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Data Centers and Global Warming, Will the web crash?

gimmiethescoop.com — So you ’ve heard the hype on going green, wouldn’t you like to know how the internet fits into the big picture of saving energy? Every time you search Google you could power an 11-watt light bulb for an hour…

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  • MaxP3, on 05/11/2008, -66/+21global warming is real. thats all i have to say
    • SkyBlueSky, on 05/11/2008, -18/+2it seems to me that it may be a threat to the web as we know it.
      • AlexBellisBrown, on 05/11/2008, -0/+10 People who watch porn on the web don´t need heating, which uses a lot of energy.
        • threemagic, on 05/11/2008, -0/+6you may be onto something. considering all the arm motions and friction masturbation creates... we should figure a way to harness it!!
      • DavidBGie, on 05/11/2008, -3/+11"Every time you search Google you could power an 11-watt light bulb for an hour". Every time you fart you could power a "11 watt" bulb for 6 hours! STOP FEELING GUILTY LIBTARDS! DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT BESIDES WHINING AND COMPLAINING ABOUT EVERY SOURCE OF ELECTRICITY! Let them build nuclear power plants! Build more refineries!
    • rentmitchum, on 05/11/2008, -10/+14It's believing in it that makes it real.
      • FoxFaction, on 05/11/2008, -4/+2No, I don't think temperature is subjective.
        • bphicke, on 05/11/2008, -0/+5Subjective no, but advocates are very selective in the locations they choose to "prove" it.
    • p0s3r, on 05/11/2008, -12/+29Global Warming is so real that it's actually been cooling for the last 10 years and is expected to cool for another 10 years.
      • AlexBellisBrown, on 05/11/2008, -3/+7True, hottest year on record was 1998.
      • overtoke, on 05/11/2008, -10/+5It helps to actually understand how climate works. 1. it has not been cooling for 10 years 2. it is not expected to cool for 10 years
        • p0s3r, on 05/11/2008, -2/+13It helps more not to blindly accept the warm-mongering hysteria. 1. It has been cooling for 10 years. 2. It is expected to cool for another 10.
          • noen, on 05/11/2008, -5/+3[citation needed]

            I mean really, this is stupid.
          • p0s3r, on 05/11/2008, -4/+1Google. Ever heard of it?
          • SHv2, on 05/12/2008, -0/+5Oh don't do that. You'll use up a lot of electricity.
        • twinklyJesus, on 05/12/2008, -0/+5Overtoke:
          Are YOU claiming YOU understand how the climate works? Nobody else does. There are some climatologists who understand how they THINK it works, but nobody is actually certain.
    • Shawshanksr, on 05/11/2008, -5/+5thank you for saying that
      as if the world didn't already know
    • terrablebyte, on 05/11/2008, -2/+5Oh Really?
      http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/ ...
    • ArielMT, on 05/11/2008, -0/+6The Ice Age is over? Well, that bites. I just got a new parka, too.
    • FoxFaction, on 05/11/2008, -1/+4if that's all you have to say, then you should read a book or something
    • twinklyJesus, on 05/12/2008, -0/+4Max:
      You apparently missed the memo. It's no longer "Global Warming", it's now called "Global Climate Change" which conveniently covers BOTH possibilities. In other words, no one is sure what's going on, if anything at all. The Gore-mongers are just trying to cover both bases so, no matter what, they can claim to be right.
      buried as FUD
    • ndfootball06, on 05/12/2008, -0/+4All I have to say is that you are a complete idiot. As stated earlier, the internet provides conviences that save millions time and money and gas and any other global warming causing bs you can come up with with its efficiency. If you want to look at a legitamate source of "Global Warming" - look up in the sky.

