Orleans, etc., it won't happen overnight. It will take 50 or 100 years or more. And I guess 50 years isn't enough time to escape "the great flood."

Hello Rebecca,
Your concern about the enviroment is an honest one that I'm sure that everyone, whether the admit it or not, have some concerns about. To actually answer your question, it is up to the individual to restrain themselves from wasting energy. Not the manufacturers. The companies are designing systems to meet the needs of the consumers. If the consumer asks for more, the company will give more, yet since the U.S. is a free country, I'm sure no one wants the government to control what they do in their own homes. If so, why then even call it the land of the free? The fact of the matter is that everyone has to be responsible for their own actions and make the changes they feel to do to try to preserve the planet. With the understanding that, no matter what you do, global warming will still happen causing humanity to finally become extinct. That is the nature of things. It is funny, just last night, I was watching a show in the History channel about global warming. It has been discovered that the planet is dispursing methane gases on its own anyway. And this is happening naturally, without our help. The gases are impacting global warming tremendously and we can't stop that. My opinion is that the planet is trying to heal itself naturally as it has for millions of years.
Look at it this way, we don't own the planet, we are just renting it. Eventually the landlord will need to clean house and we will get evicted. Will it happen tomorrow or next year of 10 years from now? No! The point is that no one really knows when its going to happen and all we can do is try to enjoy what we have for the time that we have it as best as we can. Of course, by always being responsible and smart about it. There is no need to rush our eviction. Think about it this way, do we really need a 42" plasma tv? Do we really need a V8 SUV? These are the things that ppl are getting just to show off to their freinds and neigbors that they own and their freinds don't. That, is what I call inresponsible. Yet, again, don't put blame on the companies. Simply look in a mirrow and ask yourself, "Do I really need one that big, or do I want one that big? I'm I willing to rush my eviction, or do I need to hold up a bit so my childrens' childrens can alteast enjoy something before its all gone?"

Well, thats my 2 cents worth.

Much of what you say has credence, but then you ruin it by verbo-bashing your pet hate groups.

Yes, the climate has gone through many stages of change to get to its present permutation, most of them driven by a change in the gasceous composition of the atmosphere, caused by some event: the impact of a meteor or a massive volcanic event for example. The uncontroled proliferation of the human species is just the latest triggering event.

In nature, when a species multiplies beyond the ability of its ecosystem to support it, a natural mechanism kicks in to re-establish the equilibrium. This is commonly refered to as starvation and death. As you point out, most religions enforce the belief that humanity is somehow not a species and therefore this mechanism does not apply. Sorry but it does.

For four hundred years the carbon footprint of humanity has increased in size and effect at a continuously accelerated rate largely caused by technology. Even several decades of austere energy conservation could not reverse this. Technology created the problem and technology must reverse it.

You speak of the invisible hand of the market where the profit motive will create this new technology out of thin air, with new energy sources created that leave only a ripple in the great scheme of things and our profligate appetite for energy can continue to expand. I see little evidence of the necessary investment to develop this technology, and yet vast profits are awaiting. Whole new industries need to be developed.

All I can see at the moment is a lot of fithy rich fat cats sitting around, marveling at their riches, and lighting a fire to burn some more fossil fuel.

Once upon a time The USA was called "the land of opportunity". Now it really does look more like "the land of lost opportunity".

you make some good points, that individuals need to take responsibility, but i disagree that it's not on the companies. companies have the knowledge and power to do something about it, and they should. why should consumers need to demand more efficient technology for companies to offer it? i understand if the cost outweighs the benefit, the company won't be driven to do it for nothing, but sometimes, companies need to use their advancements for less energy and not more power. we could possibly do things to make humans last on this planet. maybe we can't, but you don't know that for certain, so we should be trying.

So....I guess man-made global warming did wipe out the dinosaurs. Must have been the SUV's the cavemen were driving aroud in. Wake up!!!! it was really the aliens that did this......

In the United States, an estimated 70% of heavy metals in landfills comes from discarded electronics, while electronic waste represents only 2% of America's trash in landfills. The EPA states that unwanted electronics totaled 2 million tons in 2005. Discarded electronics represented 5 to 6 times as much weight as recycled electronics. The Consumer Electronics Association says that U.S. households spend an average of $1,400 annually on an average of 24 electronic items, leading to speculations of millions of tons of valuable metals sitting in desk drawers. The U.S. National Safety Council estimates that 75% of all personal computers ever sold are now gathering dust as surplus electronics. While some recycle, 7% of cellphone owners still throw away their old cellphones.
Many Comedy Central viewers are early adopters of new electronics, and produce a commensurate amount of waste that can be directed towards recycling efforts. The station is also taking steps to reduce its own environmental impact, in partnership with NativeEnergy, a company that specializes in renewable energy and carbon offsets.
Today the electronic waste recycling business is in all areas of the developed world a large and rapidly consolidating business. The environmental and social benefits of reuse include diminished demand for new products and virgin raw materials (with their own environmental issues); larger quantities of pure water and electricity for associated manufacturing; less packaging per unit; availability of technology to wider swaths of society due to greater affordability of products; and diminished use of landfills.
_________________
Consumer Electronics - A list of portable video players.

To all of those (like the previous poster) who really, REALLY want the US to get on the "alternative" energy bandwagon, consider this:

The US has been subsidizing alternative energies for about 30 years now. Currently, we taxpayers spend billions of dollars a year to continue trying to make these technologies viable. Anyone know how much these sources (i.e. solar and wind) contributed to our total energy consumption in 2007?

Anyone?

Anyone?

0.3%.

Wow. That's a ton! We only have to increase production THREE HUNDRED TIMES OVER!

Meanwhile, all of humanity is contributing how much of the overall greenhouse gas emissions?

Anyone?

3%.

Wow, that means that the earth is, ON ITS OWN, producing 97% of the GHG emissions world-wide.

Not the numbers you would expect after hearing Al Bore and the global warming hysteria crowd, is it?

Look, we need to take care of the planet. That's why we should spend our time and money eliminating REAL pollutants (and, no, CO2 is NOT a pollutant, unless you think forests, plants and volcanic eruptions, not to mention the oceans are HUGE polluters).

Let's get rid of acid rain and heavy metals in our water supply. Let's stop strip mining and keep as much of the earth as completely natural as possible, but don't try to cripple innovation and the economy by demonizing energy usage.

The BLESSING of having energy to use provides us with the creature commforts that make the industrialized world the best place to live. It's why we can telecommute, perform complex surgeries, have refrigeration, etc...

Let's remind ourselves of the real problem and not try to fix a "straw man" of a problem.

I'm curious as to the source of your figures. I don't know what the U.S. energy contribution for wind and solar, but 0.3% could be correct. Nuclear generates many times that, as does hydroelectric. The 3% total also sounds low, but even if it is accurate, that's 3% that wasn't there a century ago and couldn't take into account the recent rises in countries like China. It has to go somewhere. Maybe those vast forests in much of the world will expand and absorb it. Oops... we've been burning them and paving them over. If we cut our emissions to prehistoric levels, CO2 would still rise because we've reduced the areas that consume it.