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Data Centers Expected to Pollute More Than Airlines by 2020

Posted by timothy on from the it's-all-that-smut-in-the-wires dept.

Dionysius, God of Wine and Leaf, writes with a link to a New York Times story on a source of pollution that doesn't leave contrails: "The world's data centers are projected to surpass the airline industry as a greenhouse gas polluter by 2020, according to a new study by McKinsey & Co. ... [C]omputer servers are used at only 6 percent of their capacity on average, while data center facilities as a whole are used at 56 percent of peak performance." Data centers, though, might have more options for going green than airlines do, given present technology.

2 of 322 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Anyone else remember... by evanbd · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Really? CO2-caused climate change / warming won't have an impact on humans? Have you read the major studies, or any reasonable summary of them? Also, do you have a reference for your 0.28% number? Everything I've seen suggests you're off by nearly two orders of magnitude, depending on the accounting details.

  2. Re:Fuck Al Gore by Chmcginn · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    I wasn't aware that I had the right to dump whatever chemicals I wanted wherever I wanted.

    Knowing that, I'll go make some PCBs in my garage and start burning them in my backyard.

    --
    Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?