While browsing away on the Anandtech site today, my CPU fan started to rev up while reading the HDD price guide. At first, I couldn't figure out why the fan was throttling like that. I wasn't playing any music, the anti-virus software wasn't scanning, and the hard drive defragmenter is only scheduled to run at night.
When I opened up task manager, I noticed that my CPU was hitting about 65% utilization, most of it being used by my browser. I was rather amazed, since I was only reading a static page. However, as I clicked through my other tabs, I saw several Flash ads running.
Even though I wasn't actively looking at those tabs, my broswer continued to play the Flash ads... nearly 20 in all from all of the tabs.
My AthlonXP/3200 consumes nealy 77W at full draw. It could be guesstimated that it consumes roughly 25W at a near idle load. With Flash objects running, my processor was running at 2/3rds of capacity, so lets guess around 60W load.
So those Flash ads were causing an additional 35W of power drain at the CPU alone. Lets assume that I surf the Internet at least one hour each day. In a year, that adds up to 12.8kWh of power used to animate Flash advertising. That's roughly $45 after taxes & fees on my electric bill.
If 25,000 people were to follow the same habits and view web pages with similar Flash content, that would add up to nearly 320kWh of power going to animate Flash ads per year.
A 1-MWe natural gas plant releases 12.1 lbs of sulfur oxides per day, 46.3 lbs of nitrogen oxides, 3.5 lbs of carbon monoxides and 2.0 lbs of particulates*. Oil and coal plants expell several times that amount.
So, Flash ads create at least 5lbs of pollution per year. Assuming a larger portion of power generated by oil and coal, including power use for increased cooling solutions (both computer fan and building AC) and graphics card operations, it might be even higher.
Down with Flash ads!
*Source: Dr. S. Kalyanaraman, "Nuclear Economics"
When I opened up task manager, I noticed that my CPU was hitting about 65% utilization, most of it being used by my browser. I was rather amazed, since I was only reading a static page. However, as I clicked through my other tabs, I saw several Flash ads running.
Even though I wasn't actively looking at those tabs, my broswer continued to play the Flash ads... nearly 20 in all from all of the tabs.
My AthlonXP/3200 consumes nealy 77W at full draw. It could be guesstimated that it consumes roughly 25W at a near idle load. With Flash objects running, my processor was running at 2/3rds of capacity, so lets guess around 60W load.
So those Flash ads were causing an additional 35W of power drain at the CPU alone. Lets assume that I surf the Internet at least one hour each day. In a year, that adds up to 12.8kWh of power used to animate Flash advertising. That's roughly $45 after taxes & fees on my electric bill.
If 25,000 people were to follow the same habits and view web pages with similar Flash content, that would add up to nearly 320kWh of power going to animate Flash ads per year.
A 1-MWe natural gas plant releases 12.1 lbs of sulfur oxides per day, 46.3 lbs of nitrogen oxides, 3.5 lbs of carbon monoxides and 2.0 lbs of particulates*. Oil and coal plants expell several times that amount.
So, Flash ads create at least 5lbs of pollution per year. Assuming a larger portion of power generated by oil and coal, including power use for increased cooling solutions (both computer fan and building AC) and graphics card operations, it might be even higher.
Down with Flash ads!
*Source: Dr. S. Kalyanaraman, "Nuclear Economics"
Good read.
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