Environmental Impact of the Ubiquitous Microchip 116
TimWeigel writes "The Japan Times is reporting the results of a study by the United Nations University on the environmental impact of michrochip production. We've already seen the impact of disposal practices, but is the manufacturing more environmentally friendly? Turns out it ain't necessarily so - according to the study, producing and using a 32MB DRAM chip weighing 2 grams requires 32 kg of water, 1.6 kg of fossil fuels, 700 g of elemental gases, and 72 g of other chemicals, many of which are hazardous. I'm no environmentalist, but this looks like it might add up to more bad news when you consider that these things are cranked out by the millions each year."
Update: 01/26 16:31 GMT by J : Yep, it's a dupe.
Alternative (Score:2, Insightful)
Nope... (Score:3, Funny)
So, what to do with all the spare parts then? I know, make cool high tech looking clothing! For example, I have an archaic ram chip as a pendant... (So that's where that weird rash-burnish thing is coming from...)
Re:Alternative (Score:2)
Duplicate. (Score:3, Funny)
TheFrood
Re:Duplicate. (Score:5, Funny)
We can expect a few spelling mistakes or grammatical errors in the commentary section, however heads would roll if any were to make the front page. Not only that, but inflammatory, sensationalized or factually incorrect articles would be the norm otherwise. Perhaps even duplicate stories would grace the front page.
Why, it's these services which make a paid subscription to this site so worthwhile, and why if any of these problems ever make the front page I will immediately cancel my subscription.
Re:Duplicate. (Score:2)
I'm curious to know what it is he does get paid for. I've come to the conclusion that I pay more attention to this site than he does.
Sonny Bono (Score:2)
Re:Duplicate. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Duplicate. (Score:1, Funny)
if($results > 0)
{ don't_post_goddamit(); }
Translate concept to perl and boom! You're set. I'll bet the idea doesn't scale, though.
Re:Duplicate -- well put (Score:1)
Re:Duplicate. (Score:1)
Taco? (Score:1, Offtopic)
It's a dupe (Score:5, Funny)
-Aaron
Re:It's a dupe (Score:2, Funny)
Okay, it's a cheap shot. Mod me down.
pcow
Not surprising. (Score:5, Funny)
-Mark
Re:Not surprising. (Score:3, Funny)
Chicks with Chips... hmm...
Daniel
Re:Not surprising. (Score:1)
This all seems very familiar (Score:1, Redundant)
A solution to dupes (Score:2, Interesting)
We need a solution to the site maintainers duping!
Who here wants to jump into the SlashCode source with me and code in moderation on maintainers so we can fire current ones and get better ones? :)
Are you kidding? (Score:1, Redundant)
huh? (Score:1)
Perhaps it's some sort of rare, contageous disease that I can pay to have transferred to my girlfriend. She could use a shorter-term memory.
Printers... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Printers... (Score:1)
Re:Printers... (Score:1)
Re:Printers... (Score:2)
In defense of that, I just threw away an Epson 860 that no amount of cleaning cycles would get printing in a consistant manner (I tried directly cleaning the heads with surgical spirit also, no change.)
Re:Printers... (Score:1)
Re:Printers... (Score:1)
Re:Printers... (Score:1)
Twenty some odd years ago, I purchased a Pansonic KX-P4450 "Laser Partner" laser.
The thing that sold me on this $2,000 printer was that it had this little slot below the paper tray in which you could pour toner from a bottle. I loved the idea that I could easily replace the exact consumable needed without having to replace everything else.
For twenty years, things have been peachy.
But now, MicroCenter, Staples, OfficeDepot, et all, have stopped carrying my simple bottles of toner. Wouldn't you know it, there's something special in this toner and regular office copier toner won't work? ( I made a terrible mess by trying and cost it me a drum. ).
I will re-read this. If you can help me with which toner might work for me, could you please append my post?
I was *trying* to be environmentally friendly by purchasing stuff that would generate the minimum amount of landfill - stuff I know that should continue to function until the proverbial cows come home, but it looks like my 20 year old machine, despite the fact it works perfectly, may see its demise only for the lack of its consumable.
sig:
Re:Printers... (Score:1)
The thing I hate about it most is that it seems to put out a lot of ozone when it prints.
