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Distributed Computing and Climate Change

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the talking-about-the-weather dept.

GraWil writes "The BBC are reporting the launch of climateprediction.net. The aim of the project is to investigate the approximations that have to be made in state-of-the-art climate models which frequently give rise to inconclusive predictions. More info on the current state of climate modeling is given by the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report which highlights the need to quantify uncertainties of climate projections. So now, in addition to finding ET or curing cancer, your PC can now contribute to our understanding of climate change."

6 of 178 comments (clear)

  1. No Linux by trolman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    No Linux version for "months." How about folding at home for those of you disappointed masses.

  2. Heat by Clowning · · Score: 5, Funny

    The heat from running these distributed computing apps causes climate change inside my apartment.

  3. Other projects by Krunch · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here are some other ditributed computng projects.

    --
    No GNU has been Hurd during the making of this comment.
  4. Global warming by Krunch · · Score: 5, Funny

    > Your PC can now contribute to our understanding of climate change.

    And you can contribute to climate change itself too. Let's accelerate global warming by using 100% CPU at any time.

    --
    No GNU has been Hurd during the making of this comment.
    1. Re:Global warming by caffeine_monkey · · Score: 5, Informative
      You're joking, I assume, but this is a point they've answered in their FAQ:

      Won't all those computers left on for 24 hours a day have a detrimental impact on the climate system?

      Assume a computer running 24hrs/day requires, on average, 50W of power. If 100,000 computers join the climateprediction.net project, the project will require 5,000kW of power. There are 24 hours in a day, so each day the project will consume 120,000kW-hrs, or 432,000,000kJ of electrical energy.

      That's a big number, so let's try and put it in perspective by calculating how much energy is necessary to boil water for a cup of tea. Let's use a tiny bit of physics to do it. Assuming a specific heat of water of 4.19 kJ/(kg-K), 0.237kg/cup of water, a necessary temperature rise from 20 degrees Celsius to 100 degrees Celsius, and that only one cup of water is boiled for each cup of tea, then about 80kJ/cup of energy are necessary (assuming our kettle is 100% efficient). This means that running the climateprediction.net project for one day is equivalent to boiling water for 5,400,000 cups of tea!

      Is five and a half million cups of tea a lot? According to the Tea Council, some 37 million people in the United Kingdom drink, on average, 3.4 cups of tea per day. That's nearly 126 million cups of tea per day in the UK alone!!!

      Each day, about 23 times more energy will be spent boiling water for tea in the United Kingdom than would be used by the computers involved in the climateprediction.net project. More seriously, a rough calculation suggests that 100,000 computers running 24hrs/day for one year at a power consumption of 50W will contribute approximately 0.0001% of the total amount of CO2 generated in one year. This is not an insignificant amount, but seems (to us) a worthwhile investment to better understand the climate system.

      Assuming you are convinced this experiment needs to be done, there are basically two options: to buy a hangar-full of PCs and run it ourselves (not even an option right now, since the climate research community doesn't have the resources); or to recycle spare CPU out in the community, as we propose to do under the climateprediction.net experiment. Since the main environmental impact of a PC is in manufacture and disposal, not the power consumed in running it (never mind the air-conditioning costs and visual impact of that hangar on some innocent rural community), environmentalists will, we hope, approve of our strategy.

  5. No Linux - but they are trying hard by Angostura · · Score: 5, Interesting
    There may not be Linux port right now, but I have to say that I'm very impressed with the team's open attitude and the way that they are actively attempting to support various Unix flavours, including Mac OS X as quickly as they can. They take forum suggestions seriously, so get involved.

    I'm a SETI and Folding user, but I have to say that I find this project very compelling. We know that cancer is serious, and there are big businesses looking to find answers. The question of climate change is potentially more serious, in my opinion. But we need to find out for sure