Slashdot Mirror
Environmental Impact of the Ubiquitous Microchip
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.
What's the alternative? I seriously doubt microchip production will be shutdown because it is environmentally unsafe.
Hey, CmdrTaco, I found a site you might want to read sometime.
TheFrood
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
Just FYI.
'nuff said
Do you get paid for this job? Is it performance based? :)
Say what yoyu will about CmdrTaco, but at least he's consistent. Every story he posts is a duplicate!
-Aaron
-Mark
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/2 3/168225&mode=flat&tid=126
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? :)
Unless mankind redesigns itself
There have been so many dupes in the past week I'm beginning to believe Taco is playing a joke on us. Every article he puts up has been done 3 days before... I could go on, but this has already been covered a dozen times in the last week.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
My memory isn't that great, but Cmdr. Taco really makes me feel good about myself.
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.
This was a coincidental article to read when I was browsing the morning circulars today looking for printer cartridge replacements. Why bother with $35+ a piece cartridges (one for black and one for color) when I can just get a NEW printer for $60, trashing the old printer and adding about a cubic foot of trash, and god knows how much in invested energy/resources. At least they're starting to recycle cartridges now, but if they're going to remain this expensive, why bother? In the interest of Gaia, I think I'll bite the bullet and buy the cartridges... Damned social conscience...
-Christopher Wu
http://www.christopherwu.net/
'Pollution is inherent in the system!'
'Pollution is inherent in the system!'
'Help! Help! I'm being contaminated!'
'You saw him contaminating me, didn't you?'
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Taco is just being environmentally friendly by reducing waste from posts by re-using old ones.
Stop putting up repeat stories, you fat fuck!
I, for one, appreciate the humor of your post.
I don't remember the last story having a dead link at the end pointing to here! :-)
n2q
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. -- Benjamin Franklin
I mean seriously now, we've seen how many duplicates on /.? WHY!? Is it because the editors don't read their own site? Is it because they have memory problems? Are multiple people posting under one name and simply unaware of what others are doing with that same name? Maybe the scroll functions of their mice are broken? I just don't get how this happens SO often...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yet Another Dup.
/. article duplication is utterly pathetic. Mod me down if you wish, but you should mod me up if you like /. and want them to fix the number one problem.
/. will always seem somewhat podunk to me. Maybe that's what they want.
The rate of
The FAQ says that the editors are all busy people and can't be reasonably expected to read all the articles they post. I would argue that is simply a lot of laziness, but even so, editors should at least be required to read the stinking *titles* of the articles. Just minding the titles alone would probably reduce the dup problem by 80%.
Most obvious of all would be a simple keyword search of past articles. They could easily implement a keyword search that searches story contents for the last N days every time an editor tries to post a story. If the search turns up relevance to another story which is beyond some threshold, the editor should be warned and given a chance to not post the story.
Until they fix this,
However, these chip are never really destroyed the basic logic is still in them. Now the natural radiation which is much higher on garbage dumps than you would expect comes into play. It's struture altering effect creates basically a natural genetic algorithm on these chips which breads something which could be best described as silicone lifeform - it's slightly reproducing and adaptable.
Currect simulations show that in about 20 years these heaps will have reached nano-fracmentation. This means that they will send of little silicone nano-lifeforms comparable to bacteria. These thing are not a direct threat to the normal lifeforms on this planet - all life is carbon/hydrogen/nitrogen-based and not silicone-based. However simulations show that these silicone bacteria will spread all over the hull of earth (70 % silicone) and will eventually "mutate" to incoporate iron. This means that 85% of the outher hull of earth will be destabilized. Earth rotation and gravitation from moon will do the rest - our planet will slowly evaporate into silicone bacteria dust.
It's very important to do something about these problems, that mean either - shipping old computers to Mars for savety (radiation is lower there because Mars is older than earth), melting down all old embedded devices or sterilize them with underground nuclear explosions.
However G.W.Bush is more occupied to save America oil supply in the gulf region than to do something against evaporation of earth.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
did you forget about deserts? I bet the sand is cleaner from a desert than it is from a beach, too...no water bringing in who knows what and depositing it.
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.
foldplay your photos won't know what hit them.
Why does everyone always make such a big fuss about dupe posts?
guess what else porduces and uses harfull chemicals in its production?
:)
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
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Are we all suppose to repost the same comments from the last time the article was posted or are we allowed to post new ones ? I wouldn't want to cause any sort of time continum problem...
He is being paid for having the original idea of Slashdot years ago.
Okay, I'm just a visitor here. I come for the news and haven't bothered registering a name and posting anything. When my time is limited, I find myself better off sticking with Wired's page because at least the editors read their own site and don't post repeat stories every week.
Seriously, it makes Slashdot look bad.
of all the energy and bandwidth wasted publishing duplicate stories?