      PS - that volcano eruption in Chile a week ago probably caused more climate change than any interwebs could every do...
  • Scaryclouds, on 05/11/2008, -7/+40Well one solution for cooling data centers is to build them under ground. I think at 6+ feet the temperature is a constant 50 degrees Fahrenheit. You might loose during the winter (depending on where you have the data center located) but you would definitely come out ahead during the summer. Of course not all parts of the US allow for this and building under ground is, I'm sure, a good bit more expensive.
    • carpespasm, on 05/11/2008, -1/+12that would only account for the heat the DC would gather from the ambient outside temp. The problem of all the heat generated by the servers themselves wouldn't be affected. If you built the cooling system to run through a large underground radiator to help dissipate the heat into the earth then you might get somewhere, but I have a feeling the heat load would just build up to be too much unless you had a pretty massive subterranean cooling system. If you have a body of water near the DC you could divert some of that through a cooling system, but DCs aren't usually built near waterways to help minimize flood damage. The only way to get better power consumption is more efficient use of the systems you have, since most of the time you're machines will be in a wait state. Virtualization and better power management are more attainable answers IMHO.
      • Kerath, on 05/11/2008, -0/+4Hasn't Google been building near hyrdoelectric facilities anyway?
      • tomz17, on 05/12/2008, -0/+3The other problem is that many bodies of water have very strict environmental temperature regulations. You can't just arbitrarily raise the local temp of the water by dumping your waste heat there without breaking the law.
        • carpespasm, on 05/12/2008, -0/+1very true. haven't there been some rivers that are negatively impacted by power plants doing this?
      • Ph0N37Ic5, on 05/12/2008, -0/+3Of course the solution would be to build server farms next to swimming facilities, so you could use the excess heat to keep the pools warm.
    • HotSaucePanCake, on 05/11/2008, -1/+6These are Extremely expensive ideas. not to mention data centers have to exist in places where earth quakes happen. also putting something underground essentially creates a giant BBQ pit.
    • liuite, on 05/11/2008, -0/+11Using underground heat exchanger should do the trick...the ground becomes the heatsink
      • doctechnical, on 05/11/2008, -5/+3Then the ground would be unnaturally warm during the cooler months. What effect is that going to have on things? I'm thinking about hibernation cycles.
        • KibibyteBrain, on 05/11/2008, -0/+3No, it wouldn't really have to at all. Have you ever been to a cave? It would take a ton of power to heat the earth up like that. The heat generated by the DC would be a drop in a bucket of heat into the ground if done properly. The concerns with heat transfer are mostly physics, that being you need a very large gradient to move a lot of heat energy, and thats why the idea might not have the ground be cool enough without massive size. But the temperature change in even a very small system would be insignificant. Think about how many servers it would take to even add up to a home electric furnace. Do you think pumping your home furnace into the ground in winter is going to make the snow melt?
        • tomz17, on 05/12/2008, -1/+2Actually, not as many servers as you think... Each server is hundreds of watts, convert that to BTU's and you might be shocked at what even of modest room filled with servers can put out.
      • skyshock1, on 05/12/2008, -0/+2Dirt is too much of an insulator for that to work. Heat exchange doesn't work efficiently enough when you try to pipe it into the ground
    • alexforcefive, on 05/11/2008, -2/+15My dad's job involves researching energy conservation, alternate fuels etc for local government. So, he's my source for this one. I may not be 100% accurate =D

      The heat from a computer comes mostly from the power supply, which transforms the 240 volts (in europe) to the 12v needed for most PC components. HOWEVER one interesting thing is that solar panels actually produce 12v by design. So if computers were solar powered, you wouldn't need a PSU (or, you'd need a different design of PSU), and you wouldn't be generating excess heat. Problem solved at minimal expense and effort. Hooray!
      • HotSaucePanCake, on 05/11/2008, -4/+6lol and the sun to be on all the time
        • KnifeOrSpoon, on 05/11/2008, -2/+4Brings up the age old failed Irish invention... the solar powered torch
        • KnifeOrSpoon, on 05/11/2008, -5/+2Or we could just power our PSUs with treadmills and then we would lose weight at the same time as using our PCs.
          If you think about it, the more we exercise the less we weigh and theorhetically the better we will feel, i.e No longer driving to the corner store in lieu of walking 200 metres. And if we had excess energy we could put that back into the power grid!

          Just a another crazy left wing idea from myself =)
        • CrispyBeef, on 05/12/2008, -0/+1It would actually work quite well when you think about it and plan it properly. While I appreciate the solar joke, the real life version works by having batteries power the computers, these batteries are constantly "topped up" by the solar panels. So, you'd basically need a complex set-up of batteries with redundancy in case of failure in addition the the normal generators. Might be expensive to set-up correctly but think of the benefits and savings to be had with the reduced power consumption from the national grid.
      • thorseth, on 05/11/2008, -0/+9Sorry, but the main power loss in a computer comes from the processor and other active components. If your PSU have a huge fan it is most likely an inefficient one. But more efficient power converters would be a way to bring down power consumption. Remember solar panels only work when the sun is up...
      • krnldmp, on 05/11/2008, -0/+5The power supplies in computers are very efficient. Quality varies, but input to output efficiency is usually over 85 percent. 90-95% is not unrealistic, but requires top grade parts and is more expensive. New motherboards have secondary core voltage regulators that run off 5 volts from the main power supply and step down to whatever the core requires, for an additional loss. Most of the power burned in a computer goes to the CPU and hard drive spindle motors. In hard drives that are read/writing like crazy, the head positioning drive requirements can get pretty high. In any case, whether the system mains voltage is 120VAC or 12VDC, the supplies of +-12V and 5V needs to be tightly regulated electronically. There is no way to simply run a computer straight off a solar array. All in all building data centers underground is not a bad idea. You would never have an additional heating bill.
      • boris4ka, on 05/11/2008, -6/+3Wrong. The part that produces the most heat is a graphics card (if you have a performance card like an 8800). Then the processor. Then PSU, then hard drives, then smaller parts like the north and south bridges and RAM.
        • krnldmp, on 05/11/2008, -0/+10Dedicated servers have no use for a graphics card and don't have them.
        • antoniuk, on 05/12/2008, -0/+2It is true that servers do not have use of high end graphics card but it is lack of information in what you speak to say dedicated servers do not use a graphics card.

