The Planet Needs a New Internet (gizmodo.com) 201
An anonymous reader shares a report: When climate change comes for our coffee and our wine, we'll moan about it on Twitter, read about it on our favorite websites, and watch diverting videos on YouTube to fill the icy hole in our hearts. We'll do all this until the websites go dark and the networks go down because eventually, climate change will come for our internet, too. That is, unless we can get the web ready for the coming storms. Huge changes will be needed because right now, the internet is unsustainable. On the one hand, rising sea levels threaten to swamp the cables and stations that transmit the web to our homes; rising temperatures could make it more costly to run the data centers handling ever-increasing web traffic; wildfires could burn it all down. On the other, all of those data centers, computers, smartphones, and other internet-connected devices take a prodigious amount of energy to build and to run, thus contributing to global warming and hastening our collective demise.
To save the internet and ourselves, we'll need to harden and relocate the infrastructure we've built, find cleaner ways to power the web, and reimagine how we interact with the digital world. Ultimately, we need to recognize that our tremendous consumption of online content isnâ(TM)t free of consequences -- if we're not paying, the planet is. You probably don't think about it when you're liking a photo or reading an article, but everything you do online is underpinned by a globe-spanning labyrinth of physical infrastructure. There are the data centers hosting the web and managing enormous flows of information on the daily. There are the fiber cables transmitting data to into our homes and offices, and even across oceans. There are cell towers sending and receiving countless calls and texts on the daily.
To save the internet and ourselves, we'll need to harden and relocate the infrastructure we've built, find cleaner ways to power the web, and reimagine how we interact with the digital world. Ultimately, we need to recognize that our tremendous consumption of online content isnâ(TM)t free of consequences -- if we're not paying, the planet is. You probably don't think about it when you're liking a photo or reading an article, but everything you do online is underpinned by a globe-spanning labyrinth of physical infrastructure. There are the data centers hosting the web and managing enormous flows of information on the daily. There are the fiber cables transmitting data to into our homes and offices, and even across oceans. There are cell towers sending and receiving countless calls and texts on the daily.
Did you forget... (Score:4, Insightful)
... about Internet2 [wikipedia.org] again?
Re:Did you forget... (Score:5, Informative)
Internet2 was a technology platform change. What this article is evangelizing is retooling much of the internet to fit his particular mindset, and then drabs on for a few paragraphs about fiber being submerged. News-flash: Fiber can be wet. Most bury-able cable is designed to not deteriorate in water. Fiber is also non-electrical, so it won't suddenly short-out. Fiber in data centers is the soft, east kind. When you bury fiber, or run it in outdoor conduit, its tough, gel-filled, heavily armored cable. It will work fine when submerged.
What the author is asking for is focusing on the internet and how we power it, and reducing the power. On the one hand, I am all for finding the most effective, clean power sources for our lives (I personally drive a Tesla, and power it with a solar roof most of the time). But, to pick on the internet specifically? Come on. The internet isn't even a thing. It is a network of networks that span the globe and has the most diverse set of power solutions you can imagine. Many cell sites are in remote locations, and powered by solar/battery solutions. The data center where we run our gear is 100% green powered (Switch / Greenpeace [switch.com]).
So what is the author of this piece trying to convey? That while we might bitch and complain about coffee and wine, a threat to the internet will actually spur us into some random action she specifically sees fit? How condescending. Come on Maddie, your article is seriously #woke.
For Starts (Score:5, Funny)
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The wokeness of TFA is off the charts! Clearly the author is missing the first and most important thing he could do to eliminate his CO2 emissions.
Fine, ban all those auto-play videos that every other web page in existence seems to have.
There are auto-playing videos on your internet? You should get a better internet.
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Yeah, seriously. Just get Brave Browser and you can turn off those annoying auto-playing videos.
Well, I do use the Brave web browser, thanks. What about the billion or so other people who don't?
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Sucks to be them.
