Is the LCD greener than the CRT?

Nathan Smith

Thu Jul 03 12:35:36 -0700 2008

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Perhaps we should commision someone to come up with an all-encompassing, unwieldly, amazingly complex "green formula."

Is the LCD greener than the CRT?

Uncle Entity

Thu Jul 03 13:04:17 -0700 2008

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GW = Anthropomorphic Emissions(AE)

Should've held out for the government grant...

Is the LCD greener than the CRT?

Charles E Hill

Thu Jul 03 13:29:39 -0700 2008

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Ah, but do you include indirect emissions?

As in the increased cow flatulence due to the heavy beef diet of many nations?  What about sheep flatulence because of the population's demand for wool?

Is the LCD greener than the CRT?

AB3A

Thu Jul 03 14:16:21 -0700 2008

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...what about the oil we need to extract to make synthetics for the spandex pants crowd?

Is the LCD greener than the CRT?

Uncle Entity

Thu Jul 03 14:57:08 -0700 2008

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But of course...

Anything not resulting from people living in harmony with nature as hunter/gatherer tribes is 'anthropomorphic'.

Till the soil or domesticate an animal in opposition with Gaia's grand plan and you are contributing to global warming.

Do you really think it's a coincidence that the earth has been steadily warming since people invented agriculture?

No agriculture = ice ages, agriculture = Anthropomorphic Climate Change.

shenanigans

Scott Drake

Thu Jul 03 15:11:06 -0700 2008

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That's not fair. No one said anything about "Gaia's grand plan" or "living in harmony with nature". Straw man.

Also, I'm pretty sure your hypothesis is wrong. If you have any evidence at all that human agriculture has been staving off an ice age, the world would surely love to see it.

shenanigans

Uncle Entity

Thu Jul 03 16:34:41 -0700 2008

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Just look around you, lots of agriculture and no ice age.

Though strawmen may have something to do with it too as they act to keep the forces of nature at bay.

But, yeah, I'm also pretty sure my hypothesis is wrong...

shenanigans

Scott Drake

Thu Jul 03 16:49:48 -0700 2008

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Oh, man... That is very very funny. You got me.

I feel like an ass, but you totally made my day.

Holy crap. Thank you. :)

Is the LCD greener than the CRT?

Beryllium Sphere(r)

Thu Jul 03 16:58:21 -0700 2008

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That's still being debated by climatologists. William Ruddiman's "early anthropocene hypothesis", that deforestation and agricultural methane bumped the climate starting 8,000 years ago, is criticized for choosing the wrong interglacial to compare with ours.

Is the LCD greener than the CRT?

rubycodez

Thu Jul 03 21:26:11 -0700 2008

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turkeys keep the planet warm, the year to year increase in turkey flocks is creating global warming.  For proof, look no further than Thanksgiving holiday, we eat most the turkeys and then winter comes.  With the birth of poults comes spring and then summer as they grow into big gobblers.

Is the LCD greener than the CRT?

Scott Drake

Thu Jul 03 15:00:41 -0700 2008

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I believe that it is ruminant belching that releases most of the methane.

The Reg article is a little dubious. The 17000:1 GWP (global warming potentional where co2=1) is at odds with other measures. The Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion, 2002 says it has a GWP of 8000:1, as does the safety data sheet from the Air Liquide Encyclopedia.

I mention the Assessment of Ozone Depletion because it looks like it is a substitute for an ozone-layer harming gas. Also, according to the Air Liquide Encyclopedia, it's heavier-than-air.

The latest issue is not yet up at the AGU website (American Geophysical Union).

Climate change and greenhouse gas emissions are real problems. I get the feeling that this story (the Reg's take, not the paper) is meant to make us "greens" look stupid, and to convince everyone else that it's pointless to worry about co2.

I will reserve judgment on the paper until I can read the abstract, but I am almost totally sure that the author is not suggesting that co2 emissions aren't a problem.

So, how much?

Beryllium Sphere(r)

Thu Jul 03 17:18:19 -0700 2008

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If nitrogen trifluoride is 17,200 times better at trapping heat, but if there's (for example) a million times less of it than there is of CO2, then it would be lost in the noise. We need to know how much less of it there is.