"And this is my boy, Sherman. Speak, Sherman." "Hello." "Good boy."
I don't know, I'm pretty sure that I saw those blue Intel guys with sand pails and shovels at the beach last time I was there...
Why does everyone always make such a big fuss about dupe posts?
I can finally post that really witty reply it took me these past three days to come up with. ... ...
Oh, damn. I probably should've spent some time coming up with a witty reply.
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
Computers and communications networks avoid moving people and materials. This is their main economic impact.
Once again, the level of scholarship surrounding UN and environmental issues is very low.
Lew
According to the EPA, advanced technologies designed for the elimination of duplicate stories could reduce the environmental impact of Slashdot by up to 50%. I urge you all to write your Congressional representatives and let them know of your concern on this issue.
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
given that marketing etc. costs take up 50% of the price, the $5 in fuel costs alone seems like way too much for DRAM to be profitable at current prices.
When will that be? I was hoping to make you give up your SUV by Tuesday, since that's when I gain my dictatorship required for the task, but we can reschedule if that's inconvenient for you.
the free software dipshits should get off their ass and learn to accept the idea that memory and cpu profilers are necessary and important tools, not goo gaws that can be tacked on as an afterthought and that dont work very well.
Someone should sing that and put it online in ogg/mp3 format. It should be Taco's theme! ;)
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
CmdrTaco's Impact of the Ubiquitous Microchip
quote:port 17 udp
Has anybody else noticed that there is a slight problem with the new ways comment moderation totals are displayed? For example this parents post currently has:
Moderations: 20% Offtopic, 20% Informative, 40% Funny,
Which gives a total of 80%. What are the other 20% of the votes? Also, sometimes the totals come in with 110%
It's a minor quible, but should be a quick fix.
700 grams of nitrogen? But....the atmosphere is, like, 78% nitrogen or something. What happens if we use it all up? We'll have only 22% of the atmosphere left, and that's mostly oxygen, which is a lethally corrosive and highly flammable gas. We'll all die!
OMG CHEMICALS NO! I HATE CHEMICALS! THOSE FUCKIN THINGS! THERE'S 700 CHEMICALS IN CIGARETTES! I HATE DHMO THE MOST! HERE IS MORE INFO ABOUT DHMO:
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
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
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...)
32mb dram chips are not produced at all any more. For this research to be of any use at all it needs to be more current. Why? because, it doesn't take 16x as much resources to make a 256mb dram chip as it does to make a 32mb chip.
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.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
You'll be happy to know sand is a renewable resource, continuously produced as water and weathering break down a negligibly thin upper part of the the 20 mile thick silicate crust of the planet. The crust itself also has a renewal cycle
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And, I, for one, am getting really tired of people saying, "I, for one, bla dee bla bla". That phrase is officially overused.
Power to the Peaceful
producing and using a 32MB DRAM chip weighing 2 grams
...
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?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
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?
Virtually serving coffee
If CmdrTaco posted an article talking about the way he posts dupes, would he duplicate that posting as well?
That thing you stick in your computer is a module which features multiple chips.
So much for my Karma, but what the hell is it good for anymore?
/. /. /. front page /. and contribute some material. Googles for articles and finds 3 or 4 really good articles in the google cache from wired.com, posts them /. and post some cool articles found earlier in that day, after all, they don't remember posting since before dinnertime. /. and after reading through for a couple of minutes, yells "What the hell is with all the dupes on /. today!??!! f'ing editors!"
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
Whereas IMO I think IMO is, IMO completely overused. But this only IMO you understand
Here's and idea I just thinked:
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.
He's got a wife
and probably a life.
Maybe when you get one,
you'll understand the fun.
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).
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I think there are poeple who are now willfuly trying to get dupes up on the front page of slashdot.
If this is a dupe, why don't you just delete it from the main page?
I don't have any numbers, but I'd be willing to bet the environmental impact of transportation, wasteful packaging, advertising, and retail outlet shelf-time are far greater than that of manufacturing most technology products. Then, take into account the office buildings / transportation / materials / etc. used by all the middlemen and worthless-job suits who mull around all day doing nothing of value with regards to actual production.
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.
Let me be facetious for once and spell out the environmental impact for a human body as this article seemingly does...
:)
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
Favorite
I have done extensive research and found that, on average, each SlashDot page hit costs 1.32 chickens, 2.55 shots of cheap tequila, a line of coke off a hooker's ass, 14 bytes off your CF card, 1.4 oz of fecal matter, and 4 drops of your momma's breast milk.
It's all well and good to assert these claims, but until it's corroborated, I won't believe it. I've never heard of the "United Nations University" If it's at all connected with the UN that gives me even MORE reason to distrust the report.
Vaughn, I believe you missed my point.
...] any idea how many lawsuits against the EPA there are yearly to address these scenarios?
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.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way