Friday, September 17, 2010

Choking on coal

Washington Independent: coal related health effects cost the US $100 billion each year, including over 13,000 deaths. I imagine that even prior to considerations of climate change, if the public health effects of burning coal are taken into account, renewable energy is more affordable than such dirty combustion. Meanwhile, the head of BHP Billiton has said that Australia needs to move beyond coal. And finally, images of coal ash in China.

Independent: UK government to adapt to inevitable warming, yet without spending any more money.

Mongabay: vs the Amazon: paper trails and deforestation.

Deep-sea trawling damages an area twice the size of the contiguous USA each year.

And just to show that sometimes simultaneous disasters can dilute rather than amplify each other: Scientific American reports on research showing that hurricanes help save thermally-stressed coral reefs by cooling water temperatures; Skeptical Science points out that in New York, higher rainfall doesn't necessarily mean more flooding due to drier soil from higher temperatures; and NASA satellites reveal that the incidence of wildfires is no higher in dead forests killed by mountain pine beetle infestations (which have reached epidemic proportions due to warmer winters enabling more beetles to survive) since green needles of live trees are more flammable than brown needles of dead ones.

These points vaguely remind me of the story of a man who wanted to kill himself and so decided to do a thorough job. He hung himself over a lake after taking poison and brought along a gun to make sure. His shot missed his head and severed the noose, dropping him into the water which diluted the poison. Since all the other methods had failed, he decided he wanted to live after all and so swam to shore and survived. I'm not sure we're going to be so lucky.


Jereth said...

Byron, I wonder if you have taken these issues into consideration in your campaign against global warming:

‎"all the data centres and telecommunication networks in the world will consume about 1,963bn kilowatt hours of electricity by 2020. That is ... more electricity than is used by France, Germany, Canada and Brazil combined."

The internet (which includes social networking, youtubing, twittering, and blogging) is a huge CO2 emitter -- up there with motor vehicles, manufacturing and air travel. Would you advocate that people get off the Net in order to save the planet? And if your answer to that is 'yes', how might you continue your campaigning on this issue without your blog?

(These are serious questions!!)

byron smith said...

Jereth - My campaign is for Christians to love their neighbour in service of God and for those who don't yet know Christ to hear and believe the good news.

Since anthropogenic climate change is one of the effects of a culture based on the pursuit of more and more consumption, and since the negative effects (in general) are falling and will fall first and hardest on the world's poor (and the young and unborn), then I believe that being concerned about climate change is an expression of Christian love (along with all the other reasons I outlined in my SALT article that we're discussing elsewhere). So with this in mind, it is not that carbon dioxide is bad per se (or human activity that emits it), but it is a question of scale. We have too much of a good thing and it has become a flood (too much of a river, which is a good thing, is a flood that can be deadly and destructive).

So the goal is not to demonise all activities associated with GHG emissions, but to rethink the assumptions which lead us to lives lived disconnected from the reality of the atmosphere and biosphere more generally. And those issues are both personal (idolatrous assumptions about consumerism and myopic habitual behaviours) and structural (a system that treats the atmosphere as a free waste dump and which rewards those most efficient at passing on the costs of their activity to others). So in seeking to raise awareness of this problem, both personal repentance and collective restructuring have important parts to play (as I discussed here, where I also mention that smarter activity has a role too).

So speaking at the personal level, in the process of repenting and re-examining both our assumptions and our behaviour, then it becomes important to not miss carbon camels while we're straining out gnats. Not all carbon emissions are equal. It is important to have good estimates of which activities need most rethinking. Hence, I note the discussion in the comments on a number of those links that point out that some of these numbers are somewhat fanciful, being based on unrealistic assumptions. They also all related primarily to Facebook. So let's look at the internet more broadly to see if your claim that it is up there with motor vehicles, manufacturing and air travel. This article suggests that a reasonable estimate (such things are always ballpark figures, particularly for something as complex as the net) for the total carbon footprint of the net is "around 300m tonnes of CO2" per annum, or about 1% of anthropogenic GHG emissions. In comparison, transport is about 15% and manufacturing even higher. Livestock contribute between 10-15% and deforestation about 20%. So while answering your question is not irrelevant, it has to be kept in context. More important are questions such as how much meat you eat (esp factory farmed), how energy efficient your home and workplace are, how much travel you do, how often you replace your goods (including electronic goods), which luxuries you choose to do without and from where you source your energy (I have a post on that coming up).

byron smith said...

