“Apple Computer will be forced to discontinue the sale of several products in Europe next month because they fail to meet compliance with a European Union directive that will go into effect on July 1st,” Katie Marsal reports for AppleInsider.
“In 2003, the European Union adopted the Directive on the Restriction of the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment, also known as the RoHS directive,” Marsal reports. “Effective July 1, 2006, the directive prohibits the sale of electronics that contain hazardous materials such as lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium and brominated flame retardants.”
Marsal reports, “A handful of Apple products will not meet all the requirements and will therefore be withdrawn from sale in Europe. These products include the iSight, AirPort Base Station With Modem, AirPort Base Station Power Over Ethernet & Antenna, iPod shuffle External Battery Pack and all versions of the eMac all-in-one desktop computer.”
More info in the full article here.
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oh jeeze, here come the whackos.
My philosophy: Who cares whether humans are the fundamental cause of global warming or not? The unassailable fact is: it’s happening. We can either just shrug our shoulders, continue on as usual and wait for the Earth to kill us off, or we can try not to aggravate the problem.
In other news, the disparate opinons of the people on planet earth bubbled up today on a small, Mac-friendly internet site.
That the opinions were so dissimilar was taken as heartening news for some in the Mac community previously known to be possessed only of liberal dogma.
The evidence that Macs are reaching heretofore untapped markets is encouraging news indeed.
Can pie charts and spread sheets be far behind? Time will tell…
It is pretty widely agreed that the climate is warming. I have never done the experimentation, but it is a simple enough scientific concept to experimentally prove that CO2 & other gasses are transparent to light,but opaque to heat. No one disputes this in the current controversy.
It is also a scientific no-brainer to prove that CO2 levels in the air are increasing.
It is also a no brainer that there are major disruptions of our current planetary civilization in store if the climate warms quickly.
History and archeology are littered with the wreckage of cultures & civilizations that disappeared because they embarked on unsustainable courses.
So, the climate is warming, greenhouse gasses do what they do, and they are increasing in concentration in the air.
Would not a GENUINE “conservative” say, “considering the stakes, let’s not throw gasoline on the fire” ?
Sigh . . . go ahead you “conservatives” out there, label me a
” whacko tree hugger” . . . . . there, now don’t you feel vindicated?
Thank you
G-Spank,
I agree that some research points to man being at fault. But I don’t agree we just assume that it’s the case and not look elsewhere too.
What if there is another controlable cause? It would have been stupid to assume that school houses caused lung cancer in he 60’s and 70’s G-Spank,
I agree that some research points to man being at fault. That doesn’t make it true however. But I don’t agree we just assume that it’s the case and not look elsewhere too. The earth has been warming for the last 200,000 years. Back then the earth was a Popsicle, what do you think caused or better yet stopped the Ice Age? What caused the earth to start warming then?
What if there is another controllable cause? It would have been stupid to assume that school houses caused lung cancer in children in the 60’s and 70’s and just shut the schools when all along it was really the asbestos in the school.
If it’s just a natural course that the earth takes every 200,000 years or so it won’t matter, nothing we do will help.
So no, I never say let’s just assume.
Don’t laugh at the sheer stupidity of the European Union, the North American Union (US, Canada, Mexico) is right around the bend. Adios, soverignty and hello New World Order.
Jerry, you are assuming already. You’re assumption is that the evidence that points to man being at fault is incorrect.
I also never said that we should bury our heads in the sand. Of course we should be examining all possible causes. Isn’t that what many scientists are doing already, with most of the results pointing towards man as the root cause? Sure it is.
I think your assumption is self serving. It’s certainly the easier of the two assumptions. The other one requires change.
careless—don’t drive, dont wear leather shoes, don’t wipe you backside with paper, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t—go live in a cave, preferably in France.
History and archeology are littered with the wreckage of cultures & civilizations that disappeared because they embarked on unsustainable courses.
True enough. But there aren’t many examples of civilizations wrecked by self-inflicted global climate change.
Our technology is still barely a step above stones and sticks; we couldn’t change the planet’s climate if we wanted to! IMO it’s rather questionable that we’re doing it by accident.
Now that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t at least be conscious of the biosphere, and try to limit the damage our technology CAN do.
Ah Gspank.
You said 2 things that are kind of funny:
1. “Logic & science don’t mean much to either of you.”
– Logically there is a God, and you can’t disprove it.
– Science isn’t above the God who created everything. For Christians, science is the study of what God has made, and the only contradictions come in our understanding of it.
2. “The consequences of assuming they are wrong are much worse than the consequences of assuming they’re right. Isn’t it better to be safe than sorry?”
– If I changed the subject of your statement from Environmentalism to Christianity would you still support it? IE: “The consequences of assuming they (Christians) are wrong are much worse…..”
If what we’re doing today causes the highest temperatures for 2000 years, then what in the hell caused the high temperatures 2000 years ago? How do we know the same thing is not responsable for todays high temperatures?
Two different things have occured over the last 50 years. We have increased the use of fossil fuels at an alarming rate and we have cut down equitorial rain forests at an alarming rate. SUV’s are only responsible for one of those things. Over population is responsible for the other.
Equitorial rain forests have a much greater influence over climate change than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Rain forests used to negate the fossil fuel burning by absorbing carbon and becoming carbon sinks. The loss of the rain forests is a big part of the problem now.
The Sahara used to be rain forest. Over population changed it from lush forest into desert in Biblical times. The earth was warmed as a result.
Prior to that there have been several ice ages. Several times it has become cold enough to cover most of the Northern Hemisphere with up to a mile thick sheet of ice. Several times it has become warm enough to melt it all again.
