Posted on 04/24/2011 11:16:39 PM PDT by smokingfrog
Clicking on all those viral videos, chain emails, celebrity tweets and paparazzi photos online sucks up enough energy to rank the Internet –- if it were a country -– fifth in the world for electricity use.
That’s more power than Russia uses, according to a new report about cloud-computing from Greenpeace.
Computer servers in data centers account for about 2% of global energy demand, growing about 12% a year, according to the group. The servers, Greenpeace said, can suck up as much power as 50,000 average U.S. homes.
But most of what powers the cloud comes from coal and nuclear energy rather than renewable sources such as wind and solar, according to Greenpeace. Clusters of data centers are emerging in places like the Midwest, where coal-powered electricity is cheap and plentiful, the group said.
In its report, the organization zeroed in on 10 major tech companies, including Apple, Twitter and Amazon. Recently, the group has waged a feisty fight against Facebook, which relies on coal for 53.2% of its electricity, according to Greenpeace.
Many companies, the organization said, tightly guard data about the environmental impact and energy consumption of their IT operations. They also focus more on using energy efficiently than on sourcing it cleanly, Greenpeace said.
Yahoo landed bonus points for siting facilities near clean energy hot spots and using coal-based power for just 18.3% of its portfolio. Google got love for its extensive support of wind and solar projects and for creating a subsidiary, Google Energy, that can buy electricity directly from independent renewable power producers.
In 2005, the U.S. had 10.3 million data centers gobbling up enough energy to power all of Britain for two months, according to Internet marketing company WordStream.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimesblogs.latimes.com ...
Amazing! I better send this link to everyone in my address book,,, (snicker)
Hey Greenpeace, do you know if whale oil burns cleaner than natural gas?/s;)
Really? This so just makes me want to phart.
members of greenpeace should quit exhaling CO2 and save the planet...
If we turned off all these electronic devices, we would kill the economy which would kill a lot of people.
I am sure Greenpeace would be happy if we went back to mechanical typewriters and the tons of paper to crank through them.
Please shut up. I am tired of arguing with you green hand-wringing ninnies. If you don’t like CO2 then support nuclear. If you want renewable then support more hydro electric dams. Say you hate progress, say you want to abolish modern civilization. But quit using “science” in your flawed, circular and deceptive arguments. Just shut up and go away.
Pixel Power Producers Possibly Punish Planet with Pollution.
I see! But to be fair many sites recycle garbage so it may all balance out.
Fermentation is the process by which yeast converts glucose sugars to ethyl alcohol and carbon dioxide gas.
A similar study should be conducted to determine total CO2 output from Ethenol generally, and Beer in particular. A third of the annual US corn crop is diverted to these uses, so the numbers must be staggering.
Well if anyone would know about sucking, it’s Greenpeace.
Let’s see: efficiency of power usage, clean sourcing... what’s missing? How about efficiency of processing: Less waste in operating system overhead equals fewer cycles needed to perform a given task. The high-to-low and low-to-high swings are where current draw comes in, and is why faster processors require more heat. Running a modern CPU with no heat sync/fan will burn it up in a matter of seconds - if not faster.
Code more efficiently. Jettison DLLs in favor of organic programming, where systems are initialized ONCE - not once for each thing that uses them. Bigger but more efficient code.
Eventually you can get it down to the point that you do not NEED six billion clock transitions (=3GHz) to power these servers. You can run just as fast at 500Mhz, perform exactly the same tasks in the same amount of time with greater efficiency.
Alternatively, keep the newer modern equipment but with the refactored architecture, but just perform the tasks more quickly and then sleep in a no-cycle state until the next requests.
People are overlooking how the trends in software toward complex modular (not organic) systems, most of which now require gargantuan non-organic frameworks like Microsof’s .NET, have likewise contributed to energy inefficiency. Going against “conventional wisdom” in computer science, on a grand scale, could help reduce power requirements, reduce power bills, and reduce carbon footprints.
A win-win.
Greenpeace sucks IQ from the planet. They just plain suck too.
“In 2005, the U.S. had 10.3 million data centers gobbling up enough energy to power all of Britain for two months, according to Internet marketing company WordStream.”
One datacenter for every 30 people in US? http://images.icanhascheezburger.com/completestore/2008/8/11/hahahahahah128629548180562774.jpg
Please don’t blame the whales for the f*ing retards in Greenpeace. I want to feed those jerk offs to the polar bears.
Who but the press gives a rats ass what the ayatollahs at Greenpeace think about anything? They’re loopy activists, that’s all they are.
Of course, on the other hand, if they have connections to the all-powerful EPA, they may hang us all.
I think Greenpeace probably emits more harmful gas into the atmosphere every time one of them opens their sanctimonious mouths.
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