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How cloud computing impacts the environment

thecloud.christmas

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Re: How cloud computing impacts the environment

#11

Post by Traubenfuchs »

lifty wrote: post #10
adrianN wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 eco…

This doesn't fit the empty narrative of false hope that currently prevails. People can not accept that fact that we can not fix this within the next decades and get angry. It's like telling a cancer patient that, yes, he will die within the next few months.

Re: How cloud computing impacts the environment

#12

Post by adrianN »

lifty wrote: post #10
adrianN wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 eco…

It is unlikely that energy growth in India and China will be met with renewables and nuclear only because there is insufficient political will to help or force them to do so. They build coal plants because that's the cheapest option. Politics can change that.

Re: How cloud computing impacts the environment

#15

Post by klyrs »

crocowhile wrote: post #14

I once read the suggestion to build a powerful cloud datacenter in orbital space, powering it with solar panels. That would solve any overheating problem too.

Space might be nominally cold, but it's also a vacuum. It's rather difficult to dissipate heat up there.

Re: How cloud computing impacts the environment

#17

Post by dspillett »

crocowhile wrote: post #14

I once read the suggestion to build a powerful cloud datacenter in orbital space, powering it with solar panels. That would solve any overheating problem too.

That would work for tasks that are not latency sensitive (i.e. long compute tasks, not interactive ones) and that don't require oodles of bandwidth (or aren't time sensitive so it doesn't matter that getting the data up there for processing takes a while).

IIRC typical packet round trip times for generic networking a single satellite is at least half a second, two or three times that being typical RTTs, and bandwidth is going to be orders of magnitude lower than can be achieved with land/sea wire based networks.

Also dissipating heat is more problematical in space than most people intuit do to vacuum conditions.

And getting the kit up there in the first place will have a large environmental impact, and upgrades will be somewhat more time consuming and otherwise resource intensive.

Re: How cloud computing impacts the environment

#19

Post by omgtehlion »

proposed solutions:

> Increased energy efficiency on component level

> Increased energy efficiency on data center level

Why no “Increased efficiency on software level”? Is it simpler to throw hardware (and money, energy, carbon emissions) at the problem than find better solutions?

Re: How cloud computing impacts the environment

#20

Post by yoz-y »

Ok but how about all the carbon removed by cloud computing? Less commutes necessary thanks to video conferencing tools and work from home, less cars on streets due do deliveries (disputable, depends on how the city is laid out I suppose)...
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