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Re: Environmental Impact and Cost

Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2008 4:29 am
by P5-133XL
Have one less baby. There are too many people on this planet. Period! One less baby, will over its lifetime save far more carbon, than many computers folding.

Another solution, don't drive, drive less, use a bicycle, walk, or use public transportation: that will also save far more carbon than produced by your computer.

Another solution is simply replace your PS3 with a computer with a high performance video card and GPU client: If PPD has any relationship to the scientific productivity then that combination will produce far less carbon per point. I know that personally, my PPD went up by 3x and my energy usage went down by 3x when I replaced three P4's and seven 4600X2's (aprox 4K-5K PPD at a cost of 2200W) with two more modern machines with moderate GPU's (15K PPD with 650W).

Re: Environmental Impact and Cost

Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2008 4:26 pm
by mdk777
As a fellow researcher and environmentalist,
Let me turn this question back to you.
What research are you doing that costs less than $185 (AUD) per year?

Sorry if my initial response was too sarcastic. I'm a materials engineer by trade. I work every day looking at the energy/cost benefits of various recycling technologies. Hence I don't deal with wishes and hopes, but with reality and hard economic numbers.

If you are interested:
I work with Bio-mass power generation facilities, taking their by-product (ash) and selling it into the steel industry.
Hence the process goes:
Bio-mass agricultural waste= not field burned/reduced CO2 and eliminated particulate pollution= yield renewable electrical power.
ASH = not land filled = allows the above to be cost effective = jobs bagging, warehousing and transporting sold by product
Ash used as insulation in the steel making process= reduced energy use, better process control= lower cost and energy use in the largest recycled material industry (More than 70% of Steel production in the US is recycled material)
This year I have sold about 24,000 tons (1090 flat-bed truck loads) of this material, from three plants that are generating about 30 MW of power.

Anyway, that is what I do to reduce damage to our fragile planet.

Back to your question:
From my analysis, using already spent capital (ps3 gaming consuls) that are idle 80-90% of the time seems like good stewardship of the world's limited resources.
I would sincerely be interested in the technology and research that you think would be more cost effective/less resource intensive.
You posse a question, do you have an alternate answer in mind?

Best regards

PS as a researcher, it is good to start with accurate information before jumping to conclusions
What is the power consumption of the PS3 running the FAH client?

The original PS3 model will use about 200 Watts while running Folding@home. A later model PS3 (with a 40 GB hard drive) will use about 115 Watts.
Your calculation based on 350 Watts is clearly in error. I have the latter model. 115 Watts is 1/3 of your calculation. Hence if I can manage to turn off more than (1) 100 watt light bulb in my house. (there are (11) 65watt can lights in my kitchen alone) my carbon foot print will not be increased.

Re: PS3 Uses 5x more Electricity than Fridge

Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2008 11:05 pm
by owza
I stand corrected, several sites have concluded that the PS3 consumes 200W on average for video game processing.
The original PS3 model will use about 200 Watts while running Folding@home. A later model PS3 (with a 40 GB hard drive) will use about 115 Watts.
I'm happy to inform the forum that I do indeed own the latter version of the PS3, however
Hence if I can manage to turn off more than (1) 100 watt light bulb in my house. (there are (11) 65watt can lights in my kitchen alone) my carbon foot print will not be increased.
you shouldn't justify your carbon footprint in terms of before and after, oh, there's no difference! When I first became aware of my carbon footprint I was shocked; I owned 3 vehicles, ran lights 24/7, ate meat by the esky full and refilled my pool monthly because "I hated the thought of swimming in bacteria" even though I was using chlorine.
I was no saint, but this was 10 years ago, before I knew that carbon emissions caused by everyday civilians can damage our planet.

Now, I; don't own any vehicles, only use 14W lights, don't consume any animal products and my pool has been replaced with a vege patch. This is my new benchmark for carbon emissions, I'm not going to justify going on a trip around the world or running X number of PS3's based on my previous emissions.

