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Argh. No. Bad headline from The Guardian.
The actual research here is kind of interesting: most corporate data on the cloud is only used once. That’s interesting! Both cloud providers and corps could investigate ways to reduce this waste.
The path from that research to the headline, however, is…tortured.
The chain of reasoning runs like this:
- Corporate cloud data is mostly only used once
- So probably that’s true of personal data too
- Memes and old emails are examples of that, probably
- Data centers have climate costs
- So don’t use “reply all” or post memes to save the planet
2/
Telling people to save the climate by reducing memes and not using “reply all” is just…just…it’s the tech equivalent of telling people the best way to fight climate change is to run the dishwasher after midnight.
(Maybe it helps? a little? but (1) that’s not even •close• to your biggest individual contribution, (2) guilting individuals is a corporate responsibility dodge, and (3) we need systemic solutions, not piecemeal behavior change.)
I call BS on the article.
/end
Addendum: I too favor running the dishwasher late, on the scientific principle of “eh, why not.” But when I was on Xcel’s time-based pricing pilot program, I found — much like @rationaldoge here — that it didn’t really make much difference.
@inthehands @rationaldoge if you run the dishwasher late because it saves you money due to incentive pricing, that's different IMO. Because it's the power company or public policy creating that incentive which could lead to collective action!
@aburka @rationaldoge
A fascinating finding of Xcel’s pilot program is that the time-based price incentives basically did not work, despite seeming to have helped in other places: they didn’t alter behavior much, didn’t reduce environmental impact. Xcel sunsetted the program, and are back to the drawing board.
In our case, we have primarily electric heat, and heating the house through the night when power is cheap doesn’t make it warm the following afternoon when power is expensive, so….
@inthehands @rationaldoge hmm that's too bad, whether due to incentive pricing structure, insufficient education, weather conditions, etc?
@inthehands @aburka As the inscription on the sundial at the Lake Harriet Rose Garden says, "Count only the sunny days."
Your observation that incentive pricing didn't work well surprises me. But electricity already seems like a pretty good value around here and maybe the savings were not that Big?
Anything to forestall peaking generation and transmission woes, though.
I'd like to build a dashboard for my meter and keep a cold eye on it.