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The most alarming part of the article for me was the reference to climate change and its impending consequences. I I may say I've been living under quite a roc

The most alarming part of the article for me was the reference to climate change and its impending consequences. I I may say I've been living under quite a rock for I hadn't thought of it as mentioned here in this paragraph: " The book’s most fascinating and disturbing chapter is about how the Internet, the primary vector of information about climate change, is increasingly a vector of the problem itself. The world’s data centers already have roughly the same carbon footprint as the global aviation industry, even as people continue to speak of “the cloud” as though it were a barely corporeal entity. As temperatures rise, our information technologies will function less efficiently—increased heat and humidity will hamper the flow of wireless transmissions and satellite communications—and a vicious cycle will commence. (Bridle makes a similar point about cryptocurrency, that supposedly revolutionary and transformative technology: if its rate of growth continues, by next year Bitcoin alone will account for the same level of carbon output as the entire United States.) Even more depressing is the contention that climate change could actually wind up making us stupider: he cites research showing that human cognitive ability decreases significantly with higher atmospheric concentration of carbon. “Carbon dioxide clouds the mind: it directly degrades our ability to think clearly, and we are walling it into our places of education and pumping it into the atmosphere,” he writes. “The crisis of global warming is a crisis of the mind, a crisis of thought, a crisis in our ability to think another way to be. Soon, we shall not be able to think at all.”" I am genuinely in an odd state of distress at this point. While I continue to function normally in society and keep living as though it is something so far away in the future, a special place in a deep corner of my mind still seems to nudge every once in a while when I am alone and drive me to borderline insanity.

czechdeveloper 8y ago
This actually paralyses me a bit. Nice vacation? All I think is footprint I'm making and how I'm destroying that very beautiful nature I wanted to visit. Start enterprise? I'll just add another CO2 to provide people with service they don't really need to survive. Like this new gadget? I can't buy it, I don't need it and again, just another item in vicious cycle or consumption. But what can I do. I want my enjoyment of those stuff back. I want to be motivated to create and experience, yet I can't as I see the other side of that. I want to enjoy good stuff, but I can't.
- Nition 8y ago
  I know what you mean, and you didn't even mention the thing that makes it extra stressful: The fact that other people keep doing all that stuff anyway. So you either disadvantage yourself against them while having no real effect as an individual, or you do the same as them while always feeling bad about it. Although some of those things don't necessarily make life better anyway. Sometimes I'm happier having a break at home vs. trying to plan a vacation, and new gadgets often just mean more work in your life to maintain them. Not to mention the extra work you have to do to afford it all, that you could instead have as free time. But in the end, I think individual change on a large scale requires government legislation, and government legislation requires worldwide agreement, because no-one wants to be disadvantaged against everyone else. Tragedy of the commons. But we do what we can.
  - czechdeveloper 8y ago
    Yes, I can either be social or ecological. As my family lives in different parts of country, it dictates car travel (public transport is really bad). Even just volunteering usually requires me to travel by car somewhere. I try to live simply, it always gave me great pleasure, or at least less stress to own little. But I moved away from this a bit recently as I have family and also I feel like I should be less dependent on surrounding (ie. have good tools, have some backup items etc.).
- EcoHobbies 8y ago
  Your conclusions are rational. If sustainability is important, we'll have to rethink our actions. Imposing constraints inevitably reduces choices, but there remains plenty of options: * local vacation (this is a tough one, I realise) * enterprises that are sustainable: either marginal negative emissions (e.g. durable goods) or carbon neutral (perhaps via credits) * sustainable activities: hiking, sailing, stand up comedy * start cycling * reduce meat consumption Admittedly I do poorly at adopting sustainable choices merely for the sake of sustainability.
  - czechdeveloper 8y ago
    I did some changes (work from home, smallish energy efficient house), but it seems like not enough in any sense as I still travel by car, I buy a lot of plastic packaged stuff and overall if everyone (whole planet) lived like me, we would likely be in way worse trouble than we are.
notacoward 8y ago
> The world’s data centers already have roughly the same carbon footprint as the global aviation industry While this is true, it does need to be put into perspective. People's appetite for computing isn't likely to go away. A thousand people sharing a compute resource in the cloud might be more efficient than those same thousand people each having to do those same computations on bigger beefier machines in their homes. One of the reasons laptops can be so small nowadays is that they're doing less locally; that's explicitly part of the strategy e.g. for Chromebooks, or for Adobe's Creative Cloud. Also, our connectedness through those data centers sometimes saves energy by allowing people to work from home instead of commuting. So yes, there is a problem with the energy cost of computing, but using data-center consumption as a proxy for that is a bit like using increased wind/solar energy production as a proxy for excess overall energy use. The problem is on the demand side. The suppliers are often doing the best they can, and an increase in a particular supply segment might sometimes be a good sign. Of course, I'm biased, because my day job involves making the storage part of data centers work more efficiently.
zhengwang 8y ago
I read the IPCC report in grad school and was incredibly alarmed. Honestly it appears doubtful that short of a massive breakthrough in carbon sequestration there is no chance we will be able to stop whats coming.

