Power Consumption and the Internet

Who needs lights? The computer monitor gives off all the light I need!....Just kidding, but seriously, it is not only the demand for faster and faster connections. More and more people are becoming connected. It won't be long before there really is a computer in every home connected and cruising the internet, running 24/7. Remember when kids went outside to play, throwing around the baseball? Now they'll throw and hit a "virtual" baseball while bloggin on various chat areas about the latest news.

But think of all the power I save by sitting at home in front of my screen instead of driving over to your house to watch yours.

Can your car float? It's 3,000 miles.

Yes my car can float. Not for very long, though.

It is true that a lot of energy is used by the internet but the alternative must be considered.

Imagine printing books containing all the available information and distribute it to everybody that might want to read it.

I believe 17 pine trees are needed to produce 1 1000 kg of paper.

A lot of the paper currently used for advertisement can be replaced by by the internet. For example the community newspaper for our area is distributed and printed by money obtained from advertisements. The result is that the first thing you do when you receive the paper is to remove and throw away about 2/3 of the paper.

Of the rest only 50% is articles.

This wasting of resources wont stop because advertising is tax deduct able.

....I believe 17 pine trees are needed to produce 1 1000 kg of paper....

- and a lot of water too.

Thirty years ago, the "Chicago Tribune" newspaper consumed 40,000 trees per day in order to print the average daily newspaper for its distribution. This was a large part of the Tribune's business. So large that it owned the forest land, the pulp/paper mills and the ships to move it to Chicago.

I bet that the internet can distribute the same amount useful information as the Tribune on a fraction of the energy it takes to cut, mill into pulp/paper, and ship 40,000 trees per day not counting the energy to print and distribute the paper.

OLD WAYS DIE HARD

If you really want to save paper (and the energy needed to manufacture, print, and distribute paper based information), then we should all petition the government to simplify federal and state taxes. Imagine all the tax books that are printed. This tax season, I had 2 tax books (1 fed and 1 state) plus about a dozen suplemental pages. It was quite a nice stack of paper when it was all done, just to show what I owed.

Now multiply that by the millions of US taxpayers, PLUS add in all the tax books and forms that every year are not used. My local library has several boxes every year that get pitched as soon as tax season is over. If every library has several boxes, that REALLY adds up!

Simplify taxes, eliminate the vast numbers of shelters, credits, and deductions, and encourage (and eventually stipulate) filers to do their taxes online. A key part of this simplification would be a flat tax rate across the board, with no tax shelters which rich lawyers can exploit and use for their clients.

Environmentalists, if they truly care, should love the idea of a flat tax rate for how much it would simplify and eliminate all that paper waste. Not to mention that we could get rid of the bulk of the IRS. There's not only energy savings there, but cost savings. And reduced federal spending means reduced reuired taxes to run the government.

Sure Jake ! you're absolutely right. But shouldn't we wait a bit until we have another job for all those people who work in the printing industry ? You have an idea how many people get unemployed when you stop printing ?
And yes, they would need only a few employees at the IRS. You gonna give all those other people another job ?

OK, we should be careful with our envirement, but I know that the big waste of trees does NOT go to paper industry.

I think I heard that 70,000,000 people filed over the internet this year, a record. I haven't seen a paper tax form or manual in 5 years.

I agree that there is a considerable amount of increment in power consumption, when more and more people sit with internet.

This is where man's intelligent shall work. Some one mentioned games on internet. People shall consciously distinguish between several usages of internet and concentrate on its communication side.

There are some experienced engineers in our company who worked on several projects without the internet kind of facilities. In those days projects use to take several months or even years. Such projects are just a matter of days now. It is because of this excellent media of communication.

Recreation, entertainment, gaming are the side features in the net. There should be a limit on bandwidth of these kind of things instead of reducing the bandwidth as whole.

I think, nearly same power will be consumed at home when leaving the internet and watching the television.

"I think, nearly same power will be consumed at home when leaving the internet and watching the television".

That is true for those of us who do not watch the television at the same time as we use the internet.

What I mean to say is , that Media of communication is being misused a lot.

I don't know about your weather. At present its very hot in our country. So, people who are using TV or computer definitely use fans, AC or coolers. Suppose what they are doing with internet is useful for their business or some productive work then it makes sense in using the power. Otherwise its waste.

So, some people care about the world they live in.

This is an example about wath internet does, i'm reading you from Spain and as us, a lot of people are welding ideas thanks to internet. We are not Einsteins but, after reading this kind of dialogues, will look at solar panels, winds generators and pem membranes in other way. Asking ourselves ¿Can i put one of this in my house? And will ask ours governs to reduce taxes in those technologies. Yea, there is a lot of people spending power in how his budy grows in front a tv and others going in their cars and not sharing a bus when they perfectly can, and only seing jokes in youtube or any else worse. So this message aplies to they, and us wen we are doing the same. It's at night and, have turn off my 100 wats lamp, and will continue to read. Tanks for be there.

A lot of discussion had been done on:
Are Little Transformers Energy Pigs? <http://globalspec.ip09.com/rd/9z1zc8h3lmep1pe52h9m9ilfrf7gmh25d1l8mvk3i80> (Electrical Engineering)