Don't Choke Power to the Internet, Exec Says

cronopio2001, 

I doth protest! The Copernican analogy is surely valid, along the lines of religiosity and censorship. Copernicus could be viewed as a critic of Man made global warming, and the IPCC could be viewed as the church, believing a myth. RE: “The medieval thinkers (not scientists, necessarily) dismissed him for theological reasons, they didn't analyze data, just rejected a theory based on first principles.”  Precisely! Critics of the Global warming due to man farce seem to have good reason that this is exactly the case with the IPCC. They reject hard data obtained by through true scientific method. Then their faith, philosophy, political motives overtake rational thought and reasoning when used with the scientific method (not that faith, philosophy or politics in itself is irrational or unreasonable).

RE: "Scientists respond to incentives as everyone else, so it's logical that they devote time to get government or private foundations grants. It's even legitimate. What it is not  valid, is to manipulate the data to support a priori some argument. That's plain intellectual dishonesty, and you can find it in both sides."

That's exactly what the IPCC does. Not only are they manipulating the data, they are CENSORING the data see paragraph 6 here.  The IPCC is a sham, a fraud…a UN body. The IPCC needs to be held accountable or dissolved. If you can point out instances of this dishonesty by the critics of Man made Global warming (I’m not saying they do not exist), please post back.

Trying to get back to topic - regulating power consumption to data centers with unnecessary, burdensome regulation while claiming that these regulations are helping the environment due to the upcoming calamity of Man made Global Warming if we don’t do something about it, quick, right now…..is pure, unadulterated, human folly at its finest (ahem…worst). This regulation can be used responsibly however, to make data centers run more efficiently, if we REALLY need them to be. Aye, then, when is government EVER responsible?

DontHateMeCUZImRIGHT (probably!),

I think you're mixing a truth with a non-valid analogy: you say an idea is not true just because is wide-held, and I couldn't agree more, but the rejection of copernican ideas has not any resemblance to the current climate change-debate. The medieval thinkers (not scientists, necessarily) dismissed him for theological reasons, they didn't analyze data, just rejected a theory based on first principles. In the climate-change debate the bashers of climate change being man-made are not dismissed by a majority of the scientific community for political reasons. The arguments against them are centered on simulation models, time-series analysis, and other computational and statistical tools, and The Royal Society offers just a synthesis of the data spread in hundreds of scientific journals (to clarify, the idea that climate change is not man made is discussed in their “first misleading argument”). By the way, if we try to be critical with the knowledge we acquired in elementary school, we should know that in Columbus time most scientists and learned people in general knew the Earth wasn't flat, but his travel was criticized for reasons other than the roundness of the planet.

There is grant money for scientists studying everything related to the effects of economic activities over climate change. That means there is also financing for scientists able to produce evidence that finds that the role of economic activities in those changes is negligible. Scientists respond to incentives as everyone else, so it's logical that they devote time to get government or private foundations grants. It's even legitimate. What it is not  valid, is to manipulate the data to support a priori some argument. That's plain intellectual dishonesty, and you can find it in both sides. 

You have a point when you discuss the lack of conclusive evidence about the 1940-1970 period. The aerosols explanation is a hypothesis, so is just "probably" the reason for the cooling in that period. You have to consider, though, that (1) even if the hypothesis is incorrect is not enough to reject the main hypothesis (c. change is man-made) because that conjecture is supported by a much longer period, and (2) is the best hypothesis so far (that I'm aware of).  

 

Prepare yourself for the next big disaster scenario: water.

cronopio2001--

I think you got the gist of what I was saying, except for the bit about global climate change being a myth, and the science supporting it as "bad science". That was an attempt at sarcasm; not the best even at that.

As humans, we sure seem to be able to rationalize our behaviors even when the evidence is right in our faces that we are hurting ourselves in the process. Sad. Very sad...

cronopio2001, 

CRITICAL THINKING is difficult. It’s hard work, especially when you have to separate your politics from proper, factually based reasoning. That’s why most people choose to avoid it and many people NEVER think critically. This can set very dangerous precedents though. Just a few decades ago, scientists were fearful of the upcoming Ice Age because that was where the “disaster hype” grant money was. Now, the deception of this Man made Global Warming farce is where the “disaster hype” grant money is. The beliefs that the Earth was flat and was also at the center of the universe where widely held at one time too, but Christopher Columbus and Nicolaus Copernicus proved these were foolhardy. 

You with your “Researcher” designation, surely observed the videos first (from my links); and if you posted your comments after scrutinizing the videos (sigh), I wonder if you should try them again. The very generalized responses “Misleading Arguments”, 1-8, posted by The Royal Society are weak in my view. At the bottom of that page they even state: 

“Our scientific understanding of climate change is sufficiently sound to make us highly confident that greenhouse gas emissions are causing global warming.” 

There was no debate whether or not the globe was getting warmer (it was, but not since 1998); the debate is about the cause of that warming. There is NO direct evidence that increasing CO2 levels causes temperature to increase, anywhere. Under Misleading Argument #6, they even shoot themselves in the foot by stating that there was a downturn in solar activity during ~1940 to ~1970(5). Then say was “PROBABLY” (there’s Hard Science for you!) “…was probably offset by increasing amounts of sulphate aerosols in the atmosphere, and a slight downturn in solar activity, as well as enhanced volcanic activity.”  