With all those things considered, I still do try to reduce the impact of my online behaviour: I very rarely replace electrical hardware and avoid unnecessary purchases, our home electricity is from 100% renewable sources, the electricity of the university has a large renewable share (I haven't checked the exact figure recently), I've deleted all my photos off Facebook some months ago when I became aware of the issue (and of Facebook's ongoing failure with their handling of information) and using Google for Blogger means that a larger share of the servers are being run on low carbon sources (though that was more an accident than a conscious choice when I set up my blog). All that said, I suspect that my carbon footprint is considerably less than it would be were I to travel around the world to the hundreds of readers and speak to them face to face, or even if I were to write letters to each of them. Perhaps there is a place for questioning the relentless growth of high intensity information (movies, music and pictures) that has seen server numbers going through the roof, though at the same time, there are ongoing improvements in the efficiency of these machines so that one byte today has a smaller carbon legacy than a byte a few years ago.

So, in conclusion, our assumptions and practices on the interwebs need to be evaluated on many levels, of which carbon emissions are one (and probably not the most important). And conversely, in considering our carbon footprint, our online behaviour plays a small part and so is indeed a question that needs more thought, but it is far down the list of significant behavioural changes.

Jereth said...

G'day Byron,

I am satisfied that you appear to be morally consistent in your own personal thinking and practice. (I commend you for deleting your Facebook photos! Well done!) However the point i was trying to make here was not about you personally.

There seems no reason to doubt that quote from the Guardian article about the colossal energy consumption of the internet and telecommunications industry. And more to the point, the colossal growth rate of these industries.

I suspect you would agree with me that mobile phones, iphones, laptops, file sharing, you-tubing, facebooking, twittering, blogging and so forth have become as much a part of Western consumer culture as cars, fastfood, DVDs and plasma TVs. (I recently read that the average user upgrades their mobile phone once every 18 months!) And let's also remember that the internet accounts for an increasingly large chunk of manufacturing -- we can't access the net without the continual roll out of faster and faster electronic devices and gadgets. (Including the hidden side which the consumer does not see -- eg. the massive server farms)

So even if the internet only consumes 1% of global electricity at the present time (which I suspect is a significant under-estimate), it would be fair to say that in 5, 10, 20 years time that will grow exponentially.

Your thoughts?


Jereth said...

More on the hidden pollution of the internet:

What is required for 3 billion people to check their emails, search google, tweet, share their photos, and update their Facebook status using their mobile phones, laptops and PDAs? Answer: a massive network of telecommunications towers, transmitters, receivers and satellites all operating 24/7.

How much carbon is emitted every time a big telecomms tower is built and added to the 3G/GSM network? Let's consider what might be involved: the metal must be dug out of the ground, transported, refined, transported, processed, transported, processed again, transported again, and finally constructed into a big tower. Which needs ongoing maintenance and upgrades, of course. Does the 1% figure account for all this activity?

How much carbon is emitted in order to build a communications satellite and launch it into orbit? (which includes the carbon emitted to manufacture the rocket which launches the satellite)

How much carbon will be emitted during the manufacturing and construction of a brand new Australia-wide fibre optic NBN? (This must include the petrol guzzling trucks that will transport the materials 1000s of kilometres to remote areas)

Now, given the fact that hundreds of millions of men women and children around the world are buying devices every day so that they can log on to the internet for the first time.... how many new towers? How many new satellites? How many new fibre optic cables?

Oh yeah, don't forget that people have a tendency to want to upgrade to a faster speed / bigger bandwith / more groovy handheld device every 6 months.

BTW I'm not seeking a solution here. Merely outlining an issue: that the internet is not as green as people might think!

Jereth said...

Check out this wikipedia article:

Jereth said...

Byron, I have read that article again more carefully (the one which estimates that the internet is responsible for only 1% of the world's carbon footprint). Their calculations are only based on running costs.

They have excluded, for instance, the footprint created to build all those machines in the first place (and continually upgrade/maintain them), not to mention the footprint created when the buildings that contain the machines were constructed! (which of course must include everything beginning with the mining of the raw materials needed to build those buildings and machines)

They have also excluded the entire mobile internet phenomenon. The transmitters, the receivers, the towers, the satellites, and so on.

Also, we should remember that the internet does not run by itself -- it surely must require an enormous human staff to keep it all going. (Eg. When one of the machines on the big server farm goes bust, some guy needs to go in and fix or replace it.) All these "internet employees" emit carbon into the atmosphere the same way the rest of us do when we go about our jobs -- driving too and from work, eating, drinking, etc. etc.

I thought 1% had to be way too low!!

Ok I think I'll stop now :-)

byron smith said...

Hey I seem to have missed these comments and those on the other thread until now. I came across this article and remembered our discussion back here and found that you've added more interesting thoughts.

I won't say more about this particular topic, though I'll go and respond to your comments on the other thread.

byron smith said...

BBC: "In the future, the 'Green 500' will be the important list, where computers are listed according to their efficiency."