Fear of 'Green' Legislation

[Azrael]

Re: energy saving Giles and Azrael...unfortunately not everyone is as parsimonious as you both with their energy consumption, if they were legislation like this wouldn't be necessary...besides, governments banned the manufacture of CFC based products (and there were people with EXACTLY the same arguments as you - I remember someone complaining that non-CFC aerosol deoderant 'wasn't as good cos it's not freezing cold' and a variety of 'Well if they say I can't have it, I'm gonna have it' type responses), the lightbulbs thing is just the same as that.

Well no, it's not really, unless they needed CFCs to avoid constant migranes. Two very different products with very different applications. And CFCs were specifically responsible for enviromental damage: no such claim can be made for incandescent lamps. In fact, with their mercury content, that's a charge better levelled at flourescent tubes.

The stupid thing is, solid-state lighting (white LEDs, basically) is already on the market for some applications (torches, headlights, etc), and would probably have replaced lightbulbs within 10 years or so. Now it's going to have to rush onto the market before it's ready (bulbs are only about 25w equivilent) and probably gain a poor reputation as a result.

My point is banning light-bulbs will do nothing to restrict serious energy hogs. Air-con, massive home cinema set-up (complete with projector), heating on at full blast all winter: all completely fine, so long as you use the right sort of light-bulb. I see absolutely no reason why I should be punished for the actions of power guzzlers. A Royal Commision and proposals to cap energy consumption (not just a particular product) would be sensible. This hysteria is not.

 

[kyser_soze]

My point is banning light-bulbs will do nothing to restrict serious energy hogs. Air-con, massive home cinema set-up (complete with projector), heating on at full blast all winter: all completely fine, so long as you use the right sort of light-bulb. I see absolutely no reason why I should be punished for the actions of power guzzlers. A Royal Commision and proposals to cap energy consumption (not just a particular product) would be sensible.

And it's precisely for those people that personal or household carbon allowances should be introduced, with penalties for exceeding them either through higher energy costs or some form of direct taxation. Then you can't be accused of clobbering the poor either since in my world at least having an energy intensive lifestyle and being poor are not two things that can run together.

Incidentally, can someone point out to me where banning incandescants is on the legislative agenda? I can't find a mention of it in relation to the UK - it's happened in Oz, and retailers like DSG are discontinuing selling incandesants...

 

[GarfieldLeChat]

Ah, found some figures. Please don't take this too seriously because I'm just doing a quick look in my lunch hour rather than researching it properly.

Embodied primary energy in a computer is apparently something around 200 MJ per kg

Mine (a powerbook) uses 16w, which if I just did the arithmentic right comes to about 1.3824 MJ per day.

(of course, this doesn't factor in all the stuff on the other end of my internet connection, but on the other hand, that's shared with millions of other people so it's not all my personal cost)

source (pdf)

A small car apparently contains 100 GJ of embodied energy (again though, there's shitloads of supporting shared infrastructure too, including arguably the US military)

source

One litre of petrol yields about 35 MJ of energy.

So, I'd be willing to hazard a guess that if we worked all this stuff out properly instead of going on the 'back of a fag-packet' figures above, computers would turn out to be many orders of magnitude less environmentally intensive than cars, but their contribution is enough to be considered non-trivial.

however put that into reality practice thatmost people are on work destops not nice shiney macs and they are runnign through some kind of corerpare firewall/server set up... (my work pc is around 40 w for refference...) the servers are signifcantly higher (not to mention that the power use around canery warf is comparible to the second largest city in the uk if not greater...) i'd say your figures are sadly the best likely case not the norm, and as previously stated you have to do these things over the life time of the machine not jsut on a daily basis becuase this is what the enviromential effects and anti car lobby are largely basing their arguments on in terms of methods of production etc...

more over i can guarentee that there's more significantly more people who needlessly sned emails go on to bullentin boards chat rooms msn messenger etc etc etc with out any concern for the enviromental effects and there's never a need for these mod cons ever we don't need email, or bulletin boards or chat rooms or messneger or pc's at all there will never (or rarely ever) be any excuse which could ever justify havign a pc in a home... let alone then plugging it in, regardless of how flimsey the argument for little tabitha being taken to shcool in the myboxy monstrosity 4 by 4...

 

[Azrael]

Incidentally, can someone point out to me where banning incandescants is on the legislative agenda? I can't find a mention of it in relation to the UK - it's happened in Oz, and retailers like DSG are discontinuing selling incandesants...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/03/10/nbulbs10.xml

This is one of the new LED lightbulbs. Much as I love Edison and Swan's little invention, they're clearly better: massively more efficient, and full control over colour balance. (Filaments produce full spectrum of light, but unevenly, which is why lightbulbs give off a yellow tinge.) Lightbulbs use vaccume tube technology (like old-worlde vavles on radios) while LEDs are semiconductors (similar to transistors). All very impressive.

Thing is, it's only 60 lumens. That's dimmer than a Home Office directive. (40w light is about 350 lumen). It's also very expensive. People with poor eyesight who need very bright incandescents will be screwed. People who get migranes but can't afford the bulbs also screwed. Joe 12-pack with his air-con and home cinema is not screwed. If they'd just waited a few years the free market would have killed the humble lightbulb better than an EU directive ever could. But why wait when knees must be jerked!

