Clean Energy Photo Contest
Posted by: Kathie Brosemer (kathie) on January 27, 2003 at 12:51:17
from the goin'-to-Magpie-Falls,-anybody? dept.
The Ontario Clean Air Alliance is having a photo contest. They want some nice pics of clean energy and dirty coal plants, to use in their work this smog season (the season formerly known as summer). While we're a long way from the coal plants, we suffer coal effects from a coke oven battery nearby. But we are neighbours to some great "clean" energy sources - waterpower, the new wind development, etc. So take some pictures - you might win a new digital camera! Rules are here. And while you're at it, check out this link for a Globe & Mail story on the environmental impacts of the memory chip in that digital camera.
Ludicrous!
--- [CUT] ---by odin on 2003-01-27 13:24:06
The study, led by Eric Williams of the United Nations University in Japan, says the production of a garden-variety computer chip known as DRAM consumed 800 kilograms of fossil fuel and chemicals for every kilogram of DRAM chips made -- a ratio of one unit of chips for 800 units of input.
By comparison, it takes about two tonnes of fossil fuels to make a car that weighs a tonne, a ratio of 1:2.
--- [/CUT] ---
Ludicrous! 2,000kg fuel to produce something that maybe one in two people in North America has (and which goes on polluting after it's produced) vs 800kg of fuel to produce 500 pieces of DRAM (16 on a 512MB stick of memory)
That's about 16GB of memory. And once it's in my machine, it doesn't
pollute anymore.
I haven't owned 16GB of memory yet. (barely 1GB if you add up all the
memory I've ever owned) The number of chips per MB has been going own
exponentially, so this will only get better.
It's a horrible comparison. Yes, no doubt producing microchips is more environmentally expensive than, say, making cheese, but not automobiles... and _certainly_ not 400 times more so!
-Dan