Try Denying Global Warming Now
Yesterday was the hottest day ever in my fair city. Not just the hottest July 29th, the hottest day ever recorded. Prior to yesterday the hottest day on record was August 9th, 1960 at 33.3°C.
Don’t believe me? Hit up this fact check:
http://www.news1130.com/news/local/more.jsp?content=20090729_160129_6332
So what are we going to do about it?
Are you going to continue following the consumer culture of indulging in every creature comfort never to be inconvenienced in the slightest?
Well I WOULD buy an air conditioner but there’s simply no where to put it – even a stand-alone unit could not work in any room of our house. But even if I could get one, that’s not all I would do.
First off I plan to re-commit myself to a strict recycling regimen. I’m embarrassed to say that we only recently got proper paper recycling at my work and I’m slightly ashamed to say I’ve only about half-implemented it in my area. In the past we had recycling bins but there was no pickup mechanism so we used them as garbage bins. Well today I converted those back to their intended original purpose especially now that there is a procedure to back them up and make them functional.
Here’s something else you can do: Shut off any computer you’re not using. Obviously different circumstances exist so different approaches are needed. At home you should probably shut it down if you’re not going to be using it within the next half hour. At work you likely need them on during the day but once you leave you should be able to shut them down – this doesn’t just save power but is very good for the computer.
Do you leave a computer running 24/7? Let me explain why this is a horrible idea, unless of course it’s some kind of server or something that people would access remotely.
When your computer is running heat is generated, heat cuts down on the lifespan of physical components on the computer. A CPU that may otherwise last 5 years might only last for 3 if run nonstop.
Also as a computer runs, a variety of temp files are created many of which are deleted at shutdown – this can impact that amount of available RAM and the size of the pagefile. To this day many operating systems are dynamic in one direction only when it comes to pagefiles – that means they can only get larger over time. The only way to cut down on the pagefile size once it’s ballooned is to shut down the computer. To put this in simpler terms when the RAM which is about ten times faster than the hard drive gets full it has to put stuff on the hard drive but since the hard drive is so much slower it slows the process of accessing that information down. Plus in order to properly install many updates a restart is required, shutting down at the end of the day and booting up fresh the next morning is a restart. So don’t just shut down your computer to save the environment and keep the heat down, do it to save on your electricity bill, to help the computer components last longer, and help the computer run faster with all the latest updates. Speaking of updates, leaving a computer running and online for no reason at all means it’s just sitting there for hackers to attack; even patched it may be vulnerable to brute force denial of service attacks.
So while you try to beat the heat as best you can, try to attack the root cause while you’re at it.
