thinkingstring.com

Its all been ‘go’ since ThinkingString Ltd began providing coverage services to Quocirca Ltd. All the Quocirca folk have been very welcoming and helpful, but there has been a lot of organising to do in order to get my feet under the desk. Quocirca also has a great and trusted brand name and so the activity level has been on the up and up.

Quocirca has been looking at datacentre efficiency for a while, with both Clive Longbottom and Bob Tarzey also writing and researching around the pros and cons of various IT services provisioning models as far as their relative GHG emissions levels. My intention with Quocirca is to look at both efficiency gains, as well as the strategic role of IT as an enabler to the reduction of overall emissions by business.

What will be important in achieving efficiency gains will be to ensure that data centres are targeting a real emissions reduction, rather than focusing simply on productivity/energy. Making a data centre twice as productive per watt of energy consumed is laudable, however it is a wash in emissions terms if the gains are subsequently consumed by increased processing in the future. If business is serious about reducing emissions, we need to target an immediate 50% cut in energy consumption, and then maintain that level through the continued introduction of new technology and alternate energy production techniques.

We also need to make sure that any new technology introduced in order to reduce energy consumption doesn’t actually result in higher GHG emissions elsewhere. It is important to factor in the HW replacement lifecycle costs, and the energy going into the production of the latest gee-whizz-energy-efficient model that replaces the old tried-and-true one we already had. It is also vital that the manufacturing technique for energy efficient devices doesn’t generate harmful emissions. More on that later.

In the coming weeks I’ll be revamping the ThinkingString website and also this blog. I’m looking to combine it all and along the way simplify the layout, and simplify it from my point of view as far as administration is concerned. Much to do…too few minutes in the day.

James Hansen is the NASA scientist who twenty years ago warned the US Government about the reality of, and the dangers in climate change. In 1988, during what was then a record year of high temperatures (a record repeatedly exceeded since), Hansen testified before Congress and called for urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Two decades later Hansen has again appeared before US Congress to say that we have long since passed the “dangerous level” for atmospheric GHG levels. In short, we need to get back to 1988 levels in order to survive. Hansen is a man to be listened to. He is the director of the Goddard Institute of Space Sciences, and has been “popularly” referred to as “the godfather of global warming science” - though his message is by no means popular with many who hear it.

Hansen’s warning underscores the fact that energy efficiency, while being desirable and laudable, is not going to get us to where we need to be. Only transformational change, in societal structure (and therefore living and working lives) will drive GHG levels down to sustainable (and survivable) levels. In the technology industry, a reduced energy usage per computing task is only any good as long as the resultant efficiency is not simply burned doing more “business as usual” computing work. In transport, energy efficient vehicles are only any good if we don’t use them to drive further. The list goes on.

This is the difficult part for us all. Energy efficient light bulbs do not cast a comforting light on the real task facing us. The simple changes are 95% comforting, and only 5% effective. A building that doesn’t need artificial light to be a useful structure is better. Not requiring the building at all is transformational.

As Hansen told The Associated Press; “We’re toast if we don’t get on a very different path. This is the last chance.”