Shut down universities!

Why?

Google is destroying the planet.

Wonder how much CO2 their 'research' generated?

So because I type this, the end of the world has come just a little bit nearer! :D And this and this and this nooooo stop it!! ;)

Oh yes, driving across town to the library to find what you're looking for instead is so much better for the environment.

Oh ek, I bet this will lead the UK government to leap on this and rush through an internet carbon emissions tax :/

I.C.E Tax, oh the irony :p

Boiling a kettle produces carbon dioxide?

Lol, Is that a joke john :D

Anyway, why pick on google?

I know computers take a lot, but at least they are important and actually useful. What makes me angry is when i see a city at night and almost every damn light is left on. In a city, other than street lighting for safety/security should be completely shut off when not needed. For example why does the eifel tower or the BT tower need to be lit up 24hours a day? Office buildings with every light on? (apart from the plane navigation lights) A few hours in the evening till 11-12pm be ok, but who is looking at it at 4am?

Another thing i get irritable about is people -in general-, driving 2 minutes to the shop, leaving lights on and doors/windows open with the heating on full blast ("its ok, the social is paying!")

As far as I know, a boiling kettle produces H2O as it produces water vapour from boiling water. If we are talking about electric usage, that's an idiotic example IMO.

Every time i hear one of these idiots bleating on about carbon emissions, when they themselves probably use aeroplanes twice a week, i feel like turning on all my water taps and disabling the cutoff value in the toilet and fluching it. That's got to use some CO2, surely!

I am doing my bit to reduce my carbon footprint by following this advice - Light your farts

I think the article is just as valid as the university one. Both producing the same amount of hot air

why dont they ban curries, beans and vegetables as they cause people to emmit methane into the atmosphere LOL :D

Heh, seems like they don't have anything more to blame for global warming. I'd focus my attention on the more serious cases...

books = cutting down trees
trees breathe in what we breathe out
stop mass producing books that just dont sell

a 3 track CD single uses the same amount of plastic etc as a full album and takes just as long to stamp
we should have killed the CD single years ago with the rise of iTunes (legal) Napster etc (least with tapes you could re-record something else)
and a blanket ban on novelty records
i heard that jordan released a CD (single with peter?) and a pallet load was found somewhere, if CD's cant be recycled then they should only make albums and "now thats what i call (s***e)"

I read that 14% of the US emissions come from rearing cattle to produce meat. Doesn't surprise me when I see how many people like to gorge themselves on HUGE semi raw steaks. Was actually more than passenger vehicles.

Mortiis: Electric appliances cause carbon emissions too in most cases -- not in your home, but they do down the street at the electrical geneneration plant... (Unless you're getting hydro/solar/nuclear power, but most people have plain old coal generating their electricity)

Thats nothing, every school in glasgow has a policy of never turning pc's off, they all run 24/7 even though the schools are open 8/5. Imagine that rule applied across every school in the UK.

This is science for real men with hairs on their chest, aarr!

How long do those computers last being non turned off?

I didn't turn off my computer more than a dozen times in maybe 3 years. I think they might even last longer if you leave them running. Biggest strain on the system is often when they first start up.

I only recently started turning of because every $ counts these days.

I didn't know that. That's rather interesting.

Yes a PC left on all the time sucks £s.

I recently (2 years ago?) installed one of those "artigo" miniPCs running Fedora which i leave on 24/7.
Before that i had my workstation doubling as a server the power bill was much uch higher.

I strongly reccommend anyone getting one, as far as SSH access, print/file/mail/webdev server goes its as good as the big one was. Theyre only about 150 quid.

*Performs searches over and over on google and counts co2 usage*

7g...
14g..
21g..

...840g

Contest anyone?



I think you're right. I have probobly turned my secondary pc off about 4 times for less than 24 hours in a 4 year span. Hardware-wise, I have never run into a single problem. Quiet, cool, smooth. I pushed the thing to the max for a long time as well, and no decay to show for it.

Another PC, only 2 years old that is turned off at night here, used only casually for things like browsing the web, is having a blast at "which byte can make the most noise?". The cpu, amongst other hardware in the box is becoming toast.

A fair debate would be to ask what causes more pollution...creating 3 computers (as you'll have to replace the ones that die from turning them off), or one that is run over a 5 year span?

