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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."
No, wait...
This was a subtle ploy by data center competitors to use Greenpeace to get Apple to reveal their power consumption strategies... And it worked!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Greenpeace is more than happy to distort the truth for propaganda purposes. They've said in the past that the whole reason they single out Apple is because it makes good news. And they are right.
"Distort" the truth? Hell, they just made up some numbers and went with that as the "reasoning" for their rant.
But as usual with Greenpeace, it's 99% bullshit believed by no one except the Greenpeace faithful.
And from what I see, the Greenpeace faithful do definitely qualify as a cult, complete with wingnut behaviour.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
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.
No, actually, Greenpeace can pull numbers out of their ass all day long, and few people challenge them on it, because "it's for a good cause", and "they're just trying to save the planet", etc. The whole "somewhere in the middle" has more relevance when you're talking about arguments with lots of grey areas. We're talking about simple numbers here. Greenpeace made a bunch of guesses on the numbers involved, and they've been called out on their very bad estimates and incorrect assumptions.
Apple has all the number they need for a very accurate reading on power usage. Unless you're going to accuse Apple of out and out falsifying those numbers (it would be an incredibly stupid thing to do, as one whistleblower would blow the lid on this), then I'm going to have to side with Apple here as being closer to "the truth".
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
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.
That was PETA, but both organizations are full of fact averse nuts so I can see confusing them. Nothing undermines your cause like being associated with crazy behavior.
Who modded this clown up? Almost every statement he makes is plain wrong.
I know my experience with meeting Greenpace activists in
Toronto in the 1980's -- all excited by Fuel Cell Technology
could not comprehend that the Hydrogen Economy relied
on having abundant Nuclear Energy. They were not the
brightest lot on the block.
The activists were right, you were wrong. The hydrogen economy doesn't require nuclear. Renewables would do equally well. Electrolyzers aren't very expensive per kilowatt and can run on intermittent electricity. Hydrogen is often pushed as a possible way of solving the whole intermittency issue for solar and wind power.
They also did not seem to understand that Wind Turbines
are great bird whackers and kill more birds per year than
lit up skyscrappers in Toronto.
I don't know about Toronto but here are the stats for Denmark, which gets 25% of its electricity from wind power. They have about 30,000 annual bird deaths from wind turbines, 1 million from cars, 2 million from window collisions, and 5 million from cats.
the fabrication of solar
cells required extremely toxic chemicals such as Selinium
and also required large tracts of land
Yes, some types of solar cells use toxic chemicals, but so do lots of other industries. As long as they get recycled there's no huge problem with this. But other solar cell types only use silicon, which is 100% harmless. Land requirements are large compared to nuclear, but tiny compared to bioenergy. Solar cells on just a few percent of the world's deserts could supply all the energy we need, but they could also be distributed over other "dead" surfaces like rooftops, parking lots, roadsides, etc.
From these people I met, if they were representative, I would
be surprised that they could calculate any energy efficiencies.
I'm an energy system researcher with no connection to Greenpeace, but the research reports they produce are very good. Did you hear about the recent IPCC "scandal" where some highlighted scenarios originated from a Greenpeace study? That wasn't because the IPCC is partisan, but that at least some parts of Greenpeace do impressive work that gets cited in academic studies.
Like I said, they were not the brightest lot on the block. LoL
... naw, too easy.