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Joking aside, there is a point beneath that. Internet resources are cheap to use. Really cheap - so cheap that much of the time it isn't even metered and charged for, just sold in a flat fee. This has encouraged people to be very wasteful with it.
Re:For Starts (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's see... a couple hundred watts for a couple hours... in gasoline equivalent, that likely won't even get your family of four in that oversized SUV a tenth of the way to the movie theater.
You've got to consider what the bored-ass public will do as an alternative before you go about shaming streaming addicts.
Malthusian bullshit from the Gizmodouches. (Score:5, Funny)
Those assholes are pretty desperate for attention, as usual.
Re:Malthusian bullshit from the Gizmodouches. (Score:5, Insightful)
Virtually everything is being overrun with climate maniacs claiming it needs to change to save the world.
I wouldn't blame people for being sceptical when people claimed the eco-cult was actually just a reformulated communist movement hiding behind a save-the-world slogan.
I was. Not any longer.
I'm 100% sure they are.
They just can't leave people alone. You will be assimilated.
What if it's all a Hoax (Score:3, Interesting)
Climate Change deniers are all over
As for this line of attack, look, we're facing a global catastrophe. You think maybe, just maybe that's going to have an effect on a large scale computer network that's less than 60 years old?
Re: What if it's all a Hoax (Score:3, Insightful)
It IS getting tiring (Score:2, Insightful)
Global Warming has clearly become something of an apocalyptic religion for many. It's their Return of Angry Christ, their End-Times. We're all doomed from every corner, and no amount of repentance will save us now. They've gone beyond "Say ten Hail Solar Panels and 5 Our Wind Turbines, and go and sin no more". Mankind hurt the Earth Mother, and He Is Going To Pay. Judgement Day is coming, and you humans are going to get the punishment you so richly deserve.
You do know scientists are all in agreement (Score:5, Insightful)
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[You do know scientists are all in agreement] that it _is_ an Apocalypse scenario, right?
That's debunked bullshit, sorry. That "97% scientific consensus" AGW religious zealots quote is a lie. They simply went through and cherry-picked published papers from multiple fields and took a line or two out of those papers, totally out of context, and claimed the scientists in question agree with them on that basis. Intellectual dishonesty, refusal to share the data-sets used, disingenuous propaganda, and attempts to censor opposing views is not science, it is ideologically-driven social- and political-
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This definitely seems to be the dumbest thing I've read today. The week still has a few days in it (including the much vaunted Saturday stories), but with the exception of the Great Greenland Gaffe, this story might win the week.
Chicken Little (Score:2, Insightful)
Chicken Little used to be a story of the village idiot, now he's been declared the prophet.
Climate change has been going on for billions of years and will continue to do so for billions more. We have so much evidence for this it's not even funny.
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And how many of those billions of years has human civilization been around?
This has to be the most braindead response to AGW around. It ignores context completely. It doesn't matter what the fuck average global temperatures during the Cretaceous. There were no primates occupying large chunks of the Earth's surface growing grain and relying on a fairly narrow set of climactic conditions to do it.
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You're right. The evidence is that primates have been most successful in warmer and wetter climates that is predicted to be the effect of the climate change we are all having a panic attack about.
Re:Chicken Little (Score:4, Informative)
Sure, primates will probably do fine.
Civilization is the problem. We have massive amounts of infrastructure invested in things like coastal cities and climate-matched agriculture.
The idea that climate change will make humanity extinct is silly. What it will do is kick the crap out of civilisation. Most of the preceding civilisations we know of declined in whole or in part due to local climate change.
Re:Chicken Little (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, you can just replace the computers (Score:4, Insightful)
Sea level rise isn't the immediate problem as you've figured out. The problem is that rise is happening on a global scale. You're getting flash floods. Also, those places becoming flood plains will fuck up the real estate market. It'll become harder to buy houses when land that is currently usable isn't anymore.
