Energy use and the internet

Image by Sackerson: http://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.co.uk/

"Worldwide... digital warehouses use about 30 billion watts of electricity, roughly equivalent to the output of 30 nuclear power plants", says the New York Times.

Wikipedia reckons global electricity consumption in 2008 was 20,279,640 billion watts, so internet servers use around 1.3% of the total (presumably more as more of the world gets connected).

But we have to add to that the power usage by machines that access the data. According to Time Magazine, a report in July ("The Cloud begins with Coal" - pdf) by Mark Mills of the Digital Power Group estimates the total IT system to be around 10% of world electricity production.

The Time writer paraphrases him: "It’s the same amount of electricity that was used to light the entire planet in 1985. We already use 50% more energy to move bytes than we do to move planes in global aviation."

The first Sinclair home computer offered 1 kilobyte (1,024 bytes) and the next (the Spectrum, which I bought) boasted 64 kilobytes. New word (for me): "zettabyte" (used in slide 3 in Mills' presentation). 1 zettabyte = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes. Here is Mill's graph showing estimated current (4 - 5 ZB) and forecast data usage: 


(Mills, from slide 5)

Mills points out that coal is the world's most important energy source, and IT is using more and more. Perhaps when the mines are empty, we need no longer worry about the NSA/GCHQ's cybersnooping.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Albert Burgess: reporting treason

In December 2006 I was given a CD-ROM with over 200 pages of documents retrieved from the Public Records Office by David Barnby, each page headed Secret, Classified, or Restricted. I was told these were of historical interest, so I sat down to read them with my historian’s hat on.

After ten minutes my historian’s hat had been kicked into touch and I was wearing my constable’s hat as I exclaimed to myself, “My God, this is sedition!” I hit the print button and printed off all the pages. I then sat down pencil in hand to make notes. Once I had satisfied myself that crimes of sedition and treason had been disclosed, I took the papers to St Aldate's Police Station in Oxford, a 15-mile drive from my home in Thame.

On arrival I was greeted by a civilian counter clerk. I asked if he could get me a police officer. He said, "Why?" I said, "I want to report a crime." He said, "You don't report crime here, you phone this number," and he chucked an 0845 number at me. I pirouetted around in the police station front office and said "This is a police station, is it"? He said, "Yes." I said, "Then get me a policeman.” He said, "Perhaps if you tell me what it’s about?”

My first thought was to tell him to mind his own business and get me a police officer, but I said, "Yes, well, it’s about the fact that Edward Heath, one-time Prime Minister, set up a conspiracy to subvert the Constitution, the major crime of Sedition at Common Law, and at this level of sedition an act of high treason against the Constitution and people of England. And his conspiracy planned to hand over this Kingdom to a foreign power, the EEC, the major crime of high treason. Are you any the wiser?” He said, "No." I said, "Then get me a policeman!”

He vanished out the back and came back with the tallest police sergeant I have ever seen, who I now know to be Sgt Thomas. Sgt Thomas walked up the counter, placed his hands on it and in a very I've-got-a-lunatic-here tone of voice said, "YES SIR, AND WHAT CAN I DO FOR YOU"?

I said, "Well, Sergeant, the first thing you can do for me is open up one of these interview rooms so we can sit at a table and discuss this in relative comfort." The look in his eyes was one of utter confusion: after all, no-one walks into a police station and tells the duty sergeant what to do, but I had done just that. He stood for a moment, not sure what to do, then he walked away and opened the interview room and my journey had begun.

I explained to him how Edward Heath had set up a conspiracy using a Foreign Office civil servant by the name of Norman Redaway (now deceased) who worked in the information research department (IRD), which used to be known as the Special Operations Executive, which trained (SOE) agents to be dropped into occupied Europe to work with the Resistance. Redaway was a spook. The SOE was disbanded in 1946 and IRD was born.

Sergeant Thomas said, "But Heath is dead!” I said, "I know, but some of his people are still alive." After about 45 minutes talking Sgt Thomas said he couldn't deal with this, he would have to take it upstairs. I agreed and giving him a full print out of the documents retrieved from the Public Records Office, I left.   

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Russian carbon sequestration: bigger picture needed?

Writing for the green website Grist, John Upton quotes Russian research released in August that claims abandoned farmland there has taken up large amounts of CO2 since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. Reporting on the same, New Scientist says this equates to 10 per cent of Russia's carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels (although the study's abstract says "... ~10% of the annual C sink in all Russian forests", so not having access to the full text I don't know whether the NS has misread).

However it seems to me that there is a limit to how much the wild vegetation will absorb, as it will reach maturity (presumably in the form of reforestation).

Also, even though many Russians have given up farming, they haven't stopped eating. So someone somewhere else is farming for them, and if that's in foreign countries there is an energy and emission implication in getting the food to market. So per capita, I suspect CO2 emissions relating to food have increased.

To some extent there may be some offsetting for demographic change - the Russian population shrank in the post-collapse years - but the population has begun to grow again.

I'd think it's more important to look at Russian industry and the extent to which emission reductions have been achieved because of more efficient plant, as opposed to being caused by the loss of productive capacity to (for example) coal-burning China.