Particularly since there are lots of other ways to obtain electricity, than burning dinosaur bones. Nuclear Power? Wind Turbines? Geothermal Energy? Hydroelectric Power?

My mum anda dad are with scottish hydro. They keep putting their electricity prices up. Wind must cost more to blow these days i reckon...

Turning things on and off of course causes spikes in the current and is a strain specially for hd's, but leaving computer on just because of that is just plain wrong. Getting your computer killed by electric network is just bad luck. A lot more common causes for hardware failures are cheap components and heat, and those are widely overlooked these days.

3:1 relation you described has nothing to do with reality. IMO it's the other way around.

That's a load of rubbish.

Shutting your PC down properly causes no danger to the hard drive whatsoever. On the other hand, if you routinely turn off your PC by yanking the plug out of the wall socket, you deserve all you get.

No it's not.

Starting up always requires much more energy for moving parts than upkeep of motion. More energy means more strain. I don't know how much of a risk starting up a hard drive exactly is, but it is a lot more than "starting up" your memory modules.

Except hard drive bearings are virtually frictionless so the amount of electricity 'wasted' is less than my keyboard used to type this post. Congratulations on making me murder another penguin.

You'd think it'd be cheaper given that there's so much of it in Scotland!

What on earth kind of keyboard are you using, penguin murderer?
And who said I was talking about friction? I was referring to inertia.

Judging by the amount of posts you've posted on this forum, you really hate Mr Pingu.

Why not use Google to search for the sollution to reduce the CO2 problem :-)

That's kind of the same thing as asking for green taxes. What do they do with the money? Buy more ozone? Research green tech my ass...

If you're going to leave your computer on 24/7 would it kill you to put it on standby when you're not using? Every little helps.. I think school/office computers should be set to autostandby after a few hours. (You can set that in the screensaver options page).

Admittedly I haven't read the article in question, but would it have something to do with the fact (I think) that the bulk of US electricity is generated by coal fired stations?

Personally I think as long as Google is tying to the standard power grid, any carbon cost via electricity is not their problem. It's the power company's problem. And evidently, the power company is living in the dark ages.
Now, Google could make it their problem and build their own superior power infrastructure (eg: a helluva lot of wind turbines), thus putting the power company to shame, but that would really be quite sad.

On my end it's almost all hydro, so I don't feel major issues about using power. (Okay, it displaced a lot of fish and beavers, but there's no fixing that anyway and the effect is probably far less problematic for them than had this been gas or Mr Burns' Nuclear plant. Well, except the salmon...). I probably won't feel so smug when all the ice is melted.

Not entirely true -- It's easier to keep a spinning platter spinning than it is to start a stopped platter from spinning, especially if have a bad bearing.
More than once I've seen an old server happily chugging along, only to never start again after a shutdown because it can no longer spin up the drive.

Not common perhaps, but there is always a small chance...
that said, keeping it 'always on' does put a lot more wear & tear on other components like cooling fans, so those are more likely to die on you causing heat problems and related premature death...

Most computers will spin down the hard drive unless it is used constantly, so that's not very relevant in any case.

> but would it have something to do with the fact (I think) that the bulk of US electricity is generated by coal fired stations?

Figured this would be worth looking up. Looks like coal and natural gas are the biggest.


http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat2p1.html

Carbon dioxode is good. It lets plants breathe.

If you are so blind you can't see that the whole "carbon footprint" thing for what it is, you deserve everything you've got coming. The government wants to tax you for breathing. How stupid are you?

Not stupid enough to think that Total Recall was real.

Seriously, I bet us humans contribute a lot more CO2 than google searches, so, we should all stop breathing.

The study is biased anyway, it didn't compare the CO2 output of Google to any other companies. It's not science, it's sensationalism.

It does. When a balanced momentum is on your side, mechanical stresses are much less. Also, dont forget progressive microscopic heat wear from rapidly heating/expanding components (although the damage is negligible and is a little bit more of a problem when the startup environment and components are very cold; eg: a refrigerated room).

Although in a pc there is a lot of other power drains over several minutes use that far outweigh the hard disks' high drain at startup so its still a good idea to shut it down for a few hours a day.