To answer mdk777 question, I work as a biotech researcher, specializing in agriculture. I have amazing ideas that would have far reaching benefits, but I too live in the real world and understand that anything substantial would take years, so far, the only change that I've incited is that our facility send DNA samples to be analyzed interstate rather than Korea.

Re: PS3 Uses 5x more Electricity than Fridge

Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2008 1:07 am
by mdk777
you shouldn't justify your carbon footprint in terms of before and after,
I don't feel the need to justify my carbon footprint at all.
I do what I do because it works, not because it is Politically Correct.
However, I am glad to hear that you walk your talk.

In your OP, you came across as a Luddite, questioning if computational methods were worth the environmental investment.
However, your profession is entirely based on the intensive use of technology to avoid the Malthusian dilemma of Human starvation due to over population.
Just Ironic to me.
Aren't projects like the RICE GENOME PROJECT fairly computer intensive?
Aren't the advances in GPU technology, intensively refined here, being applied to bio-tech?

Anyway, I don't mean to attack you personally. I just come across so much unreasoned, reflexive, environmental dogma, that it is always interesting to hear from someone who has a more considered point of view.

Best Regards

Re: PS3 Uses 5x more Electricity than Fridge

Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2008 1:28 am
by bruce
you shouldn't justify your carbon footprint in terms of before and after,
Well, that's where my software programming background comes out. We have to make repeated improvements or we'll never achieve anything.
I know: a lot of people use that as an excuse to make insignificant improvements instead of genuine improvements and that's deception, but the point of view that all changes are too big/expensive to make are just as deceptive.
mdk777 wrote:I just come across so much unreasoned, reflexive, environmental dogma, that . . . .
True, but there is just as much unreasoned, reflexive, anti-environmental dogma floating around from the other half of the political continuum. How do you respond to it?

So many people just listen to the first few words to decide whether somebody is going to agree with their prejudice or challenge it. Then they stop listening and start thinking about their next response. We'd be much better off if we listened to each other.

Re: Environmental Impact and Cost

Posted: Mon Dec 22, 2008 2:42 pm
by smASHer88
owza wrote:The PS3 uses 350W, if used all night to process the Folding@home, at 8 hours a night, the pS3 would require 1,022W a year which would cause over 1tonne of CO2 to enter the atmosphere and cost each user $185 (AUD) per year. If you've read the user agreement, you'll notice that you won't even be recognized for your efforts.
As a fellow researcher and environmentalist, is there another way to advance science without damaging our fragile planet any further?
Your assuming that the bill-payer is not using Green Energy. I currenlty only have power connected that sources 10% of its energy from Green sources.. but I do plan to run almost entirely off a household solar grid-connect system when i purchase a house of my own. Many ppl can take advantage of Green energy to save CO2 emissions.

But as a strong suggestion.. if u live in a heavily-populated, especially low economic-status country.. do your bit and have a maximum of 1 child! :wink:

Re: PS3 Uses 5x more Electricity than Fridge

Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2008 12:37 am
by 7im
One thing rarely taken in to consideration by the environmentally concerned is the opportunity cost of curing cancer in the next 10 years, rather than waiting 50 years. The care and treatment of cancer patients is very resource intensive, let alone the loss of productivity from each of those people, and if we can eliminate that resource drain sooner than later, the rewards, IMO, far outweigh the initial costs, especially over the long term.

Re: PS3 Uses 5x more Electricity than Fridge

Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2008 4:39 am
by John_Weatherman
Why not have a solar powered fridge?

Re: PS3 Uses 5x more Electricity than Fridge

Posted: Fri Dec 26, 2008 2:39 am
by owza
Your assuming that the bill-payer is not using Green Energy
Exactly, therefore I propose a simple and elegant solution that will ensure that scientific research can advance via distributed computing power and keep environmentalists, like myself, happy...

...which is an environmental message in the client software. Something short to make the user aware of their power usage and the effects, for example "F@H requires power which may be derived from earth damaging sources. Please consider the environment."