I'm in Australia, so I suppose I can't really help you out with regards as to where you can get the toner, but I can say that I get the toner from a nearby franchise store Cartridge World (I think) - they can get drums, toner, ink, cartridges and ribbons for pretty much any printer. (Even my old Commodore dot-matrix!) Have you tried looking around for shops like that where you are?
Denis says... (Score:3, Funny)
'Pollution is inherent in the system!'
'Help! Help! I'm being contaminated!'
'You saw him contaminating me, didn't you?'
Not an identical duplication... (Score:2)
n2q
Beyond Comprehension (Score:1)
same economic problem... (Score:2)
But the same economic problem exists for chips as for everything else --- it's not that chips take real resources to produce, which is obvious, but that not all the costs of production are reflected in the price of the chips. Every time a chip manufacturer, or anyone else, pollutes for free or exposes people to toxic hazards they create a negative externality, a market inefficiency that sends the wrong signal about the real costs of the product in question.
If manufacturers had to pay for the pollution they create, they'd have a powerful incentive to look for cleaner ways to produce things.
The existence of externalities has long been one of the key arguments for government intervention in the economy. In a competive market place even a company that would like to "do the right thing" (not poisoning the environment or workers) cannot if it means that other companies will be able to produce the same product for less.
Government regulations, representing the intent to compensate people for negative externalities, also provide an incentive for firms to look for cleaner ways to produce. That's why many environmental regulations ultimately cost firms (& consumers) much less than predicted.
Why? (Score:1)
Re:Why? (Score:2)
ah harmfull chemicals (Score:2, Insightful)
Chemicals are: Sulfar, Nitrogen, Nitrate, Slicon, Oxygen, and etc..
Whats your guess?
Try the Hman body and its cells..
Just becasue something is manufactured with harmful chemicals doesn't in of itself mean tis harmfull to the environment at alarger amount or lower amount than the biological creatures who already use this earth...
You guys need to wake up and anlyze soemthing once in awhile
Also, how MUCH "environmental damage" was that? (Score:5, Insightful)
And storing 32 MB of data. In the '60s (decades into the computer revolution) 32 K by 36 bits cost around a million bux (in '60s currnecy, of which $24 would buy a troy ounce of gold) and worth every penny. It occupied one standard IBM 70x cabinet - roughly 3' x 6' by 8' or maybe more, just barely fitting into a standard elevator car, CHOCK FULL of circuit boards soldered with lead and wired with copper
requires 32 kg of water,
And what happens to that water? Is it disintegrated into its compoent subatomic particles and beamed into outer space, never to be heard from again? Is it sealed into a vault with the radioactive waste and buried for geologic time? Or is it cleaned up back to super-purity and reused to make ANOTHER chip, and ANOTHER ad-infinitim, until it finally evaporates and comes back as rain?
1.6 kg of fossil fuels,
3 1/2 pints of fuel oil - enough to make about 1 3/4 pints of gasoline. Call it five chips to the galon. You probably burned more gas per chip just to GO PICK 'EM UP the last time you upgraded your RAM.
Of course that's assuming all the energy came from fossil fuels - which are still used because they're so abundant that they're cheaper than most alternatives. But the last time I looked the windmills at Altamont Pass were still spinning, and the hydroelectric dams were still generating, etc.
700 g of elemental gases,
Yeah - liquid nitrogen and liquid oxygen. And any that doesn't end up in the chip itself (i.e. the oxide layers), like, say, the liquid nitrogen used to supercool gas traps or purge ambient air and its contaminants, eventually goes back to the air from which it was extracted.
and 72 g of other chemicals,
2 1/2 ounces.
many of which are hazardous.
And some of 'em (such as the doping gasses, used in microscopic amounts) are SO hazardous - both to humans and to the next step of the process - that any excess is destroyed at the end of the step where it is used. Others (like the cleaning solvents and etchants) can also be supercleaned and reused, destroyed, or disposed of in other safe ways. That's where a lot of that energy goes. Want to cut its use?
