We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
Maximising your carbon footprint is fun and easy! Just leave your computer turned on! I am pleased to see that all the modern gizmos that make life worth living are having a significant effect on everyone’s ‘carbon footprint’.
I cannot tell you how delighted that makes me. The notion that all the traffic that Samizdata generates adds to the preposterous statistics used to describe anthropogenic global warming gives me such a warm fuzzy glow I am myself no doubt heating up my little part of the globe… however the notion at all the people using their computer to visit the Greenpeace site are doing the same is thigh slappingly funny.
And yes, I leave my computers on 24/7. Take that, Gaia.
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
Perry,
Why would anyone want to waste energy, unless they have more money than sense?
I’ve always gone to the trouble of buying low energy appliances. I bought a very low energy fridge over 10 years ago (it has super thick ‘walls’) and it has saved me more in electricity c.f. a ‘normal’ fridge than it cost in the first place. My electricity bill is less than half that of my neighbour (and they have no children).
Whether you believe in global warming or not, why waste money?
I’ve had great fun over the years showing people who think computing is “clean” that my computers are coal powered; I’ve followed the wires back to the powerplant.
Read the linked article, in my view it is not ‘wasted’ energy at all, it is just getting more people to use the cool things our technology produces.
Well, when you has a computer that wakes from sleep mode in about 2 seconds, you never need to shut it off or restart unless you install something that requires it. I don’t think my computer has been off, except for power outages during storms, for a few years. I sleep it whenever I walk away from it.
My concern is, what is the carbon footprint of the Olympic games going to be?
Perry,
I did read the linked article.
It still makes sense to minimise energy consumption where you can. Why deliberately waste it?
Just to repeat myself, the article indicates folks are handing their previous generation of gizmos to the children rather than scrapping them when they get the latest whatever… that is not ‘wasting’ energy, it is adding to the quality of life. If gizmos become more energy efficient, fine, but the important thing to me is not that, it is that people are availing themselves of technology’s life enhancing fruits.
I leave my computers on because it suits me as I use Skype, P2P streams etc…. the fact all this energy use might annoy some people is just an unlooked for bonus.
Perry, I am so glad I’m not the only one.
I leave my main computer on 24/7 since I built a personal website and experimentally set it live.
I have often been astonished by just how much heat this Dell Optiplex produces, but now that the flat is insulated and the weather is cold, I am met by a comforting heat when I enter after work, all for less than 20p a day.
And the other upside of being a webhost is that my site(criticised as ‘too American’ in outlook) is attracting job contract offers from the USA.
Just leave your computer turned on!
If you really want to hammer your CPU and use up lots of electricity, why not run this?
They’ll ban it eventually. They’ll pass legislation that forces ISPs to reveal the names and addresses of anyone who leaves their computer/router online for more than the approved limit.
Perry, you seem to have missed the good news. All the people who’ve spent the past few years evangelising on the benefits of terry nappies have been wasting their time – washing the shitty things apparently creates enough of a ‘carbon footprint’ to make them no more ecologically sound than disposables!
See this – http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22014238-662,00.html
I love it when something as spectacularly unpleasant and hair-shirt as this sees the eco-fundies hoist by their own petard.
Oh, and a few million quids worth of taxpayers money was wasted in the process; but, hey, for the laughs I’ve had over the past couple of days, I’d consider it money well spent!
Between my computer and my amplifiers being on all the time and the plasma on for a couple of hours, I barely ever have to turn the heating on.
Perry,
We all leave our computers running 24/7 – except for the occasional reboot obviously. And the Green Meanies can stick this in their pipe and smoke it. Because when I’m away from my machines they’re running Folding at Home. They used to run Ligandfit but that seems to be defunct now. This is basic science which just might result in better drugs for cancer. So basically just fuck-off.
So 50% don’t give a toss about GW. I’ll bet ya another 40% think energy efficient light bulbs and not leaving the Sky Box on standby is “doing their bit”. It’s only a small minority of complete nutcases we need worry about. Unfortunately most of them are called Milliband and are part of the government. I actually have to turn the TV off whenever I see Al Gore. The fat git. What I actually want to do is subject the bastard to the most acute torture possible. And no, folks, I’m not even considering going anywhere near that patently flatulent rectum with the pear of anguish. Instead I just wanna whisper in his ear “Clinton left you a strong economy in 2000, you were running against a moron and you still lost”. I don’t actually have too much against Dubya but he really isn’t the sharpest pencil in the box. Neither, alas, is the Goreacle.