Hopefully, this will stimulate the end user to be more aware of their actions and make the conscious choice to switch to a green energy source.

However, it can be argued that if implemented, where would it end? Messages on your car, pc, air conditioner?
Maybe that's a good idea.

Who knows how the Earth will be 50 years from now? Will it still be habitable without a space suit? Maybe that's a bit dramatic but do we have to wait for the governments to create a policy to enforce the masses to use less energy or should we continue mindlessly ignorant of the consequences and wait for scientists to find a solution as they did create this problem.

Re: Environmental Impact and Cost

Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 6:57 pm
by spazzychalk
yeah that prius study toyota is saying their study results dont match (shocker) and some scientist group is claiming to have debunked the test even through theyve never even seen the test data or done their own.

you might be being anti productive to your cause to be telling people to stop playing their video games on their video game system so the folding can have more time. foldings always been a when youre not doing anything itll use what youre not doing. its its strongest selling point. help save the world by doing nothing at all.

i am curious about the phantom power usage of a ps3 shutdown by atx, not the rocker. and computers sitting shut down (like anybody does that any mroe) but not unplugged.

the 200w and 115w (even though im sure its 120) are not usage stats, theyre the max rating of the power supply.
As a fellow researcher and environmentalist, is there another way to advance science without damaging our fragile planet any further?
nuclear energy? animal testing? human testing. we could even go back to thinking we angered the gods because there was an earthquake. do you only use the computer at the library? im gonna say no or you wouldnt be folding, so youre only an environmentalist as far as it doesnt inconvience you in any way. or maybe youre even worse, the do as i say not as i do al gore global warming while im flying around in private jets. if you truely believed in something you would sacrifice for it. i believe in folding so i sacrifice some of my money. if you honestly believe in the envoronment you would sacrifice your creature comforts and convienences. if you were a real envirmonmentalist you wouldnt be able to be on here because you'd be omish. You know what a real environmentalist is? i saw a guy on the news being interviewed tell the reporter he had a visectomy so he wouldnt create any more consumers. thats believing in your cause. i guess not owning any vehicles is a start. but do you ride a bike or take a bus? have you ever been behind a bus when the leave a light? huge outputs of black smoke. do you use an electric mower or a manual one? as far as your 14w lights, youll be interested to know that flourescent lights, by a department of energy study, use the same amount of electricity to turn them on as they do to run for 8 hours. CFL, while slightly better, still as an energy saver is a myth. all the material on the boxes dont account for the startup. thats why theyre in institutions. schools, hospital, places that turn on once and leave on all day. not houses. how about starting an innitiative to require mandatory engine compression tests on vehicles over 60,000 miles? the reason the rice burner crowds can here get jspec crate engines for their cars is most people in japan either ditch the whole car or the engine at 60k because of the emmission laws. that one single asshole driving down the road with his blow headgasket is creating more pollution than a thousand other cars combined. you know what you could do? you could move to sweden. where you go to jail for driving 5 miles over the speed limit because of the carbon emmissions. and the recently passed Ban on the Humiliation of Plants for “the moral consideration of plants for their own sake” including the criminal “decapitation of wildflowers at the roadside without rational reason.” sorry if i sound ilke a jerk but this is the sort of thing that offends me. its self righteous hypocrcy thats nothing but posturing so people will think youre better than you really are.

