Which do you think is greener?

digitalintrigue said:
We are here to use Earth's natural resources. The Earth has been here far longer than we have, and through much more than we could ever inflict on it. I don't buy into all this stuff, because if one takes it far enough, it means we have to leave the planet to save it. Every person creates waste and CO2. It's called life. Enjoy it and don't fret. 🙂
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No offence, but I think there's some middle ground between leaving the planet, and actively trying to wipe out future generations. Clearly we're not likely to destroy the actual planet, but the aspects of it that we enjoy (air, water, food, etc) are undeniably being deteriorated at a phenomenal rate. In fact, looking at any newspaper will make it clear that the "future generations" concern is far too conservative: the present generation is already paying a huge price (cancer rates, food shortages, water shortages, civil wars).

I appreciate the original question (my vote's film, by the way), but I don't think it's going to make much difference either way. At a bare minimum, get rid of your car and any incandescent light bulbs.
 
digitalintrigue said:
The way to reduce my carbon emissions to the greatest degree, is to die. No thanks.

Has anyone seen the comparison of the enviro-impact of the Toyota Prius vs. a Hummer? Check it out:

http://www.thecarconnection.com/Aut...us_HUMMER_Exploding_the_Myth.S196.A12220.html
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If you look into the methodology, the "study" cited above is ridiculous. One of the assumptions used, for example, is that the more you drive, the better it is for the environment. That's right! Prius drivers drive less than Hummer drivers (obviously, since the former are going to have a higher concern over emissions), and the study counts that AGAINST the Prius' `green' rating. That's just one of the flaws, but I think it's indicative of the quality of the work...
 
Digitalintrigue is right - the planet can survive far more than the human race can throw at it - even if we allow are emissions to spiral. Whilst the planet will survive, it will kill the human race in doing so.
 
Following logic from the original question..... ALL material is already manufactured and sitting on your kitchen table.
Using film will leave you the film can and reel left over. You will use energy to keep everything at a constant temperature as you develop. You will have used chemicals left from developing and printing. You will use electricity to power the enlarger lamp.

Using digital you will use your charged batteries. You will use electricity for processing and printing. Maybe some ink cartridge will be empty at the end.

I think the electricity is a wash - will be generated anyway and probably the same amount needed to do both. I guess it comes down to the leftovers. Film will leave you the can, reel (both should be recyclable) and chemicals. Digital will leave you the ink cartridges (which are recyclable or refillable).
So I guess the answer is digital.

Steve
 
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We just need to go get the energy that is out there waiting for us. It's sitting in the earth, it's there in the atom. There is no energy crisis. It's just a crisis of politics.

And making carbon a pollutant makes life a pollutant. No offense, but 'balderdash' is the appropriate word here. 🙂

That being said, anyone that wants to go live in a cave without electricity or other modern creature comforts, feel free.
 
BillP said:
a. Using a IID to take 36 exposures, develop and print.

b. Using an M8 to take 36 RAW exposures, process and print.

?

I have my own views, but I would like to hear yours.
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c. The Shroud of Turin.

Seriously: it depends; what starting point for the carbon/"toxic" footprint?
 
The government looks at the minor polution from chemicals and forgets all the toxic waste used in manufacturing thousands of throw away cameras. Like all electronics, they should be salvaged and toxic materials removed. In practice, guess what happens.
 
digitalintrigue said:
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And making carbon a pollutant makes life a pollutant. No offense, but 'balderdash' is the appropriate word here. 🙂
...
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that makes no sense to me...
if you are dying of thirst, drink a glass of oxygen, or better yet two glasses of hydrogen

I believe that A is green friendly answer to the question as posted.
however, both camps (digi and film) can make very "green" choices:
use the technology until it no longer works, dont chase the lastest and greatest.
research the chemicals used in the process from cradle to grave.
try to recycle as much as possible.
pick products that care about environmental impacts (like silvergrain products or washers that conserve water)
etc.
 
"Green" can count in the little things that one does, or tries to do.

