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May 09, 08 - 12:21 pm Comment from: ron

God will solve 'Climate thingy'. We should be more focused on the "Morals Crisis".

Maybe Algore and Slick Willy could help in that area.

Who appointed these turkeys environmental judges and juries? Enough of this pseudo-science. Please don't give these self-appointed nannies a platform.

May 09, 08 - 12:23 pm Comment from: Demon

This is all about grabbing headlines of a phony ECO organization looking to cash in from the public.

Man caused Global Warning in a load of Crap anyway. Any scientist that has reviewed the data and does have a BIG GRANT pending on Global Warming research will tell that it's crap too.

Notice what they are talking about here? "Publicly stated" goals. Many companies have been promising the sun the moon and the stars. What they've been delivering is quite different.

Rating a company on their promises is less than helpful. It encourages big press announcements, nothing more. If countries were rated for their "publicly stated" goals concerning democratization I'm guessing China would come in first and the United States and other established democracies would come in last.

I'm all for encouraging environmentalism. But I'm all for USEFUL measures, not measures that distort and conceal the truth.

Just a load of BS! Do the math. With current technology, only nuclear power works as a way to reduce emissions deemed harmful. Nuclear power reduces dependancy on outside sources of fuel, provides jobs, saves lives.

May 09, 08 - 12:25 pm Comment from: Demon

Missed the word NOT

Any scientist that has reviewed the data and does NOT have a BIG GRANT pending on Global Warming research will tell that it's crap too.

Sorry, I take that back about god solving our problems. I shouldn't have been posting on the Internet anyway; I was supposed to be at church. Damn me to Hell.

Besides, I realized that we decide to task God with solving our problems, then by exacerbating these problems we are fighting against God. And by advocating this blasphemy, I was going to be damned to Hell anyway.

Sorry all.

May 09, 08 - 12:28 pm Comment from: smegdude

from the linked apple webpage it looks like apple has had an environmental policy since 1990.....

Are these guys working closely with greenpeace marketing?

May 09, 08 - 12:29 pm Comment from: mr_matalino

I'm so sick of environmentalist...

Always complaining and finding problems about others but have no real solutions to them.

While I'm all for helping minimize global warming and being more "green" I think its getting a bit tiring when groups like this slam Apple when they openly admit they have no information to go by. You can't just give a bad score because Apple doesn't publicly boast about their efforts.

May 09, 08 - 12:36 pm Comment from: ron

Piss off ron. Fake-o little puss.

May 09, 08 - 12:36 pm Comment from: eMax

The Day After Tommorow...its a true story, once that happens in real life the air will "smell cleaner"

Who cares.

Im just happy that my new 24" iMac is on the FedEx truck to be delivered TODAY!!

Replacing my 5yr old Dual 1GB G4 should help reduce my electric bill (not that that's why I bought it).

I too agree that Nuke power + reasonable conservation is the only solution to America's energy needs. Unfortunately, here in Ca, the State Gov has fully submitted to the Enviro Natzis and outlawed any new nuke plants. So we just buy our energy from other states that produce it mostly by burning coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel.

But hey-

I'm getting my new iMac today!! Frickin cool!

They're just after headlines. Apple is one of the few companies these days that are guaranteed column inches.
For years they were ignored, but now their a focus point.

Apparently the new media is not very bright. I blame "Journalism" degrees. A proper education in economics or Poli-Sci will produce a thinking journalist. Journalism degrees just produce monkeys who can type.
But I'm not bitter, just a Swing Geezer.

As Falkirk said, this is the exact same thing Greenpeace was latching on to: the fact that Apple doesn't SAY anything about the fact that they are FAR ahead of EVERY OTHER COMPUTER MANUFACTURER from an environmental perspective.

Morons. All they want is free publicity. It's much more effective to just go guide your friends towards environmental-friendliness rather than being stereotypical jerk liberals like these groups.

May 09, 08 - 12:41 pm Comment from: Think

Global Cooling

Lot's of "real" scientists, with "real" data point to cooling not warming.

Next time the "Global Warming" hyper idiots scream about the world will end, ask them to show you the hard data, actual recorded past historical data that shows this.

They can't.

This warming hype is ALL based on computer models looking to the future. How accurate are those? Just ask your local weather man how well they predict the weather 5 days in advance. NOT VERY WELL.

May 09, 08 - 12:42 pm Comment from: Macinfo

There is no climate crisis, never has been, never will be. This is nothing more then a way for government to control more of your lives, and you should be writing your congressman to tell them so.

Otherwise one day, your going to wake up and in the name of some man made crisis with no basis in reality, your going be living in a world with no freedom to do much of anything and it will make the depression of the 30's look trivial.

