[LINK] Clouds of Coal

[Richard Chirgwin]

Ahhh, I found the study I was thinking of ...

www.infra.kth.se/fms/pdf/Report_epaper_final.pdf

Now, I don't pretend it's complete, accurate, perfect, or any such 
thing. But I think it demonstrates that we need more than just slogans 
to sustain the belief that the Internet is greener than reading 
newsprint or printing books.

One other number. Until the GFC, passenger growth in airline travel 
worldwide was between 5% and 7% annually (2005, 2006 and 2007). So it 
doesn't seem the Internet was replacing travel (in fact, by helping 
drive down prices, it probably drove up miles). (Source: 
http://www.iata.org/pressroom/facts_figures/fact_sheets/)

Skype replaces IDD, but I don't think it replaces much in the way of travel.

RC


Richard Chirgwin wrote:
> Kim Holburn wrote:
>   
>> You'd think that there would be offsets: like the tonnage of emails  
>> not sent as real letters, books or news read online instead of made  
>> out of trees and transported around the place, people skyping instead  
>> of going there, invoices sent electronically etc.
>>
>> Surely that would have some positive effect?
>>   
>>     
> Only maybe.
>
> The IT industry has been very good at making people believe fuzzy nice 
> things about it with the right sloganeering, and the "dead trees" line 
> is probably the best example of this that exists.
>
> The only moderately rigorous analyses I've ever seen of "dead trees 
> versus Internet publishing" (I sent to Link last year, I think) were at 
> best equivocal; pulping dead trees is at worst marginally more damaging 
> than burning dead fossils. It may even be that dead trees have a lower 
> carbon footprint than the newspaper Web presence; and of course a 
> significant proportion of Australian newsprint is not a dead tree but a 
> dead newspaper.
>
> Regarding e-mail and letters, the actual carbon footprint of a single 
> letter would anyway have to be vanishingly small (as is the carbon 
> footprint of a single e-mail) - but without analysis, I don't think 
> "e-mail is less polluting than snail mail" is a safe assumption.
>
> As for "skyping instead of going there", it doesn't stand up to 
> analysis. The state of the economy has vastly more impact on 
> individual's use of air travel than the state of the communications 
> network; until the GFC, air miles were still growing.
>
> So, Kim, I'm deeply sceptical of the worth of the offsets. The industry 
> likes to paint itself as green, but my feeling is that 90% of it is 
> greenwash.
>
> Richard C
>   
>> On 2010/Mar/31, at 1:26 PM, stephen at melbpc.org.au wrote:
>>
>>   
>>     
>>> "If considered as a country, global telecommunications and data  
>>> centers
>>> behind the cloud would have ranked fifth in the world for energy use  
>>> in
>>> 2007, behind the United States, China, Russia and Japan .."
>>>
>>>
>>> Coal fuels much of internet 'cloud', says Greenpeace
>>>
>>> March 31, 2010 <http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news>
>>>
>>>
>>> The 'cloud' of data which is becoming the heart of the internet is
>>> creating an all too real cloud of pollution as Facebook, Apple and  
>>> others
>>> build data centers powered by coal, according to a new Greenpeace  
>>> report.
>>>     
>>>       
>>   
>>     
>
> _______________________________________________
> Link mailing list
> Link at mailman.anu.edu.au
> http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
>
>