The Bishops of Oxford and London and others are going to reduce their carbon footprint for Lent by (amongst other things) reducing their mobile phone usage. I've done a quick rough calculation :
An hour on a mobile phone equates (at a rough calculation) to leaving a 100w light bulb on for 50 seconds.
It wouldn't consume enough energy to remotely begin to start your car, let alone drive it! It might heat the glow-plugs of your diesel car up (i.e. turning on the ignition) before you actually try starting it.
A typical surge-protected 8-way multiplug, if left switched on (but with nothing plugged into it) is roughly equivalent to having 20 mobile phones permanently in use. The one I've got (no longer using) used 43 watts doing nothing. According to another rough calculation : over the course of a year, that's equivalent to boiling 5,000 kettles of water for two people. It would take my mobile phone about a day and a half to boil the same kettle.
In fact, the 'Carbon Fast' suggestions for Lent from Tear Fund (see http://www.tearfund.org/webdocs/website/Campaigning/CarbonFast09/Carbon%20Fast%202010%20actions%20for%20web.pdf) which is what the bishops are signing up to is a good list of suggestions. Looks like it's their PR people that don't quite get it.
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One of the Tear Fund suggestions is to turn down your water thermostat to 60°C.
One of my church members has pointed out that a hot water system needs to run at a certain temperature to things like Legionnaires' Disease establishing itself in the system.
60°C is the minimum it should be run at, apparently.
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