The linked article is completely silent about the numbers that are indispensable for having an informative story. Going over to look at Geophysical Research Letters, the abstract says that estimated 2008 production of nitrogen trifluoride (not releases, production: it's toxic and may be controlled already) is "equivalent to 67 million metric tons of CO2". Compare that to our annual manmade emissions of 26 billion tons of CO2. Another number appears in the sentence "If released, annual production would increase the lower atmospheric abundance by 0.4 ppt". Carbon dioxide is measured in hundreds of parts per million. Nitrogen trifluoride is measured in tenths of a part per trillion.

So, how much?

Scott Drake

Thu Jul 03 18:37:57 -0700 2008

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Could you post a link to that abstract? I could not find it, and I said above, apparently in error, that it's not on the AGU site yet... My second episode of stupidity in so many comments on this story.

So, how much?

Simon

Thu Jul 03 23:27:46 -0700 2008

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A quick Google suggests that NF3 production facilities produce a few hundred tonnes a year, global production is a few thousand or tens of thousands of tonnes a year, so 10's or 100's of millions of tonnes CO2 equivalent (yawn).

Probably enough to dent the green credentials of anything produced with it, but small fry as regards global warming.

Some users of NF3 ensure it is combusted before atmospheric release, because it is toxic, so the exact figure will depend on precisely how it is used.

So, how much?

Simon

Thu Jul 03 23:28:28 -0700 2008

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few hundred tonnes a year EACH

So, how much?

Beryllium Sphere(r)

Sat Jul 05 00:43:51 -0700 2008

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http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2008GL034542.shtml

So, how much?

Scott Drake

Sat Jul 05 00:54:20 -0700 2008

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Thank you.

The Reg is getting cranky

isdnip

Thu Jul 03 18:39:27 -0700 2008

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I like The Register and have been reading it daily for the past decade or so, not to mention the competing blog The Inquirer founded by the former owner of The Reg.  However, in recent months, it has been devoting a lot of space to silly articles by global-warming skeptics and others opposed to "green" initiatives.  Today there was a feature about how wind power wouldn't be useful for the UK, because there are periods when there's no wind anywhere in the UK or nearby Europe (due to big high pressure systems).  That was fairly rational, though it tries to lead one to conclude that green power is a bad idea.

The consequences of global warming, not to mention depletion of some fuel supplies, are serious and even depressing.  When faced with a bad situation, one option is denial.  Simply pretend it ain't so!  A second approach, more popular in the US than Europe, is to adopt a religion that believes that the world is coming to an end soon anyway, so we may as well party like it's 1999.  These are both irrational but understandable variations on a theme.  A third approach is despair; don't do anything and disparage those who try.  A fourth is to become an activist to try to fix things.  The Reg leans towards the first and third options.   Technocrat has more people in the fourth category. 

The Reg is getting cranky

Scott Drake

Thu Jul 03 19:55:12 -0700 2008

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Well put. The article (the Reg's) is from the viewpoint of the third option.

Not sure about your speculation about technocrats, though. Seems like many have a libertarian-leaning-towards-survivalism streak. Perhaps a fifth option: survivalist secretly wishing to test their mettle.

(Not me, btw. I fall into the fourth option.)

The Reg is getting cranky

Bhima

Fri Jul 04 00:41:36 -0700 2008

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Where they used to be snarky, informative, topical, and relevant The Register has for a while now been completely full of shit. A while back they suddenly started randomly picking issues to be against and disparaging random people involved or interested in the issues.  The last climate related article from The Register we had on Technocrat was a complete unethical farce.  Starting with a letter in Nature Magazine, they took a title and a few choice phrases of the abstract and then dredged around and found a newspaper’s website for unrelated climate sounding text and some climate obstructionist kook website for some graphs and mashed them together.  Having read the letter in Nature, it was clear that they only used name “Nature Magazine” to falsify some sort of credibility where the article clearly had none.

What’s so disappointing is how many news aggregation / Weblog sites were completely uncritical with their coverage of it (Technocrat included).

 

As an American citizen the American public’s reaction to environmental, energy & other resource supply, and health care issues has long been a source of frustration to me.  However the reaction to warnings of climate change during the Bush Administration exceeds all of my most cynical imaginings.  The successful binding of these issues to imagined leftwing, Marxist, American-Hating, liberals is going to have far reaching consequences.  Today the news is dominated consequences of the politicizing of science and the glorification of extremist consumer culture and few, if any, people understand that.  I wonder how bad it will have to get before most Americans come to the understanding that these issues are importance to all people and that ignoring the problems and going shopping in their giant SUV is hurting themselves just as much as it is hurting everyone else.