Comments on: How Much Energy Does the Internet Use?

By: REAF

REAF — Fri, 30 Aug 2013 07:38:00 +0000

http://tweetfarts.com/

By: Dave Harcourt

Dave Harcourt — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 10:07:00 +0000

Yes it’s true, that’s how I justify my own data management, but…

I’m not sure how deep deep storage is, my own tweets (hardly followed by anyone) appear instantaneously and in full?

We maybe need to think of the carbon footprint issue as well as the cost?

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 23:58:00 +0000

Hard drives are dirt cheap. Most likely 90% of what is stored goes quickly to ‘deep storage’ on drives that are rarely activated. But it’s there if we should want it for any future reason.

It’s probably a lot cheaper to store stuff than to separate the “should keep” from the “no reason to keep”.

By: Zachary Shahan

Zachary Shahan — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 22:24:00 +0000

yeah, i know, i really wonder about all the useless crap stored for no reason.

also wonder about the email boxes and Facebook pages of the deceased… which just keep on collecting info

By: Dave Harcourt

Dave Harcourt — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 21:07:00 +0000

Interesting and worrying!

Should we not be thinking about what we are storing? I suspect there are piles of duplication ( multiple shared posts ), now irrelevant information ( eg up to 2000 posts a second on goals during the World Cup in South Africa in 2010), stored personal emails, useless “yeah” comments and aborted social communications

We used to write this kind of stuff on paper, which was burnt, composted or piled up at little cost! Not stored at high cost for an undetermined time!

By: Zachary Shahan

Zachary Shahan — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 21:01:00 +0000

Corrected.

By: gavinhudson

gavinhudson — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 07:56:00 +0000

Quite right. Apologies for the mistake.

By: Anne

Anne — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 13:32:00 +0000

“assuming 20.3 petawatts as the world’s annual electrical energy consumption”

Please get the units right! 1 PW is a unit of power, it is the rate of production at a certain momnt in time.

You mean 20.3 PWh, petawatthour, which is a unit of energy.

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 06:18:00 +0000

That’s an interesting observation. Paper use is way down. Fewer newspaper, fewer magazines, fewer catalogs.

And I would guess less office printing. (I certainly print far, far less than I used to.) As people get more comfortable with the safety of digital storing there’s go to be less hard copy backup happening.

Pulp mills have been shut down. Fewer tons of paper hauled from place to place.

Wonder what the energy savings has been?

By: Adam Johnston

Adam Johnston — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 05:48:00 +0000

I think using more energy to run Internet now compared to using more paper is a short term trade off in order to reduce overall paper consumption use. Although ideas of a truly paperless society are likely impossible, I think it is possible that we will see a sharp reduction in paper consumption very soon. We have seen lots of progress in recent years, thanks to the Internet.

As for energy use for the Internet, with the commercialization of renewable energy in the past 10-15 years, is making it more affordable, will enhance energy efficiency. That will be the boon needed to keep energy use clean for running the Internet.

By: jburt56

jburt56 — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 19:48:00 +0000

No worries here long term. Lower power stuff is well on its way.