And that's before we talk about sustainability. Will our power grid keep up with the rate of growth? We stopped spending on infrastructure ages ago because we hate taxes so much (funny thing is the people reading this didn't really get a tax break, almost all of it when to the top 1%, who I'm guessing don't spend their days reading
Also large parts of the world are going to become uninhabitable. India's got cities running out of water. Hell, they may already be out.
Complex global problems need action. Ask yourself this: When in your life has the answer to a complex problem been to ignore it and hope it goes away? So far that's what we've been doing.
Oh and don't forget the droughts (Score:2)
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data centers use lots of water
As far as I am aware they cannot use salt water, which by the by, is what we are getting more of. However, if using salt water becomes a usable thing in data centers then I would assume that you're good on at least that end.
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The water problems have just started. Most of the US is using water faster than it's replenished, which is why the water table keeps dropping, and deeper wells keep being needed, which not only take more energy to pump from, but also are more likely to be salty (or even pure salt water). Lots of places depend on water from glaciers for part of the year. They may think it's river water, but that river is fed by melting glaciers. When the glaciers go, that water source is gone. And that's quite sensitive
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The "article" is silly. I wouldn't be surprised if internet use decreased emissions. People sitting in front of their computers aren't out driving around.
I was replying to a poster who seemed to think that because primates like warm weather climate change isn't a problem.
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You're right. The evidence is that primates have been most successful in warmer and wetter climates that is predicted to be the effect of the climate change we are all having a panic attack about.
The thing is that we also had resources around us that also evolved at the same time that we could eat. Much of the plants that we currently call food are not adapting to the change as well. Yes, there are plants that are seeing success, none of them are food we currently eat or cultivate in large quantities. Ergo, we are going to have to change eating habits, change supply chains, change methods of farming, develop new technology to at scale harvest that food, and so on. We've spent a bit over two cent
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There's no way we are capable of understanding a billions year old process with only a hundred years of measurements of variable accuracy and consistency in the recording and interpretation.
The greater disaster is making a change we think will help and ending up making things far worse. We have a proven track record of fucking up ecosystems thinking we were doing something good.
My Angst is with the people that proclaim they have the solution to the Earth's changes as long as we buy their 'carbon credits' th
Re: Chicken Little (Score:2)
quite a few. ...
well before the last ice age.
most likely well after the next one.
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quite a few.
Quite a few what? Billions of years? You're making my head hurt.
well before the last ice age. ...
Humans didn't exist before *this* ice age. (Yes, we're in one currently. Perhaps you meant glacial period?)
Humans are an ice age species.
most likely well after the next one.
As in humans will still be around? I'd like to think so, but not if we've got fucking idiots like you consisting of a significant fraction of our population.
Re: Chicken Little (Score:2)
350,000 in our current genetic form by current estimates.
the last ice age started ~20,000 years ago and ended ~10,000 years ago.
since then we reinvented the microchip and sea levels rose 135 meters, falling back roughly 10 meters in the last 300 or so years.
people still stupid enough to think a few inches here or there is the end of the world tho, perhaps worse now than when egypt started seeing the nile dry up 4000 years ago or so.
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While what you say it true, it's worth noting that it's not the same grains in each region. There are good reasons why southern China prefers rice and northern China prefers wheat. And why Canada prefers wheat, but California prefers to grow rice.
I'm no farmer, so I don't know the details, but I do know that there are good reasons. (I didn't mention corn == maize, because I don't know as much about where it's grown. But every plant has it's limits.)
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Re:Chicken Little (Score:5, Informative)
Obligatory xkcd [xkcd.com]
Climate hockey stick fairs poorly (Score:2)
Yeah, I know from my title alone everybody is queuing up articles refuting the common stupidity people invoke to make that claim.
Allow me yo pre-empt that be exclusively referring to Michael Mann's(of the original hockey stick fame) own follow up work and very quickly presenting his own findings in his own words. Having laid that out, let me point out the uncertainties.
