Here are a bunch of made-up stats to scare you into joining the fight against global warming:
- - Computer screens account for over 100 trillion megajoule-hours each year
- - It takes 16 times as much energy to power an all-white screen vs an all-black screen
- - 13 million barrels of oil a DAY would be saved if Google were to change their background to solid black instead of white. That’s equivalent to 1 million trees, 200 thousand kilotons of coal, or 8,366,001 spotted owls.
Scared yet? You better be. But don’t despair, hope is on the way! My idea is a series of environmentally friendly screen savers and desktop backgrounds. How can a screen saver save the planet? Well, a computer screen is made up of millions of pixels that are comprised of three lights. When all three lights are on, you see white. And when they are all off, you see black. By having a screen saver that is mostly black, you end up saving more energy than if the screen saver were white or a combination of other colors. (see, I’m not totally making this up!)
The screen saver or background doesn’t have to be solid black. It could be a pattern or picture comprised of low-energy colors that would raise awareness around the energy saving power of the “Screen Save The Planet” campaign.
What do you guys think? Come on, Screen Save the Planet – that’s catchy!
5 responses so far ↓
TL // June 13, 2007 at 8:48 pm |
I’m calling bullpucky!
It may be true that a CRT uses 16x as much power to draw a white screen vs. a black one.
BUT, and LCD flatscreen has a white fluorescent backlight which is on ALL THE TIME at the same brightness when the screen is on. The LCD filters out the unwanted colors to get red green blue or whatever.
Thus, for every flatscreen LCD or laptop, the black Google screen wouldn’t have any effect.
TL
astartupaday // June 13, 2007 at 10:02 pm |
That may be true, but here’s another stat I made-up to counter that claim:
The LCD crystals that filter the screens can use up to 7x as much power when on (blocking colors) as opposed to off (allowing all colors)
capitalAI | Can We Amplify Power? // June 14, 2007 at 2:08 pm |
[...] Astartupaday had a great comment on how Google could do something for the planet, but I suspect that if Google switched to a black background there would be many more suicides and cases of depression. People would leave in droves, be forced to use Yahoo search, and hate every minute of it. In other words, it would be bad for business. [...]
dana girl // July 26, 2007 at 11:41 pm |
WOW i think thats cool to bad more didnt do that to their pages
eveyone that suffers from irlen syndrone would be CHEERING, like me
http://www.dyslexiaservices.com.au/
Google Stole My Idea! « A Startup A Day // March 29, 2008 at 9:31 am |
[...] 29, 2008 · No Comments Last year I posted an idea called “Screen Save the Planet” and made up some stats about how if Google changed their homepage background from white to [...]