How cloud computing impacts the environment
thecloud.christmas
How cloud computing impacts the environment
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Re: How cloud computing impacts the environment
#2Climate realists know that if climate change is significantly man made, we can not stop it.
If humanity keeps growing at the current rate, a reduction of 10% of our climate footprint is eaten up in 10 years and a reduction of 20% in 20 years. And a reduction of 10%, let alone 20%, is completely unrealistic.
Greta and her climate cult are en vogue, but the majority of people are not ready to change anything beyond some virtue signing activities at best.
Re: How cloud computing impacts the environment
#3While yes, datacenters will be a significant consumer of energy in the foreseeable future, I honestly don't feel bringing "cloud" into the picture gives relevance other than the buzzwords.
Like what the article actually says, cloud is basically datacenter hosted by another guy. In fact, I would argue that cloud is more energy efficient due to the shared infrastructure and higher efficiency due to the scale involved. Imagine the amount of redundancy an organisation have to have to handle peak demand, vs a cloud provider aggregating the demands together.
The graph is probably even more telling. With (assumed) increased need for technology going forward, we actually have almost static demand for energy due to these technologies. It's actually a good news!
End of the day, yes technology is expected to consume more energy in the future, but in a good way, they will be somewhat aggregated to cloud. That means we can look into solutions targeted to cloud providers that actually have significant impact to the environment (eg. more incentives to use solar panels in cloud datacenter)
Re: How cloud computing impacts the environment
#4While yes, datacenters will be a significant consumer of energy in the foreseeable future, I honestly don't feel bringing "cloud" into the picture gives relevance other than the buzzwords. Like what the article actually says, cloud is basically datacenter hosted by another guy. In fact, I would argue that cloud is more energy efficient due to the shared infrastructure and higher efficiency due to the scale involved.…
The author makes the same argument; or at least points out there is truth to that argument.
Re: How cloud computing impacts the environment
#5Disclaimer: former OVH employee
> Although many cloud providers have pledged to decarbonize their data centers, none have ditched fossil fuels entirely
Most datacenters in France are located close to nuclear power plants and only run on fossil fuels in case of a prolonged power outage. To me this is as carbon neutral as it gets.
Re: How cloud computing impacts the environment
#6Climate realists know that if climate change is significantly man made, we can not stop it. If humanity keeps growing at the current rate, a reduction of 10% of our climate footprint is eaten up in 10 years and a reduction of 20% in 20 years. And a reduction of 10%, let alone 20%, is completely unrealistic. Greta and her climate cult are en vogue, but the majority of people are not ready to change anything beyond som…
You assume that any population growth is facilitated by an equal growth in fossil fuel consumption, but that doesn't have to be true. Assume a hypothetical society that has switched all primary energy to renewables an nuclear. Children born in that society won't use additional fossil fuels, because their demand would be met with more renewables and more nuclear power.
People unfortunately will have to change their ways. Either by adopting carbon free energy sources and improving their energy efficiency, or by dealing with catastrophic climate change.
Re: How cloud computing impacts the environment
#7Google at least claiming to buy 100% of their usage from renewable sources, they are pretty open that it doesn't mean that is what feeds their electrons at all times of the day though. Better than most traditional computing / on premises sources though.
Re: How cloud computing impacts the environment
#8Reading the title, I was thinking this would be about cloud cover and not data centers to be honest…
Re: How cloud computing impacts the environment
#9Climate realists know that if climate change is significantly man made, we can not stop it. If humanity keeps growing at the current rate, a reduction of 10% of our climate footprint is eaten up in 10 years and a reduction of 20% in 20 years. And a reduction of 10%, let alone 20%, is completely unrealistic. Greta and her climate cult are en vogue, but the majority of people are not ready to change anything beyond som…
“know that if climate change is significantly man made”
Im trying to understand how someone could possibly believe that it isn’t man-made at this point. I’m pretty sure this viewpoint would require the belief that atmospheric carbon and global temperatures are completely unrelated, which seems totally insane in late 2019.
Maybe you can enlighten me?
Re: How cloud computing impacts the environment
#10Climate realists know that if climate change is significantly man made, we can not stop it. If humanity keeps growing at the current rate, a reduction of 10% of our climate footprint is eaten up in 10 years and a reduction of 20% in 20 years. And a reduction of 10%, let alone 20%, is completely unrealistic. Greta and her climate cult are en vogue, but the majority of people are not ready to change anything beyond som…
You assume that any population growth is facilitated by an equal growth in fossil fuel consumption, but that doesn't have to be true. Assume a hypothetical society that has switched all primary energy to renewables an nuclear. Children born in that society won't use additional fossil fuels, because their demand would be met with more renewables and more nuclear power. People unfortunately will have to change their wa…
In a hypothetical society that might be the case. In our situation though, we have large countries like India, Indonesia and perhaps some African countries, that will need to grow their energy consumption per capita and it is unlikely that this energy will come only from renewables or nuclear. So it seems to me to that it will get worse before it will get better. It's just difficult to tell them to restrict their economic growth just because we in the west have filled the rest of the CO2 pie.