There are dimwits to the left and to the right of us. How come the MSM only slags off the intellect of those on the right? Dubya might be a buffoon* but Gore is an intellectual (yeah right, in the fucking chimp house he might be). Al “Gestalt of the gigabit” Gore? Saints preserve us! He invented the internet you know. He married an obnoxious Mary Whitehousesque bird called “Tippa”. Tippa Gore. I wish I was making this up. He’s got a load of carbon neutral concerts on this weekend. He can go fuck himself, royally, with a Christmas tree, sideways.
*Though he’s no Gerald Ford. And by the way, who decided that Ronnie Reagan was thick. He was a bloody awful actor but then so am I. Doesn’t mean he was thick.
Perry,
Just re- read the first paragraph. I want it noted that I was telling the Greenies to “fuck off” not the esteemed editor of this blog.
Just to repeat myself, the article indicates folks are handing their previous generation of gizmos to the children rather than scrapping them when they get the latest whatever… that is not ‘wasting’ energy, it is adding to the quality of life. If gizmos become more energy efficient, fine, but the important thing to me is not that, it is that people are availing themselves of technology’s life enhancing fruits.
I leave my computers on because it suits me as I use Skype, P2P streams etc…. the fact all this energy use might annoy some people is just an unlooked for bonus.
Perry, you are being disingenuous. You were deliberately celebrating the fact that more energy is being used and consequently more CO2 generated and larger energy bills. What sense is there in this?
I’ve spent a career in the electronics industry and energy consumption is a major and growing problem with which engneers constantly struggle. Without going into the technical side in great detail, greater energy consumption means lower reliability, more expensive thermally-enhanced semiconductor packaging, the expense of cooling fans, etc. all of which add to cost. If you want these things to be more widely available, you’d be wanting lower energy technologies to be available.
To repeat myself yet again, the increased energy use annoys the Greens and that is what I celebrate… but is just a bonus, not the main objective. It is not an end in and of itself. “Maximising my carbon footprint” is me being provocative.
That said, pissing on the altar and goring sacred cows is also worthwhile politically. Letting people know that others are thinking what we are told is unthinkable is quite valuable.
A ggod reason to increase the amount of CO2 in the air is because CO2 is a free fertilizer.
Lovelock’s Gaia theory is that the biosphere acts to create negative feedback on the climate.
It was popular in the 1980’s.
Now positive feedback is a favourite argue used by climate alarmists. So the Gaia is not sponsored by governments.
Gaia is an aguement against climate alarmism
Gaia is tommyrot in a laser-guided podule. It isn’t just wank it’s wankenstein tetrated.
But, if you leave the quasi-religious elements out of it it’s actually quite interesting. Certainly the bits Lynn Margulis contributed are. Now that is an interesting explanation of mitochondrial DNA. I have yet to hear better.
BTW Perry. I am pleased that me you and several other folk round here talk about owning computers – plural. Screw the carbon footprint because this is my living. The more machines there are the more there are to network, the more there are to break-down and the more steak gets put on my table. Because (and don’t ya ever forget it) silicon under your table equals sirloin on mine. Although, Perry, I have to say I don’t deal with the dirty Mac brigade. I’d rather have an abacus and a typewriter than a Jobbie.
Speaking as a member of the ‘Dirty Mac’ brigade I’m puzzled that you are not aware that the best Windows PC you can buy is certainly now a Mac. Since dual-boot was invented I now have a computer that finally runs Windows 64 exactly how I want it to be run – i.e. extremely fast without any driver worries, recognises 8Gb of installed RAM and has not once fallen over. As and when I have to use it for actual work then I can just reboot into Mac OS X.
Julian, behave!
A bloody difference engine with 8GB of RAM would fly. The fastest generally available machine is a custom built PC not a bloody Jobbie. There’s just more options. End of.
I assume that’s XP 64. Don’t upgrade to Vista, it’s awful.
The whole Mac/PC debate bores me because you know what, MS Word runs pretty much the same in both. The whole debate is stuck in the non-GUI days of MSDOS 3.3. Remember that? 32 Meg per HD partition and floppy disks. It was bloody awful. But then I remember using a Mac Classic with a 9″ B&W screen around the same time. And when I say B&W I mean B or W. It didn’t do greyscales. That was about 1991 and they were still marketing a 1-bit per pixel computer. But was I not pleased to return to my Amiga.