          The extreme density of modern CPUs is a large cause of heat generation. we need an exponential leap past moores law into efficient computing to combat what will soon become a very real problem.
      • liuite, on 05/11/2008, -0/+5wiring DC for 12v would be quite dangerous
      • Tomchei, on 05/12/2008, -1/+5Power supplies at data centers are already DC.
        I have a rack of servers at a baby bell (Bell South) and I had to swap out the power supplies from the 120/240V switching to take their DC outputs where they monitor power output.
        • carpespasm, on 05/12/2008, -0/+1not all data centers. more customer-driven centers tend to operate on whatever the country's standard voltage is, though I wouldn't be surprised if centers owned by telcom companies tend towards DC power.
        • antoniuk, on 05/12/2008, -0/+2DC power is becoming very unpopular in data centers due to the poor efficiency to convert "raw" ac power from the grid. Most datacenters are moving to 3 phase AC power which provides more revenue per amp for the data center itself. It is all about power these days and how much the centers can charge. The real cost in any data center is power usage. The number one concern is consumption versus heat dissipation
    • DuffyDirect, on 05/11/2008, -5/+3So you're going to take state and federal data centers into multi-million or billion dollar underground lairs and out of their multi-million dollar government office parks and buildings that were built to house them? you sound like you should work for the government!
      • Scaryclouds, on 05/12/2008, -0/+1I was referring more to new data centers not current ones.
    • theodric, on 05/11/2008, -0/+6Well, my company (we do hosting) has space in an underground datacenter in Virginia. So it's not just a good idea, it's already happening!
    • monsterette, on 05/11/2008, -0/+4agreed...move them underground...do the reverse and direct heat into buildings above ground, or move to areas with cooler climates and vent heat into surrounding buildings within that area...
      • tomz17, on 05/12/2008, -0/+2The prob. with that idea is that areas with cooler climates are far from the population centers that need to be serviced by these servers... It's been considered, and is not a viable option for several logistical reasons!
    • bizen, on 05/12/2008, -0/+1Hobbit Houses. *nods*
    • AaronD12, on 05/13/2008, -0/+1loose = opposite of tight
      lose = opposite of win; opposite of found
  • FizzanoMatrix, on 05/11/2008, -3/+100In a word: No.
    • mikehrp, on 05/11/2008, -1/+2I suspect right before the sky falls.
    • sfacets, on 05/11/2008, -1/+9I wish I could bury this submission as "*****" but Digg hasn't incorporated that option yet.
    • cr4wl3r, on 05/11/2008, -0/+6This is the dumbest ***** i've ever heard.
    • OutrightLie, on 05/12/2008, -0/+2http://xkcd.com/285/
    • jpjandrade, on 05/12/2008, -0/+1Thanks sir, I feel safer already.
    • DickBreath, on 05/12/2008, -1/+1I'll speculate that the 11 watt for 1 hour cost might include the energy cost of a pro-rated portion of all that web-crawling, indexing and other post-processing that goes on prior to your search.

      Just because a Google search costs 11-watt-hours doesn't make it is a bad use of energy. Of course, I'm all for any way to reduce this energy footprint. We should also find cleaner ways to produce that 11-watt-hours of power. But we're not going to stop using Google, and we're not going to stop using, for instance, transportation. The genie won't go back in the bottle.
  • mikephimikephi, on 05/11/2008, -6/+14Why do we have to rely on 3rd party companies to tell us how many queries that Google handles each day?
    I don't really understand why Google doesn't release the exact numbers. Especially since they are the market leader.
    • 223Sniper, on 05/11/2008, -6/+3they follow the long standing philosophy of "the less they know, the less we have to worry".
    • FoxFaction, on 05/11/2008, -0/+11Why would they do that? What advantage would it give to them to release those numbers?
    • Foofoofoofoobar, on 05/11/2008, -0/+14Because if they release exact numbers and it goes down from month to month, people will go "OMG GOOGLE IS DYING" and its stock price will fall. By keeping it nebulous, they don't need to have as much quarter to quarter pressure.
    • byrdgang, on 05/11/2008, -4/+1I heard somewhere -- I think on TV -- that there are about 200 million searches on Google daily, not the 400 million number given by the article.
  • rentmitchum, on 05/11/2008, -3/+54I didn't realize how much energy is in these internets. I imagined all the hamsters from hampsterdance were enslaved years ago to run in wheels to power it. It's the only way they can atone for their sins of annoyance.
    • Enron, on 05/11/2008, -2/+22It's not a big truck. It's not something you just dump something on, the Internet is a series of tubes.
      • rentmitchum, on 05/11/2008, -0/+18I know, I got sent an Internet the other day and it got backed up in the tubes.
        • daborg, on 05/11/2008, -0/+2At least you've got a backup of the Internet, in case it crashes.
      • twiztidsinz, on 05/11/2008, -0/+4Hamster tubes
    • dluv, on 05/12/2008, -0/+1If this figure is correct (of course its not because google's operation is too big to fully grasp its total energy usage) then search away. ***** the environment, its worth a slightly warmer earth to have the internet.

      Especially since the sea hasn't risen the 1 to 2 feet my seventh grade science teacher said it would have by 2005 (this was back in 1993/94 and it scared the crap out of us). And since google's operations literally grow by the day at this stage, solar panels aren't going to do anything to slow down their usage.
  • borez, on 05/11/2008, -13/+32Next up: Political activist send the world into a downward Co2 conspiracy spiral.

