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The Internet works fine for getting good information on fast-changing things - like programming. Otherwise, I'd stick to libraries (the book ones). Unfortunate

The Internet works fine for getting good information on fast-changing things - like programming. Otherwise, I'd stick to libraries (the book ones). Unfortunately, while we're staring at the "Miasma", the real miasma has been wreaking havoc in the real world - climate change. And the Internet is literally contributing to this miasma now with online video traffic for entertainment burning up data centres and networks around the world.

icebraining 7y ago
Let's do a rough estimation. A home router uses about 10W. It's unlikely a ISP router will use more for each stream, so if there are 6 on route, were talking about 60W. For the server, even if the CDN used a dedicated NAS for each user, we're talking about ~30W. Doubling all that to account for overhead, it's about 200W. For comparison, a Tesla Model S uses about 200kWh/km, so a mile driven uses about the same energy as streaming 1.5hrs of video. A round-trip to a movie theater 15 miles away = 45 hours of streaming video.
- NotSammyHagar 7y ago
  Your units are off on the tesla. It uses 200 watt hours per km, not 200k wh/km. Anyway, yes, driving uses more energy than watching tv.
- blue_devil 7y ago
  You're forgetting about networks' and data centres' energy requirements. A recent report estimates currently use of the carbon footprint of digital technologies is about 4% of global emissions, and in a worst case scenario by 2025, digital technologies may amount to 7% of global carbon emissions. For reference, global emissions as of 2018 grew to 37 billion tonnes CO2 equivalent. >>Digital technologies now emit 4% of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), and its energy consumption is increasing by 9% a year. [...] only one form of digital use, online video, generates 60% of world data flows and thus over 300 million tons of CO2 per year. This use is far from being “dematerialized”. On the contrary, it represents 20% of the greenhouse gas emissions of all digital devices (use and production included), and 1% of global emissions, i.e. as much as Spain. https://theshiftproject.org/en/article/unsustainable-use-online-video/ https://theshiftproject.org/en/article/unsustainable-use-onl...
  - icebraining 7y ago
    > You're forgetting about networks' and data centres' energy requirements. No, I'm literally counting those requirements. Hence routers + server (+100% for overhead, like cooling). > A recent report estimates that in a worst case scenario by 2025, digital technologies may amount to 7% of global carbon emissions. Why do you trust that report? The numbers don't even make sense; just as an example, dividing the watched VoD time by the consumed VoD data, you get 24Mb/s, yet they say on the same row, "Average Bitrate : 3 Mbps". That's a 8x difference!
    - blue_devil 7y ago
      >>No, I'm literally counting those requirements. Hence routers + server (+100% for overhead, like cooling). I would not say you're "counting", you're rather doing a back-of-the-envelope calculation with eye-balled numbers. These estimations are difficult by nature. I don't "trust" the report per se, but they do provide sources, from which I can inform myself. Which is more than I can say about your calculations, which come without sources. Digital tech is one of the fastest growing carbon polluters, and data centres alone account for almost 50% of the emissions. Now, the specific attribution to online video may be less clear-cut, but the trends have been replicated in multiple studies. You may also be interested in this recent report: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095965261733233X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095965261... Can you point me to this inconsistency? >>Why do you trust that report? The numbers don't even make sense; just as an example, dividing the watched VoD time by the consumed VoD data, you get 24Mb/s, yet they say on the same row, "Average Bitrate : 3 Mbps". That's a 8x difference!
      - icebraining 7y ago
        > I would not say you're "counting", you're rather doing a back-of-the-envelope calculation with eye-balled numbers. Yes, of course. My point is that I wasn't forgetting them. > I don't "trust" the report per se, but they do provide sources, from which I can inform myself. And did you? > Now, the specific attribution to online video may be less clear-cut That's the thing, though. We know that streaming a video is a very low-power activity, since we can do so with a very low power device. And I added 100% of overhead, whereas the PUE of a real datacenter is actually about 1.09 nowadays. So any report that tries to tell me Google or Amazon, who spend millions on DC energy improvements, are wasting orders of magnitude of energy more, is not a serious report. A very big issue is that they assume a linear correlation between transferred data and power use. For the network part that may be reasonable, but for the DC is absolutely is not. Mining cryptocurrency, for example, takes a huge amount of energy to produce a message of a few KBs. > Can you point me to this inconsistency? It's in the Technical details of the report.

