Re: Bollocks: Call to scrap TV standby buttons to help environment

Norman Wells wrote:
In article <e2014g01fhs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Cardinal Chunder <cc@xxxxxxx
spam.xyzabcfghllaa.com> writes
Norman Wells wrote:
There are about 40 power stations in the UK, so the most you could save
by turning all the TVs off is one tenth of one power station.
All power stations are not equal. How many coal fired power stations does that power equate to?

One tenth of an average one.

An average what??? Nuclear, coal, oil, wind, hydro, what? Power stations don't all generate the same amount of power. As for the "about 40 power stations", you're off by a long shot. There are in far in excess of 50 power stations with 400MW capacity and twice as many again generating below that figure.

How many hundreds of thousands of tonnes of coal / oil is required for that?

You want to argue about it, so you tell me.

I don't need to argue it. It's rhetorical question. It does burn hundreds of thousands of tonnes.

And that's just TVs in the home. Think of all the regular lightbulbs that are left on. Or businesses that routinely allow PCs, monitors, laser printers, photocopiers, heating, lighting etc. to be left on overnight for no commercial reason whatsoever.

As I've said before, a lot of the energy used in this way is not wasted
since it's all turned to heat, which the heating systems don't have to
compensate for in the morning by burning extra fossil fuel. There's
also the argument that constantly turning electrical things off and on
shortens their life considerably, so more items have to be manufactured,
so more energy, rare metals etc are used, leading to greater global
warming and depletion of resources than if they had been left on
permanently.

That's absurd heat generated by televisions on standby, computer equipment etc. flies out of the window. It benefits no one.

The argument that it shortens the life of equipment is specious.

There are a lot of ways that energy could be saved with minimal impact to individuals or businesses. They'd even save money through lower bills.

They're all aware of that. If they choose to do nothing about it,
that's their choice.

The cost of leaving a TV on standby for 20 hours a day over a whole year
is approximately that of a pint of beer.

+ light bulbs, better insulation etc. It all adds up.

That's why most companies
don't care, particularly if the life of a relatively costly item is
shortened at all by turning it on and off. It doesn't make economic or
environmental sense.

Companies have dozens if not hundreds of computers, all consuming substantially more than 6 watts. Even in standby a computer consumes far more than this. It must adds up to thousands of pounds of waste for any typical office floor

By way of contrast, China is commissioning a new coal-fired power
station every single week, ie a generating capacity equal to the whole
of the UK's every 10 months.
That may be, but that is no reason for the UK or other countries not to do anything.

You can do whatever you like at a personal or even corporate level, it
won't make the slightest difference to global warming, the environment
or anything. The only thing that will is drastic, really painful
intergovernmental action on a global scale. Any action you take is
absolutely futile given the scale of emissions elsewhere.

Duh, regulating standby power consumption is an intergovernmental initiative. Let's hope there are more of them.

The whole generating capacity of Britain is a drop in the ocean. We
make no difference whatever we do. Give up. It's futile.
It isn't futile. It means the UK is less dependent on fossil fuels, meaning less pollution, less respiratory diseases, less overheads for businesses.

Not to any meaningful or even detectable degree. China alone is
increasing its electricity generating capacity every 17 hours by as much
as we would save in a year by turning all our TVs off every night. We
just can't compete with that. It isn't even worth trying.

Eh? Who said it was a competition?

Since there is no practical point in turning off the TV every night, you
can only be doing it so that you can piously lecture your friends or
anyone else who will listen. But in fact you're impotent, and the
honest approach would be to admit it.

Spare me your "pious lecturing" accusations. I think individual efforts are a waste of time. I'd be quite happy to see governments encourage better consumption through various punitive "polluter pays" initiatives.

--
"Hello. I'm Leonard Nimoy. The following tale of alien encounters is true. And by true, I mean false. It's all lies. But they're entertaining lies. And in the end, isn't that the real truth? The answer is: No."
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