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Take, for example, the idea that one of the top 10 things you should do to make a difference to your energy consumption is to unplug your cell-phone charger when you are not using it. The truth is that leaving a phone charger plugged in uses about 0.01 kWh per day, 1/100th of the power consumed by a lightbulb. This means that switching the phone charger off for a whole day saves the same energy as is used in driving an average car for one second. Switching off phone chargers is like bailing the Titanic with a teaspoon.
:roflpicard:
BUT BUT BUT… If we all bailed the Titanic with teaspoons…
The fact that you believe that is the exact misconception about our energy needs that he’s trying to point out.
Way too much pseudo science has gone into creating “top 10 things you can do” lists that do nothing more than give people a false sense that our future energy needs have a simple solution.
Let me try to make up for my lack of math in the motorcycle death thread…
So unplugging your cell charger for 24 hours gives you 1 second of car driving time.
NYC has approximately 50000 livery plated vehicles. Probably about half of those run 24/7 on any given day because the drivers just swap out. Soooo…
60 seconds x 60 minutes x 24 hours = 86400 people needing to unplug their chargers to make up for one cab running 24 hours.
86400 x 25000 cabs in ONE CITY = 2.16 billion chargers needing to be unplugged for 24 hours just to run the cabs in one city for one day. There aren’t remotely close to that many cell phones in the US.
This same concept is what drives most of my beef towards hybrid cars. It is not a solution. It is not even a band-aid for the problem. It is not enough to just take baby steps. It is basically just putting off the inevitable.
Kind of like jamming a chair under a door knob to stop a guy with a chainsaw from entering.
oh, trust me, I’m not saying this is a solution that will do anything worthwhile. I’m just sayin that if enough people do it, over a period of time, that 1 second of a car could turn into a few (obviously).
There are better ideas to push though. It’s like spending $XXXX on a super light exhaust system to save 3 lbs.
I am all for recycling and saving energy, but some things are just stupid…
the gf would unplug the phone charger all the time and I would ‘yell’ at her to not worry about. ‘whine whine whine its making this buzzing noise so it must be using electricity’
and she would also turn off the shredder bc its ready light was on.
Until these issues are physically shoved down your throats in the literal sense, I don’t understand the point in creating these threads.
Some people (like my girlfriend) are going to unplug their cell phone chargers, appliances, turn off all the lights when they’re not using them, etc, regardless of how much energy it saves. If that makes them feel good when they lay down at night, then so be it.
Personally, for me, I am the SOB paying for the energy, and will do what I please with it. For me, its worth the 5 bucks a year to just not deal with the issue.
Has anyone priced the outlet you will have to replace after you unplug your charger every morning, and the plug it in every night? I would be surprised if its not worn out after a year. Good ones are not cheap (good ones, I know you can get a walmart special for 99 cents, but there is a difference).
Yeah, my thoughts/opinions are pretty unclear. I’m pretty bad at expressing them. Oh well.
I just think that to fix an “energy crisis” and/or break our dependencies on fossil fuels, something huge needs to be developed. We need something that will revolutionize the energy industry, rather than just try to buy ourselves more time.
And its not just cell chargers. It many appliances that consume MUCH more in “standby” mode.
Basing the entire analysis on a minuscule part of the range is a pretty useless analysis.
and what the does electricity generation using Coal Fired power plants have to do with driving a fucking cab.
I totally agree that it’s not going to make a huge difference, but I started to turn off my power strips to my computers and entertainment center, and I’ve saved close to $10 a month on my electric bill, so financially it’s worth it for me. It will offset some of the cost of running the A/C this summer.