There is a lot good advice posted. Much depends on the operations that will take place in the room. Most control rooms have daily cycles consisting of the day shift with maintenance working on things and interacting with the operators, a swing shift where things quiet down, and a graveyard shift that consists of long hours of quiet and talk among the operators to pass the time. When a process upset or emergency occurs the operators must respond quickly, but with a well-run process upsets don't happen very often.
I have spent too much of my life in control rooms, paper industry and power plant. Control rooms existed before computers, consisting of expanses panels of controllers and switches. Since there were so many controls, at least half of them could only be reached by standing. The operators were trim and in good shape. They frequently spent their time sitting down because there was nothing to do, then immediately came to their feet when action was required. Humans function much better standing up. They think better and it is best for them physically, the two go hand in hand. Many control displays work by touch. Proper display design is an elite craft. Arrange the displays so that normal operator input occurs standing and dealing with the display at eye level. People will object that keyboard input is required and keyboards have to be horizontal. I don't know your processes, but the vast majority of keyboard interactions involve display selection, alarm interaction, and numerical entry (setpoints, etc.). Sometimes tags get typed, it isn't frequent or common and almost always results from bad display design. Anyway, numerical entry can easily be handled by a vertical keypad. It certainly doesn't need to be horizontal. Display selection should primarily be handled through the displays, using proper design. Alarm interaction needs its own small keypad beneath the numerical one. In the future, voice recognition will be used with the displays, but right now it would be a gimmick.
By the way, my company provides simulations for operator training. Contact me if you are interested. Start-ups, shutdowns, upsets, alarms, tags, etc. All the usual suspects.
History does not show that the human race needs intellectual property such as patents and copyright. I say this in spite of having a small software company with its key asset being a software package. However it would be a long discussion with us starting so far apart.
Thank you for responding,
John
The issue isn't nice and neat.
Carbon
When it comes to carbon everything depends on its origin and its destination. Carbon only exists in the earth, in the biosphere, and in the atmosphere. That's it. It transfers easily between the biosphere and the atmosphere, not so with the earth. The environmental problem results from digging up lots of carbon and having it end up in the atmosphere. When making paper, carbon becomes an issue when it is dug out of the ground and burned to make electricity to make the paper. That's the only carbon that counts. This use of carbon can be mitigated by printing telephone books and burying them in the ground. This takes carbon out of the atmosphere/biosphere for a long time, not geologically long, but long.
Water
Water stays water. Production of paper can result in water pollution, but not water loss. There are two types of water pollution, chemical and heat (hot water can be environmentally bad). Paper mills result in less water pollution than people think and keeping the water clean is a matter of legislation, not one of paper production.
Chemicals
Making paper uses chemicals. Most chemicals are recycled. When you see a pulp mill where logs go in and pulp and paper comes out, the big majority of the equipment and processes are dedicated to recycling the chemicals. Making paper isn't hard, its separating the fibers which takes all the work. Chemicals are expensive and the paper industry does its best not to lose any.
Heat
Definitely a waste byproduct. Nature likes to produce heat and anything we do has that result. The human body generates plenty of heat while sound asleep. That said, a pulp mill (people use bad terminology, paper mills aren't an issue) does its best to get as much work from the heat as possible. More and more mills have installed electrical turbines and some come close to generating all their own power. The electricity produced comes at a low cost. The mills already are using the steam, heating it up and cooling it down to make electricity is quite efficient.
Other issues such as old-growth are in pretty much the same boat.
There are problems with everything, once you decide to not live by chasing the migrating herds. I read all the nonsense about electronic books. What can you do? People want to make money and think selling everyone on the next best thing is the way to go. The human being is quite adaptable and can live with all sorts of stupid ideas. Is there too much waste paper in the world? Yes. Does anyone really think the human race is healthier for the invention of television?
Currently environmentalism is the hot secular religion. In another day and age building paper mills had the same cachet.
Would she have vetoed it if their Supreme Court were not involved? No. What is important is that she could have sided with her party which knew what it was doing when it passed the law. In American history, a governor siding with his party is quite common. Politically it is better to have the courts rule against you. She didn't. She didn't like it, but she did what she had to do. This respect for law and responsibility is not something we see in politicians. In Washington people worry about a law or portions of a law being unconstitutional and then go ahead and decide to let the Supreme Court figure it out. Who do you want in positions of power? Personally I would be content with a tentacle-headed Martian as president as long as it was a good executive and did the job. Instead people go with the equivalent of used-car salesmen, then moan and groan when they don't do what they said they would do. People are afraid of Palin because they suspect she will do what she says she will do and they don't like some of her ideas. So they vote for people who are lying through their teeth. Obama makes all sorts of promises on the campaign trail and then in office says things are more complicated than he realized. What an absolute joke. He knew that before-hand and wouldn't say it. Yet the people voted for him.
There are things about Palin I don't like, but I think she would be far more professional than the current group of politicians. Politicians and professionalism separated long ago.
Always draw your curves, then plot your reading.