If you came and you found a strange man... teaching your kids to punch each other, or trying to sell them all kinds of products, you'd kick him right out of the house, but here you are; you come in and the TV is on, and you don't think twice about it. ~Jerome Singer
The rising demand for flat-screen televisions could have a greater impact on global warming than the world's largest coal-fired power stations, a leading environmental scientist warned yesterday.
Manufacturers use a greenhouse gas called nitrogen trifluoride to make the televisions, and as the sets have become more popular, annual production of the gas has risen to about 4,000 tonnes.<Guardian>
The television, that insidious beast, that Medusa which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little. ~Ray Bradbury, The Golden Apples of the Sun
The gas, nitrogen trifluoride, is 17,000 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
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If all this year's production was released into the atmosphere it would have a warming effect equivalent to 67 million tonnes of carbon dioxide - roughly equivalent to the annual CO2 emissions of Austria. <TPA>
Television! Teacher, mother, secret lover. ~Homer Simpson, The Simpsons
TV makes us fat, stupid, selfish, unhappy, asocial, mindless consumers... and destroys our climate (not to mention fuels the class war)... but, well, there's just so many darn good shows on.
Via Grist