    Ooops, already happened.
  • scamerica, on 05/11/2008, -23/+41Buried until global warming happen
    • reggplant, on 05/11/2008, -11/+10What the media doesn't tell you is that CO2 emitted today takes 50 years to move up in the the atmosphere to cause global warming, at the moment we're feeling the effects from 1958!
      • Lionhart, on 05/11/2008, -1/+11Source??
      • DeadlyCouncil, on 05/11/2008, -2/+6Regg, even if that were for some reason true, it's not like emissions have exactly gone DOWN since 1958...
        • reggplant, on 05/15/2008, -0/+1Ahh yes that was the point I was trying to put across, its going to get a LOT worse.
      • MtheoryX, on 05/11/2008, -1/+3[citation needed]
      • KnifeOrSpoon, on 05/11/2008, -2/+3That does not make sense. You are saying that the media are not reporting on a doom's day of sorts for our ozone layer because the damage we are seeing now is from 50 years ago? You do know how trade winds work right and just how fast they move? How about Low and High pressure cells and how they push air around the world? If you do not have a source for this superfluous claim, please refrain from preaching doom's day rhetoric on the back of this credible article.
    • YogiWanKenobi, on 05/11/2008, -3/+6warmings happen
      warming happens
    • thorseth, on 05/11/2008, -1/+1Or energy prices rise dramatically ... oh wait...
    • DickBreath, on 05/12/2008, -0/+1Let me edit that for you:

      Head buried in sand until warming happens. A true catastrophe will convince me. Then I'll say "see, I told you all along".
    • mrraven200, 17 hr 22 min ago, -0/+1Lets see collapsing ice shelves ring a bell?

      http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/03/28/ice.exp ...

      Agreement of the global scientific community doing peer reviewed research ring a bell?

      http://www.mnp.nl/ipcc/pages_media/AR4-chapters.ht ...

      By your logic someone driving towards a cliff wouldn't put on the brakes until after they had driven over the cliff and were in the air, hey I am still on the road, what me worry?

      And no net.Libertarian.denial.denial.denial plus half a dozen researchers paid of by the oil companies does not refute the broad consensus of 99.99% of climate researchers, but thanks for playing.
  • dukeeeey, on 05/11/2008, -24/+67"Scientists from Nasa say that Mars has warmed by about 0.5C since the 1970s. This is similar to the warming experienced on Earth over approximately the same period."

    Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article17 ...

    I keep wondering if my car did that. I am sure Al Gore's solution of a global government and a global tax will fix it. Cause that's just what we need, bigger government !
    • hcl40u, on 05/11/2008, -10/+11Wow didn't take too long for Al Gore to be mentioned on an article about global warming.
      • Troy64, on 05/11/2008, -1/+15It me was about global warming and the internet, how could Al Gore's name not be mentioned.
      • MtheoryX, on 05/11/2008, -0/+8Maybe it's gonna be a new variation on Godwin's Law.
      • twinklyJesus, on 05/12/2008, -1/+4hc140u:
        Why do you think that is? Do you think, maybe, its because he set himself up as some kind of expert on the mystical magical phenomena?
        Is it, somehow, inappropriate to mention his promotion of this unfounded theory? Please explain how and why he is somehow immune from criticism, when HE is the one who set himself up as an authority on a speculative theory with little actual hard data to back it up, beyond theoretical projections based on short-term (really short) unverifiable data?
    • VAXcat, on 05/11/2008, -3/+3 I agree with you dukeeeey - not everyone thinks that taxing and central control of all human activity, and Al Gore's Green Police to enforce it, is a suitable response to a problem that may or may not exist, and if so, may or may not be human influenced.
    • overtoke, on 05/11/2008, -3/+5irrelevant
    • burningmanstan, on 05/11/2008, -5/+5Yawn. Do I really have to dig up my 1 year old rebuttal to this story or will you all try to think about this before digging him up. Here's a hint: More than two planets orbit the Sun.
    • skyshock1, on 05/12/2008, -0/+3Also worthy of note, Venus has a higher surface temperature than Mercury, even though it's farther away from the sun. Reason? It's atmosphere is mostly CO2. http://www.astro-tom.com/getting_started/planet_cl ...
      • twinklyJesus, on 05/12/2008, -0/+2Was that caused by SUVs, too? Even if we had the tech to go to Venus, do you think we could change the atmosphere? Why would you think we could change it here? THINK, man!
        • init100, on 05/12/2008, -1/+2"Why would you think we could change it here? THINK, man!"