Following up his original much publicized 'hockey stick' article, Mann released the following paper in 2008. He basically extended his idea
Re:Chicken Little (Score:5, Insightful)
To say that we only have a couple hundreds of years of measurements is false. Yes, we only have a couple hundred years of directly taken temperature measurements. But, scientists haven't been up in the arctic studying ice cores, digging in the earth for geological samples, or taking core samples from trees for nothing. The entire planet is our record book, it just takes a trained eye and mind to be able to read it. But go ahead, spout your ideological disagreements based on your gut instinct or cherry picked statistics. It doesn't change the facts, it doesn't change the science.
Can science be wrong? It's not an impossibility, because nothing in science is 100% irrefutable because that is science. But when over 95% of the smartest people on the planet try to tell us something, it might not be a bad idea to take the corks out of your ears and listen.
The scientific evidence refuting it (Score:2)
...provide the scientific evidence that refutes it...
As requested, I'll post one of the journals that was used as a source for the xkcd comic, Apologies for copying my response from elsewhere in thread:
Yeah, I know from my title alone everybody is queuing up articles refuting the common stupidity people invoke to make that claim.
Allow me to pre-empt that be exclusively referring to Michael Mann's(of the original hockey stick fame) own follow up work and very quickly presenting his own findings in his own words. Having laid that out, let me point out the unce
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Yes it has. But that doesn't mean humans can't impact climate change, one way or the other. And climate change could very well happen, our fault or not, that would mean our extinction or at least the end of civilization as we know it.
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end of civilization as we know it.
Honestly I totally see this as a win. We can do so much better than we are right now.
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Meteors have been smacking into Earth for billions of years. So let's add to that count ourselves. The ISS wants to "visit" Mar-a-Lago, by the way.
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Maybe it's more like the boy who cried wolf. No one listened when the actual wolves showed up.
Either way, congratulations to the news media, to the narcissistic scientists who deal with the news media, to the politicians, and to the environmental zealots.
Re:Chicken Little (Score:4, Interesting)
You're both right and wrong in that post.
Yes, the Climate Cultists have gained a lot of sway (and they're usually the ones telling everyone how evil they are for driving cars, and everyone should be on a bike, or just walk, and eating meat is bad for the environment, and you're evil if you're not vegan, and the only way to eat vegetables is Organic and so on). From my general debates in the area, a lot of the "deniers" are swayed into being deniers, as they don't accept the word of the Climate Cultists (largely orrectly, as the CC's are taking the worst case predicted possible by the scientists working on it, adding a lot of scare for good measure, and claiming it's the inevitable state of things unless we all revert to an agrarian society today).
However, even through climate change has been going on for billions of years, the rate of change has not been this fast for certainly thousands of years, and most likely, not for any point outside major catastrophes (meteor impact, supervolcanos and the like).
To the best of anyone's knowledge, the 'greenhouse gasses', of which CO2 is the most pervasive, are the major cause. This is what in the 70s, some of the scientific papers were mentioning when they were saying "we should be heading for cooling, as the long term cycles tend towards a high, and then a reduction". However, a lot of other papers were looking at short term data, and noticing the discrepancies, and instead saying that things were looking much more like we were heading to an average warming. Essentially, both were correct, with the long term cycles indicating we would naturally be looking towards a cooling, except now, the technological civilisations have altered the environment sufficiently to override this and instead of a gradual cool, we're now faced with a very rapid rise.
These rises and cools have been correlated with the CO2 in the atmosphere from geological record, and with all other factors removed for the current issue in the short term trending. Essentially, at no previous time in the history of humanity (since before thee split from early apes) has there ever been a CO2 over around 320ppm until the last few decades in which it's now come to well over 400ppm.