--- We're so self-important. So self-important. Everybody's going to save something now. "Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails." And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. What? Are these f------g people kidding me? Save the planet, we don't even know how to take care of ourselves yet. We haven't learned how to care for one another, we're gonna save the f-----g planet? I'm getting tired of that s--t. Tired of that s--t. I'm tired of f------g Earth Day, I'm tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is there aren't enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world save for their Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don't give a s--t about the planet. They don't care about the planet. Not in the abstract they don't. Not in the abstract they don't. You know what they're interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They're worried that some day in the future, they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn't impress me. --- George Clarin RIP

and as far as not eating any animal products (one of my favoprites)

----"Look at me, you vegetarians-sons'a'b----s! You annoy me more than anybody. Vegetarians annoy me more than that itch that I get on the bottom of my testicles. You know the one you can't scratch, so you gotta pinch the sack and roll it back and forth. Your not better than me vegetarian! (Well i don't eat life Carlos.) Oh really, well than enjoy this tasty rock, because plants are life forms. (Well, ok, what I'm saying is i don't eat anything with flesh.) Really? What do you think wood is, stupid? It's the flesh of the plant. The epidermis is the outer layer. (But wait a minute, I don't eat anything that breathes.) Really? Well plants breath, ever hear of photosynthesis? (But, oh no, Carlos you don't know what your talking about.) No! You don't know what your talking about, I eat cows because I'm a responsible American citizen. And I think green, because do you know what cows do....they fart emitting methane and carbon into the atmosphere that are destroying this planet. Now, what are you vegetarians doing? You're eating the plant life that could turn that nasty carbon into perfectly good breathable oxygen for all other lifeforms to exist. So, lets get one thing straight, right now! You vegetarians are the reason for global warming! I'm eating the problem! You're eating the solution!!!!!" - Carlos Mencia
Hopefully, this will stimulate the end user to be more aware of their actions and make the conscious choice to switch to a green energy source.

However, it can be argued that if implemented, where would it end? Messages on your car, pc, air conditioner? Maybe that's a good idea.
youre for real? what do you think an entergy star label is. DUH. you know why people buy green energy star products? solar panels? TO SAVE THEMSELEVES MONEY. as long as all your green crap is more expensive to buy and own NO ONE WILL WANT IT. you want to save the world save the people in it, make them want it. SUPPLY AND DEMAND.

Re: PS3 Uses 5x more Electricity than Fridge

Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 5:44 am
by spazzychalk
speaking of cows and emmissions, check out the new proposed cow tax from the EPA

http://www.cattlenetwork.com/Content.as ... tID=269579

Re: PS3 Uses 5x more Electricity than Fridge

Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 9:56 am
by alancabler
It may be of interest to some folks that NASA has been measuring the "lushness" of planet earth and has seen a steady increase in lush vegetation and thus associated benefits for all life for quite some time now.

Plants need sunlight and lots of CO2 to thrive, and they've had plenty of both to help make the earth greener now than at any time since we began measuring such things.
This greening trend may soon reverse, however, since the sun has apparently gone quiet from it's recently- complete
85 year cycle of above- normal activity and seems to have entered a quiet phase again.

On a brighter note, plant life is better able to withstand extremes of temperature when exposed to higher concentrations of CO2, so the small percentage of CO2 that mankind adds to the atmosphere will hopefully help the lush plants of earth to cope with the stresses of the coming cold years.

A concurrent trend is that free- thinking and well informed citizens of the world are becoming more reluctant to bend to their various governments' efforts to tax the very air they breathe in response to a threat that never existed except as an imagined danger promulgated by voices beholden to the hands that wield the swords of power.

Oh well.
"Dashing through the snow..."