          That's one thing I recommend you to do. Think. You don't think that we can change the atmosphere? Think again. At present, we're putting out 27 billion tons of CO2 every year, and the amount is on the rise. Do you *really* think that this won't have any effect?
  • Look4Truth, on 05/11/2008, -8/+28More taxes and pretending the net is in trouble so they can get rid of our free speech. God bless America and it's forming tyrannical police state.
  • doshindude, on 05/11/2008, -2/+13No.
    • Hartley1942, on 05/12/2008, -2/+1The average global temperature actually dropped in the last year.
  • nothinghere, on 05/11/2008, -7/+1Not if they remember to install air-conditioning.
  • goscript, on 05/11/2008, -3/+21"Every time you search Google you could power an 11-watt light bulb for an hour…"

    It's Google who's using this power, not me !
    • CC440, on 05/11/2008, -1/+35This metric is also crap. They took the energy used by the servers for an entire day then divided by the amount of searches they recieve in a day. The servers do more than just process searches. Google may use this much energy on a daily basis, but one search would maybe use enough energy to power a .0001 watt bulb for a minute if you base your search's energy on the amount of processing power that is used.
      • p0s3r, on 05/11/2008, -10/+2And you should know since you did the power design for their data centers, right?
        • MtheoryX, on 05/11/2008, -0/+11No, he should know because he has at least half a brain and the power of reason and critical thinking.
      • MtheoryX, on 05/11/2008, -0/+10I, too, think there should be some more exact mathematical breakdowns given when writers assert such bold claims as this.
      • twinklyJesus, on 05/12/2008, -0/+1The really cool thing is, though, if it powers an 11 watt incandescent bulb for an hour, it would power an energy-saving fluorescent bulb for 5X that long!

        BONUS!
      • zongamin, on 05/12/2008, -0/+1Yes, your groundless estimate is much more useful than the one in the article!
      • DickBreath, on 05/12/2008, -0/+1The cost of all that web crawling, parsing, indexing, and other post-processing IS A PART OF THE COST OF YOUR SEARCH !
        The cost of your search should include a pro-rated portion of that cost. It might be higher than you think.
        Not that I think this is a bad use of 11-watt-hours of energy.
        And yes, it would be a "good thing" to find ways to (a) use less energy to accomplish same task, and (b) find better ways of producing that 11-watt-hours.
    • statstudent, on 05/12/2008, -0/+9considering they then moments later say

      "So you now know one single Google search query consumes 2 to 8 watt-hours of energy."

      wait, 11 watt-hours or 2 to 8 watt-hours? first fact i checked was wrong. buried as inaccurate.
    • userperson, on 05/12/2008, -1/+1Why do you hate the earth? /s
  • bincoder, on 05/11/2008, -3/+29And this is important why? I can light an 11 watt bulb for an hour by sneezing in its general direction. Here abouts we have nuclear, hydro, and solar power all available at once. They can power the same 11 watt bulb for the next 20 trillion years and google as well. Is the power running out? Um, no. Have the prices tripled like gasoline? Again, no. High oil prices do not equal global energy crisis. Don't worry about electricity, worry about how to drive a car using a big horse in front to tow it with. You can have infinite electricity for free but that isn't going to help with the issue of getting an SUV to go 300 miles non-stop at 85 mph, refueling in 10 minutes, then driving another 300 miles. Worrying about the grid is a waste of time.
    • dougmc, on 05/11/2008, -0/+5> I can light an 11 watt bulb for an hour by sneezing in its general direction.

      No, you can't. In fact, for a person in average shape (assuming they can generate 150 watts), you'd have to ride a stationary bike hard for about five minutes to generate enough power to power that 11 watt bulb for an hour.

      Granted, the 11 watt*hour statistic given is BS, but it's not as small an amount of power (at least in human-generated terms) as one might think.

      As for electrical power, it's mostly fueled by coal if I recall correctly. It may not be becoming scarce yet, but it will. And electricity prices tend to lag ...
    • dougmc, on 05/11/2008, -0/+4Let me expand on this ...

      Nuclear plants need fuel too. Hydroelectric dams exact a large cost on the environment and can only be built in certain locations. Solar power tends to cost a lot more per kilowatt than other forms of power. And all power plants require maintenance -- none will work for any period of time without being fixed, parts replaced, etc. Yes, alternative power is likely to be what powers our electrical needs in the future, but today they only provide a small percentage of our electricity needs, especially in the US.

      Electricity prices are often not set by supply and demand but by laws and policy. So the price of coal may go way up, but the prices for electricity made by that coal won't go up quite as quickly. They'll catch up eventually, but it often takes years. And coal prices are going up as well -- here's some figures for you --

      http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/coal/page/coalnews/co ...

      of course, the US has a big advantage here, as we make lots of coal. Enough that I believe we even export it. So that'll help keep the price down, at least until we start running out. But the demand is going up and up and up. We're talking about peak oil now, and while we're probably not at peak coal now -- it's coming. With some luck, peak coal will be caused by reduced demand rather than reduced supply, but we've got a lot of work and development to do first before we can reduce our reliance on coal.

      Coal also has a large environmental cost -- strip mining ruins lots of land, and I believe that coal produces more pollution than most other forms of energy, and if you're worried about CO2 -- coal is awful there as well.

      And keep in mind that gasoline and other liquid fuels are special. High energy density, easy to transport. Ideal for powering cars and planes and boats and such. Electric cars could greatly reduce our dependence on liquid fuels, but for now they're really only practical under certain conditions -- and even then they tend to cost more overall (when you include maintenance) than comparable gasoline powered cars. Expect this to change as gas prices go up, however.