Yes, changes have happened in the past, but they've taken centuries at the very least, if not millennia to make the changes that are now happening in years. Adaptations are happening, but may species of both plant and animal simply can't adapt fast enough, resulting in them losing fertility, or not being able to survive in the new temperature bands, resulting in extinctions. Extinctions happen naturally, of course, but accelerating them, as the accelerated warming is doing will play havoc with food chains, which will be very expensive, most likely, for humanity to work around. Coupled with increasingly severe weather patterns causing havoc with infrastructure (again, a cost factor, ignoring loss of life in the events. While not huge in the global scale, maybe thousands a year, or tens of thousands, to some people each of those lives is the world).
https://climate.nasa.gov/vital... [nasa.gov]
And again, what the Climate Cultists are ignoring is that Scientists and Engineers all over the world are looking into how to reduce the impact on humanity doing its every day activities, and how to reverse the negative impact we're having on the global environment (same as we once learned how things worked much nicer when you sterilised instruments before surgery).
It's very easy to be an "armchair activist" (slacktivists are ten apenny these days). And as I keep telling my Eco Warrior friends, an infinite number of people glueing themselves to trains and yelling won't fix anything, whereas a handfull of good engineers and scientists working damnably hard will each make changes for the better. If they're interested in fixing the climate, stop yelling about how involved they are in fixing it by protesting and shutting things down, study the hard science, math and engineering necessary to join the teams working on solving the problems that'll actually achieve the results. That's the hard part, but also the bit that works.
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Well thought out and informative article. A rare deal for /. these days.
I agree with most your points, except the freeze in Siberia seems to have been sudden which would decry the speed of the warming being human caused but I accept that correlation is not causation with regards to the speed of the changes.
I think the best approach any layman can take is to plant more trees which in the case of the Amazon burning, has become an even higher priority now.
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The warming is global averages, not localised (that would fall under "cherry picking data points").
Definitely behind the "plant more trees" bit though. It seems like one of those low cost strategies that would gain us huge benefits (and interestingly, would re-start lots of logging companies, as the biggest uptake of carbon is in young trees, as they grow the most sequestering far more carbon as part of the tissue generation than their aged relatives). So there'd need to be a constant logging/planting cyc
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Absolutely on board with the trees.
There's a lot of problems with temperature measurements though.
1. In the earliest days ppl were reading the meniscus of mercury. Which portion of those curves justified one Tenth of a degree?
2. These early devices were of questionable accuracy.
3. Cities and areas where there's lots of exposed rock or concrete have higher temps day and night due to absorbtion of the suns rays by day and radiation of absorbed heat by night.
4. More data points in the form of more weather stat
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What the fuck is a 'hate-fact' ?
Making shit up again are we? No troll. I am serious.
Re:Chicken Little (Score:4, Insightful)
A "hate fact" is any factual statement that angers progressives, causing you to be modded down on /. or banned from other sites.
Example hate facts:
* Islamic terrorists killed over 11,000 people, and injured another 11,000+, in 2018.
* Sex is a biological property, not a psychological one nor a social construct.
* Women and men have different interests, as statistical groups.
* Climate change is the usual dynamics of the Earth. The stable climate of the past 10,000 years is an unexplained anomaly.
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Aha, Gotcha.
So the science that brought us all the modern advancements in technology we enjoy is now called 'hate'.
Got it.
btw, No. Lol. Just no. 'Hate Facts' have now topped the list of ridiculous.
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'Hate Facts' have now topped the list of ridiculous.
Oh, if only that could be true, the world would be a much less stupid place.
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Touche pas à mon poste Monsieur Igw
Pardon my French...
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I do my best editing after I hit send.
That didn't come out at all like I hoped.
I meant to say you have a valid point.
Facts don't care about your feelings. (Score:3)
And 183,000 civilians were killed in Iraq [wikipedia.org] largely because of our intervention. Maybe if we'd stop sticking our noses where they don't belong for cheap oil prices I don't even get to see at the pump we'd have less problems. There are pictures of Iranian girls in skirts from the 60s before we fucked with them and radicalized them. And we created MS-13
* Sex is a biological property, not a psychological one nor a social
Re:Facts don't care about your feelings. (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow, such concentrated whataboutism.
