On 24 Oct 2006 10:15:17 -0700, " wrote:

I wonder why there is this attempt to direct attention onto a trivial
area of energy consumption.

The real biggies are air travel, domestic heating and car usage.

The smallest reduction in consumption in any one of those areas would
dwarf the total elimination of standby electricity consumption.

Because the campaigners know they can't win if they say that to
achieve what they want all fuel must be pushed up in price to a point
where large numbers of elderly and poor die of hypothermia each year
and transport (other than by government approved train) becomes a
luxury only politicians and green campaigners can afford.

They have to try to get enough people into a frame of mind where they
will actually be prepared to tolerate draconian measures - and scare
stories and fake figures is the way to start greenwashing them.

To achieve this you use scientific measure, such as "if all UK
households turned appliances off rather than putting them on standby
it would save the energy produced by two-and-a-half 700 megawatt
power stations each year" or "If 10 percent of the world's cell phone
owners [unplugged their chargers when not in use], it would reduce
energy consumption by an amount equivalent to that used by 60,000
European homes per year."

Using these babytalk figures you can easily hide the truth. For
example most phone chargers are switched mode and consume under half
a watt when the battery is charged. A very few linear types from
days of yore will consume 5W even when unplugged from the phone.
Guess which figure is used to work out the "60,000 homes a year"
figure.

Real facts have to be hidden, otherwise it becomes rather too easy to
disprove the propaganda.

Generating more electricity is obviously a really big no-no as this
would inevitably involve nuclear energy and that is the ultimate hate
object of the leaders of the various greenygroups.
--
Peter Parry.
http://www.wpp.ltd.uk/