I’ve heard this assertion frequently, and always just sort of assumed it was true. This time, I decided to see if I can find a good source on the amount of fossil fuel required to produce a kcal of beef vs. a kcal of pasta. (I say “fossil fuel” because while there’s obviously solar energy input involved in growing a plant, it’s not a “cost” in any sense we care about.) I’m not having much luck, however. I’d be interested if you can point me at anything.
I did find this article, which attempts to analyze the energy cost of feedlot beef vs. grass-fed. (Summary: Grass-fed is more energy-efficient.)
Anyway, the energy cost of beef is clearly going to be strongly dependent on how the animal was raised. I’d be amazed if a pound of imported Italian pasta bought at my local store was more energy-efficient than a pound of beef eaten by an Argentinian. (Argentina has a lot of grass. No feedlots and corn-fed beef there!) And I’d be really curious to know what the relative cost is of the locally-raised, grass-fed steer sitting in my freezer.
I’m practically a carnivore, but I found this interview an interesting perspective on the costs of eating meat. Specifically, I thought it unusual to be anti meat overconsumption and abuse of animals for the sake of humans moreso than vegetarian advocacy or anything of the sort. And he has a lot of numbers in there, fwiw (I’m waiting for the paperback).
I decided to dig out the power meter and re-check with my newer PC. Results here: http://positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/?p=901
Summary -> the new 8 core PC uses less power than the dual core.
Are they really educating anybody though? I mean, their ratings seem as arbitrary as alexlitel on film.
I mean, they give companies 0’s for not giving information (I remember Nintendo getting that). They base ratings are not the present of what the company is doing but promises (remember Jobs criticizing Greenpeace for raising their insanely low rating to a respectable one based on product changes that weren’t out yet?). I mean, I’m looking through the goddamn PDF and I don’t really see how this is really giving an accurate evaluation of the companies.
You could just as well say they don’t bother acknowledging Greenpeace’s evaluations.
I’m not really impressed with Greenpeace’s report, generally (this year or other years). It lists the criteria, and states reasons a particular score was given, but it doesn’t state the methodology or scale. It seems arbitrary.
For example: there’s a category Called Commitment to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions.
“Microsoft has set a goal to reduce its carbon emissions per unit of revenue at least 30% below 2008 levels by 2012. However, there is no commitment for absolute cuts of GHG emissions.”
For this, it scores a Bad (zero points). Fair enough. But where is it spelled out exactly what a company has to do to get how many points? Are absolute cuts of GHG emissions the only way to score points? How much equals how many points? Is there a scale involved, where reduction in GHG emissions are more important to a company that has really high GHG emissions, and not very important to those companies with very low GHG emissions? Oh, and that description sounds almost exactly like the one for Sharp, which scored one point.
Don’t forget that nobosy else is even discussing the green-ness of PC’s, and we wouldn’t be doing ti here without the report. Plus,. it’s not like Greenpeace is costing any money to people who don’t actively fund it.
Sometimes all a pressure group wants or needs to do is to point at something that isn’t good, and say ‘looky here’. Job done, in that respect.
Interesting results. My pc, monitor and router is currently using 170w doing nothing. I recall reading an article about this, stating that a lot of power is wasted by the chips that support the cpu.
This thread should move over to the Hardware forum, and then rei can link us to the latest extremehardware or tomshardware article that breaks all the power draw down to individual components…
But the summary is that non-integrated GPU is the first big power sink, followed by CPU, followed by integrated GPU. Everything else is peanuts compared to those 3 things.
Also, before you spend too much time reducing the heck out of your computer power draw, note that the biggest power draw in your house is electrical heating/cooling, followed by an electrical dryer. (No source…google around to see.) And consider for example that a TV cable box draws around 40W even when it is “off” (unlike almost any other electronic devices, which draws 1-5W when it is in sleep mode).
