Quote:
Originally Posted by Xringer
iPhone uses more energy than a refrigerator... This seems a little weird. I wonder if this is true..?
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It would be a good thing to research... or at least look into the
source paper, rather than just the article.
But, why fret about the personal cost of charging an iPhone if your TV is a plasma room heater, or if your old refrig is using 2x or more electricity than it should, or if you drive a SUV, that drinks gasoline, or if your house is so poorly insulated that it is a burden to heat and cool?
Seems like a matter of worrying about pennies when you're throwing away fifty dollar bills.
But then as Daox indicated, it's the server farms that are the real problem,
and there is a price for everything we do. It's a good idea to look into what the real costs, the cost to us personally and also the broader ecological and historical costs, really are. For how long will the life systems of the planet actually be able to bear the eco-burden of a high-tech world?
Another angle is that the source paper, "
The Cloud Begins With Coal", could actually be a info-ganda piece encouraged by coal companies
[NOTE: the source paper is actually sponsored by: National Mining Association and The American Coalition for Clean Coal] (Note 2: there is no such thing as 'clean coal', the phrase is a cute alliterative slogan coined by coal industry lobbying groups), to impress us with just how much we need coal, and should stay silent about all of the environmental consequences that issue from that.
However, the US has been moving to natural gas (CH4) instead of the carbon-laden burning of coal. But then, to support natural gas, corporate power has decided to put its shoulder behind fracking, which promises to poison our birthright of pure water in our aquifers. Fracking may even dwarf harm done by coal mining/burning.
(* Gasland II is definitely worth seeing *)
But in the entirety of this, we all need to become aware of the damage we are causing, quite mindlessly, and that we need to become conscious of our choices.
I think that living local and using less is the real answer.
-AC