May 09, 08 - 12:42 pm Comment from: cptnkirk

From Apple's Environment page: "Purchase any qualifying Apple computer or monitor and receive free recycling of your old computer and monitor — regardless of manufacturer"

This says it all. Buy something, recycle your old stuff.

Besides, I currently have four computers. Instead of trashing them, I passed them on to friends and family who are still using them. They're all working great and running the latest and greatest! Recycling for them is a long way off.

May 09, 08 - 12:42 pm Comment from: Ray

Mankind has nothing to do with climate change. Climate change has been happening as long as the earth has been around. Climate change happens regardless of what we do. The were no "polluting" cars around to warm up the earth after the last ice age. Global warming just happened. The pyramids used to be surrounded by farm land! You are better off investing in a company that makes state of the art multi-wavelength sunscreen than investing in green electronics companies. You will need the sunscreen regardless of what Al Gore thinks.

Just my $0.02

May 09, 08 - 12:43 pm Comment from: Cubert

OK. How do any of Apple's products contribute to global warming and climate change? I think this organization needs to explain that first before trying to hold any company accountable.

May 09, 08 - 12:43 pm Comment from: Toasty

WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE! MOMMYYYYYYYY!!!!!!

May 09, 08 - 12:48 pm Comment from: Think

Nuclear power, oh god not that! It doesn't work safely.

That's crap too!

If nuclear power was so unsafe please explain to me how the US Aircraft carriers and Subs have been running on nuclear power for over 30 years. Gee, not exactly a smooth ride in the big old ocean and they just keep running.

Oil and gas companies like their monopoly for energy, they are not about to loose Billions to Nuke power plants, so they fund all the anti-nuke groups to keep the public scared of them.

I always go back to the old George Carlin bit:

"Save the Planet? The Planet is fine. The people are fucked!"

May 09, 08 - 12:59 pm Comment from: TowerTone

Bastards!!!
Don't they know it was that volcano in Chile that caused the cyclone in Burma?

I don't think Apple is much better or worse than the other manufacturers here. But in terms of pollution and carbon in particular, wouldn't these groups be much better targeting all the unnecessary waste? You look at the big picture and the massive carbon production comes from fires (many of them intentional), incinerators and factories, and fossil fuel powered engines. It's suicidal to stop factories and gas/diesel engines. If they put their time & money into research and education to improve and bring down the cost of scrubbers and other filters, and battery fuel cells, it would make more sense than targeting small players like electronics manufacturers.

Just my two cents.

I have requested a list of Climate Counts technical qualifications to pass judgement on the companies on its hit list. So far no reply.

Enviros are a fundraising RACKET. They're NOT objective, well-meaning groups. The more crazy nonsense they spew, the more headlines they get from a compliant media that needs to draw readers/viewers with the latest "crisis"! Even if there were a bit of global warming due to CO2, there's very little we could do about it and it probably wouldn't cause too much harm. The only long-term energy solution, of course, is nuclear. Oh, and BTW, nuclear power plants can now be built that produce basically NO radioactive waste. The real disaster is our energy policy.

@Think
So were not going to be cooked slowly in our own juices? Were going to be frozen as a food supply for future generations instead, wow what a relief.

ditto what the real ron said.

Wouldn't Algore and Slick Willy have to have morals to help solve the "Morals Crisis"?

May 09, 08 - 01:12 pm Comment from: MCCFR

I actually believe that climate change is a problem, whether it's caused by human activity or not (I actually believe the evidence supports the former).

However, even I take exception to this kind of reverse-McCarthyism that basically says "if you haven't come up with some kind of shallow lip-service statement of intent, you're basically part of the global problem."

This is, of course, total and utter bullshit.

Let's analyse a couple of areas where Apple has – for whatever selfish commercial reason – changed things in a way that benefits the environment.

• They produce computers that have longer in-service lifespans than most of their competitors in the PC marketplace. This has the effect of reducing the demand for new computers as well as a benefit in placing less stress on either landfill, recycling or other disposal methodologies.

• The iPod, which supplanted both the tape and CD Walkman as the de facto standard for portable music, is by its very nature more environmentally-friendly than the items it replaced: fewer moving parts and less wear-and-tear are just two reasons why an MP3 player – a market that Apple defined – is better than its predecessors. One battery that needs to be replaced every eighteen months to three years is another reason as opposed to filling the world with alkaline batteries.

And then there's the simple fact that an iPod evolves with every new firmware update, thus enhancing the functionality and increasing the lifespan of the product: again this reduces strain on the world's natural resources and reduces the carbon footprint of each unit when compared to the technology predecessor.