      Increasing gas prices are bad for the economy, but they do drive people towards the solution for our energy woes. People drive less, take the bus or a bike more, buy more efficient cars, etc. It also increases the interest in alternative forms of energy and transportation. Electrical power may not currently be in the crisis that gasoline is right now, but it's coming.
      • Drizzit, on 05/12/2008, -0/+2I have always wondered what they will do when Oil becomes scarce. Air travel will become non-existant, lubrication for engines?

        Also to the guy who said electricity prices have not doubled. The price of coal which in the US is responsible for 50% of power generation is rising quickly. We are now a exporter of coal which will drive up costs.

        • dougmc, on 05/12/2008, -0/+1I wouldn't worry too much about lubricants. My car needs, what, 5 quarts of oil per 3000 miles? It needs about 130 times that amount of gasoline. It also needs some grease and AT fluid and such, but none of that needs changing often. And there are non petroleum based lubricants. And oil won't go away completely, ever -- it'll just get more and more expensive.

          You're right on about air travel. It won't go away completely, but it'll become so expensive that it's only done in very extreme cases -- the very rich travelling, or very important trips (wars come to mind.) Electric planes have been made, but they're far less practical than electric cars.
      • tomz17, on 05/12/2008, -0/+1"Nuclear plants need fuel too." SNIP... yeah, but we have TENS OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS worth of that fuel!!!!!
    • YouandWhoseArmy, on 05/12/2008, -0/+1I think bincoder's point was that free, green energy is all around us waiting to be taken advantage of.
  • vault, on 05/11/2008, -21/+16More warm-mongering propaganda from the eco-Marxists = buried
    • nblsavage, on 05/11/2008, -5/+10followed by paranoid rantings by the conspiracy theorists.
  • otis12, on 05/11/2008, -0/+19Put them in an ice cream cooler. Noting better than ice cream and the internet.
    • twinklyJesus, on 05/12/2008, -1/+3This message brought to you by: The Letter H.
      (which was purposely left out to save energy and placate the leftist Goracle weenies.)
  • Ksg89, on 05/11/2008, -5/+17What a load of rubbish
    • FoxFaction, on 05/11/2008, -3/+6Oh thanks for that, you certainly changed my mind about the subject.
      If you weren't trying to change people's mind, then why are you posting at all?
      Keep your rubbish to yourself.
      • Tkuebrich, on 05/11/2008, -0/+5You're just hostile because you disagree. It's ok.
    • antechinus, on 05/12/2008, -0/+1Why can't people donate a small amount of power from their computer when they use Google? The watts could be encrypted so that no-one else could leech it.
  • rand0mm0nkey, on 05/11/2008, -2/+9If we get to that amount of warming, will we actually care about web? Won't it be more about killing your neighbor for food for your family at that point?
    • 380ppm, on 05/12/2008, -0/+3ooh i cant wait....i dont like my neighbors
  • diggerman32, on 05/11/2008, -2/+8I'll just wait for the next version of the matrix to fix global warming for me :)
    • slayerab, on 05/11/2008, -0/+6Matrix Vista
      • specialK16, on 05/11/2008, -0/+4Already been done: Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions.
    • twiztidsinz, on 05/11/2008, -1/+2I hear that Web 3.0 patches the Global Warming exploit
  • CC440, on 05/11/2008, -2/+45And yet they don't say how the internet saves energy. It is a consolidated source of information and an electronic economy in its own right. It is cheaper to search Google use the power of an 11 watt bulb than to drive to a library or a store to check prices. Without Amazon and online retailing millions of people would be forced to drive to stores, more stores would be forced to keep larger inventory (burning more gas for delivery of inventory). Yes shipping still costs money but it is more efficient to use demand shipping than to stock 20 couches in your store for 2 years.

    The internet may use huge amounts of energy, and this should be reduced, but never at the cost of the speed or abilities that this service rpovides. To do that would just cause the energy used to be moved to a more innifiecient and older economic model.
    • megaton, on 05/11/2008, -5/+2How do you come to that conclusion? That's like saying it's more efficient for everyone to drive their own car than to take public transportation.
    • bitbopper, on 05/12/2008, -0/+3Spot-on. Let's think this thing through in terms of BTU's, and vehicles
      become non-starters. My first electronics training was in vacuum tubes
      back in the 70s. Now those babies waste some Power!
    • AJQuick, on 05/12/2008, -0/+3Agreed!
  • HotSaucePanCake, on 05/11/2008, -0/+6Unfortunately Bandwidth is not the proper metric to measure this at. Bandwidth is every increasing as we are seeing most providers shift to 40 GB or OC - 768 back bones. Bandwidth should always be readily available and as technology improves. Data centers are becoming more and more efficient with the advent of several new technologies as well as new designs.

    The real metric here is adoption. Adoption of the internet by users who weren't using it before. Many data centers have archaic designs, things that shouldn't even be described as legacy systems.

    What needs to happen is companies need to re-centralize there data centers and virtualize as many resources as possible. Top of rack design must change as to minimize the number of devices needed with in these networks.