Of course if some cheapscate wants to dump used solvent, that's what the threat of the EPA is for: to make it more expensive to dump it than to deal with it properly. Meanwhile, the solvents are the same class of stuff that your auto mechanic sprays on your (toxic!) brake pads every time you get a brake job. Any bets on whether the chips in a 1/4G SIMM, built by a hypothetical scumbag manufacturer who dumps ALL his used solvent, would pollute the environment more than your last brake job?
And how much modern RAM would it take to match the pollution and resource consumption of building, or operating, that '60s-era 32Kx36 RAM box?
Re:Also, how MUCH "environmental damage" was that? (Score:2)
On the upside, we've gotten very good at recycling all our used electrons.
Re:Also, how MUCH "environmental damage" was that? (Score:1)
> And what happens to that water? Is it disintegrated into its compoent subatomic particles and beamed into outer space, never to be heard from again?
no.
> Is it sealed into a vault with the radioactive waste and buried for geologic time?
no.
> Or is it cleaned up back to super-purity and reused to make ANOTHER chip, and ANOTHER ad-infinitim, until it finally evaporates and comes back as rain?
and, surprisingly enough, no. it'd be much less of an issue if it worked that way. one of the important uses of water in chip manufacture is as a coolant.
the water is often taken from really cold, fast-running streams. when returned to the river or stream, the cumulative effect of many industries has raised water temperatures to almost fatal levels for fish species such as salmon, many of which are endangered.
>> 1.6 kg of fossil fuels,
> You probably burned more gas per chip just to GO PICK 'EM UP the last time you upgraded your RAM.
and how do you propose people get these chips without this additional waste? that probably would make a much more solid study- a study of the energy costs of shipping around computer equipment.
> Of course that's assuming all the energy came from fossil fuels
> the hydroelectric dams were still generating, etc.
hydroelectric dams have had a devastating effect on fish populations and native ecosystems. 80% of the nitrogen found in forest of the Pacific Northwest comes from oceanic sources, largely dead salmon post-spawning. with the extinction of the salmon comes the extinction of the forest.
> Of course if some cheapscate wants to dump used solvent, that's what the threat of the EPA is for: to make it more expensive to dump it than to deal with it properly.
and they fail miserably. any idea how many lawsuits against the EPA there are yearly to address these scenarios?
there are many countries which have even fewer restrictions than the U.S., how much of your computer equipment is manufactured in a country with minimal if any environmental regulations?
Oh, geez... (Score:2)
The article tried to make it sound like the semiconductor industry has an environmental impact somewhere between the near-extinction of the buffalo and the Cretaceous event. In fact the impact is somewhere between stubbing your toe on a weed (considerting the direct costs alone) and returning us to the garden of eden (adding in the benefits from the REDUCTION of other environmental costs through the APPLICATION of semiconductor technology to design, process control, etc.)
For starters, condsider the reduced polution from automobiles - thanks to computer-aided design and computerized low-emission/high-mileage engines.
But on your cost-only points:
and how do you propose people get these chips without this additional waste? [...] hydroelectric dams have had a devastating effect [...]
The point is that the energy used is a vanishingly tiny drop from a very large bucket. If you want to save the fish and such, you'll do more by turning out your desklamp lightbulb religiously than by foregoing the manufacture of a RAM chip.
[coolant] water is often taken from really cold, fast-running streams. when returned to the river or stream, the cumulative effect of many industries has raised water temperatures to almost fatal levels for fish species such as salmon, many of which are endangered.
Not only do you not understand thermal pollution and its effects on fish, but you also don't understand the regulation of it, at least here in the US.
First: Thermal pollution does not harm fish by "raising the temperature to a fatal level". (In fact, warmer water is often much more healthy for the fish population than cold - mostly by promoting the growth of nutrients.)
The alleged harm from dumping hot water into cold streams is from fish swiming through the boundary and having their reproductive cycles upset by the thermal shock. But here we're talking something ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE different from a chip fab. We're talking a nuke plant using a stream for the cold end of the heat engine.
