There must be something to gain from research into greener ways of doing business.
I work in the maritime industry and green initiatives are working hand in hand with rising oil prices to make fuel and hull efficiency a source of great savings for owners and operators. This is driven by research and engineering in areas like CO2 scrubbers, hull coatings and simple things like using energy efficient lighting.
Sure, burning less fuel might put less money back into the pockets of oil companies, but there's got to be a better future at the end of this road than burning dwindling supplies of heavy fuel by the millions of tons and smogging up the place.
I can't see the validity in an argument justifying Western emissions based on the emissions of developing nations. Just because they're not doing their bit, doesn't mean we shouldn't do ours.
The main reason I have never actually installed Linux on one of my desktops or laptops is the bewildering number of choices and their diehard fanboys. I like the idea of running a streamlined OS as my laptop is largely used for net surfing, watching video, using spotify, playing minecraft and using MS Office for work. I'd imagine I wouldn't run into too many problems with these tasks on linux, and I'd happily spend weeks sorting out little niggles to get the thing running to my liking, but I'm damned if I can work out which build to back.
It's a bit like my outlook on politics; I find myself agreeing with many liberal and left leaning ideas, but the landscape is so full of fractured groups bickering over the smallest details and frankly sociopathic extremists, that I just keep the hell out of it.
Don't look at his anti-smoking infographic, your head will explode.
For reference, I am anti-smoking (and anti the word "infographic") but there are some very cheap tricks in there. The kind of tricks you might get away with if you rely on mass media reading sheep (and those stupid enough to buy Dell laptops on your say so).
It's all very well owning The Sun, the largest newspaper in Europe (or whatever was claimed) but you could fill that whole damned rag with ads and pictures of kittens; as long as you had one story about a football (soccer) scandal and one story about a soap opera, everyone would go about their lives as normal.
With the internet in its current state, we can rely on educated people to find their own sources of information, check their reliability and make their own conclusions. Yes it would be nice to have the Sun readers thinking for themselves, but it's not about to happen. Let them have their crappy media, as long as they're happy with it. We still have plenty of room to go out and find the information we need. Just because 90% of published media is crap about X Factor doesn't mean I'm spending my 90% of my time reading crap about X Factor, that's for sure.
I don't see what he's gaining here. With that awful looking keyboard setup, surely all he's managed to put together is a poor netbook? Surely you get a decent netbook with a larger screen, better battery life and have the freedom of not being on an apple device for the same money?
Maybe he just needed to accessorize his hipster glasses properly.
I've often wondered, when creating a solar panel (or wind turbine or any other "green" power source) for a particular purpose, does someone actually work out the net emissions saving?
If you factored in the emissions of extracting and refining all of the materials, transporting them, creating components from them, putting them together, putting them in place (often set in concrete or similar) - how long does a green energy device need to run for it to counteract its own impact on the environment? Do you need to add in the impact of the researchers jumping in their cars every morning to get to the office/lab and work on the next breakthrough? Who is offsetting them? I completely understand that renewable energy sources are almost certainly better alternatives than burning coal or oil or babies, but how much better? How carbon neutral are carbon neutral enterprises?
It might be that the impact of manufacture is taken into account in some schemes, but by my knowledge of the shipping industry at least, it usually isn't.
Both possible uses I'm sure, but with 90% of world cargo transport moving by sea, it might be worth looking at the big ships on the sea, rather than the boats in it.
There have been and continue to be improvements in hull efficiency by design, but coatings also play a big part in reducing the power needed to propel large ships. Whether it's resistance to things growing on the hull, preventing corrosion or reducing friction against the water, hull coatings are big business. Currently, I believe, silicon coatings are at the forefront, but improvements are always sought. This is an area that companies would be willing to invest in too, reduced friction at sea reduces fuel usage and/or the thrust needed from the engines. Either way you're looking at a cost reduction (at a time bunker prices are sky high) and a reduction in emissions to shout about in your CSR drivel.
It must be kept in mind that even if it's possible to apply this as a coating to any form of transport, it's going to come up against a range of forces and organisms looking to get it the hell off that vehicle. I for one think a first application should be to coat the inside of my Captain America mug so that all the Tannin stains are safely out of sight inside me, rather than in the mug.
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There must be something to gain from research into greener ways of doing business.
I work in the maritime industry and green initiatives are working hand in hand with rising oil prices to make fuel and hull efficiency a source of great savings for owners and operators. This is driven by research and engineering in areas like CO2 scrubbers, hull coatings and simple things like using energy efficient lighting.
