Anthony said:
"So what did these groups propose instead of new coal? It is great they banded together to stop construction of new coal, but did they give an alter..." [
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Anthony said:
"In the long run, yes, I agree completely. Available resources, even in the whole observable universe, are finite, and so economic and population gr..." [
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Amy Collinsworth said:
"Just one correction...Kingsolver has had many books of essays published. Those works were also non-fiction...." [
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M. D. Vaden of Oregon said:
"The previous comment recommended a book called The Wild Trees, which included west coast redwood trees.
This page has images of those trees..." [
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TrollPatrol said:
"My original italicized comments were primarily meant to 1) get your attention and 2) have you read the second part. Next time I will make it ent..." [
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Vampires, phantoms and warts; No, this isn't a Halloween post, it is about power wasted by electronic devices on standby. We have made suggestions in the past about how to deal with them, but sometimes it is a bit of a pain. 
Sorry, but I don't switch off my phone at night simply because in an emergency I want it to work and don't have to ask the burglar to wait if I may plug in my phone to call the police... let alone emergencies in family. I want to be available for my family.
I've unplugged everything I can. However I've had two issues.
I can't seem to find a good alarm clock replacement. I had a water powered clock but it beeped every hour and the sound of the alarm wasn't enough to wake me up. I've tried clocks that wind up as well but I can't seem to find one that ticks quietly enough.
I've also wondered about hacks to disable the clocks in the many many appliances that come with them. I have to assume that a lot of phantom load comes from the clock display and that killing the clock would allow me to leave more appliances plugged in.
I would ask for advice but the Treehugger notification doesn't seem to work anymore.
The one computer I leave on 24/7 (it runs backup scripts, torrents and hosts my shared iTunes library) also runs the climateprediction.net BOINC project, so any excess processor cycles go towards a good cause.
It's good to keep a little perspective on this. My washing machine uses 12w doing diddly squat - so that's off. My TV tuner uses 10w on standby and doesn't lose it's settings if you unplug it, so it's unplugged. But the clocks in things do not use anything much and you are wasting your time if you try and disable them. E.g. My microwave uses 25w with the door open due to the light, but
Worst offender: I discovered that the power brick for my girlfriends laptop uses 24w! doing nothing. That's plugged into the mains but with no laptop attached. Our other similar bricks use
It's good to keep a little perspective on this. My washing machine uses 12w doing diddly squat - so that's off. My TV tuner uses 10w on standby and doesn't lose it's settings if you unplug it, so it's unplugged. But the clocks in things do not use anything much and you are wasting your time if you try and disable them. E.g. My microwave uses 25w with the door open due to the light, but
Worst offender: I discovered that the power brick for my girlfriends laptop uses 24w! doing nothing. That's plugged into the mains but with no laptop attached. Our other similar bricks use
It's good to have a little perspective on this. My washing machine uses 12w doing diddly squat - so that's off. My TV tuner uses 10w on standby and doesn't lose it's settings if you unplug it, so it's unplugged. But the clocks in things do not use anything much and you are wasting your time if you try and disable them. E.g. My microwave uses 25w with the door open due to the light, but
Worst offender: I discovered that the power brick for my girlfriends laptop uses 24w! doing nothing. That's plugged into the mains but with no laptop attached. Our other similar bricks use