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Apple: Greenpeace's Cloud Critique Driven By Bogus Numbers
miller60 writes "Apple says Greenpeace has wildly overestimated the amount of power it uses in its data center in North Carolina, and used that bad math to give the company a low grade on sustainability. Apple says it uses 20 megawatts of power at its iDataCenter, a fraction of Greenpeace's estimate of 100 megawatts in a new report on energy use by cloud computing providers. Apple says that its huge solar array and biogas-powered fuel cell will supply 60 percent of the facility's power, not the 10 percent claimed by Greenpeace."
Greenpeace: blah blah blah blah bad bad bad
Apple: blah blah blah blah good good good
The truth? Probably somewhere in the middle.
Silence is a state of mime.
Absolutely true. The real intelligent green thinkers are working with the system to make things better in baby steps - the only way things can change. We don't generally notice these people, but they do make a difference.
Greenpeace is anti-system and falls into tired false extremist eco groupthink, which obviously isn't very productive.
These Greenpeace types are the same people who've prevented us from developing and deploying newer, safer nuclear power plants to replace the less safe older ones which are forced to keep running--and which could replace polluting coal plants and help us immensely in the transition away from the fossil fuels they themselves also decry. They're the same folks who stirred up opposition to Yucca Mountain, yet use the lack of such a facility as a talking point against nuclear. They're the same folks who also fight hydro and anything else with "environmental impact" (i.e., changing anything at all about a local environment). Until they're willing to back some realistic alternatives to current power generation--other than living like Luddite hippies--I tune these idiots out. Solar and wind currently supply only about 1% of our national power generation needs, and there's no chance they'll ever supply it all. Until the Greenpeace types back something useful to our situation, they're the same ones keeping us stuck on fossil fuels. Fuck 'em.
"It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word."--Andrew Jackson
Why did I join Greenpeace in college? well, it's the same reason why I joined the vegetarian club in college. And the same reason I participated in the Occupy Wall Street protests.
To meet girls with "evolved" morality. Who would let me touch them, without clothing. Basically, for tail.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
too true. What would be really shocking news is if we found that for once greenpeace was NOT lying to get attention. And it's not just Apple. Basic M.O. for these schmucks is to simply pick whatever company is big in the news at the moment and then give that company a bad "rating" based on some imaginary numbers on some arbitrary scale.
For several years in a row when the Wii was at it's popularity peak, the greenpeace "report card" gave Nintendo a failing grade -- for the sole reason that Nintendo had the common sense to ignore them, and refused to give any detailed information about their business operations. Thus, in the mind of the eco-nuts the company *had* to be hiding something horrible, and thus was *clearly* an eco-failure.
Could've saved yourself a lot of aggregation by just throwing a keg party.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
All the frothing against environmentalists in this thread aside, GP does have an interesting response to Apple's denial...
While it is good to see Apple acknowledge it should reveal more details of the energy consumption of its data centers, the information they released today does not add up with what they have reported to be the size of the investment and physical size of the data center. When Apple announced they were building a data center in North Carolina, they announced a commitment to invest $1 Billion (USD) over 10 years. For a number of the facilities in the “How Clean is Your Cloud?” report, we made estimates of power demand using fairly conservative industry benchmarks for data center investments: 1MW of power demand from servers for every $15 million, though the number is often closer to $8 Million for many companies. Thus, a $1B investment should net Apple 66MW of computer power demand. Assuming a fairly standard energy efficiency factor for new data centers for non-computer energy demand of 50% gives you a 100MW data center. While Apple is well known for making more expensive consumer products, if Apple’s plans for the $ 1Billion investment only generates 20MW in power demand, that would be taking the “Apple premium” to a whole new level.
Size Matters
The size of the facility at 500,000 sq foot would also indicate a much larger power demand. Amazon’s chief web engineer recently conservatively estimated that based just on the size of the facility, the iDatacenter would consume at least 78MW, and speculated that it is probably higher.
We made these estimates because companies like Apple and Amazon have not disclosed details of how much energy data centers use now and will in the future. We provided Apple with our data prior to releasing the “How Clean is Your Cloud?” report, and while they did not agree with our estimate, they declined to provide specific information on their energy demand.
My short summary of the argument is that in this case Apple is trying to use secrecy to avoid public scrutiny, and Greenpeace has done their due diligence. Frankly, if Apple won't communicate with an enviro group as large as Greenpeace on matters of waste and power consumption, then it is Apple's attitude and business model that I have to question.
What is sad is that all these groups..PETA, Greenpeace, MAD, all started out with good intentions and goals, Greenpeace to stop whalers and those breaking treaties and polluting our oceans, MAD to stop drunk driving, PETA to insure the ethical treatment of food animals, but somewhere along the way the batshit fringes took over and frankly they are all loony tunes, PETA with the "sea kittens", the new head of MAD saying their goal is now prohibition (like we haven't seen what a failure THAT was) and Greenpeace with the constant lies.
Man its just a shame that you can't have an org that does good things hardly anymore without the batshit coming along and mucking everything up. All three originally had goals we could all stand behind, I mean nobody wants to see animals tortured, our oceans destroyed, or drunks plowing down families on the highway, but having sensible goals looks to be a thing of the past, its all loony tunes all the way down and i think that's a damned shame.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
But then they become worse than nothing! the guys from South Park nailed it when they had the Klan who wanted to keep the SP flag come out against the flag because the knee jerk reaction would be to automatically vote the opposite of what the Klan wanted. in this case they have gone so far out of mainstream when anybody sees their name they think "total whackos" and this automatically gains sympathy for the ones they are against!
Frankly PETA, MAD, and Greenpeace would be more helpful to their causes if they didn't exist at all because they have pissed away any credibility they once had. damned shame as all three were originally worthy causes but now I'd probably buy any product made by a company opposed by them simply because i see them as self righteous whackjobs that just like on SP if they are against it then its probably something I'd support simply because they are so far from mainstream anymore. I mean you have blatant lies, Sea kittens (look it up if you haven't I swear its not a parody, they honestly think at PETA calling all fish sea kittens will keep people from eating fish) and prohibition...yep I'd buy anything they're against.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.