Gas: The good 'ol days 2238Wow, this is the first time I've seen two people arguing with each other on usenet when they BOTH totally miss the point. If...
shinypenny wrote in part:
So energy costs now account for $1800-$3000 of the cost of building a car?
When did they arrive at this figure? How many MB is a modern stick of DRAM that has the same amount of silicon as the 32 MB one in question?
Is including the weight of the monitor? If so, then a desktop computer weighs something like 50 pounds. 500 pounds of oil is about 1.5-1.6 barrels. Does fossil fuel cost really account for $90-$100 of the cost of a computer?
So now energy cost of making a computer, if the energy comes from oil, is about $200-$350, or was the earlier figure for an automobile high?
So if 100% of the cost of aluminum is energy cost and you burn oil to make aluminum, aluminum should now cost about $11 per pound. Use something else costing 1-4 as much as oil does and aluminum would cost $2.75 per pound from energy cost alone. This sounds high to me. A soda can would cost about 13 cents, and I have seen cheaper canned soda at $4 for a case of 24 cans - about 17 cents per can, leaving 4 cents per can for markup, overhead at the manufacturer and the place of sale, transportation, and making the soda and putting it into the can, and making the aluminum into a can. However, it is good to recycle aluminum whenever you can.