Re: PS3 Uses 5x more Electricity than Fridge

Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 1:07 pm
by shatteredsilicon
7im wrote:For example, which vehicle is more environmentally friendly to manufacture? A tiny little Prius or a giant Hummer? Sounds like an easy question doesn't it. Guess what, making a Prius contributes more carbon to the atmosphere than making a Hummer, largely due to the environmental cost of the 30 pounds of nickel in the hybrid's battery. Of course, the hybrid quickly erases that carbon deficit on the road, thanks to its vastly superior fuel economy.
Sorry, OT, but actually, the last sentence doesn't hold, either. 70mpg isn't THAT great a figure in terms of fuel economy, and even that is hard to achieve. When you factor in that military spec vehicles are built for a 300,000 mile life expectancy vs. 100,000 mile life expectancy of current consumer-grate vehicle, not including the 3 sets of batteries that you'll burn (on average) during the 100,000 miles, the Hummer is actually more environmentally friendly by a considerable margin, in the full iron-ore-to-scrapyard life cycle. Appearing to be green is fashionable, and actually getting to facts is beyond most people's interests (and usually abilities).
owza wrote:The PS3 uses 350W, if used all night to process the Folding@home, at 8 hours a night, the pS3 would require 1,022W a year which would cause over 1tonne of CO2 to enter the atmosphere and cost each user $185 (AUD) per year. If you've read the user agreement, you'll notice that you won't even be recognized for your efforts.
As a fellow researcher and environmentalist, is there another way to advance science without damaging our fragile planet any further?
This has me thinking. Is there a statistic about on average, how many deaths are caused by environmental causes for each tonne of CO2 produced? I apologize for this sounding tactless, but I'd be interested to see how that compares to the projected numbers for how many lives might be saved in the medium term from research requiring production of the same amount of CO2. People seem rather obsessed with points-per-day and points-per-watt, but what is the lives-per-watt figure? Is it positive or negative? If positive, does it remain positive when bespoke folding farms are included (i.e. manufacture + power requirements of computers that have no other purpose)? Food for thought.
P5-133XL wrote:Have one less baby. There are too many people on this planet. Period! One less baby, will over its lifetime save far more carbon, than many computers folding.
The problem there is that such self-restraint is more likely to cause Idiocracy scenarios. Quality of the genetic pool is a matter of social responsibility.
P5-133XL wrote:Another solution, don't drive, drive less, use a bicycle, walk, or use public transportation: that will also save far more carbon than produced by your computer.
That argument gets questionable when considering vehicles running on carbon-neutral bio-fuels (e.g. diesels running on used chip oil which would have otherwise ended up in a landfill or sewage, causing much worse polution).

Re: PS3 Uses 5x more Electricity than Fridge

Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 3:01 pm
by spazzychalk
i think its more responsible to buy a used car and fix it up. my parents own an e85 vehicle. theres never been a drop of flex fuel in it in its entire life. thehybrids were a step in the right direction but frankly te environmental damage they caused HAD to happen to pave the way for it to not happen in the future.

and those stupid little plug in electric cars those self righteous hollywood picks used to drive around in are just shameful. you know what that power cord is? a leash. that you can only go until your little battery runs out, and you cant plug it in just anywhere you need a special setup installed to plug it into. of course they never actually drove it anyway, but you know i see an upside to those hideous things. you stupid MFs that so radical you would actually drive one of those are driving a giant birth control pill. none girl will touch you in one of those. its your solution to the "population crisis" and my hopeful solution to your contaminating the world with your offspring. the fact that you would even think of buying one is quite literally slowing down progress. the market won't come up with a better solution if youre giving them you money on this one. and you hippies seem to consciously ignoring the fact that the battery cars create MORE emmissions than low milage gas cars because theyre plugged into your house which is plugged into a coal fired power plant. youre welcome hippie asshole. youre the ones that blocked clean nuclear energy. but speaking of the box designs no one wants to buy, enter telsa motors http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q ... 1&ct=title producing the tesla roadster - a battery car that looks like soemthing a person of taste would actually drive. thats how you make people drive it, not forcing them to, making them want to. and its built on the lotus elise platform, one of the best handling sports cars in production in the world right now. AND its american. only $100,000. but you wont do it will you? let other people save the world, you cant afford it yourself, you just talk the talk. when the chips are down your brankrupt ideaology has more holes than an afghan, the only move left is the dick one, and off you run to your uncle same to try and get him to regulate us straight into another crisis.