czechdeveloper 8y ago

This actually paralyses me a bit. Nice vacation? All I think is footprint I'm making and how I'm destroying that very beautiful nature I wanted to visit. Start enterprise? I'll just add another CO2 to provide people with service they don't really need to survive. Like this new gadget? I can't buy it, I don't need it and again, just another item in vicious cycle or consumption. But what can I do. I want my enjoyment of those stuff back. I want to be motivated to create and experience, yet I can't as I see the other side of that. I want to enjoy good stuff, but I can't.

Nition 8y ago
I know what you mean, and you didn't even mention the thing that makes it extra stressful: The fact that other people keep doing all that stuff anyway. So you either disadvantage yourself against them while having no real effect as an individual, or you do the same as them while always feeling bad about it. Although some of those things don't necessarily make life better anyway. Sometimes I'm happier having a break at home vs. trying to plan a vacation, and new gadgets often just mean more work in your life to maintain them. Not to mention the extra work you have to do to afford it all, that you could instead have as free time. But in the end, I think individual change on a large scale requires government legislation, and government legislation requires worldwide agreement, because no-one wants to be disadvantaged against everyone else. Tragedy of the commons. But we do what we can.
- czechdeveloper 8y ago
  Yes, I can either be social or ecological. As my family lives in different parts of country, it dictates car travel (public transport is really bad). Even just volunteering usually requires me to travel by car somewhere. I try to live simply, it always gave me great pleasure, or at least less stress to own little. But I moved away from this a bit recently as I have family and also I feel like I should be less dependent on surrounding (ie. have good tools, have some backup items etc.).
EcoHobbies 8y ago
Your conclusions are rational. If sustainability is important, we'll have to rethink our actions. Imposing constraints inevitably reduces choices, but there remains plenty of options: * local vacation (this is a tough one, I realise) * enterprises that are sustainable: either marginal negative emissions (e.g. durable goods) or carbon neutral (perhaps via credits) * sustainable activities: hiking, sailing, stand up comedy * start cycling * reduce meat consumption Admittedly I do poorly at adopting sustainable choices merely for the sake of sustainability.
- czechdeveloper 8y ago
  I did some changes (work from home, smallish energy efficient house), but it seems like not enough in any sense as I still travel by car, I buy a lot of plastic packaged stuff and overall if everyone (whole planet) lived like me, we would likely be in way worse trouble than we are.

notacoward 8y ago

> The world’s data centers already have roughly the same carbon footprint as the global aviation industry While this is true, it does need to be put into perspective. People's appetite for computing isn't likely to go away. A thousand people sharing a compute resource in the cloud might be more efficient than those same thousand people each having to do those same computations on bigger beefier machines in their homes. One of the reasons laptops can be so small nowadays is that they're doing less locally; that's explicitly part of the strategy e.g. for Chromebooks, or for Adobe's Creative Cloud. Also, our connectedness through those data centers sometimes saves energy by allowing people to work from home instead of commuting. So yes, there is a problem with the energy cost of computing, but using data-center consumption as a proxy for that is a bit like using increased wind/solar energy production as a proxy for excess overall energy use. The problem is on the demand side. The suppliers are often doing the best they can, and an increase in a particular supply segment might sometimes be a good sign. Of course, I'm biased, because my day job involves making the storage part of data centers work more efficiently.

zhengwang 8y ago

I read the IPCC report in grad school and was incredibly alarmed. Honestly it appears doubtful that short of a massive breakthrough in carbon sequestration there is no chance we will be able to stop whats coming.