A chip fab's cooling needs are comparable to airconditioning an office building of equivalent floor space. There's enough heat in one place to rate a small forced-air evaporative cooler on the hot end of the HVAC unit - the sort you see blowing fog on other large institutional buildings. Cool a fab by dumping enough hot water into a running stream to shock the fish? Get real.
And even if they DID need to dump that much heat, they won't be doing it into streams at a US fab. (Go pester the third world to police their own industries of you're more concerned for THEIR fish than their people.)
[solvent dumping
Bunches. I live in Silicon Valley, so you don't need to tell me about what HP did back during the cold war.
But:
- It was nothing, in toxicity or volume, compared to what OTHER industries were doing at the time.
- These days such stuff happens mainly when the government inspectors go corrupt and/or get sidetracked onto eco-wacko hotbutton issues (like mismanaging the wilderness areas in ways that make them all burn down).
- And most of the suits result from a law that gives law firms standing to file, and payment for prosecuting, environmental lawsuits (bogus or otherwise). Subsidize environmental lawsuits to the tune of millions (or even billions) of dollars in legal fees and you'll get a LOT of them, regardless of their merit.
Re:Oh, geez... (Score:1)
Didn't think there were any left..
Rock on =)
I don't understand.... (Score:1, Funny)
What is the environmental impact ... (Score:1)
Hey, since it's a dupe... (Score:1)
Environmental impact of Slashdot (Score:2, Funny)
How does that song go? (Score:2)
Someone should sing that and put it online in ogg/mp3 format. It should be Taco's theme! ;)
Re:How does that song go? (Score:3, Funny)
Impact not on CmdrTaco (Score:1)
Save the nitrogen! (Score:1, Funny)
Ban DHMO! (Score:3, Funny)
Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO) is a colorless and odorless chemical compound, also referred to by some as Dihydrogen Oxide, Hydrogen Hydroxide, Hydronium Hydroxide, or simply Hydric acid. Its basis is the unstable radical Hydroxide, the components of which are found in a number of caustic, explosive and poisonous compounds such as Sulfuric Acid, Nitroglycerine and Ethyl Alcohol.
Should I be concerned about Dihydrogen Monoxide?
Yes, you should be concerned about DHMO! Although the U.S. Government and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) do not classify Dihydrogen Monoxide as a toxic or carcinogenic substance (as it does with better known chemicals such as hydrochloric acid and saccharine), DHMO is a constituent of many known toxic substances, diseases and disease-causing agents, environmental hazards and can even be lethal to humans in quantities as small as a thimbleful.
What are some of the dangers associated with DHMO?
Each year, Dihydrogen Monoxide is a known causative component in many thousands of deaths and is a major contributor to millions upon millions of dollars in damage to property and the environment.
BAN DHMO TODAY!
http://www.dhmo.org [dhmo.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Ban DHMO! (Score:2)
Not to mention the enormous hole in the ground (over 1 mile deep) in Arizona caused by this vile substance.
Not by the millions (Score:2, Insightful)
What to do about it? Dont buy ram in small quantities. Buy the biggest chip on the market (currently 1gb for most modern platforms). This will also help costs for these new chips
That said, I wouldn't think about going that extreme, (you can buy 3-4 512mb chips for the price of 1 1gb chip) but I wouldn't buy 64mb either.
mmm.. chippies... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:mmm.. chippies... (Score:2)
How did they arrive at these numbers? (Score:2)
Has anyone found anything anywhere that explains their methodology? I chased most of the links last time, and there were no clues. What are they counting? The materials used in the factory itself? Including the workers? The mining of the raw materials? Their transport?
Also, does anyone have a clue how these figures compare with anything else, ie how much water is used to make, say, a hammer, measuring the same way?
And finally, do the figures vary across the world? For example, America-based companies generally use several times as much water as their counterparts in Europe. Is this true of chip manufacture too?
In other words, is there any substance behind this 'news', or is it just journalese?
Re:How did they arrive at these numbers? (Score:2)
What they IMPLY is that the process involves going back and looking at all the infrastructure required to keep the microchip industry producing, not just the process itself, but the trucking of raw goods, fuel used by the people to get to work, etc. They don't appear to discount the fact that some of the electricity is probably nuclear reactor based, and that some of the materials are re-used, etc. In short, junk Science. (And the fact that the news web sites couldn't come out and say what the method was makes me think it is bunk in the first place.)