If you're a global warmist, can we have a global picture, please?

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

The No-Fail Tipster does it again!

Another stunning 16-1 betting coup by Broad Oak's The Punter's Friend left the bookies drowning their sorrows at Ascot this afternoon, as Intibaah romped home in the 3.05.

Right every time, as always!

Too good to be true? Doubt our infallible racing pundit? See the evidence for yourself in this morning's posting (last updated 7 p.m. today).

Read The Punter's Friend every day in your soaraway Broad Oak Magazine!

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

The Daily Mail's memory hole and David Rose's Arctic ice

UPDATE (19:00): My tip for Intibaah to win the 3.05 at Ascot today was, as usual, completely correct.

Those who have read Orwell's "1984" will remember the 'memory hole' down which Winston Smith would lose historical evidence that was inconvenient to the current official narrative.

Spot the differences in this modern example:

Daily Mail online, 8 September 2013

- and 20 days later...

Daily Mail online, 28 September 2013

Perhaps the rewriting of history was in response to this video (htp: Paddington), from which the first image above was taken (at 24 seconds in):



As it happens, I am a Daily Mail reader (or skimmer), and this paper makes many people gibber (see this site); but as I said to someone who posted the latter link to his Facebook page,

"The Mail is hated by groupthinking Lefties, esp. R4 comedians who expect sycophantic laughs for their own prejudices instead of wit. It's successful because it cast its net wide - look at the funnies page (always the soul of a newspaper) to see how disparate and mutually antipathetic its subsets of readers. I read it to get the gist of the national agenda, not to share its point of view - when it has one, instead of blowing hot and cold, which is what it usually does."

Clearly even David Rose has recognised that he had blown too cool on this occasion - though retrospectively rewriting the original piece instead of issuing a correction illustrates the exuberant self-granted journalistic license that made me for a time suspect that he was really Johann Hari come in from the cold.

And now my infallible, solid-gold tip for the winner of the 3.05 pm at Ascot this afternoon: #1 - Intibaah - odds forecast 16/1. Fill yer boots! (Important note: this post updated at 19:00 on 04.10.2013).

Read The Punter's Friend every day in your soaraway Broad Oak Magazine!

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Leather

An old German anecdote:

As he was accompanying a duchess into the dining-hall, a German general remarked on the long leather gloves she wore, as was then the fashion, and asked her why. "They keep my arms and hands soft and supple," she replied.

"That's odd," said the general, "for I wear lederhosen and my arse is as rough as a rasp (so rauh wie ein Reibeisen)."




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The future of climate change

Environmental science tends to be carried out within a regulatory regime which why it attracts funding. Once established, the regulatory regime is in the driving seat, not the science.

This is a fact of life for environmental scientists. The science is mostly about monitoring regulatory compliance and providing evidence for prosecution where such things as discharge licences, emission licences or environmental laws have been broken.

I must have signed many hundreds of witness statements in my role as an expert witness in cases of water pollution, although I hardly ever had to attend court as scientific evidence was challenged only rarely. The witness statement was almost always sufficient.

What we refer to climate change with its associated treaties and laws is merely another regulatory regime but on a global scale. Climate science has a similar support role to other regulatory regimes, but the science is significantly less mature and dependable.

As well as having an enforcement role, the environmental scientist’s job may be to provide a scientific basis for new regulations. For example the quantification and regulation of dioxins and dioxin like substances in the environment.

It requires spending on advanced analytical technology and the development of reliable methods for the sampling and analysis of soil samples. This means reliable enough to go to court and give evidence about scientific results under oath.

Provision of funding and expertise for new environmental investigations is the positive side of regulatory regimes. Another example has been the identification and quantification of endocrine disruptors in the environment.

In this respect, climate change is a fairly typical if wildly controversial and ambitious regulatory regime. It has facilitated funding and expertise for the investigation of an alleged environmental problem due to human emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere supposedly causing a rise in global temperature.

As I see it, the problem with the regulatory regime for the global climate is a clumsy desire by UNEP to regulate combustion processes before the scientific rationale devised by the IPCC was known to be sound.

For me this has been one of the most startling aspects of climate change – the science is horrible and nowhere near reliable enough for regulatory purposes. I suppose one advantage of a carbon market is that m’learned friends are given no opportunity to pick apart the science in an enforcement process based on prosecution.

So what does the future have in store?

To my mind, the most interesting aspect is the future direction of global temperatures. The climate is in charge here, not UNEP or the IPCC. It’s as if Defra had no idea what the Thames might do next.

If a global warming trend sets in, then it will probably be business as usual and the regulatory regime will require climate scientists to carry on as if nothing untoward happened. They won’t spend much time on explaining the warming hiatus either.

If the warming hiatus continues or a global cooling trend sets in, then it may still be business as usual, but how they intend to carry it off I have no idea. There may be contingency plans spoken of in private, but you or I will never hear of them until the press releases pop up.

A much bigger problem is the obvious damage done to national energy policies as they become more and more absurd. Somehow the climate regime may have to compromise on this one.

Don’t bet on it though – regulatory regimes don’t care about a few thousand extra deaths each winter.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.