much in the way of our current vehicular crisis no one even knows about. ever take your car to autozone to get a free engine code scan? you know when the light comes on? see back in 95 congress decided that customers were being treated unfairly by car manufacturers. every company, and even nearly every model from within the company, used different proprietary computer systems to run their cars. so they passed a new law regulating that all 96 and up models MUST be run on OBDII onboard diagnostics gen 2 computer system. now a customer can go to any shop anywhere to get their car worked on not just the dealer. well first off all, and most importantly, people could already go anywhere and get their car worked on. the free market allowed tool manufacturers like mac and snap-on to make and sell scanners that would work in any cars computer by just swapping the chip in the scanner. 2nd the OBD2 wsas already a decade old, nearly obsolete, but still the latest thing FOR THE MOMENT. so now you can go to autozone and get your engine scanned for free. but on cars made ONLY AFTER 96. i think they seem to have retards working there. and by there i mean ALL of their locations. to take a 1988 mitsubishi eclipse or a 94 buick to an autozone to get the engine codes read i have to tell them its a 96 inside to get them off their lazy asses because cars before 96 dont have obd2. no asshole thats just the magic date when it became mandatory.

can you imagine where computer technology would be today if they decided what we needed in the computer industry was more regulation, and all computers must run on windows 3.1 to make it fair for consumers to be able to go to any computer shop to get their computer fixed? its a technical progress freeze. stuck in 1990. well thats what congress did to us with cars. the restof the unregulated world is running infinately more efficent computer system and we're still running OBD2 from the early 80s. what if all our computers were from 1985. what world would we be living in? that IS the world we're living in with our cars. and now that the ccar manufacturers here in america want money from congress, we're going to get a national car czar to help further insure that we never see any money returned from them to us by bankrupting them the rest of the final way. and dont give me any of your BS about the economy all 3 of them have been in the red for a decade or more. so when the free market decided to not spend our hard earned money on junk, big brother told us we're too stupid to decide for ourselves, and gave them our money anyway. does anyone here know how many literally hundreds of car manfuacturers no longer exist bankrupted and died just here in america in the last century? its the natural cycle of things. its like the airline industry. if you let the failing company die, a new one will emerge with better business practices that can keep it afloat. by bailing them out every couple years youre re enforcing a bad behavior with rewards. of course they treat us like shit you moron they know they can. theyll still get paid by the govt even if nobody flies. and if we do need to fly you better bend over and take it cause where else are you gonna go?

and unlinke most people unaware of this, this has affected me personally. i lived in germany, fell in love with the british lotus elise. you could buy it for just over $18,000. but i couldnt bring it back because it was a superior car. it ran a rover k series engine on the motorola MEMMS system. newer, more fuel efficent, faster, superior in every way. but we're the morons in america still writing programs for our cars in DOS. well a couple years after i moved back to the USSA lotus finally decided the american market was worth the tens of millions of dollars it was gonna take to redeign the entire chasis to accecpt a toyota engine with an out of date obd2 computer. now the car costs $50,000 and i cant afford it. so ive personally screwed over by the inner party big brother knows best you people are too dumb to decide for yourselves whats good for you.

i found out about a company. its a 500+ employee company - 29 employees have been accussed of domestic violence against their spouses, male and female, 7 have been arrested for fraudd, 19 have bouced unbelievable amounts in bad checks, 117 have bankrupted AT LEAST 2 companies, 3 have done jail time for assault, 71 can't even get a department store credit card their credit is so bad and they never pay their bills, 14 have been arrested for drugs, 8 have been arrested for shoplifting, 21 are current defendants in lawsuits, 84 were arrested for drunk driving in 2008. so who is this company? the US CONGRESS who knows better than we do how we should live our lives.

anyway, back to point, every try youve made to make a car thats good for the environment is worse than our stard 28 mpg cars we have now. your hybrids destroy the environment with manufacturing. nickel mining in canada, sulfuric gas emmissions, metal mining in africa, trasporting all that crap half way around the world because its the cheapest way for toyota to make them. your plugin battery leash cars cause more emmissions plugged into your house plugged into your coal fired power plants because this same you who cares so much about the environment stopped clean nuclear energy because you were afraid of the boogie man. and where are your old cars you replaced with these new "green" cars? in a junkyard rotting. very green. and if not, you actually sold it to someone, its because you didnt want it in a junkyard, its because you wanted the money. very green. the ONLY thing you saved on these cars was some gas money for yourselves. very green.