• Thanks to Apple's development of a viable market for digital downloads, both the music and the video industry have a mechanism for servicing their respective markets by moving bits as opposed to atoms. Whether they like it or not, Apple has indirectly helped those companies to reduce their carbon footprints as they a) don't have to produce a physical product, b) they don't have to transport that product and c) customers don't have to drive to a retail location to buy or rent that product.

This advantage now also extends to TV as well as iPod.

• Connecting an iPod to a car's personal stereo is a far more environmentally-friendly approach to in-car entertainment than a daisy-chain of CD or MD autochangers. Less cabling and less plastic are just two factors. But we should also remember that we're using the same iPod we use when we're walking or listening to our home stereo. The net result is only one product being produced as opposed to three or four which serve the same purpose in different spaces.

• Apple's packaging is also more efficient than it was before: I have the box for an iPod touch in front of me and the box for an old 1G iPod up on my shelf - I would argue that you can fit about eight times as many iPod Touch containers into the space taken by the older unit. That means one-eighth of the burden on transportation and recycling. And don't even get me started on iPod nano or the Mac mini.

Some companies need to make environmental amends because their products and their methods of doing business suck (did I hear someone say Coca-Cola?), however some other businesses – and I include Apple – have created an environmental advantage simply by the products they make and the way in which they're used.

May 09, 08 - 01:23 pm Comment from: LinuxGuyAndMacProdigalSon

It is partly Apple's fault. They should have gone public with a denunciation of Greenpeace when they pulled their extortion act. Appeasement does not work. It only leads to more blackmail.

I do think it is important not to poison the environment we live in to the degree possible. That said, these kinds of groups do not do their supposed cause any favor with such stupid methods of determining who follows the values they favor. Even a 5-year-old conservative could see what's wrong with that method, as evidenced here.

Still, all these pressure groups of all persuasions have one thing in common, particularly the conservative (as opposed to conservationist, though they're guilty too) groups, they want power over other people's lives. Power-seekers are the lowest form of scum in my book. We have so-called liberal groups that want to control production via all manner of schemes, and control and take what people have earned. Then worse, are the conservatives who also want to take what others have earned and finance bullshit like the endless Iraq undeclared war while not going after the people who actually attacked us, but also want to control people's bodies, by making illegal private consensual activity between adults, and trying to control women's bodies by making abortion illegal, the idiotic drug "wars" and other crap only the most vicious brain-dead could be for. These pressure groups are all evil, and are made possible by the same notion that other's individual lives are within their domain.

There seems to be no one of real standing that questions the premise of anyone to control the lives of others, to question the whole premise underlying so much of what's going on, particularly not the people who should be in the front lines of this effort, University professors, and to a lesser extent, the media (who are almost totally worthless, worse than worthless, directly harmful).

May 09, 08 - 01:25 pm Comment from: HMCIV

@ClimateCounts.org

Tell the guys who pay your bills I don't like ground glass in my dairy, even if it's environmentally friendly ground glass.

http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/stonyfield03_08.html

BOYCOTT STONYFIELD FARM.

This is a PR stunt for this yogurt company. They're smearing Apple to get publicity for their self-serving "environmentalist" sales campaign. Let it backfire on them in a big way.

BOYCOTT STONYFIELD FARM. Spread the word, Apple fans!

ClimateCounts.org stupidly learned from Greenpiss? Haven't we learned that publicly stated goal is a meaningless nonsense as a tool for ranking?

May 09, 08 - 01:32 pm Comment from: Always Right

Yeah, I wonder why Apple DIDN'T counter Greenpeace more forcefully?

May 09, 08 - 01:33 pm Comment from: Spark

I'm with Falkirk, Steev, LinuxGuyAndMacProdigalSon and a half dozen others here.

Piss on the climate and these looney tunes. Sound like asshat libs, proud they are part of the entitlement generation, and cant cope with the real world.

The world will end in the year 1900... opps, no I mean 1985, opps, forgot, missed again, umm, oh, yeah 1999, that french dead dude who wrote a bunch of nonsense that no one seems to understand said that! Opps, we read that wrong, its 2000, damn it! Ok, then it has to be 2012, because that one group, ummm, oh, yeah, the Mayans said so, because you see their calendar stopped on Dec 21st 2012, you see, yeah, those Mayans knew something we don't, beside how to feed themselves, oh yeah, and human sacrifices to some would be Sun God and Wind God really won't save you starving civilization. I mean, come on, living on this god forsaken planet just sucks, so I really must comment on all of it and tell you all that the world will end... soon, no really, it will... I think?

All these tree huggers measure is what companies are SAYING they do. Not what they ARE doing.

So now Apple too has to waste time and resources on this non-issue...

Idiots.

