Killing the Planet One Cell Phone at A Time

A new study suggests that the ICT (Information and Communications Technology) industry will contribute, by 2040, a carbon footprint greater than 14% of all contributing industries, up from 1.6% in 2007. That’s half as large as the carbon projected impact of the entire transportation industry. ICT represents computers, monitors, servers, smartphones, tablets, telecom and the like.

The study fingers smartphones as a stealth culprit in generating a high planet killing carbon footprint. As we shift away from laptop and tower PCs towards smaller mobile devices, the overall environmental impact of technology is getting worse. From Fast Company:

Smartphones are particularly insidious for a few reasons. With a two-year average life cycle, they’re more or less disposable. The problem is that building a new smartphone, and mining the rare materials inside them, represents 85% to 95% of the device’s total CO2 emissions for two years (my note: not to mention the truly destructive strip mining required to obtain rare earth minerals). That means buying one new phone takes as much energy as recharging and operating an existing smartphone for an entire decade.

Zerohedge does a good job of spanking Apple and its peers for cultivating and building business on a replacement culture. Apple certainly plays the part of being an obedient progressive company, but its success requires rapid replacement of Apple technology by users. I’m sure you Apple users are acutely aware that the company is particularly aggressive in crippling the functionality of its “older” products with a variety of tricks to force (i.e. dupe) customers to buy a new device, such as software updates that cripple and slow down the device.

So, raise your hand all you climate alarmists. How long do you keep your cell phone before getting a new one? Perhaps, before the next smartphone upgrade cycle, just replace the battery in your existing phone and suffer through not having the latest shiny spiny thingy. I mean, after all, it is the planet we are saving.

Mickey Mouse and Hogwarts’ own Albus Dumbledore join an Alliance of World Scientists declaration of a “climate emergency”

The 11,000 name-petition that accompanied a statement of concern of climate change has been blocked as the signatories are being reviewed. Dozens of obvious fake signatories have been removed, and who knows how many more are just fake names, given that anyone with internet access could “sign” the petition.

The original statement from Oregon State University on the petition claimed the support of 11,000 world scientists in declaring a “climate emergency.” But, given access to sign the petition was unmoderated, open to anyone on the internet, this petition has zero legitimacy.

Rebelnews.com decomposes this little propaganda piece. Not many actual “climate scientists” on the list.

Is this even allowed? Maybe they should pull her Green card

Elizabeth May, the leader of the Canadian Federal Green Party, showed up at the Victory Day parade in … wait for it … a solar-powered car? eh, no. How about a gas guzzling Dodge Vipre muscle car. You’d think her spider sense must have tingled when her ride showed up. But, obviously not. With the human race on the verge of extinction because of climate change, I guess she wanted to go for one more joy ride before things go blinky.

Exposing The Bogus “97% Consensus” Claim Over Climate Change ‘Science’

Robert Murphy decomposes the fake 97% consensus climate alarmists use to bolster their argument about human caused climate change.

In the original source study for that statistic, of the abstracts the authors surveyed, 2/3 did not take a position on human caused climate change. These abstracts, 65% of those considered, are not included in the 97% figure. Further, what the original authors, Cook et al., actually found in their 2013 paper was that 97.1% of the relevant articles agreed that humans contribute to global warming. That is not equivalent to saying that humans are the main contributors to observed global warming (since the Industrial Revolution).

An accurate reading of the actual 2013 source of that bogus statistic is: “Of the approximately one-third of climate scientists writing on global warming who stated a position on the role of humans, 97% thought humans contribute somewhat to global warming.” Hardly anything to get your knickers in a knot over.

The additional distortion climate alarmists use is that, by stating “97% of scientists …”, it assumes there is a list which comprises 100% of scientists. Clearly, no such list exists, rendering even the original 97% figure meaningless baffle-gab.

update 240120: Here is an article from Forbes that challenges the 97% consensus. The author, Earl J. Ritchie, does a good job of rebutting the basic idea that 97% number has any meaning, and is nonsensical bafflegab.

update 060320: Here is a video that obliterates the fake 97% consensus nonsense.