You say, “they’re darn loaded with evidence!” Yeah, ah…PROBABLY (not)? But, according to the theory of man made global warming [increasing CO2 levels are causing temperature increases]; why then did temperatures fall [~ 1940 to ~ 1975, nearly 4 decades] during the post WWII economic boom where CO2 levels increased dramatically due to economic progress? Per ice core studies (of which Al Gore cites in his, ah, drama), temperature increases lead CO2 increases with ~ a 600-800 year lag (See video GGWS 20m:30s to 24m:06s). These temperature increases, then 600-800 year lagging CO2 increases, are driven by Duh SUN. 

Under Misleading Argument #8, they even cite the IPCC as an authoritative body on climate change. But the popular, “Green”, political, non-scientific, “Man made global warming” theory is being driven by the IPCC! The IPCC is UN political body made up of many NON-scientists. There is an incredible amount of bias, corruption and the "Sky is Falling" alarm w/in the IPCC in order to keep themselves alive! I would hardly call this UN body “prestiged”, or trustworthy, or holy. See IPPC bias, Climate Catastrophe Cancelled, 17m:55s to 20m:51s., and IPCC bias & data censorship, Apocalypse? NO!, 9m:00s to 20m:25s. 

RE: Movie scripts, the real movie script is “An Inconvenient Truth”, Dreamworks (fitting, of course could be renamed to Fantasyworks), created by Mr. Fantasy himself Al Gore. Why do I say Mr. Fantasy? He loves extremism. He loves the drama and hype, that’s just how he is and how he can motivate (scare) people. He says “I used to be the next President of the United States”, fantasy. He claims apocalyptic 20 foot high tides, melting ice caps, massive coastal flooding, fantasy. Al Gore says he’s an environmentalist, fantasy. He is a hypocrite, he doesn’t even practice what he preaches like oh, Ed Begley Jr. for example, a true environmentalist.

Mike, you're right: an industry polluting with HFC-23 cannot be considered green just because they bought some carbon offsets or put into practice some environmental friendly practices. On the other hand, your're taking an outlier as an example. The main problem with most pollutant activities related to GHG is CO2, which accounts for more than 80% of the GHG, while HFCs and PFCs TOGETHER make less than 3%. If the take home message is that we should consider the net effect of each industry sector, I completely agree.

Regarding climate change being a myth and the scientific evidence that supports it "bad science", I just would ask, according to whom? According to most scientists, climate change is a fact. That's the consensus of almost every national academies of science that has an official statement on the subject. Some scientists do not challenge climate change as a scientific fact, but debate the policies recommended by IPCC, but that's a different story.

One of the most tragic, or maybe it is really more ironic, results of the greening of the corporate world is the rhetoric coming out of some companies. The misuse of terms demonstrate that many of the spokespeople, and the copywriters, don't understand the use of the terms deeply enough to use them properly. The dirty truth for many companies is that greenwashing is the only environmental movement active in the company.

For instance, it is possible for me to greenwash myself by buying carbon offsets for every trip I make, or using one of those fancy carbon footprint calculators to figure out how many credits I need to offset my entire carbon footprint and purchase those. Am I green now? Have I actually reduced the amount of carbon I release?

Now apply that to a company that is a big polluter. Let's say they replace all of their incandescent lighting with flourescents (did that when they built the plant in the 60's), convert their entire truck fleet to natural gas, install video conferencing to eliminate some business travel, and buy carbon offsets for the rest of their business travel. This is all good, right? But what about the pollution they produce? What if their main pollutant was nitrous oxide? Each metric ton of nitrous oxide is the equivalent of 310 metric tons of carbon dioxide. How about HFC-23? Each metric ton is the equivalent of over 11,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide. What if it is sulfur hexaflouride? That's a whopping 23,900:1 ratio with carbon dioxide. At least according to the EPA.

Do not get me wrong--reducing our footprints by reducing our consumption is a good thing. And even greenwashing has some benefits--if the credits are real from a reputable project. Producing products that consume less energy is a good thing. Many of the suggestions I have seen posted on this thread are great ideas and good things to do.

But equally, as others have pointed out, measuring the net effect is difficult. There is even the extreme position that remote diagnosis wouldn't be necessary if the net hadn't driven the edge of computing to the end-user. I know that is a stretch--but it is only intended to show that measurement is hard.

But then, global climate change is a myth. Increased floods, increased droughts, melting sea-ice in the artic and antarctic, disappearing glaciers (what will they call Glacier National Park when they are all completely gone in the summer?), record snowfalls, more severe weather and intense storms--even the anecdotal evidence seems to point to a myth. No wonder the scientific evidence is called "bad science".

But that's okay: our industry is going to save itself, right? I just wonder about a spokesperson that touts a lower ROI as a benefit, and then talks about GHG reductions in the same release.

Mike

Mike

modza, I understand the metric isn't perfect or well developed at this stage - there's still a lot of room for improvement, and quantifying this sort of thing as useful work or task and make a meaningful conclusion isn't easy. But I still think it's a good starting point.

Viboons, The Green Grid has tackled an existential problem.  If it's tasks that you're counting, what about storage? What if the tasks are video games, or porn? Or banking fraud? I could go on...

I'm with you, David. While there are plenty of cynics who say IT has never eliminated any work, but only expanded it, and shifted who is doing it, I come down on the side of the Internet is a good green-aiding tool. (I'd advocate for all ecommerce to contribute to local taxes so as not to starve our real world communities, but that's another fight.)

At the same time, servers and datacenters were built initially for reliability and uptime, not energy efficiency, so there's a lot of improvement that's possible, much of it without much capital expense.

 Shameless plug: come to the Uptime Institute's 4th Annual Symposium in April in (energy-efficient) New York. The theme is Lean, Clean & Green, and we have nearly 90 hours of content in 4 days. Visit greenitnyc.com for the scary video.