How we generate energy is the question that seems to underlie all others when discussing environmental issues, so this article will focus on just discussing some “facts” about energy usage, as best we know them.
The World is experiencing a global food price crisis which saw prices of wheat rising by 130% in the year to March 2008, and those of soya and rice rising by 87% and 74% respectively over the same period. The consequences of this are real increases of poverty, global inequality and a reduction in life expectancy. Prices have since declined since March, but are still somewhat higher than levels back in 2000.
Since LocalCooling was launched in November 2006, the project has managed to raise levels of understanding about how PCs can contribute towards the fight against global warming and climate change. For some time there has been an increasing level of awareness, among the global PC-using community, that by optimizing computer power settings a huge amount of energy can be saved. As a user of LocalCooling, you contributed to this in a big way, by discussing the issues of global climate change on the forum.
PC power consumption: does it really matter?
More than 30 billion kilowatt-hours (108 petajoules) of energy is wasted because many of us simply forget to shut down our computers when we aren’t using them.
If we could improve the efficiency of how we use our PCs, the value of energy saved would be over $3 billion dollars! What’s more the CO2 emissions from just 15 computers are equivalent, in energy terms, to the gas consumption of one car!
This is part 2 of the “Global Warming effects article” …continued here:
Greenhouse gases and CO2
The Sun’s rays hit the earth as long-wave radiation, which passes through greenhouse gases easily. However when they hit the earth the warm the planet and the energy is then radiated out from Earth as short wave infra-red radiation (heat) which is easily absorbed by greenhouses gases before it escapes into space. So the world gets warmer. This is the greenhouse effect and the leading greenhouse gases impacting on the environment are water vapor, CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone.
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