Friday, 28 August 2009

Oh Dear - Another IT Problem!

The print edition of the Daily Telegraph reports that a £30million 'supercomputer', designed to predict climate change has been named as one of Britain's worst polluters - which must be an embarrassment to the Met Office.

Capable of 1,000 billion calculations every second, it is a key part of helping scientists predict changes in long-term weather and climate change. It uses enough energy to power a small town - producing 12,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year.

This, by the way, is the computer used to inform us, earlier this year, that we would have a 'BBQ summer'!

How ironic for the environmentalists that a computer designed to help stave off climate change is responsible for such high levels of pollution!


1 comment:

Mark Wadsworth said...

I liked that story as well - it's one of the oldest problems in science, how do you observe or measure something without influencing the outcome? In this case, they are actually contributing in a small way to C02 emissions etc.

I suppose the good news is that C02 emissions aren't in any way harmful ...