Sure, burning less fuel might put less money back into the pockets of oil companies, but there's got to be a better future at the end of this road than burning dwindling supplies of heavy fuel by the millions of tons and smogging up the place.
I can't see the validity in an argument justifying Western emissions based on the emissions of developing nations. Just because they're not doing their bit, doesn't mean we shouldn't do ours.
The main reason I have never actually installed Linux on one of my desktops or laptops is the bewildering number of choices and their diehard fanboys. I like the idea of running a streamlined OS as my laptop is largely used for net surfing, watching video, using spotify, playing minecraft and using MS Office for work. I'd imagine I wouldn't run into too many problems with these tasks on linux, and I'd happily spend weeks sorting out little niggles to get the thing running to my liking, but I'm damned if I can work out which build to back.
It's a bit like my outlook on politics; I find myself agreeing with many liberal and left leaning ideas, but the landscape is so full of fractured groups bickering over the smallest details and frankly sociopathic extremists, that I just keep the hell out of it.
I'd be quite confident at guessing your age from that reply.
I think he's talking rile up as in agitate them to fight with the author on an anti-mega media crusade.
My part in the mega media wars can be summed up by the number of times I have misread Mega Media in the title as Megavideo...
Don't look at his anti-smoking infographic, your head will explode.
For reference, I am anti-smoking (and anti the word "infographic") but there are some very cheap tricks in there. The kind of tricks you might get away with if you rely on mass media reading sheep (and those stupid enough to buy Dell laptops on your say so).
Either that or he/she correctly filed many of the recent stories on /. as "not news"
It's all very well owning The Sun, the largest newspaper in Europe (or whatever was claimed) but you could fill that whole damned rag with ads and pictures of kittens; as long as you had one story about a football (soccer) scandal and one story about a soap opera, everyone would go about their lives as normal.
With the internet in its current state, we can rely on educated people to find their own sources of information, check their reliability and make their own conclusions. Yes it would be nice to have the Sun readers thinking for themselves, but it's not about to happen. Let them have their crappy media, as long as they're happy with it. We still have plenty of room to go out and find the information we need. Just because 90% of published media is crap about X Factor doesn't mean I'm spending my 90% of my time reading crap about X Factor, that's for sure.
I don't see what he's gaining here. With that awful looking keyboard setup, surely all he's managed to put together is a poor netbook? Surely you get a decent netbook with a larger screen, better battery life and have the freedom of not being on an apple device for the same money?
Maybe he just needed to accessorize his hipster glasses properly.
I wouldn't like to have to work out the per cargo transport emissions for any given load.
Truck-> ship -> lorry -> warehouse -> van -> consumer? And don't forget the flight that sales guy took to go and meet the client.
Add that sort of work for every component and you've got a headache. I'd limit myself to the back of an envelope too...
Very helpful and informative, and the link provides exactly what I was looking for, with the life spans of the solar panels included.
Thanks!
I've often wondered, when creating a solar panel (or wind turbine or any other "green" power source) for a particular purpose, does someone actually work out the net emissions saving?
If you factored in the emissions of extracting and refining all of the materials, transporting them, creating components from them, putting them together, putting them in place (often set in concrete or similar) - how long does a green energy device need to run for it to counteract its own impact on the environment? Do you need to add in the impact of the researchers jumping in their cars every morning to get to the office/lab and work on the next breakthrough? Who is offsetting them? I completely understand that renewable energy sources are almost certainly better alternatives than burning coal or oil or babies, but how much better? How carbon neutral are carbon neutral enterprises?
It might be that the impact of manufacture is taken into account in some schemes, but by my knowledge of the shipping industry at least, it usually isn't.
Both possible uses I'm sure, but with 90% of world cargo transport moving by sea, it might be worth looking at the big ships on the sea, rather than the boats in it. There have been and continue to be improvements in hull efficiency by design, but coatings also play a big part in reducing the power needed to propel large ships. Whether it's resistance to things growing on the hull, preventing corrosion or reducing friction against the water, hull coatings are big business. Currently, I believe, silicon coatings are at the forefront, but improvements are always sought. This is an area that companies would be willing to invest in too, reduced friction at sea reduces fuel usage and/or the thrust needed from the engines. Either way you're looking at a cost reduction (at a time bunker prices are sky high) and a reduction in emissions to shout about in your CSR drivel. It must be kept in mind that even if it's possible to apply this as a coating to any form of transport, it's going to come up against a range of forces and organisms looking to get it the hell off that vehicle. I for one think a first application should be to coat the inside of my Captain America mug so that all the Tannin stains are safely out of sight inside me, rather than in the mug.