"Maybe if we'd stop sticking our noses where they don't belong" - that's as may be, but Islamic terrorism is nevertheless a real thing in this world that kills thousands every year.
"Hermaphrodites" - still biological. Also, astonishingly rare - far more people win the lottery.
"And there's plenty of evidence that this is cultural rather than biological" - that as may be, doesn't change simple statements of fact.
"Red herring. You're trying to distract from the current climate issues." - Guess all you want at my motives, facts are still facts.
"If I sound triggered it's because I literally can't understand why you think trolling for lols is worth more than the daily massive loss in human life that results from the world view you're backing." - Communism killed 160 million people, and that's the world view you're aligned with. Now go away.
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It's a right-wing term for what might otherwise be called an 'inconvenient truth' - something which is true, but also politically or socially awkward to accept. That's the idea anyway - in practice most of the time people proclaim a 'hate-fact' the statement which follows is far from clear - sometimes an outright lie, sometimes a claim which is strictly true, but difficult to interpret. The aim regardless is not actually to win the argument: It's to make the opponent angry and trick them into looking stupid
Death! Destruction! Calamity! (Score:5, Insightful)
C'mon msmash.. another End of the World article with breathless tone and a sense of urgency?
According to you and all the info you pull from, humanity is dying next year, no?
Then dudes, party on like there's no tomorrow, because msmash says there isn't one! YARRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!
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Or you could just move the Internet to space (Score:2)
or blimps.
The real problem is that you will probably need some kind of electricity, which is an infrastructure that is in way worse shape than the Internet.
This can be done easily. (Score:5, Funny)
Trotting out the sea level rise as justification (Score:4, Interesting)
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I'm all for working on climate change and a better internet, but please use valid reasoning.
Very worst case in the worst areas predict a 2" rise in sea levels in the US by 2050. I don't think a 2" rise will much affect the status of the internet.
https://www.globalchange.gov/b... [globalchange.gov]
The link you provide shows 2' rise as the worst case, and goes onto use a 1' rise for its estimates of increased frequency and severity of flooding. 2' == 24''.
Two feet is about 60 cm.
Two inches is ~5 cm.
Whichever units you like to use the link you've provided is talking about increases that are 12 times higher than the numbers you are using in your post.
Two feet of Sea Level Rise is of the average sea level.
So it means even higher flood levels.
And it means more frequent flood levels.
It increases the likeli
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I'd be less worried about the sea level rise than about the increase in extreme weather events. Warmer oceans mean more hurricanes. Warm water also means more evaporation, which means more precipitation.
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I'm all for working on climate change and a better internet, but please use valid reasoning. Very worst case in the worst areas predict a 2" rise in sea levels in the US by 2050. I don't think a 2" rise will much affect the status of the internet.
That's 2' (two feet; 24 inches), not 2" (two inches). Units matter.
That said, I agree that climate change doesn't mean we need a "new" Internet. It probably means we need to move some of the infrastructure to higher ground.
Problems already addressed (Score:4, Insightful)
rising sea levels threaten to swamp the cables and stations that transmit the web to our homes
We already transmit the internet under the sea so obviously the internet will continue as the sea rises.
wildfires could burn it all down.
Yeah that's why I stopped hosting in wooden damtcenters in the middle of forests.
if we're not paying, the planet is
Sweet! Internet on the planet everyone!
You probably don't think about it when you're liking a photo or reading an article
Wait - didn't *YOU* just write an article that I am reading...
THE DOOM IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE INTERNET.
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THE DOOM IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE INTERNET.
They now have topical cream for that. No prescription needed.
Utopia? Forget it (Score:2)
It'll be so moderated, no one will be able to employ basic freedoms that are enjoyed by most countries.
Or it will be so commercialized it'll be devoid of independent or small time devs trying to make a buck or express themselves.