    • 380ppm, on 05/12/2008, -0/+0in 10 years everything on the server side will be virtualized. Every enterprise I walk into has a vmware project underway/already done.
  • FuzzyCat, on 05/11/2008, -1/+9
    Build greenhouses on the rooftops of data centres and use the heat generated by the servers to grow plants and heat water. Assuming you grow food in the greenhouses, sell the food locally and make some money.

    • YogiWanKenobi, on 05/11/2008, -3/+5I don't get your idea. Plants need light--not heat--to grow. Not to mention having water circulating above your DC could have disastrous consequences.
      • mrdiggdude, on 05/12/2008, -0/+3well your pretty stupid then arent you, heat increases the rate of chemical reactions (reffered to as photosynthesis in this case). Its the reason why pretty much 100% of the worlds tomatoes are grown inside greenhouses.
    • twinklyJesus, on 05/12/2008, -0/+5fuzzycat:
      You've overlooked the major flaw with building greenhouses. What to do with all the greenhouse gas that builds up in those greenhouses! Don't you know anything??? ;-)
      • FuzzyCat, on 05/12/2008, -0/+2
        Giant space chimneys!
      • mrdiggdude, on 05/13/2008, -0/+2the same amount of co2 made by plants in greenhouses is the same as that outside, in ideal conditions... it could be possible to harvest the co2 inside greenhouses and compress it and store it but that wouldnt really work long term
      • mrdiggdude, on 05/13/2008, -0/+2er i meant o2 wtf was i thinking :S
    • AJQuick, on 05/12/2008, -1/+2The roofs of the data centers have air conditioners on them.
  • bbliss17, on 05/11/2008, -7/+9This was stupid....

    Anyway I choose the internet over global warming bs anyway.
    • kinetix06, on 05/11/2008, -4/+4Global Warming BS? Dude how ignorant can you get?
      • christopherRB, on 05/12/2008, -1/+2What the hell is it with you people? Just because someone disagrees, it makes them ignorant.
        • puscifer919, on 05/13/2008, -0/+0What do you mean, you people?!

          Diggers?!?
  • atgmac, on 05/11/2008, -3/+31Who uses 11 watt light bulbs?
  • kylere, on 05/11/2008, -3/+11Mathematically incorrect drivel
  • Titan615, on 05/11/2008, -3/+5Honestly, I don't think global warming is really happening. That being said, I think its scary that we can change the composition of our atmosphere... I think we should go "green" just because we aren't able to clearly predict what our actions may cause. As to efficiency of the internet it will improve over time as newer more energy efficient and powerful device replace older existing technology.
  • manitoba98xp, on 05/11/2008, -0/+13Move them to Canada. Why are all of the big data centers (hyperbole, I know) in San Francisco, Dallas, or somewhere warm? If it's cooler out, it should cost less to cool, eh?

    Okay, maybe I just want the big sites to load slightly faster for me. :)
    • scamper22, on 05/11/2008, -0/+2or maybe if we build enough of them, we can finally get rid of the canadian winter :)
    • skyshock1, on 05/12/2008, -0/+1In all seriousness it's mostly due to those areas having cheap enough power to off-set the power consumption needed by the extra cooling units.
  • thechosen, on 05/11/2008, -1/+32If the internet does go down, all we have to do is unplug it and plug it back in, right?
    • specialK16, on 05/11/2008, -1/+2So we can have our Japanese Girls puking over each others mouths back.
    • AJQuick, on 05/12/2008, -0/+2Yes. We must do this in order to get the blinking light back.
  • shoqman, on 05/11/2008, -0/+4Don't worry- TENTACLES are Novell's answer!
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3yVahLi3gU
    • tchynerd, on 05/12/2008, -0/+1Will these lead to more japanese rape porn?
  • birkoph, on 05/11/2008, -2/+10My access to online porn is more important than the status on the planet.
  • Mard, on 05/11/2008, -1/+8This is nonsense. Not a single source for all of these random factoids? How exactly have they determined the energy consumption of a single Google search? I'm supposed to trust a random blog on the internets which assumes their readers are idiots and don't know the web address for Youtube, yet fails to add links for the really relevant bits? Get this off the front page.
  • Cattywampus, on 05/11/2008, -0/+2Business Week did an article recently on how tech companies are trying to reduce the energy appetite of data centers...
    http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_13 ...
  • Erythroxylum, on 05/11/2008, -1/+8Great. The next time I want to find out a piece of information - like the vital statistics, birth date, nationalist &c., of some pornographic actress I've just completed a particularly violent wank over - instead of doing an internet search with google, I'll sit in a room with a single 11W CFL bulb in misery.

    Despite the facts that global average temperatures have decreased over the last 10 years despite huge increases in carbon dioxide (you know, that gas which makes up 0.03811% of the Earth's atmosphere and is produced, naturally, by 3 of the 5 fundamental kingdoms of life as a byproduct of respiration) and that Earth's climate has gone up and down faster than Paris Hilton on prom night over the course of its 4.5B year history, we simply must do something - which doesn't include that main driver of temperature on Earth, that big yellow thing that some jokers call the Sun - to maintain this exact average global temperature. And if that means turning off the internet, stopping all industry and ultimately euthanising every plant, animal and fungus which produces that evil gas, carbon dioxide, then so be it.