What caused the warming and cooling over and over again for 10’s of 1000’s of years?
It was not my SUV.
In my opinion global warming is ridiculously offtopic here as none of the substances involved in this new regulation are greenhouse gases.
MU47,
point 2, nice try, but it doesn’t hold up. The difference is that in the first example (the various causes of climate change) both theories have scientific validity.
In your point, believing in a book where a dude puts 2 of every animal on a boat when the earth becomes completely covered in water has no basis in science whatsoever. In fact, it certainly looks like a fairy tale to me. So why would I choose the “better safe than sorry” for something that is hearsay at best? I’m sorry, but I think that is kinda crazy to think something as ludicrous as Noah’s Ark actually happened.
mac user 47:
“If I changed the subject of your statement from Environmentalism to Christianity would you still support it? IE: ‘The consequences of assuming they (Christians) are wrong are much worse…..’ “
*lol* I’ve often considered religion in that light! If you are religious and it turns out you were wrong, you’ve wasted a little time, maybe forfeited some choices… If you aren’t religious and it turns out you were wrong, major bummer!
On the other hand, I figure I’ll do my best to lead a good life and not worry a lot about whose name I’m doing it in. I figure it’ll all get sorted out in the end. Though, if somebody gets into Heaven for doing some really horrific shit “in the Lord’s name” while unbaptized children go to Hell, then I’ll stand in line with the kiddies as a conscientious objector.
On the environmental front, it doesn’t really matter whether the Earth’s temperature fluctuates naturally every bazillion years — we, and all the life currently on the planet, have evolved to handle the temperature *as it is*. So even if it’s a natural process, we might want to do our best to interfere with it.
As for paper, why the HECK are we still making it out of *trees*?!?! Haven’t the paper companies heard of hemp? It grows way faster than trees. Or jeez, why not blackberry bushes? Those things grow like crazy…
8:22am – temperature of rock in front yard is 71degf
10:45am – temperature of rock is 84degf
12:48pm – temperature of rock is 91degf
comclusion: rock will explode by 6:00pm if americans don’t stop driving suvs.
G-spanker
The issue isn’t the ark… it’s Jesus. That’s what the bible is all about, and Jesus is the real “fork in the road”, not the ark.
btw, grok’s explaination is the best global-warming-lunacy explaination I’ve ever heard…
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Big Al Said: “If what we’re doing today causes the highest temperatures for 2000 years, then what in the hell caused the high temperatures 2000 years ago? How do we know the same thing is not responsable for todays high temperatures?”
Unfortunately your logic has already failed you. The data are only calibrated properly for 400 years and reasonably correlated for 1500 years. This means that they have no accurate measure of temperature before that, so they are not saying that it was hotter 2000 years ago, just that they cannot be precise on the temperature measurement. And before you jump down my throat with “but how do they know there were glaciers then”, it is not possible to tie glacial advance with specific temperature.
and mac user 47 “Logically there is a God, and you can’t disprove it”
man, oh man! you are right only in the respect that the existence of God cannot be disproved, but you must have a feeble grasp on logic if you think that it somehow proves his existence. In fact do it, use logic to prove his existence, now that I’d like to see. Besides, I thought proof denied faith and without faith He is nothing…hmmm?
G-Spank,
My assumption is based on the fact that the earth has already been a greenhouse, then a frozen tundra, then it heated up again, at least four times in history that we know of. All thousands of years before man and without mans help.
Some of the researchers on global warming have concluded that after the polar ice caps melt and the sea level rises dramatically that the earth will begin to rapidly cool. A possible ice age or mini ice age could occur they say. How odd that that seems to be the exact same thing that happened before. Four times in fact, before man even existed.
To ignore that fact seems idiotic to me. The earth is warming, that is a fact. It has been slowly warming for the last 200,000 years since the last ice age.
The last time it heated up we lived in caves. A sheet of ice reached from the North Pole to North Africa, what caused global warming then?
I knew the UK never should have joined it, even if we do get paid billions to be in it by the rest of europe
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I never wanted us to join, we’re an independant country and the EUs taking over too much. Next theyll bring in some directive saying we cant use the £ any more cos its ‘made of illegal substances’
Also a lot of people dispute the fact that pollution is causing global warming by saying that it’s happened before but since there were no cars then they can’t have been the cause – maybe not but maybe we’re speeding the process up?
One thing I never understand is that in in relation to, say, cars and their use of fossil fuels – people only ever seem to talk about using them up and increasing global warming – the environmental angle. Very little attention is drawn to the fact that their exhaust fumes are just not pleasant. Cyclists and pedestrians wear masks in cities, they’re dirty, they smell (you can commit suicide with them) – surely that’s enough to want to get rid of them or at least limit them?
Of course this is totally off topic.
If Apple can’t get their act together and still offers outdated, polluting junk, no doubt made in China by 5 year olds, good riddance to them. Most of this garbage, especially the isoght camera, was obsolete and overpriced anyway.
Tell me World, how is the iSight obsolete? Together with iChat AV, it works remarkably well at my house.
If we were even anywhere near that subject, Apple wouldn’t be only one who contributes to the overdramatized news whore that is “global warming”. A lot of other companies do too you know. Especially car companies. The impact that car companies have on the environment would overshadow and dwarf whatever Apple could do.
But this isn’t even about global warming or anything of the sort. This is about hazardous materials, you know, stuff that can cause bad stuff to happen in bad situations. Does lead cause global warming? No.
Jerry,
The vast majority of scientists who are all way smarter than you or I on this subject agree that mankind is playing a major role in the heating up of the planet. That’s the fact that you are desperately trying to ignore. Why?
Lead and mercury don’t contribute to global warming. They simply kill.