 

[gentlegreen]

LEDs are useful up to a few watts - and are especially good for getting the most from non-rechargeable batteries.

CFL is still the winner from 9 watts upwards.

 

[GarfieldLeChat]

And it's precisely for those people that personal or household carbon allowances should be introduced, with penalties for exceeding them either through higher energy costs or some form of direct taxation. Then you can't be accused of clobbering the poor either since in my world at least having an energy intensive lifestyle and being poor are not two things that can run together.

then you simply know nothing of fuel poverty, which is very luckly for you... in my world i can assure you they are mutually exclusive... (energy industry...)

 

[GarfieldLeChat]

Ah, found some figures. Please don't take this too seriously because I'm just doing a quick look in my lunch hour rather than researching it properly.

Embodied primary energy in a computer is apparently something around 200 MJ per kg

Mine (a powerbook) uses 16w, which if I just did the arithmentic right comes to about 1.3824 MJ per day.

(of course, this doesn't factor in all the stuff on the other end of my internet connection, but on the other hand, that's shared with millions of other people so it's not all my personal cost)

source (pdf)

A small car apparently contains 100 GJ of embodied energy (again though, there's shitloads of supporting shared infrastructure too, including arguably the US military)

source

One litre of petrol yields about 35 MJ of energy.

So, I'd be willing to hazard a guess that if we worked all this stuff out properly instead of going on the 'back of a fag-packet' figures above, computers would turn out to be many orders of magnitude less environmentally intensive than cars, but their contribution is enough to be considered non-trivial.

however put that into reality practice thatmost people are on work destops not nice shiney macs and they are runnign through some kind of corerpare firewall/server set up... (my work pc is around 40 w for refference...) the servers are signifcantly higher (not to mention that the power use around canery warf is comparible to the second largest city in the uk if not greater...) i'd say your figures are sadly the best likely case not the norm, and as previously stated you have to do these things over the life time of the machine not jsut on a daily basis becuase this is what the enviromential effects and anti car lobby are largely basing their arguments on in terms of methods of production etc...

more over i can guarentee that there's more significantly more people who needlessly sned emails go on to bullentin boards chat rooms msn messenger etc etc etc with out any concern for the enviromental effects and there's never a need for these mod cons ever we don't need email, or bulletin boards or chat rooms or messneger or pc's at all there will never (or rarely ever) be any excuse which could ever justify havign a pc in a home... let alone then plugging it in, regardless of how flimsey the argument for little tabitha being taken to shcool in the myboxy monstrosity 4 by 4...

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Well, the stuff that came up when I had a quick dig around looked like a fairly strong indication that it was about 500:1 in favour of computers over cars, but I'll happily look at any full life-cycle analysis material if you can find it.

 

[Slash]

It would be interesting to try to quantify what you're arguing Garf. Compare full life-cycle analyses for the various types of technology in question. I'm not sure if anyone has done a life-cycle analysis of the environmental impact of personal computers and so on. I'd be quite interested to see one though.

While I don't think this is a complete life-cycle analysis, it does have more info than anything else I've seen (start reading at 'Environmental and Social Impact of Computers').

It might be far higher than many people think but I'm in agreement with Bernie that we're talking orders of magnitude less than cars.

I think you have to keep in mind that if people weren't using PCs they'd probably be watching television, and then start to factor in the full life-cycle costs of the television, including broadcasting equipment, repeaters etc.

Personally I don't buy computers new, and tend to scavenge them from corporate leftovers and run free software on them. Of course I do use the Internet though!

 

[Bernie Gunther]

It's all a bit of a distraction from the question about 'green' legislation though.

Or at least from the question that I'd most like to ask about it, which is: "assuming for the moment what the science says is not a conspiracy but actually true, what response would we actually want to see from society and particularly from government and are we seeing such a response or just more of the usual stupid shit?"

 

[poster342002]

what response would we actually want to see from society and particularly from government and are we seeing such a response or just more of the usual stupid shit?"

Cor, I wonder which ...?

 

[GeorgeGeorge]

It's all a bit of a distraction from the question about 'green' legislation though.

Or at least from the question that I'd most like to ask about it, which is: "assuming for the moment what the science says is not a conspiracy but actually true, what response would we actually want to see from society and particularly from government and are we seeing such a response or just more of the usual stupid shit?"

The response I'd like to see is to see an end to all this apparent
panic in the Uk from the green lobby.... We were already doing
enough 5 years ago before being forced to have loads of seperate rubbish
bins inside every home etc etc


Also... an end to the threat of
green legislation and taxes in UK... Just an excuse to control us.
Just an excuse to stop freedom of movement of the poor...

And I'd like some focus on the 'real'
polluters... ie, Illigal War, Trident, China, Korea N, all the competitive
nonsense from too-late industrial revolutions all over the world....
End to countries that pour untreated chem waste into sea...
Stop all nuclear tests, sanction countries that kill off rainforests...

And also.... we have to change our lifestyles to live with the
'natural' warming that is taking place and that we cannot
change even if all nations go zero carbon...

..

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Interesting little snippet in today's Indy.

Ministers have quietly suspended a grant scheme to help householders generate their own power through solar panels and wind turbines.

source

This is consistent with the Stern Review's recommendation to 'penalise undesirable action rather than subsidising desirable action' or words to that effect.

 

[bigfish]

Is nulabour HQ logged into this forum and posting spoiler messages?

You know, don't you?