    '...wouldn’t you like to know how the internet fits into the big picture of saving energy?'

    Oh, sure. And then maybe you could tell me about the shape and texture of the last ***** you had.
    • skyshock1, on 05/12/2008, -0/+1Dugg for "particularly violent wank"
  • yaosio, on 05/11/2008, -1/+12Not only are there no sources, but the writer thinks that the computers at google are only on when somebody does a search, and then shuts down!. Buried!
    • AJQuick, on 05/12/2008, -0/+1Yeah. Those hard drives have to spin up and then there is the POST screen.. and then windowz has to load. someone has to login .. it has to crash.. then do it again perform the search. and it shuts off. amazing tecnhology.
  • Mahoney07, on 05/11/2008, -2/+5Google is powered by mostly solar power now. Not sure how much but I know over 50%
  • scamper22, on 05/11/2008, -0/+7This article is really lacking any context.

    1. How much energy do the data centres save
    googling vs driving to libraries or having something mailed to you...
    watching online video instead of driving to blockbuster...
    centralized data centre versus every random company having their own ineffecient servers
    ...
    2. ease of change
    It's much easier for a large data center to implement energy saving techniques than if things were not so centralized.
    They can use virtualization on a massive scale.
    They have the resources to even relocate the datacentre to a new location (somewhere cooling is not as much needed)
    they could institute heat capture techniques...

    3. The very utility of it all
    I'm not giving up my googling/youtubing regardless of the 'global warming' implications.

    4. $$$ more powerful than green
    I've worked in a networking lab before. Suffice to say, the cooling resources are massive. The last thing on our mind was carbon emissions. The first thing on our mind was cost.

    5. No, the web won't crash
    we can cool what we have, and away we go.


    But the overall message 'save power in data centres' is good...and obvious.
  • DuffyDirect, on 05/11/2008, -3/+5an 11 watt lightbulb sounds pretty damn useless to me...
    • CommandNorth, on 05/11/2008, -0/+3Yea, you can't even Easy-Bake yourself some delicious treats with that.
    • zongamin, on 05/12/2008, -2/+1You're stupid. The new energy saving bulbs are 11w and equivalent to a stand 60w
  • Goodanswer, on 05/11/2008, -1/+8Every time you search Google you could power an 11-watt light bulb for an hour...and everytime I step on a crack I break my mothers back.
  • bmson, on 05/11/2008, -0/+4data centers are going green.
    both google and yahoo have been thinking about going to Iceland and use green geothermal energy...
    • regeya, on 05/12/2008, -1/+2Which is weird, because the state of California has been using geothermal for years...
      • bmson, on 05/12/2008, -0/+1Iceland has been using geothermal longer than anyone else and we have the cheapest energy in the world.

        From wikipedia: In 2006, 26.5 % of electricity generation in Iceland came from geothermal energy, 73.4 % from hydro power, and 0.1 % from fossil fuels.
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power_in_I ...

        Iceland is just a huge battery and we have more energy than we will be able to use, so why not use it for data-centers?
  • kowalzki, on 05/11/2008, -1/+9How much CO2 did it take to write this ***** article?

    The author is so green that he didn't even bother to search for references... 11 watt my ass...
  • quiker, on 05/11/2008, -0/+2I have to admit, I'm digging the irony in this INTERNET article :-D
  • doctechnical, on 05/11/2008, -0/+3I propose that we shut down all the internets for the next Earth Day. All in favor?
    Hello?
    Hello?
  • c0r3file, on 05/11/2008, -0/+4We'll all just drive to the library to look stuff up. That'll be better right?
  • sfacets, on 05/11/2008, -1/+3*****. More Greenpeace propaganda - they just want more payoffs. The article didn't even bother to reference where it got it's information from.
  • unpolloloco, on 05/11/2008, -0/+4ok.......this author sucks at math
    powering an 11 watt lightbulb for an hour does not use 2-8W-hours of power
  • byrdgang, on 05/11/2008, -0/+3YouTube takes up 10% of all Internet bandwidth? This article has several unsubstantiated claims. The YouTube thing alone sounds ridiculous.
  • BigglesPiP, on 05/12/2008, -1/+1I hope not, I just paid for years hosting.
  • regeya, on 05/12/2008, -0/+3Yeah, that's great. Let's attack one of the top contributors to green initiatives, and one of the main companies contributing to the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, which if successful will cut down CO2 emissions by about 54 million tons a year. And let's do it with made-up numbers. And finally let's host it from a data center, so we can look like the biggest frickin' hypocrite on Earth.
    I commend the effort, but condemn trying to paint Google with the evil-polluter brush after they've already demonstrated they give a *****.
  • statstudent, on 05/12/2008, -0/+1i know some companies (like sun microsystems) are already working on low-energy chips. this would both reduce energy use and heat production (making cooling easier). anyways, i think cooling internet servers because its hotter out is low on the list of things to worry about... rising seas, drought, floods, etc.
  • jordyhoyt, on 05/12/2008, -0/+4buried for not knowing the difference between "effect" and "affect"
  • rock774, on 05/12/2008, -0/+1and the drum beats on
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