IT's carbon footprint

Once again discussed in terms of the big kahuna Google here. According to this take, 2 searches generates and equivalent volume of CO2 as boiling a teapot (15 grams). (Although the CO2 volume of *that* activity depends on whether you're using natural gas, electric power generated with the same coal/nuclear split as Google's server farms, or a wood fire.)

Then again, Google claims that 7g CO2 volume per search "is *many* times too high". It would be good if the assumptions and methodology for these claims are also published. But then again, I'm not sure that "grams of CO2 emitted per search" on the server side is necessarily the right way to evaluate this.

The (not insignificant) carbon footprint of large data centers was covered (somewhat misleadingly I think and again using Google as the example) in March last year by Ginger Strand in Harper's Magazine, which prompted me to respond with a letter to the editor (never published in the magazine due to I'm going to guess my tendency to outlandish word count that I just can't seem to suppress).

Here's that text (I think it's once again relevant given today's meme):

It's important to realize that the move to an information- and information-services-based economy isn't as environmentally benign relative to "heavy industry" as is commonly conceived, and Ginger Strand performs an important service in pointing this out in "Keyword: Evil".

But I do feel compelled to point out that some of the numbers used to quantify the impact of data centers like Google's could be a little misleading and ought to be put in perspective. In particular the notion of how much economically useful work is performed for every watt consumed is an important one when impact is assessed and weighed against societal benefit. After all, no human activity regardless of economic or political organization is without some impact on the environment.

I would suggest that a more meaningful metric isn't that - as the author puts it - "thousands of servers" spring into action on each search query, or that "tens of billions of CPU cycles" are allocated to that task. Since "frivolous" or "wasteful" energy consumption is the putative consequence here (and presumably in contrast to other economic sectors or even individual lifestyles taken in aggregate such as watching television or commuting long distances to work), a more useful metric would be to examine total data center CPU-seconds per useful task divided by idle CPU-seconds where a CPU is doing nothing and waiting for something to do. Okay, maybe you can argue that the "American Idle" - sic - query example isn't a "useful task", but never mind that much more subjective angle for now...

Given this so-called "utilization" metric, best practices for data center software and infrastructure engineering practice are intended to optimize things so that the CPUs and other hardware consuming power are utilized as much as possible. This means that these CPUs don't sit idle very long, and can be quickly and efficiently reallocated from sub-second to sub-second as they complete their (subdivided) work for any given search query.

It is true however that these data centers are sized to peak loads, which are no doubt significantly higher than the average ones and so this reduces utilization. But even at non-peak periods these idle CPUs can do something else (like serving Gmail or Google Docs or YouTube, which don't in general share the same peaks) or can be put into a lower-power ready-to-use standby state.

Such strategies for energy consumption management and reduction - which I'd expect is taken into account in the quoted 103 megawatt figure - should also be contrasted with what happens on the receiving end of these queries. Similar CPUs in end-user PCs (and home routers and other microprocessor-intensive accessories) essentially sit idle most of the time waiting for the consumer to click the next web link (or even sit down at the keyboard). Multiply this times the hundreds of millions of internet-connected PCs in North America alone (even when in low-power standby mode which can run around 5 watts) and the data center power consumption pales in comparison.

To conclude, it's absolutely correct to point out that data centers such as Google's have a significant energy consumption impact, on par with aluminum smelting, which is traditionally considered to be a "heavy-industrial" benchmark for point electricity consumption. And it's also worthwhile to point out how an unregulated global economy with sharp differentials between states and countries in terms of environmental protection or rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul subsidization provides incentives to chase the lowest cost and often environmentally harmful arrangements. But to mention this without contrast to other aspects of environmentally harmful energy waste both within the information services sector as well as outside of it is somewhat misleading and might imply that merely eliminating the concentration in providers of information services would significantly reduce total energy consumption and waste, which I don't think would be the case at all.

Relief

“Relieved” is the best word I can find right now. Now we have to hold the Democrats to the fire against overreach. Which strikes me as easier than the last eight years have been, notwithstanding some of the more classically and repressively “liberal” impulses in the new Congressional makeup. This truly is a centrist country (and let’s forget about the “center-left” and “center-right” posturing when the left/right dichotomy is so demonstrably obsolete) and this election rekindled my optimism on that point and on the fact that “yes we can” also keep some of the congressional excess at bay while getting to work at rebuilding infrastructure, credibility in foreign policy and not least opening the economic “force multiplier” that is a true internet commons. Oh and restructuring the economy away from a foundation based on the assumption of "cheap" fossil fuels...