the car im personally interested in is the chevy volt coming out. http://images.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&q=chevy+volt plug in battery electric for the first 400 miles, then when it gets low the gaas engine comes on and recharges it. its the best idea so far. a plugin car without a leash. AND IT LOOKS DECENT. but the cold hard fact you dont want to admit is the battery technology is not there yet. these cars will NEVER hit 100k miles. the nickel cadiumk hydroxide cores will die out MUCH sooner and no one will want to spend the insane amount of money to replace them. so now theyll be wasting even more resources on top what they already are.
P5-133XL wrote:
Have one less baby. There are too many people on this planet. Period! One less baby, will over its lifetime save far more carbon, than many computers folding.
you know what else we could do? we could make it illegal, like chine. 1 male per household. In fact, since we know male children are cause solely by the male parent's DNA, we give em a 3 strike policy.

1 - 1st male child is allowed
2 - 2nd male child is put to death
3 - 3rd male child - father is put to death.

it doesnt seem to be working for china. did you see the air during the olympics? im sick of this evil america shit. 90%+ of our country is untouched and wild and we have one of the lowest per capita pollution rates in the industrially civilized world. now that its cool to be green the answer is quite literally the free market. all companies want to known as green to their cusomer base. the VERY lightly regulated free market will always do whats best for the customers in the information age. its the incentive system we really need for solutions.

Re: PS3 Uses 5x more Electricity than Fridge

Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2009 1:01 am
by 7im
shatteredsilicon wrote:
7im wrote:For example, which vehicle is more environmentally friendly to manufacture? A tiny little Prius or a giant Hummer? Sounds like an easy question doesn't it. Guess what, making a Prius contributes more carbon to the atmosphere than making a Hummer, largely due to the environmental cost of the 30 pounds of nickel in the hybrid's battery. Of course, the hybrid quickly erases that carbon deficit on the road, thanks to its vastly superior fuel economy.
Sorry, OT, but actually, the last sentence doesn't hold, either. 70mpg isn't THAT great a figure in terms of fuel economy, and even that is hard to achieve. When you factor in that military spec vehicles are built for a 300,000 mile life expectancy vs. 100,000 mile life expectancy of current consumer-grate vehicle, not including the 3 sets of batteries that you'll burn (on average) during the 100,000 miles, the Hummer is actually more environmentally friendly by a considerable margin, in the full iron-ore-to-scrapyard life cycle. Appearing to be green is fashionable, and actually getting to facts is beyond most people's interests (and usually abilities).
Not to be argumentative, but I quoted my data source. What's the data source that backs up your statements? Plus I doubt consumer grade Hummers are the same as military grade Hummers, though I haven't researched that topic. I also doubt the Prius needs a new battery pack every 33,333 miles. I've talked to a Prius owner with over 200,000 miles on his first battery pack, though he said that isn't typical. He seemed to think age and weather were larger factors that affected the mileage in the life of the battery pack. 5-6 years tops, with whatever miles you happen to drive in that time... assuming the average of 15,000 miles a year from the typical driver, that equates to about triple your stated life span. But again, nothing to back that up with.

And my last sentence does hold up, as I only mentioned the carbon footprint, as mentioned in the article I quoted. If you want to debate the full birth to death greeness of each, I'd have to see more data, though I don't have the time for it at the moment.


And spazzychalk, I would have debated and dispelled much of what you said as well, except I liked your paragraph about the US Congress, so I'll let the rest slide as a personal rant. ;) And not to start a political debate, but I wonder what the political party breakdown is on all those offenders. :evil: Don't answer that. :lol:


And would a Mod or Admin add a "[not true]" or something to that affect to the title. We don't want casual forum readers to get the wrong idea.