Example: several years ago, after stopping in at Adorama to buy a few rolls of Ilford XP2, and being handed a 3-pack of 35mm film packed in "120-style" wrappers instead of plastic canisters, I wrote Ilford about changing most, if not all, of its 35mm film this way. I was thinking eco-friendly first of all, but also easier in terms of carrying and shipping (less bulk and weight, also a "green" issue, methinks). Since then, the 50-roll boxes of Ilford film seem to be coming individually wrapped 120-style. Wish I could take credit for it, but I'll just say I tried to do my part. 🙂

As far as the digital vs. film matter, environmentally-speaking, it's a tad complex, but one undeniable fact of our digital lives is that we live in an age of more disposable, non-repairable products than we did two decades ago. When your $200, two-year-old digital p/s camera packs it in, and you gamely take it into a service center, you know what you're going to be told, don't you? Same deal with your "bargain" $65 DVD player, compact table-top stereo, and multi-function inkjet printer/scanner/copier/fax machine. All the above items are, in effect, "long-term disposables", to be used for few years, then tossed. There are electronics-recycling programs near where I live, and I dutifully cart our household's broken-and-non-fixable electronics their way, but I know that's not where most of this stuff winds up.

Some people, of course, have long believed "environmental protection" means outfitting their house with central air...🙁


- Barrett
 
Digitalintrigue - I am fascinated by your fatalist view!
Firstly, I think you are missing the point, carbon is not a pollutant - carbon dioxide is the emission and also not a pollutant unless emitted in excessive amounts (which unfortunately is seen to be the case, and rising).

The reason carbon has become a buzzword is because of the idea of attempting to create a market price for its part in fuels, as part of the environment and its part in emissions (and therefore mediate the negative externality and excessive consumption / emission). Carbon accounting giving a carbon economy if you like.

This reminds me of a recent BBC breakfast TV interview with Josh Hartnett (wearing his environment warrior hat for the day, he was discussing his recent work in the area) where he exclaimed; "we have to destroy the carbon!!” Which of course is ridiculous (see the laws of entropy), but he is just the poster boy - who has been charged with trying to increase the public awareness of environmental matters.

Similarly with Al Gore, you may or may not like it or him, but he has jumped on the story that scientists have been trying to tell for many years, and tried to tell it much louder.

The point is he is upping the awareness of the general public (and previously ignorant decision makers), and taking the emphasis away from the "eco warrior loonies" who have been easily ignorable in the past (IMO).

You may see him as a hypocrite but that isn't the point - he has got people talking, by re-presenting a problem in grand style that needs addressing (whether you like him or not) in layperson's terms.

You are right - we are not going to literally "destroy our planet", but we are consuming too much and degrading the delicate environmental and ecological equilibria this planet hosts which we rely on to survive.

With the predicted degradation as a conservative estimate of climate change, the things we need to worry about (in an anthropocentric way) are that certain parts of the world are likely to become difficult to inhabit, and for one example, agriculture may be impossible. This will have a knock-on effect to you. Add to this the displacement and misery of millions of people and the chances are that there will be increased and wider political tensions and potentially wars, wider terrorism etc. We can't know for sure the socio-economic future, but take a look at the IPCC website, and specifically this report regarding potential regional impacts of climate change:
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/special-reports/spm/region-en.pdf

By trying to mediate our combined consumption and live on this planet in dynamic equilibrium, in a sustainable way, we run the risk as a race of inhabiting it comfortably for many thousands of years yet. But I expect having a defeatist attitude or taking the fatalist viewpoint "we are here to use the Earth's natural resources", we can't expect to continue living in the same way at all, with unknown but most likely disastrous consequences.
 
tritiated --- I'm quite optimistic. What scares me, are charlatan politicians and bureaucrats.

Global warming is a hoax.

The Chicken Little fatalism is the one purveyed by the Gores of the world. 🙂

If carbon isn't the enemy, why is the buzzword 'carbon footprint?' I won't even begin to get into that concept...clearly, buying carbon 'credits' does absolutely nothing but line the pockets of people like Gore.

Yes, I see Gore as a hypocrite. How can anyone describe him otherwise? He's buying 'credits' from his own companies, while actually increasing his real consumption.

The 'global warming' temp increase from the last 100 years was wiped out last year. (This was reported by four different institutions: The UK's Hadley Climate Research Unit, NASA, Univ. of Alabama/Hunstville, and Remote Sensing Systems.) This was 'unexpected' which simply means that the models are wrong. We know far too little about the weather to jump to these kinds of conclusions.