I think the climatologists are concerned it's 'too much of a good thing'...

well if they didnt cut down most of the rainforrest we'd still have a good 'sink hole' ... who cares well all be dead or mutated or abducted by aliens by 2012 anyway ;)

The people who don't believe in alien invasions.

Why these premonitions always say some years in the future? why they're never like, "tomorrow" or "in a couple of days"?
(I do have the answer to that, mind you)

I only exhale every other breath so I'm doing my bit.

makes me wounder how much Carbon oxide Microsoft produce cause of demanding faster computers :)

Which hard drive exactly isn't in use constantly then? Have you ever run filemon? Maybe if you're using Linux and regularly umount your drives, but otherwise those things get used all the time.

Flameducks right, by settings default its usually only laptops that do this when in 'battery saving mode' (hdd spins down) but only really ever does this when the pc is very idle. If running windows or if you have low ram then it rarely spins down. Depending on how often the HDD spins up again eg. it spins down after 5 mins and spins up again 2 mins later, this can actually use more battery than simply leaving it spinning, so is only useful if pc is to be idle for a while.

Indeed.
I think home computer advancement should be stalled (unless its to do with making them more efficient energy wise) for a decade or so and let the software catch up. I think its software development not hardware that should be refined. Those that remember the 8bits and the amiga and ST will remember that the technology was in the software rather than the machine and because of this the programmers pushed the edge more.
I am pretty sure we have never fully explored the true potential of any X86 chip.

Wait a minute here. I hope your not suggesting we stall hardware advancement for home users, because of carbon dioxide emissions? I think there are far most pressing issues to deal with, like MP's flying to europe and back probably every week to have meetings with the EU, and pop stars and celeb footballers having private jets.

Not quite stalling it, rather a slowing down. It would be better if they were focusing on all the other stuff (peripherals, io, power efficiency, legacy phasing) rather than adding increasingly power sucking performance all the time. For example a 3D card that does better 3D performance at a lower power drain would be fine, but the way its going everyone may as well be switching on a 500W-1KW electric fire (already the case when running full pelt on a high end PC).

I know at first it seems like an outrageous comment :D, but think about it, what are we really getting? What we have now is more or less what would have been classed as a supercomputer a decade or so ago and most people are using them for more or less the same stuff.

Programming these days is a lot sloppier than it used to be. If something runs slow people simply expect to upgrade their hardware, rather than the developers refining it. Back when there was no chance of an upgrade the programmers really began to explore the potentials of the hardware available and work wonders, even surpassing the computer designers wildest expectations of what their own creation could achieve. Im sure we only scratched the surface of what could really be achieved on say a Pentium MMX 512MB with super efficient coding. Another way to look at it is the way all the free operating systems like ubuntu, dsl and others are making old brick PCs useable again -and- to a much better and up-to-date level than when they were running the usual bundled crew (windows 98, mso, ie, etc..) of the day.
Also each time PCs drain more it throws fuel at the environmentalists lobby who use it as an argument for us to all have suck-top-boxes & thins only.

As for politicians, stars and footballers i agree. Unless world war 3 is imminent (politicians) they can get the #¤%&1n¤ bus/ryanair like everyone else.

As long as it's not for an environment benefit :o)

Just a few days ago I saw a 1200W power supply for $340. Who needs a thing like that?

Indeed.... Windows 8 users maybe? :D

(it was for a server probably:)

I do believe we should be doing our bit for the environment, with recycling, tapping into reusable energy, preserving green belt land and the wildlife within it.

The thing I don't like, is having it rammed down my throat every five minutes, then being bullied by the authority's with potential on the spot fines if I don't play the game.

Now, by playing the game, I mean, Derwentside District Council (My old local council) applied a rule (or their own law) where all your recyclables had to be placed in the recycle bin loose, not in sacks... Or they would whack a sticker on the bin and leave it, with a warning if I didnt leave the rubbish loose, they would fine me!

Well, I have two household bins in my kitchen, one food waste, one recycle waste, when they are full, I tie them off and put them in the appropriate bin outside. One bin gets emptied one week, the other the following week, so effectively, my bins were emptied once a fortnight.

I took no notice, and without fail, I returned from work to find my recycle bin hadn't been emptied, and a nice little sticker whacked on the top... I just shut the bin and put it back.

A fortnight later, I again returned from work, to find another sticker placed on top of the other sticker and my bin still full to the brim.

