I?have researched environmental issues associated with the Internet, Electronic Commerce, and Computerization for a number of years.? Yet, it only?recently hit me that this blog may be contributing to a larger carbon footprint.?My environmental guilt meter rose a little.
The evidence?was clearly laid out in?a?recent New York Times (NYT) investigatory article?on environmental implications of data centers.? Although to researchers working in Green Information Technology (IT), this is not news, for?the average person the numbers and issues may?be eye-opening. The title of the article is: "The Cloud Factories: Power, Pollution and the Internet". It reports on a year-long investigation into the information industry.? Their finding, the Information?industry is not as clean and environmentally friendly as previously thought, especially with respect to energy usage.? Their focus was on data warehouses, also known as the heart of ?the cloud?.
Some sobering statistics are provided such as: ?Worldwide, the digital warehouses use about 30 billion watts of electricity, roughly equivalent to the output of 30 nuclear power plants...? and "...Nationwide, data centers used about 76 billion kilowatt-hours in 2010?? ?...the paper industry, which some predicted would be replaced by the computer age, consumed 67 billion kilowatt-hours from the grid in 2010?.?
The numbers speak for themselves.? This?results are?only for data warehousing activities, not necessarily all computer usage in organizations.? Add to these numbers?the amount of energy and resources used to build and dispose of computer IT systems and the impact becomes exponentially larger.? There are many life cycle analyses completed for these systems (see this work by Eric Williams), and the?picture on the screen gets a bit?dirtier. In a clarifying ?rejoinder? to this NYT article, Katrin Winkler, Sustainability Director at EMC Corporation, in her blog does a good job of trying to explain that industry is not blind to these issues. Effective practices and norms to address these energy usage?from data storage?has been occurring.? EMC Corporation is one of the world?s largest large scale data storage manufacturers, and is clearly concerned with an article that puts data storage in a?negative environmental light.? There are actual benefits to cloud computing that seemed to have been overlooked.? For example, storage in one centralized location can result in less overall energy use, when compared to distributed storage on personal?computers.?
There are also indusry activities that have been occurring to save energy and money.?Part of the recommendations imply that metrics and evaluations should be carefully considered as organizations and society shift their effort and resources to a more virtual world.?
Now, back to my initial concern, what is?the carbon or energy footprint of this, my,?blog?? Should I?be writing this blog? What is the environmental value of my information and awareness raising, is it worth the energy of storing this blog in a Google Data warehouse?? Should I be deleting superfluous emails and pictures that are no longer necessary?? Should I get rid of my Facebook, Linked-In, Academia.edu, Research Gate, etc., social media accounts?? Should I get an editor who can say all this in fewer words? Should I have used smaller font??
Source: http://oneaomonline.blogspot.com/2012/10/what-is-carbon-footprint-of-this-blog.html
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