To think we can predict what will happen years from now, when we can't even predict what the weather will do next week. And none of the so-called 'experts' foresaw this drop in temperature last year! So much for experts.

Climate change is normal, and has always been a part of the Earth; any change is not man-made.

The IPCC is essentially the UN, and it's got a political, not scientific, agenda to equalize the world's economies (i.e., bring down the USA.)

See it for what it is...namely, not science.
 
leicasniper said:
I think the flaw in the thinking here is that cameras have been high tech trash (when disposed of) since the 70's. The Canon AE-1 and its popularity ushered in that era. Digital cameras have sensors that automated film cameras don't, but that T-90 or F4s, or EOS1 or F6 is just as full of electronics as the typical digital camera. Neither are particularly "green." That many digital shooters don't ever print an image has got to have some positive effect for the environment.

People already have the computers that are being used to view and email those images. So that is not a factor.
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First, how many times have these Canon AE-1 buyers upgraded their *film* cameras over 25 years? Compare that to the "upgrade cycle" of today's typical digital cameras (DSLR or P&S). Not to mention camera equipped cellphones. Which one do you think fills the landfills faster?

Secondly, printing on paper doesn't have as much adverse effect on the environment as you think it does. My eyes were opened when a paper mill company from Europe came over to the place I work -- these are high quality commercial printing industry in which even small printing plant could consume a ton of paper in an hour.

On the side, they explained that the green-fanatics can't touch them because they re-plant the trees they use to make papers. And they did a better job maintaining the ecological balance of their forests than any of greenies could ever muster, why? because they can afford the resource and the technology from the profit of selling... printing paper.

Thirdly, of course it's bad enough that we use computers. Maintaining servers is part of my job, I know how bad it is. But do not think for a second that those obsolete digital cameras and cellphones are not filling up the landfills at a slower rate.

Now that would be a flaw in thinking.
 
digitalintrigue said:
We just need to go get the energy that is out there waiting for us. It's sitting in the earth, it's there in the atom. There is no energy crisis. It's just a crisis of politics.

And making carbon a pollutant makes life a pollutant. No offense, but 'balderdash' is the appropriate word here. 🙂

That being said, anyone that wants to go live in a cave without electricity or other modern creature comforts, feel free.
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DENIAL is the first symptom my friend 🙄
 
As I said, it doesn't matter if al gore is a hypocrite. I'm not defending him - but I am defending the cause he has taken for his own.

In actual fact, its entirely based on science. I'm really not sure where you got your figures from but as far as I understand: "2007 was one of the ten warmest years since global records began in 1850 with a temperature some 0.4 °C above average", and that is despite of La Nina; the cold phase of ENSO which started early 2007, which is only starting to show her face at the beginning of this year. ref: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre/news/cc_global_variability.html


Anyhow, an unexpected result in one year would not render climate models "wrong", just that they model and predict trends on a longer timescale (decades/centuries) - variability is to be expected (expressed in uncertainty values) and extreme variability is likely to be be seen more often, as a result of climate change. The overall trend has been and will be towards a gradually increasing average temperature. This is backed up by a vast amount of research.

I think you could benefit from reading more information, particularly on the science - don't dismiss it out of hand. Please look past what celebrities and politicians say, as can be seen they often invoke irrational and emotive responses.
 
If you want to call me a global warming denier, so be it. 🙂 I was a Y2K denier, too, bucking the popular trend, and we all know how that turned out.

I have spent many, many hundreds hours on this subject, from both scientific and political viewpoints. I'm not just dismissing it out of hand. (My education background is scientific, in fact.)

Regarding science vs. politics, just look at who created and runs the IPCC, and who attends its meetings. It's government officials, not scientists. Google it, the information is there.
 
digitalintrigue said:
If you want to call me a global warming denier, so be it. 🙂 I was a Y2K denier, too, bucking the popular trend, and we all know how that turned out.

I have spent many, many hundreds hours on this subject, from both scientific and political viewpoints. I'm not just dismissing it out of hand. (My education background is scientific, in fact.).
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I'm with you. The only thing that bothers me is that I do not drive a Hybrid and still like Starbucks 🙂

Reg the original question, the other side is always greener 🙂
 
Actually when I saw the title of the thread, I thought it was going to be something along the lines of Provia vs. Velvia. 🙂
 
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