4 ms·
Off-topic, but at the bottom of the page there is this quote from Jay Walker at TED 2008: > “It takes the energy in one lump of coal to move 1 MB of informatio
by juliend2 8y ago
Off-topic, but at the bottom of the page there is this quote from Jay Walker at TED 2008:
> “It takes the energy in one lump of coal to move 1 MB of information across the net.”
I wonder if it's still true today, 10 years later.
- orf 8y agoWas it ever true?
- patrickg_zill 8y agoWhat is the size of one "lump"?
- philipkglass 8y agoNo. I'm skeptical that it was true then, for reasonable values of "lump." One lump of coal: 25 grams (Per https://books.google.com/books?id=HLFJAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA5-PA20&lpg=RA5-PA20&dq=coal+lump+grams&source=bl&ots=rG5vD0QN6z&sig=mhO2OhL1PhqmIQL8C1RDfj6eOfw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj72_Wu-JPeAhUdHjQIHcqqD7QQ6AEwFXoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=coal%20lump%20grams&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=HLFJAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA5-PA20&l... ) Annual internet traffic: 122,088,000,000,000 MB in 2008, 1,152,648,000,000,000 MB in 2016 (petabytes per month to megabytes per year: multiply by 1.2 * 10^10) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_traffic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_traffic There are 40,000 coal lumps of 25 grams per tonne of coal. That would put moving-information-across-the-net energy consumption at 3 billion tonnes (3.4 billion short tons) of coal in 2008. That's about 44% of world coal production in 2008. If it took 1 lump of coal per MB in 2016, that would be about 29 billion tonnes of coal (32 billion short tons), or about 360% of world coal production in 2013 (latest date available). https://www.indexmundi.com/energy/?product=coal&graph=consumption https://www.indexmundi.com/energy/?product=coal&graph=consum...