Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Mrs Belmot's guide to NOT killing the planet

The internet is costing us millions, and who's paying the bill PLUS service charge? The planet, that's who.

To make matters worse, the tip isn't optional like it can be everywhere except America. You've GOT to pay, like when you go to America or an American puts the guilt on you with their judgmental eyes in a British restaurant.

Here comes the maths. Keep up.

I keep my computer on ALL the time. What's the cost of this in electricity? No-one can say for sure, so let's say £5 of electricity a day.


Now let's multiply this by 1,596,270,108 which is the total number of internet users.

That's a whopping £7,981,350,540 - nearly eight BILLION pounds a day. The biggest number I've ever written. Whatever that means to the planet is anyone's guess. MY guess is that it's terrible news. It's giving me sweats. BAD sweats.

To make matters worse, this ISN'T factoring in the cost of running all the servers needed to keep the internet full of clutter, like your photos on Facebook, or day-to-day banality sharers such as Twitter or Facebook again.

Let's factor that amount in with a conservative highly-educated guesstimate: let's double the previous figure and add four billion to make a round TWENTY BILLION pounds of electricity a day to run the internet. No wonder the planet is cankerous.

Now let's apply the insight. Keep up again.

We might as well just pour poison onto soil while paying a fortune in electricity. This is NOT advice, it's a metaphor. Don't actually do this. I do NOT need a repeat of the 'Milork' leaflet fiasco. If we keep on internetting at this rate, I safely predict a global catastrophe before the Olympics in 2012.

What to do:

Delete everything you've ever put on the internet to reduce burden-strain on servers. Stop using banality-sharers more than once a month. Turn off the central heating and wear more clothes. Clean your house using wind rather than hoovers. Microwave jacket potatoes rather than ovenning them. Check this blog on an hourly basis for mandates.

Case closed.

File under environmental FACT-mongering.

P.B (post-blog - DO try to keep up)
Herman has been strutting around the house claiming he was "born to drive steel", whatever that means. This has all the hallmarks of a 'whopper'. He's been listening to too much Johnny Cash and wearing "that" shirt again.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What kind of computer are you running? A research grade super computer? The average computer setup uses 90w so if run for 24hrs would consume 2160w i.e. 2.16kWh x £0.10kWh = 21.6p per day to run.

Not £5.

Mrs Belmot said...

That's a reasonably good point but doesn't factor in everything else I use to power the internet:
Router
Monitor
Printer
Lights
Fridge (we all eat)
Car (we all have to go to the shops for food)
Electricty for Sainsburys (they've got lights and fridges too).

When you add it all up, £5 is CONVERSATIVE with a small 'see'.