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If you read the study linked to in the article, you'll see that a majority percentage of European and Asian nationals would pay extra to buy more environmentally-friendly computers. This was apparently less of a concern in the United States at the time of the study.

Edited 2006-09-13 16:45

USA is different, people doesn't care about their cars gas consumption (which is a higher pollution than computers), so why would they care about computers?

Government in USA should higher prices for gas or atleast taxes, right now price of gas in USA is 50% of EU prices

Bit disappointed this was modded down, as he's absolutely right. And we don't need to open up the debate on how America can keep gasoline prices this low, do we?

It's wrong to body-swerve the very idea of touting greener tech to America, just as it's not wrong to make UK schools look seriously at what they feed to their morbidly-obese pupils. They may ignore it, but the need to keep trying overrides the 'pointlessness' argument.

Why would US always have prime access to new stuff ? Sony delayed the PS3 on March 2007 in EU, the Apple Event 2006 was moved from EU to US, etc... For one time EU have something before the rest of the world (US and JP), I think you have not to complain...

And yes, ecology is far from being a concern in US.

Kochise

The UK company that is "partnered with" (stupid marketing term for "buying from") VIA according to the article is using the C7-D to create entirely carbon-free computers. VIA also has PC-1 concept machines that are entirely carbon-free.

It's called photosynthesis. Plants NEED carbon dioxide just like we need oxygen. It's part of the beautiful interdependent cycle of life.

Yup. Simple rule of thumb: everything on a plant/tree that's green is capable of photosynthesis.

yeah but we are producing more than plants can handle. So much, in fact, that it damages the atmosphere and can lead to increased temperatures and reduced shielding of UV.

this is why Asia and Europe and the United Nations all understand the need to eliminate carbon-emissions from manufactory processes.

Damages the atmosphere? I think you are suggesting that C02 destroys the ozone layer. I'm not sure, but I don't think that's right. For one thing, it's heavier than air.

But since you broached the temperature issue, let me say that I don't understand why people report on global warming without mentioning that the sun is known to be getting hotter and larger. All stars like our sun are. If I remember right, I think it's luminosity is increasing at about 0.1% per century. It seems appropriate to mention this in all global warming stories.

let me say that I don't understand why people report on global warming without mentioning that the sun is known to be getting hotter and larger.

You need to read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming#Solar_variation_theory

That's a totally different thing. It's talking about solar activity--sunspots and solar flares, etc.

I was referencing the gradual increase in size and heat/light output that all stars like our sun experience. It's due to the way they use up their fuel. I don't understand it enough to explain it, and I don't know any links because I've read about it in books.

Yes, all stars including the sun bloat up as they get older. The bigger a star is, the faster it goes (so the smallest stars will live for trillions of years, the biggest for 25,000, if they really are that big). The sun is a little less than halfway through its 10 billion year life, and all this time it's been cooling and getting larger and brighter.

This continues until the sun hits age 9 billion, at which point the hydrogen runs out and the sun poofs out to gigantic size, and spends the last billion years burning helium (and other things, towards the bitter end). This won't actually DESTROY the Earth, but will probably bake it to a crisp.

The Earth will be completely uninhabitable long before then, though. Planets are heated by their parent stars, and there's a zone around every star where the planet's surface temperature would be between the boiling and freezing points of water. Earth is sitting inside the Sun's habitable zone, but as the sun gets brighter, the zone moves outward... within about a billion years the Earth will be too hot for liquid water on the surface.

The other factor, of course, is the atmosphere. If not for the greenhouse effect we've got, (the water vapor and CO2 in the atmosphere) the Earth's average temperature would be something like -30 C. Obviously, if we add too much CO2, or make the atmosphere thicker, we end up trapping too much heat and end up like Venus. In fact, Venus and Mars apparently both had liquid water on their surfaces, but one had too much atmosphere and their greenhouse effect ran away, and one lost too much atmosphere... So, runaway greenhouse effects will take us even before the "habitable zone" moves too far out.

Basically, the holy grail of extrasolar planetary research is to find Earth-sized planets in the habitable zones of their parent stars. Thus far there hasn't been much luck; the planets are too small and far away from the stars to see.

Plants don't actually sequester a lot of carbon dioxide. Each time a plant dies and decomposes, it releases most of the carbon dioxide again. Ocean's on the other hand sequester the majority of atmospheric CO2.

Citation from article:
The term "carbon-free" isn't what it sounds like -- it's not like sugar-free or caffeine-free. It means that in using this CPU, the carbon dioxide produced by generating the electricity necessary to run it is offset or nullified.

Read article before you post.

Actually, what you want is a clean atmosphere, so all the heat and light will reflect back. Yeah, one way to do it is preventing it getting in.
(which is something hurricanes do well- not only do they transform heat into windpower (and unfortunately, destroyed New Orleans), they're also big white extremely reflective regions)