Might as well just say "industrial revolution is bad", "chemicals are bad" and "if you eat twinkies you are bad".
This is just nothing more than pseudo-environmentalist hype, the same sort of mis-guided thinking that blames soccer moms driving SUVs for terrorism. (I dont like them either, but I tend to blame terrorism on, oh let me see...say.. the terrorists.)
Philosophical question (Score:1, Offtopic)
A day in the life of CmdrTaco (Score:5, Funny)
7:55am, Alarm goes off, Snooze
8:04am, Alarm goes off, Snooze
repeat several dozen times
11:14am, Alarm goes off, crawl out of bed, hit the head
11:18am, load up wired.com, glance over headlines
11:19am, without having read any, copy and paste 3 or 4 of them over to
11:20am, back to bed
1:32pm, wake up, crawl out of bed again, eat cold pizza from the LAN party the night before
1:41pm, load up wired.com, glance over headlines
1:42pm, without having read any, and not remembering having done it before, copy and paste the same 3 or 4 articles to
1:49pm, read through hate-email from people complaining about dupes, and from paying subscribers who feel short-changed
2:24pm, meander to the "office" for the 1pm staff meeting
3:08pm, meet with editorial staff to discuss that afternoon's postings
4:11pm, CmdrTaco, timothy, and Hemos decide on 3 or 4 really good articles from wired.com that are worthy of the
4:55pm, after a long day at the office, calls it quits and heads home
5:15pm, arrives home after stopping by Starbucks, Ikea, the BMW dealer, and the natural food store
5:45pm, decides to check up on
6:12pm, after having exhausted that day's supply of Mountain Dew and Pringles, decides to meet some friends at Outback for dinner.. brings laptop, of course
7:11pm, seated in the 802.11 section of Outback with michael, Hemos, and timothy, and his pseudo-quasi-girlfriend that he met on IRC, who, having just gotten her first driver's license, drove out from Raleigh in her parents' 1971 Pinto, without their permission
7:15pm, orders a Mountain Dew to drink
7:24pm, fires up laptop and the gang looks for good material for the front page. Collectively, they find 3 or 4 really good articles on wired.com to cut and paste. Decide to post an article from The Register just for the hell of it.
7:29pm, server asks if they're ready to order. The gang asks if they have Pizza - but settles for burgers and beer (At Outback)
7:57pm, after a few beers, decide to check up on their darling blogger and post some relevant "News for Nerds, stuff that matters"... they find some really good articles on SLASHDOT to post to the front page
8:11pm, finishing up gobbling down the burger, having gone through 38 pitchers of mountain dew and the equivalent of a case of Meister Brau, they head to CmdrTaco's apartment for that nights UT LAN party
8:21pm, pick up a case of Meister Brau, a case of Mountain Dew, and a case of Miller Light on the way home
8:46pm, arrive at CmdrTaco's place, decide first thing to check
9:11pm, timothy, rip-roaring drunk, logs onto
Re:A day in the life of CmdrTaco (Score:2)
Pfew.... Oh dear, just wait until his wife reads this comment.
Eliminating the dupes (Score:2, Interesting)
One of the perks of having the highest karma ratings on Slashdot could be that the top 50 users could see a story for the first 5 minutes before comments could be taken on that story. So that we can eliminate these pesky dupes once and for all, those users could be given a "this looks like a dupe" button. If the button is pressed by one of the chosen few, then the story could return to the poster for review and possibly cancellation, saving both time and embarrassment.
I like my idea, however I cannot foresee what the negative astroturfing aspects of this feature might wind up being.
I definitely wrote this before coffee, so all standard disclaimers apply.
What if..... (Score:1)
If I replaced my email/pron with paper versions, I'd be killing more trees, releasing more dioxins (paper production) and burning more gas (delivery).