So I just shut the bin and put it back.

*In the meantime, I was playing war with the council over it, but that just surrounds me demanding a rebate on my council tax since they weren't providing a service I was paying for... Emptying my bins*

A fortnight later, I arrived home, and thou and behold, my recycle bin had been emptied.. I rejoiced in utter triumph! :D

Now, the cherry on the cake was just before I moved to another local authority when I moved house, I got a flyer through the door from the council stating that 'all rubbish must be placed within sacks in the recycle bin'

Due to bins opening in windy weather and peoples paper waste flying everywhere! :)

So, for 6 weeks, they restricted my recycling because some daft plank thought it would be a good idea not to collect waste in bins if the rubbish is sacked. Only for them to retract the rule when some other nob realised that it was a terrible idea.

That's what I hate about being green in the UK, the authority's make a plain and simple exercise into a ruddy nightmare, in the vain hope they'd make the odd quid to buy decent biscuits for meetings that 50% of the time are probably only there to devise stupid rules like the above.

Dabz

I read somewhere that many councils are simply piling it all in the same skip at the depot because the workers have no clue what should be where or the facilities are not appropriate.

Another nu-lab faliure

was thinking today (hence the bump)
i wonder what pixar's rederfarm's foot print is like and if they are carbon nutral seeing as they use alot of pc's / blade servers / whatever to rival a small/medium isp

edit:
i (and probably the rest of the world) agree with D4NM4N bout the possibilities of what a pc 'might' be like if they optimised the code instead of writing bloat that isnt fixed just improved by whacking in more ram or a faster cpu, cos its a vicious circle
windows gets bigger and pcs get faster, but it still feels like were going at the same speed

When someone can give clear and undeniable PROOF that there's any global warming orr that it's a bad thing(tm) then I'll start listening to the overzealous ecologists. Until then, I'll sit here and be annoyed at how such an age-old apparent 'proble' has only fairly recently been addressed (and only under pressure from the EU) by the UK government in a manner which shifts all their responsibility onto Mr & Mrs Taxpayer, without once addressing commerce and industry about such things as excess packaging...

What I''d like to know is, when has ANYONE ever turned around to the people who assumed that 'greenhouse gasses' qould lead to a 'global warming' and asked them to actually prove it, or find scientific evidence. It's just a theory that seemed ever so popular a bandwagon it's a buzz word that in my opinion, is a little out of control now.

If there was any global warming, surely the global temperature would be INCREASING instead of its current (and long-lived) trend of DECREASING?!

> When someone can give clear and undeniable PROOF that there's any global warming

Ice sheets melting at an alarming rate. (only question now is how far you are going to move the bar of proof)

hot and dry places are getting hotter and dryer
cold and wet places are getting colder and wetter
guess which one im in
climate change yes
global warming ... hmm

i spent 'winter' with my window open letting fresh air in unless sleeping, wouldnt catch me doing that a decade ago

I mean how much more evidence do we need, many a recognized scientific and written "fact" is based on much less evidence. Natural climate process or not there is almost undeniable proof that humans are aggravating it enormously. What you are basically saying is the house is already burning so why not throw some petrol on it anyway.. Its already burning after all.

The only reason that there is so much problem with this idea is that it forces people make consessions that they don't want, so they hide behind excuses like 90% probability isn't enough i want 100% absolute proof that man is speeding up climate change before i turn my lights off and take the bike occasionally. Its people with stubborn attitudes who are too lazy for even the slightest lifestyle change who will ensure the efforts of others are in vain.
Ironically it would be interesting to see how many in the west would still believe in god if the religious leaders told them to cut back on engine size and to separate their rubbish. Probably start a new church i suspect because theres no proof that its "gods will". L.O.L :/

Yearly global temps are 'noisy' - by taking a small enough 'slice' (7 - 10 years for example) you can show any increase/decrease you like. You need to look at the long(er) term trend (30 - 50 -100 yrs).

If by 'long lived' you're referring to 1998, that was a record year - a 'spike' (related to El Nino). Skeptics often like to point to this year and claim climate change is 'canceled', but the long term trend doesn't support this conclusion.




It's not in contention in the scientific community that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. You can do your own experiment though - shine a UV light through a CO2 filled containerand measure gas temp.