Blog Action Day

[NancyP]

Today is Blog Action Day (http://www.blogactionday.com). Bloggers around the world are writing about the environment. Did you participate? If so, please provide a link so I can read your blog post!

Here's mine (http://queenofroads.wordpress.com/2007/10/15/environmental-responsibility-and-road-trips/).

[moonslice]

I signed up for that, but they were supposed to send me a reminder email. Did you get one? I write about the environment on each post on Light green stairs, but thanks for reminding me about today. I'll post something!

[plnelson]

Today is Blog Action Day (http://www.blogactionday.com). Bloggers around the world are writing about the environment.
Here's mine (http://queenofroads.wordpress.com/2007/10/15/environmental-responsibility-and-road-trips/).

Great.

It's ironic that one of the fastest-growing consumers of energy in the world today are server farms. In fact a major part of California's new "green" initiative to cut in-state greenhouse gas emissions is to move the huge server farms that their economy depends on to states with less restrictive environmental rules, e.g., Nevada. I don't think the citizens of California have noticed that the earth's atmosphere doesn't respect state borders.

According to this article (http://www.news.com/2100-1017-257567.html?legacy=cnet) in CNet PC's and servers now consume between 8 and 13% of US electricity! That same article describes a server farm that was being built near San Jose as having "10 huge air-conditioned warehouses on 174 acres that would constantly draw 180 megawatts of electricity--about enough to provide energy for all the homes in a city the size of Honolulu."

That was a few years ago and recent server farms being built by Google and Yahoo in other states are even bigger.

So if the blogosphere - and that includes me - were really serious about the environment, we would turn off our computers and stop blogging.

[benbradley]

Great.

It's ironic that one of the fastest-growing consumers of energy in the world today are server farms. In fact a major part of California's new "green" initiative to cut in-state greenhouse gas emissions is to move the huge server farms that their economy depends on to states with less restrictive environmental rules, e.g., Nevada. I don't think the citizens of California have noticed that the earth's atmosphere doesn't respect state borders.

According to this article (http://www.news.com/2100-1017-257567.html?legacy=cnet) in CNet PC's and servers now consume between 8 and 13% of US electricity! That same article describes a server farm that was being built near San Jose as having "10 huge air-conditioned warehouses on 174 acres that would constantly draw 180 megawatts of electricity--about enough to provide energy for all the homes in a city the size of Honolulu."

That was a few years ago and recent server farms being built by Google and Yahoo in other states are even bigger.

So if the blogosphere - and that includes me - were really serious about the environment, we would turn off our computers and stop blogging.

If anything, server farms could be put into office buildings in more northerly areas so the generated heat could contrubute to heat the buildings. Though I recall that some large office buildings are so well insulated and sealed that heat builds up naturally, so they have to run the A/C year-round.

But the real measure would be not the absolute amount of energy a server farm uses, but how the computing resources are used, such as the amount of energy used per blog. Most blogs (like mine especially, with only a few entries and comments) take an insignificant amount of hard disk space and bandwidth - a sngle PC can work as a webserver for thousands of blogs the size and popularity of mine. My computer may well use more energy in an hour of writing a blog entry than the server uses to host my blog for a week.

And if I write such an entry today, it would include this search string for good measure:
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22attached+to+hot+chimneys

Ducking and running...

[MidnightMuse]

My favorite quote on the subject (from 101reasonstostopwriting.com)

Don’t go to your critique group. All that smoke you’re blowing up each other’s asses is sucking the oxygen out of the Amazon, not to mention giving you ass cancer.

[Georganna Hancock]

Thanks for asking! I tried to promote this activity on another forum and had the thread hijacked into a political free-for-all!

You can see my post at http://www.writers-edge.info/2007/10/writing-on-blog-action-day.htm

[nancy02664]

Here's my post:
http://www.nancy.cc/2007/10/15/environmental-baby-names-forrest-rain-river-sky/

[soma]

I did a post. My blog is the link in my sig.