Putting things in perspective.. (Score:2)
It's my opinion that if we want to reduce the environmental impact of industry, we (globally) need to make the economy efficient before we even think of cutting production. Progress and the enhancement of our standard of living is not hurting the environment. Inefficiency in the way we go about it is.
The Human Body and its Environmental Impact (Score:2)
The Human Body requires about 2 kg of water of consumption, 120 g of carbohydrates, ~60 g of protein, 60 g of fat, totalling approximately 2000-3000 Calories (that's 2-3*10^6 calories) a day. The equivalent of hydrocarbon (gasoline) is about 41.5 kg. Among the noxious and toxic (yes toxic) chemicals that it excretes are ammonia and urea.
The usual Human Body also requires at least 128 kg of water to safely and convienantly dilute the toxic execretions and transport them to a processing plant. It's called a toilet.
There are 6 billion Human Bodies functioning on Earth and they are reproducing faster than microchips are being produced.
The fallacy of this argument is that the process (a human body functioning or the production of a microchip) counts only the materials being inputted and the harmful substances being outputted. It also counts only the amount of water used in the process and not the amount of water leaving the process clean.
The silane and other harmful chemicals used never leave the factory harmful. Whatever is leftover and not used is converted to something harmless through a series of chemical reactions expressly designed to make the factory environmentally friendly. In addition, factories clean up all of their outputted chemicals, including water, so that they cause no enviromental damage.
This is especially true for microchip plants where the profit margin is so high and the cost of bad publicity is so devastating. The extra cost of building an ecofriendly factory is miniscule compared to the profits these companies enjoy.
Salis
Re:The Human Body and its Environmental Impact (Score:2)
Makes you wonder how far your car might go if it oxidized food like we do.
Re:The Human Body and its Environmental Impact (Score:1)
That's 260 kg of gasoline per day equivalent.
As biologicals, God created us extremely efficient. So much so that obesity is a national problem. If you want to see a really good example of "molecular systolic programming", I suggest you pick up a biochemistry manual and refer to the Krebbs cycle.
The Krebbs Cycle is the basic biological mechanism by which we, as living organisms, derive our energy from our raw inputs of fats, carbohydrates, and protein. If we were literally metabolizing the equivalent of 260 Kilograms (hydrocarbon) per day, we would be almost incandescent. Instead, we glow at about 98.6 degrees farenheit. An infrared transducer would see me as an energy source, emitting atout 500 watts at about 9.3 microns. ( Thats how burglar alarm Passive Infrared Detectors see us. )
God knows how much I would like to skip a day's worth of eatin's and lose 260 KiloGrams! ( since fat has roughly the same energy density as gasoline. )
( The bit about 500 watts and 9.3 microns is from the book "Optoelectronic Devices and Circuits", McGraw-Hill, Page 147. In an entry by W.E.Osborne, Staff Scientist, Gilfilian Corp, Los Angeles, Ca. *cough* 1964 ).
(Or did I take one too many nips of Stolichnaya, the Nectar of the Gods...?)
Re:The Human Body and its Environmental Impact (Score:2)
You're also confusing our emission of bodily heat with my equivalency of energy. All the energy that our body releases from food is not converted to heat...or we WOULD burn up like gasoline on fire. The energy is used, effeciently, as work...in the form of forming bonds, specifically the reaction ADP + Pi -> ATP, which is then used as the energetic intermediary for a host of other endothermic reactions.
So, yes, I have picked up a biochemistry book. But, I was not concerning myself with biochemistry, but with thermodynamics. And..I made a stupid error. It's actually 261 g of gasoline.
You'd have to go to nuclear reactions to get a better payout of effeciency. It would take ~1.0*10^-4 grams of hydrogen undergoing fusion in order to 'power' one human body for a day.
And, btw, not all fat has the same density nor the same energy of oxidation. Saturated fats provide more energy per volume because their lack of double bonds (unsaturated bonds) make them pack more tightly. Fats also have different lengths. A 3xC-12 fat has less energy than a 3xC-18, of course. The reaction pathway that the body uses to metabolize fat is extremely ingenious and relies on a recursive process of breaking the next two carbons off the fatty acid (3 fatty acids plus a glycerol make a fat molecule) and funneling them to the Krebs cycle. It's all done by multiple bindings to a complex of 3-4 proteins which rotates around the fatty acid.