icebraining 7y ago

Let's do a rough estimation. A home router uses about 10W. It's unlikely a ISP router will use more for each stream, so if there are 6 on route, were talking about 60W. For the server, even if the CDN used a dedicated NAS for each user, we're talking about ~30W. Doubling all that to account for overhead, it's about 200W. For comparison, a Tesla Model S uses about 200kWh/km, so a mile driven uses about the same energy as streaming 1.5hrs of video. A round-trip to a movie theater 15 miles away = 45 hours of streaming video.

NotSammyHagar 7y ago
Your units are off on the tesla. It uses 200 watt hours per km, not 200k wh/km. Anyway, yes, driving uses more energy than watching tv.
blue_devil 7y ago
You're forgetting about networks' and data centres' energy requirements. A recent report estimates currently use of the carbon footprint of digital technologies is about 4% of global emissions, and in a worst case scenario by 2025, digital technologies may amount to 7% of global carbon emissions. For reference, global emissions as of 2018 grew to 37 billion tonnes CO2 equivalent. >>Digital technologies now emit 4% of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), and its energy consumption is increasing by 9% a year. [...] only one form of digital use, online video, generates 60% of world data flows and thus over 300 million tons of CO2 per year. This use is far from being “dematerialized”. On the contrary, it represents 20% of the greenhouse gas emissions of all digital devices (use and production included), and 1% of global emissions, i.e. as much as Spain. https://theshiftproject.org/en/article/unsustainable-use-online-video/ https://theshiftproject.org/en/article/unsustainable-use-onl...
- icebraining 7y ago
  > You're forgetting about networks' and data centres' energy requirements. No, I'm literally counting those requirements. Hence routers + server (+100% for overhead, like cooling). > A recent report estimates that in a worst case scenario by 2025, digital technologies may amount to 7% of global carbon emissions. Why do you trust that report? The numbers don't even make sense; just as an example, dividing the watched VoD time by the consumed VoD data, you get 24Mb/s, yet they say on the same row, "Average Bitrate : 3 Mbps". That's a 8x difference!
  - blue_devil 7y ago
    >>No, I'm literally counting those requirements. Hence routers + server (+100% for overhead, like cooling). I would not say you're "counting", you're rather doing a back-of-the-envelope calculation with eye-balled numbers. These estimations are difficult by nature. I don't "trust" the report per se, but they do provide sources, from which I can inform myself. Which is more than I can say about your calculations, which come without sources. Digital tech is one of the fastest growing carbon polluters, and data centres alone account for almost 50% of the emissions. Now, the specific attribution to online video may be less clear-cut, but the trends have been replicated in multiple studies. You may also be interested in this recent report: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095965261733233X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095965261... Can you point me to this inconsistency? >>Why do you trust that report? The numbers don't even make sense; just as an example, dividing the watched VoD time by the consumed VoD data, you get 24Mb/s, yet they say on the same row, "Average Bitrate : 3 Mbps". That's a 8x difference!
    - icebraining 7y ago
      > I would not say you're "counting", you're rather doing a back-of-the-envelope calculation with eye-balled numbers. Yes, of course. My point is that I wasn't forgetting them. > I don't "trust" the report per se, but they do provide sources, from which I can inform myself. And did you? > Now, the specific attribution to online video may be less clear-cut That's the thing, though. We know that streaming a video is a very low-power activity, since we can do so with a very low power device. And I added 100% of overhead, whereas the PUE of a real datacenter is actually about 1.09 nowadays. So any report that tries to tell me Google or Amazon, who spend millions on DC energy improvements, are wasting orders of magnitude of energy more, is not a serious report. A very big issue is that they assume a linear correlation between transferred data and power use. For the network part that may be reasonable, but for the DC is absolutely is not. Mining cryptocurrency, for example, takes a huge amount of energy to produce a message of a few KBs. > Can you point me to this inconsistency? It's in the Technical details of the report.