1. Greenpeace's latest data center drive-by shooting - by doug mohney

    Views and Opinions on Green IT (Apr 7 2010)

    1. Greenpeace's latest data center drive-by shooting - by doug mohney

      Not content to clean up its own usage of coal-based energy, Greenpeace decided to leverage the onslaught of iPad hype to take another hypocritical swipe at the IT sector by linking cloud computing to "dirty" coal power.  I guess if you are a preacher on a soap box, you can ignore how you got the soap box in the first place.

      More specifically, Greenpeace's latest IT white paper, "Make IT Green: Cloud Computing and its Contribution to Climate Change," to assert that cloud-based computing, including "devices like the iPad" -- gotta throw that in there to get more SEO and pick up by the major website -- has "potentially" (i.e. maybe, but we're not willing to swear to it) a much larger carbon footprint than previous estimated.

      (Of course, I get a bigger kick out this because the Greenpeace PR guy wrote the release on a MacBook, so  there's another thread of O Henry-esqness madness in here for another day).

      The press release alleges that at current growth rates, data centers and telecommunications networks will consume more than triple the kilowatts than current usage in 2020.  It goes on to suggest that Fortune 500 companies like Microsoft, Google and IBM go influence policies to "decouple" economic growth from rising greenhouse gas emissions, and once again uses Facebook as its whipping boy for bad energy choices.

      You may recall that Facebook was previously pilloried by Greenpeace because it's new Oregon data center gets power from the coal-using local utility -- the same sort of dirty coal that powers some of Greenpeace's servers in Northern Virginia. But hey, what's a little "Do as I say, not as I do," among friends? I mean, it's not like finding out that the founders of PETA have a weekly lunch down at Ruth Chris' Steak House, right?

      Hopefully when Greenpeace launches its next shame campaign, it will have its own emissions issues cleaned up.

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    On 4/9/10 judgecorp said:
    "Nice post Doug.

    I still think there's a place for Greenpeace's whistleblowing, and as an SEO-chasing journalist, I have some sympathy with their throwing in the iPad for more clicks. I reckon that Greenpeace - shcik! - using a data center, actually *isn't* as bad as finding animal rights people eating meat.

    I think we mentioned that aspect of the campaign in our write up here http://www.eweekeurope.co.uk/news/greenpeace-targets-ipad-in-war-on-dirty-tech-6183
    though I'd have to admit, we did make sure the iPad name was up there to get readers.

    But then, I eat meat *and* use data centres, so I'm not one to talk. :-)

    Peter

    "

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