Only way it makes sense... (Score:2)
...is if a new Internet is based on a security-oriented model. No more TCP/IP. No more Ethernet L2 flooding, and probably no more Ethernet. No more BGP based on advertising and trust. No more ability for a nation-state to redirect traffic.
If you're not willing to throw ALL OF IT away, including all of the protocols and the network stack and start fresh, don't bother.
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What does ethernet have to do with the Internet?
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What does ethernet have to do with the Internet?
Sadly, a lot these days, since ISPs followed the race to the bottom and replaced line protocols that had actual OAMP with the cheapest, crummiest possible alternative and then just glued the seams together with bubblegum and popsicle sticks. That however has little to do with the problems on the IPv4/IPv6 layer,
other than the bits of IPv4 and IPv6 that cater to the careless promiscuous use of multicast and broadcast media features which were encouraged by the use of ethernet. The IP problems are primarily
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If the internet were to be redesigned from scratch, I like to think we would separate static content from real-time communications. Think a distributed content-addressed store, something similar to IPFS, running alongside a packet switched network as we have now.
Obligatory (Score:2)
The Planet Needs a New Internet
Only if it has blackjack and hookers. In fact, forget the Internet.
Zealots long for utopia (Score:2)
Part 10,368.
Go and build something then. Do it with your own time and your own funds. That's how things get better.
After you actually start to do work on something, you gain perspective about what you want versus what exists versus the amount of effort it takes to make improvements. If you still have something to say about what the world needs then you’ll be talking based on experience instead of wishing for things like a child does
"Modern web", bad coding practices, ... (Score:2)
So MUCH wasted computing resources because : RAM and HDD are so cheap that we can throw decades of good code practices/optimization/architecture! Your site/application is to slow? Instead of writing optimized code with a GOOD programming language (not a toy one), then add additional computers, more network gears, ... Force users to upgrade their computer/phone/tablet/... to handle your shiny new bloatware/bloated site. Waste, waste, waste, ...
alarmist bullshit - there is no problem in USA (Score:2)
bullshit written by those ignorant of internet infrastructure.
the big ISP already use fiber that can be under salt or fresh water for indefinite period of time near the coasts. Floods happen for other reasons than climate change, overdevelopment causing erosion, storm surges, etc.
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There are cell towers sending and receiving countless calls and texts on the daily.
On the daily? No way - I thought our entire planet goes a few days without a single phone call being placed. Thank you article for letting us know that calls are place even more frequently than weekly.
Built to survive nuclear attacks (Score:3)
...but can't handle a bit of heat and water?
Which Internet? There are 3 (Score:2)
There's the one you're using, Internet, which was originally a military/university system not intended for you.
There's the other one you know about, Internet 2, which is a research university and medical system not intended for you, it runs at 100 GBPS with some 40 GBPS nodes.
Then there's the one we don't tell you about, which is used for things we're not going to tell you about.
Stay in your lane.
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OK, you mean the Chinese mil one. Good point.
We're all gonna die! (Score:2)
Truth to be told (Score:2)
The Earth also needs a new people.
The one which will stop with Earth destruction.
AGW is just one among many issues which are threatening our species survival. And all the issues are of our own making.
Blablabla to make you depressed... (Score:2)
There are things you can do like beter insulate your housing and solar panels, and why not an EV. But guild complexes about you communication possibilities aren't going to help.
The Perspective is Weak in This One (Score:5, Informative)
So, datacenters use electricity, which causes CO2 emissions. Do I have that right? Well, a few things...
1. Many of the bigger companies who have their own datacenters - Facebook and Google come to mind - either already are carbon neutral, or are trending toward it. Amazon is pretty close to zero net emissions, and other datacenters tend to use at least partially renewable energy due to cost (e.g. why Bitcoin mining is popular in Washington state - hydro power is very cheap). Underwater datacenters, arctic datacenters, and other means of reducing energy usage are a constant push for companies that are using lots of power.