May 09, 08 - 01:44 pm Comment from: Predrag

Stonyfield Farm??? Where on earth did this come from??? And how is it related to this ClimateCounts.org? Or Apple?? (and while at that, why would you boycot Stonyfield Farm for an obvious accident; do you actually believe they put glass in their yogurt on purpose!!!???).

I can see a lot of people here who claim here that Holocaust never existed. It is a bit surprising, mainly for two reasons. First, the usual stereotype of a Mac user is that he/she is liberal-leaning, progressive, educated type (generally receptive to what overwhelming numbers in scientific community support). Second, now that even the most resistive of all governments in modern history has begun admitting that human-induced climate change is real and needs to be addressed, it's rather strange to see people who still, for some strange reason, refuse to accept that (perhaps they work for oil companies....?).

Still, I agree with LeMecDuTex about the fact that Apple as a company generally does more with respect to climate change than it is credited for. I don't know anything about ClimateCounts.org, so I won't pass summary judgment on them (there is plenty of that already done here, I'm sure with no more specific knowledge about the organisation than mine). They may be in it for publicity. They also may be doing it because the actually believe in what they are doing. Again, not knowing anything about them doesn't allow me to declare anything.

If they are in fact right, this is an easy problem for Apple to fix. All they need to do is appoint an environmental officer (if they don't already have that function) and have this person work with all those eco-NGOs around the world to make sure they know what Apple does in this respect. All these NGOs are necessary in today's world when big energy has so much power they can get away with anything and everything.

It doesn't take long (approx. 5 sec) to search the net for info on how the "scientific community" feels about Global Warming....everyone above this post seems to think it's fake....why? Sleep better at night? --------- copied from Wiki - "These basic conclusions have been endorsed by at least thirty scientific societies and academies of science,[4] including all of the national academies of science of the major industrialized countries.[5][6][7] While individual scientists have voiced disagreement with some findings of the IPCC,[8] the overwhelming majority of scientists working on climate change agree with the IPCC's main conclusions.[9][10]"

May 09, 08 - 01:48 pm Comment from: hagar57

The threat of glabal warming notwithstanding, how can anybody differentiate between computer makers? They all (including Apple) have their production outsourced to the same Chinese sweatshops, they use the same components from the same manufacturers (Intel, Toshiba) who also outsource production to Taiwan or Mainland China.
This outfit is simply steaming because nobody at Apple sent them a list of promises. Wankers!

I think we may have to go back to the drawing board when the world cooled off this past winter and emissions are still up. How about building it right the first time, not cutting costs on material, and having the customer dispose of our equipment properly. Is that to hard?

@Ray

And you'll go to heaven when you die... Get a flippin' clue dude! Sure the climate has changed on this planet in the past...ON A GEOLOGIC TIMEFRAME!! Not over a matter of years/decades! But ignorance is bliss so keep on keeping on with your "beliefs" and let "God" take care of you.

May 09, 08 - 02:17 pm Comment from: The Macster

@MCCFR

Thank you for some excellent points. I agree that digital downloads have made a welcome reduction in energy usage and pollution due to the decreased manufacturing and transportation-related requirements of digital downloads vs. physical media.

This is nothing more than a publicity stunt by a group who knows that no headlines would be generated if Sony or Dell were named as the worst because, honestly, those are companies who are no longer relevant. But the media idiots would love to jump on Apple because it's a hugely high-profile company.

As someone who formerly believed in global warming until I began researching the issue myself (as opposed to listening to the media always state this hypothesis as if it were fact), I'd suggest reading these articles:

Little Ice Age is still with us

The politics of global warming

May 09, 08 - 02:17 pm Comment from: Mac4lfe

There is no man made global warming. Everything works in cycles. These are the same idiots who diverted food to make fuel that was less effcient than what we already have in the earth naturally, OIL.

@I'm confused...

you lost me at "copied from wiki"

Hey Cleetus, who put a nickel in your back and pulled your string? No need to dig on someone for their religious beliefs. Leave that to the MicroSuck boys in their forums. Be a bit more courteous here.

People - you have got to wake up and smell the money trail. Al Gore has won a Oscar and the freakin' Nobel Peace Prize (how does the facade of Global Warming bring about peace, by the way?) for his load of crap. He will even sell you Carbon Credits for your misdeeds of carbon emissions. He will fly his huge jet across this world, spewing who knows how much carbon emissions, just to tell you to ride your bike to work instead of driving. ALL of this to be holier than thou. Oh, and let's not forget that little thing called the almighty dollar. That's what he is really after.

In the 70's, Time Magazine told us that right about now, we should actually be in an Ice Age. A FREAKIN' ICE AGE. How are we supposed to predict the future when my weather can't the the 5 day forecast right?