Ok, I'm done being specific. I will now go back to being facetious...like I said I was being before.
Re:The Human Body and its Environmental Impact (Score:1)
Something inside me sniffed out something that didn't sound right. I wasn't for sure exactly what - but your 261 grams sounds right on the money...
I thought maybe it was the confusion that always stems from a "food calorie" being a physical kilocalorie. That one caused me a lot of miscalculation once.
( I thought I could drink 100 mL of ice water, forcing myself to expend 3700 calories to bring the water up to 37 degrees C. (98.6 degrees F) then pass the warm water, take on more cold water, and lose weight that way.. I figured I could easily swamp out even the 100 to 500 calories that may be in the drink itself. This procedure did not work. At all. I am sure you see where I goofed. )
Quite right about the sat fat and unsat fats. Gasoline should be in the same ballpark as fats. About the same energy. In my case, being I do almost no *physical* work to speak of, if I do not ultimately radiate the energy, I must store it (as fat).
The Krebs cycle... God, what an efficient mechanism. I only wish I could design and implement something so elegant. ;) The car engine would burn up that 261 grams of fuel in a few minutes, like you say, with most of its energy uselessly converted to high temperature heat as the thermodynamic basis of the car engine is the Carnot cycle.
I would suppose you could burn a 261 gram candle (fat)over a 24 hour period and it should keep a moderately clothed 180 pound bag of water at a constant temperature of 98.6 degrees, assuming all the heat went to the bag, and the bag radiated it. The end result is heat, carbon dioxide, and water vapor, but for us there sure is a lot of other stuff that happens during the transfer.
People like you are the reason I like Slashdot. How many other people could I mention the Krebs cycle to and they have the slightest inkling of what I am referring to?...much less post an intelligent reply?
(That was good for another swig of Stolichnaya.)
Re:The Human Body and its Environmental Impact (Score:1)
You forget one thing - the human body is inherently bio-compatible -- "From dust we are created, to dust we return." -- Our natural excretions (with emphasis on "natural"), our natural byproducts of life, as well as the process of our creation and decomposition, are inherently harmless to the earth.
The process of creation of microchips (or steel, or SUVs, or cement) is *nowhere* near as bio-compatible.
> The silane and other harmful chemicals used never leave the factory harmful. Whatever is leftover and not used is converted to something harmless through a series of chemical reactions expressly designed to make the factory environmentally friendly.
But the net effect is not harmless to the environment. Chemical manufacturing, power generation, building infrastructure -- all this does damage the earth. And we seem to be damaging the earth faster than we are replenishing it. And this (the latter point) is wrong.
Re:The Human Body and its Environmental Impact (Score:2)
To prove this, I will give you a rotten can of meat, full of the bacteria Clostridium botulism, and tell you to eat a tiny spoonful. What HARM can a tiny spoonful of such a naturally harmless biological organism do to you, another biological organism?
Biological organisms _never_ produce any sorts of toxins or poisons or inflict any physical harm upon other biological organisms. It wouldn't be "bio-compatible!".
Biological organisms produce the most effective and dangerous poisons in the world. For Plants, see ricin. For bacteria, see botulism. Snakes, Scorpions, Fish, and even certain types of algae.
A volcano spews out more carbon dioxide, sulphur, and carbon monoxide than a thousand years of operation of any single factory. The forest fires in Asia produced more carbon dioxide than a year's worth of operation of _all_ the factories in the U.S.
Before you go blaming technology for the radical destruction of the Earth, at least share blame where blame is due. The Earth itself has a cycle which has been running since before any civilization has risen. This includes massive ecological changes which have _nothing_ to do with technology. To separate the NATURAL ecological changes and the technological ones is a science that is incredibly complex and not well known to even the smartest of scientists studying it. Be careful where you place the blame. It may turn out that nature has made these changes over and over again and will continue to do so even with our puny attempts (purposeful or accidental) at technological change.
Salis
Why should we believe them? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:sand and microchips (Score:1)
Re:sand and microchips (Score:2)