[speedgibson] Speed Gibson: Global Warming: Unplugged

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Posted by Speed Gibson:
Global Warming: Unplugged
http://speedgibson.powerblogs.com/posts/1184131831.shtml


   I woke up around 3 am this morning, heard Phil Hendrie is back on the
   air, 1-4 am on KTLK 100.3 FM. As luck would have it, Phil gave a
   beautiful, powerful rant on the Live Earth event.
   Basically, he said if we only have 10 years left to act, why sweat the
   small stuff like leaving your cell phone charger plugged in?
   Conversely, unplugging your chargers matters only if the ten year
   warning was a lie. Were you lying then or lying now?
   I see that someone ran the [1]obvious experiment of actually putting a
   meter on an idle charger. One charger didn't even register, nor did
   two, nor did three:

     I plugged in the three phone chargers, the laptop computer's power
     supply, the charger for a pocket PC, and a battery-charger for 4 AA
     batteries. Finally, the meter registered power! One Watt.

   Assuming the meter is accurately rounding, that's no more than 0.1
   watt per cell phone charger. Even a 13 watt compact fluorescent bulb
   uses over 100 times as much energy. The energy saved from unplugging
   the charger for a week would run that bulb about an hour, or a typical
   home hair dryer about a minute.
   I'm leaving mine plugged in.

References

   1. http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sustainable/charger/