Dave Winer: fair and balanced?

It wouldn't be much of an exaggeration to say that Dave Winer invented RSS ("Rich Site" or "Real Simple" Syndication), the backbone of today's web in general and weblogs like this one in particular. His own weblog - Scripting News - is a good read and shows up in my feed readers.

Dave, like Doc Searls, is a mentor to me about how to use this new medium to effectively contribute opinion. Like me they're both technologists with a wider interest in the world at large and not just the technology facet. They both often opine on matters of a political nature. You can see their influence on my blog, which I hope of course represents my own unique perspective which is influenced by but not equivalent to Dave's and Doc's.

So not surprisingly, lately Dave's been blogging about Sarah Palin. The first one I read had (what was to me) a novel take on the implication of the Palin selection. The basic theses (in typical blogging fashion, these are quotes Dave pulled from other sites), which is that Palin is congruent with working class values (note: not issues) in key states OH and PA; that she represents the next iteration of Reagan's "Morning in America" and "small-town values"; and finally that the Palin selection is intended to be the vanguard of an full-press attempt to swift-boat Obama as a true agent of change, rather than Washingtonian-by-way-of-Daley's-Chicago business-as-usual.

Not all of these opinions (or opinionators) represent Dave's (and my) own pro-Obama point of view, unless he's also a glass-half-empty sort like I am and is really worried about the course this election might take.

Dave's very next Palin post in contrast was almost entirely his own words. It's about the media reaction to Palin and (in Dave's words) the media suddenly growing "a backbone" and challenging the received McCain narrative of the Palin selection. Interesting, and (if Winer is correct) a bit scary since one of his ideas about why this might be the case is that they weren't included in the vetting process through leaks and the resulting complex of psychosocial and psychopolitical feedback loops in the sense of the 21st century electronic media milieu where the media oligarchs play a critical gatekeeper role.

I'll close with a Palin bonus link (thanks to Doc Searls for this stylistic tool!).

Can't say I disagree...

...with this John Judis analysis of what sure looks to be a difficult road ahead for Obama's presidential hopes. I expect tonight's acceptance speech will indicate which way the trending goes from here to November.

Barackonomics

I've been convinced for a long time now that we need to transcend left/right polarity on many seriously pressing issues, including "the economy" and particularly sustainable and equitable development and (yes) growth. Here's a good example of why I think Obama is the superior candidate, not just compared to McCain, but also to the other vanquished primary candidates Democrat and Republican alike (and don't even get me started on the oligarch-friendly Bush administration).

Pull quotes:

"The market is the best mechanism ever invented for efficiently allocating resources to maximize production,” Obama told [David Leonhardt, NYT]. “And I also think that there is a connection between the freedom of the marketplace and freedom more generally.” But, he continued, “there are certain things the market doesn’t automatically do."

"I think I can tell a pretty simple story. Ronald Reagan ushered in an era that reasserted the marketplace and freedom. He made people aware of the cost involved of government regulation or at least a command-and-control-style regulation regime. Bill Clinton to some extent continued that pattern, although he may have smoothed out the edges of it. And George Bush took Ronald Reagan’s insight and ran it over a cliff. And so I think the simple way of telling the story is that when Bill Clinton said the era of big government is over, he wasn’t arguing for an era of no government. So what we need to bring about is the end of the era of unresponsive and inefficient government and short-term thinking in government, so that the government is laying the groundwork, the framework, the foundation for the market to operate effectively and for every single individual to be able to be connected with that market and to succeed in that market. And it’s now a global marketplace."

It would be laughable...

...if I wasn't so afraid that tactics like this might just do exactly what the Republican brain trust intends.

Duh. Ugh.

Still more examples of things are obvious (duh) and things that are just abhorrent (ugh).

We urgently have to purge these incompetent, corrupt, dangerous ideologues from the body politic with extreme prejudice. McCain - though better than these clowns - just ain't enough of a purge for this non-party-affiliated independent. We can worry about the consequences of any Obama shortcomings in competence, ethics and ideology later. Even if they are worse than I suspect (i.e. as bad as the McCain campaign or the Wall Street Journal implies they are), they probably cut in a completely different direction and even that would be progress.