I remember an ‘upgrade’, it could of been Word for Mac 6 to Word 98 (I’m not sure), where the Mac version of the software had many features removed because they were unable to duplicate them on the PC. They apparently didn’t want the Mac to look more functional than the PC.
After we discovered these ‘improvements’, we reverted to our older version and used it as long as we could.
The reason they “run pretty much the same” is policy not potential. That said, Mac is fast turning into a PC clone as far as business strategy, partner treatment and customer treatment are concerned. They lost me when, for short term accounting reasons, they killed the clones. They’re idiots.
@sammy morse
I use washable nappies on my son, and would like to point out that I don’t do it for carbon footprint reasons.
I do it because it is cheaper (even taking into account washing powder and electricity) and doesn’t use up landfill space (another scarce resource that can be better used by other things). An added bonus is that it doesn’t leak the really nasty chemicals which disposables are filled with into the water table. Yes, it is by no means pleasant but in terms of cost its something I’m willing to put up with.
I resent your implication that I’m an eco-fundy simply through my use of washable nappies, they were good enough for me when I was a nipper after all. I come at this whole environmentalism thing from a purely financial angle, if it costs me less then I’ll do it if the financial benefit is marginal then I’ll go with the easiest option.
And yes my computer is on 24/7 (both of them)
Mandrill,
“Cheaper” is a good reason. In fact, the best.
But landfill isn’t a scarce resource, and properly engineered landfill doesn’t leach into the water table.
If you do it for cost reasons, or even personal preference (whether you prefer the texture of cloth, or dislike washing, or whatever), that’s absolutely fine. It’s the inaccurate non-cost reasons put about by the environmentalist fanatics that we object to. That people are persuaded by the constant repetition of ‘received truth’, with not a word said against, is no grounds for criticism of them (or very little, anyway). Those who do it because of the environmental ‘benefits’, and are active in preaching it to others, I feel have at least some responsibility to check, but most of my ire is for those who preach it uncaring of whether it is true or not, or even knowing that it is not – the ones who hate technology and human progress generally, rather than trying to make life better by doing the same things cleaner.
See Lomborg’s book The Skeptical Environmentalist for a discussion of landfill issues, or even Julian Simon’s Ultimate Resource.
Mandrill
Your choice, if you want to wash crappy nappies, that’s fine by me. Personally, I don’t begrudge the extra money for disposables (if indeed, extra money it is), and there’s a reason why terry nappies stopped being popular once there was an alternative, but your life, your choice.
If you want to spend my money laying a guilt trip on me for using disposables, you can go to hell. But I take it, you *don’t* want to do that?
of course not sammy, you can do what you like. I wouldn’t want to spend your money on anything. I was just trying to make the point that people do ‘green’ things for a wide variety of reasons and not all of us deserve to be tarred with the same brush as the eco fundies.
Check out this US Carbon Footprint Map, an interactive United States Carbon Footprint Map, illustrating Greenest States. This site has all sorts of stats on individual State energy consumptions, demographics and State energy offices.
http://www.eredux.com/states/
Perry de Havilland, I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiment regarding carbon footprint – however, I would go further – what we really need to be doing is celebrating our carbon footprint.
good job i think keep at it
Perry, you fail at trolling. Nice attempt though. This guy had it right. http://fastnet-consulting.blogspot.com/2008/03/your-carbon-footprint.html
This new legislation for reducing america’s emissions by 66% has sparked my anger and i too will now polute as much as i can to offset these environmental wackjobs. Just like my silly friend who is a “vegan”. I now have to eat twice my share of meat to make up for the animals she’s not consuming.
The legislation is yet another failed attempt at policy by the left.. Lets think of this rationally.. You want the US industries to innovate and invent new renewable energy sources.. Well how are they going to invest money in this when you raise their cost of doing business by 7 trillion dollars? You leftist fucktards fall in love with the cause and ignore the side effects as wilkow says..
This bill would set aside nearly 300 billion to help the animals adjust to global warming… Are they fucking mad? The planet has gone through several ice ages already and our delicate little ecosystem survived them then.. It doesn’t need our help. If you want to live in a green pussy-ass society, move to FUCKING CANADA and let us live by the constitution it was founded on. Don’t fuck it up for the rest of us.
And you people wonder why the world’s going to pot. Leave all your appliances on! Woot. When YOU get a bazillion dollar bill for electricity and the ozone layer falls on top of your head, THEN we’ll see who leaves their computer on all night. . .
sorry, you p*ssed me off.