2. How much in the way of carbon emissions has the internet offset? Traffic-centric GPS navigation has certainly saved plenty of emissions of people sitting in traffic. Cashless tolling has undoubtedly improved it as well. Ma Bell's central offices weren't exactly running on solar power for much of the 20th century; with most of that having moved to VoIP, a whole lot of those COs have been downscaled. How many shipments of paper documents have been saved with e-mail and other transfer methods? Is the author really arguing that pressing and shipping optical discs is better for the environment than streaming?
3. I'm giving teleconferencing its own point because of this line in the article: " A report the Shift Project published in July found that digital technologies now accounts for 4 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions—more than the entire aviation sector. And that footprint could double to 8 percent by 2025." Well, I'm sure that the numbers would look very different if teleconferencing wasn't a thing and there was a whole lot of aviation going on to shuttle business passengers between meetings.
The fact of the matter is that the internet has, in all likelihood, saved more carbon emissions than just about any other technological advance of the past century. Yes, we can do better. Yes, we need to work in all areas - including internet backbones - to be more mindful of the environment. To say that it's unsustainable and that we need to go back to mailing letters and sitting in traffic and doing in-person business meetings is just short sighted and betrays an utter lack of perspective.
Nonsense (Score:2)
Some content provider may need to change the way they do things, but the Internet is not the problem.
I am all for doing effective things about the upcoming global warming existential threat, but unfounded panic and doing things that do not matter that much or are counter-productive is not going to help.
Should those utility poles be higher or shorter? (Score:3)
the internet? (Score:2)
All I'm hearing (Score:2)
It's a Joke, Right? (Score:2)
Please tell me it's a left-over article from April 1st.....
If it's not I'm just going to call it that regardless because that's about the highest amount of respect I can give it.
Don't harden the Internet. Save the Earth. (Score:2)
Rantings of a Madman (Score:2)
> An anonymous reader shares a report:
What the hell. It thought AC's were done away with to prevent insane manifestos in the comments, and here we have one on the front page.
Built-in redundancy (Score:3)
Good thing is the "Internet" is not centrally planned nor managed. If is a combination of many independent actors, and that is precisely what makes it resilient.
We hear news every other week about Comcast being down, T-Mobile having issues, and even an entry country cutting off access, however the "Internet" continues as if nothing happened. There are redundancies in both the connection pathways, and services.
But I do not think a "planned" Internet would have the same safeguards.
Re: (Score:2)
Mmm, pizza.
Oh wait, you said piza. NVM. =P
Re: The internet is fine. (Score:2)
I'll settle for a new hegemony.
One that doesnt spew AGW garbage into my eyeballs or get space book advertisements banned because the book misleads people into thinking the earth is not flat.
Didn't you get the memo? (Score:5, Funny)
The planet needs a new dominant species.
Didn't you take a look at the internet in recent years?
We already have a new dominant species, it is cats.
Re:Do your part TODAY! (Score:4, Funny)
Your title makes me think of the scene with one of the propaganda clips in Starship Troopers with the "I'm doing my part!" bit.
Re: (Score:2)
Does it really?
Do you want to know more?
Re: Do your part TODAY! (Score:2)
If I think I'm psychic, maybe I am....
Re: (Score:2)
> but do you really need to watch things on huge screens?
Yes. It's called immersion aka "Home Theater."
Second, as a Plasma owner myself (Panny VT60) the Picture Quality (PQ) is amazing compared to crappy LCD screens. Only OLED beats it in picture quality and weight. (Technically CRT has better PQ but good luck finding a 60" CRT that doesn't weigh a metric fuck ton.) Why the hell would he watch on a shitty 23" screen when he has fantastic PQ with the Plasma??? I'm assuming you meant 23" (inches) and n
Re: (Score:2)
The most perfect brain surgery/rocket science sketch ever made. The pace and delivery are flawless and you laugh even when you see the joke coming a minute in advance.