On 2007-03-07 10:56 +0200, Tuomo Valkonen wrote: > ... I am not going to waste my breath supporting it. Recent > research, BTW, suggests that the manufacturing of a computer > with a monitor, takes five times as much energy as the > manufacturing of a car.
One should not completely trust the popular press, though. The original reference may be (http://www.it-environment.org/compenv.html), and the quote there says: """ Manufacturing computers is materials intensive; the total fossil fuels used to make one desktop computer weigh over 240 kilograms, some 10 times the weight of the computer itself. This is very high compared to many other goods: For an automobile or refrigerator, for example, the weight of fossil fuels used for production is roughly equal to their weights. Also, substantial quantities of chemicals (22 kg), and water (1,500 kg) are also used. The environmental impacts associated with using fossil fuels (e.g. climate change), chemicals (e.g. possible health effects on microchip production workers) and water (e.g. scarcity in some areas) are significant and deserve attention. """ So the amount of fossil fuels used would be more like 1/5:th that of a car, which is still by no means a small number. However, this number does not seem to be the energy used: 1000kg of fossil fuels is not even comparable the amount a car burns in its lifetime, and as I said, the energy in that is comparable to the energy used in the production of a car. So it could be that the press got their number from elsewhere in the book, or that the number has not even been calculated. -- Tuomo
