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Everyone has seen the warning. At the bottom of the email, it says: "Please consider the environment before printing." But for those who care about global warming, you might want to consider not writing so many emails in the first place.
More and more, people rely on their electronic mailboxes as a life organizer. Old emails, photos, and files from years past sit undisturbed, awaiting your search for a name, lost address, or maybe a photo of an old boyfriend. The problem is that all those messages require energy to preserve them. And despite the tech industry's focus on renewables, the advent of streaming and artificial intelligence is only accelerating the amount of fossil fuels burned to keep data servers up, running, and cool.
Right now, data centers consume about 2% of the world's electricity, but that's expected to reach 8% by 2030. Moreover, only about 6% of all data ever created is in use today, according to research from Hewlett Packard Enterprise. That means that 94% is sitting in a vast "cyber landfill," albeit one with a massive carbon footprint.
"It's costing us the equivalent of maintaining the airline industry for data we don't even use," says Andrew Choi, a senior research analyst at Parnassus Investments, a $27 billion environmental, social, and governance firm in San Francisco.
[...] Choi says the problem is getting too big too fast: How many photos are sitting untouched in the cloud? Is there a net benefit from an internet-connected toothbrush? Is an AI model that enables slightly faster food delivery really worth the energy cost? (Training an AI model emits about as much carbon as the lifetime emissions associated with running five cars.)
Parnassus has been focusing on Advanced Micro Devices and Nvidia, companies that are researching more efficient storage technology. But Choi says real solutions may require more radical thoughts.
"Data is possibly overstated as an advantage for business, and no one's really asking the question," he says. "If a small group of people are the only ones really benefiting from this data revolution, then what are we actually doing, using all of this power?"
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @02:05AM (4 children)
Hahahaha, good page title. Email... yeah, right, and meanwhile ignore:
- all the ads, with associated network load, server work tracking people and building "big data", etc.
- all the video tutorials, press releases, etc that could be a text with some small photos. Tired of mumbling people wasting 10 minutes, making it "funnier" with their text corrections overlaid in the video, instead of re-recording that part. Paint strokes require video, musical instrument too... but 3D-app "click this 5 things to get that option" is fine with text and pictures. Multimedia, not always video, you morons.
- all those process twice "because frameworks". Current "favourite" is asshole sites that send you some kind of markup and JS to convert that to HTML. Or send you 8K pictures that on screen render smaller than 1K, and no link to view bigger ("view image" is power user magic, all other users have been "de-trained" about context menu or shortcuts).
Other points are the issue, email worked with less powerful computers 20-30 years ago, now it is the smallest factor. Yet I doubt we will see "please consider not wasting electricity with [ ads | useless videos | stupid programming fads | etc ]" to become common warning all over the corporate place like some emails footers did decades ago.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @02:15AM (2 children)
Using i.reddit.com or old.reddit.com instead of www.reddit.com will save up to 4 mb of environment every page load. How many emails is that on average?
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Monday January 27 2020, @09:16AM
using old.reddit.com will also show all the comments if you browse with a no script plugin
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday January 27 2020, @12:39PM
What are the technical differences between those reddits that make them more efficient?
(Score: 5, Funny) by takyon on Monday January 27 2020, @03:36AM
All of this wasteful stuff will take up less energy over time. More efficient home computers, server hardware, optical links, video codecs, etc.
That's when we hit the environmentalists with 32K resolution [soylentnews.org] streaming VR video and multi-terabyte game patches.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]