Will the internet survive energy contraction?

[ben m]

How many gallons of jet feul does one person use on one short trip?

A seat in a fully-packed long-haul airliner is getting something like 90 miles per gallon. That's much more efficient than a solo road trip, but comparable to a road trip in an efficient car full of people.

Short-hop air travel is probably less efficient.

Surprisingly, Amtrak gets an average of something like 40 passenger-miles per gallon---not because trains are inefficient, but (I think) because there are so many long-haul routes with empty seats.

 

[TFian]

How many gallons of jet feul does one person use on one short trip?

I get your point, but I found an interesting (and detailed article) that may very well prove that "The power consumption of our high-tech machines and devices is hugely underestimated."

http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/06/embodied-energy-of-digital-technology.html

Feel free to check over it.

 

[TFian]

Until today, I had never encountered the argument that Internet communications consume more energy than Pony Express or air mail, or that the energy required to cut down trees, make paper, print a book, and distribute the book via land, sea, and air freight is less than the energy required to publish the book electronically.

Back-of-the-envelope calculation: It takes about 100KJ to produce one sheet of paper. The energy cost of a tweet has been estimated at 100J. Even before we put the letter into an envelope, stamp it, and transport it to its destination, it has consumed a thousand times more energy than a tweet.

Can I see a source for that claim? Also, this might be interesting to you...

http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/01/information-dam.html

"Is an electronic newspaper more ecological than a paper newspaper?"

 

[ben m]

Can I see a source for that claim? Also, this might be interesting to you...

http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/01/information-dam.html

"Is an electronic newspaper more ecological than a paper newspaper?"

That is interesting, and surprising. However, it's tough to extend it to a policy/decisionmaking argument---it looks like quite a lot of the power they attribute to "online newspapers" is to take a lot of internet *infrastructure* (cable modems and whatnot) which is on all the time, say that 6% of this modem's time is devoted to serving up online newspapers, and put 6% of the modem's power in the budget column.

If we want to nitpick: this doesn't quite capture the "marginal cost" question: what's the net effect of someone switching from paper to Internet news, and vice versa? (You'd debit the paper-manufacture energy, credit the computer-screen-turned-on energy, but the modem energy would be unchanged.) But that indeed looks like a nitpick; if this analysis is right, details aside, the two channels are of order equal in energy cost, whereas I (and I think most people) would have guessed that printed paper was an order of magnitude higher.

 

[Dancing David]

http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/howmuch.html

Air conditioner 12 hrs. day , 1302 KW/month
Computer 17in LCD screen, 12 hrs. day , 56 KW/month

 

[Number Six]

I didn't read it all, although I will later, but I came across a big problem in the second sentence. It reads

"It should be obvious that whether or not a given technology or suite of technologies continues to exist in a world of depleting resources depends first and foremost on three essentially economic factors."

I don't believe our resources are depleting. Certain resources are depleting but what we use as a resource changes over time anyway. We're using oil right now but for 99.9% of history oil wasn't even considered a resource.

Barring some unforeseen epidemic or war the Internet isn't going to go away until something even better comes around to take its place.

 

[TFian]

http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/howmuch.html

Air conditioner 12 hrs. day , 1302 KW/month
Computer 17in LCD screen, 12 hrs. day , 56 KW/month

Point taken (and thanks for the source, I'll read it over), but what about the embedded cost of manufacturing the electronic parts? What about the energy usage of the server farms?

 

[Dancing David]

I understand that, I drive a car to work everyday, this time of year we run window fans 24/7, I have a refrigerator.

They have many embedded costs as well.

 

[TFian]

I didn't read it all, although I will later, but I came across a big problem in the second sentence. It reads

"It should be obvious that whether or not a given technology or suite of technologies continues to exist in a world of depleting resources depends first and foremost on three essentially economic factors."

I don't believe our resources are depleting. Certain resources are depleting but what we use as a resource changes over time anyway. We're using oil right now but for 99.9% of history oil wasn't even considered a resource.

Barring some unforeseen epidemic or war the Internet isn't going to go away until something even better comes around to take its place.

You're right there, as Howard Bloom so eloquently put it "Those who say that we have raped the planet and have come dangerously close to using and misusing all of Terra’s resources are dead wrong. We are using less than a quadrillionth of the resources of this planet. There are 1.097 sextillion cubic meters of rock, magma, and iron beneath our feet. (1,097,509,500,000,000,000,000) That’s a one-with-eighteen-zeroes-after-it stock of raw materials we haven’t yet learned to use."

However, I would say we are dangerously over consuming *some* of the resource we know how to practically use, while ignoring more safer (albeit less convenient) forms, while causing various forms of environmental damage. I'm saying "we" as a gross over generalization of course, once you fractional societies, resource use tends to get a lot more diverse (IE like community wind farms, and such)

 

[TFian]

I understand that, I drive a car to work everyday, this time of year we run window fans 24/7, I have a refrigerator.

They have many embedded costs as well.

Yes, I know that as well. I'm not sure what your point is though?

 

[W.D.Clinger]

Can I see a source for that claim?

Which claim? No matter...

From the current Wikipedia article on paper recycling^WP:

The Energy Information Administration claims a 40% reduction in energy when paper is recycled versus paper made with unrecycled pulp. while the Bureau of International Recycling (BIR) claims a 64% reduction.

Recycling 1 short ton (0.91 t) of paper saves 17 mature trees, 7 thousand US gallons (26 m3) of water, 3 cubic yards (2.3 m3) of landfill space, 2 barrels of oil (84 US gal or 320 l), and 4,100 kilowatt-hours (15 GJ) of electricity — enough energy to power the average American home for six months.

Footnotes in the Wikipedia article direct you to the sources for those facts. Do the math: One short ton of recycled letter-quality paper is about 4*500*(2000/20)=200000 sheets. The energy cost per sheet of recycled paper is about the same as the savings (because 40% and 64% are both close to 50%), so the energy cost per recycled sheet is about 15GJ/200K=75KJ. The energy cost per non-recycled sheet is about twice that, or 150KJ. About half of the paper produced in the US is made from recycled materials, so the weighted average energy cost per letter-sized sheet of paper is a little over 100KJ. You can quibble with the details, but that should be the right order of magnitude.

The second claim, that a Tweet costs about 100J, is a little more questionable:
http://www.greenm3.com/2010/04/carb...et-energytweet-approx-100j-co2-002-grams.html

 

[TFian]

Which claim? No matter...

From the current Wikipedia article on paper recycling^WP:


Footnotes in the Wikipedia article direct you to the sources for those facts. Do the math: One short ton of recycled letter-quality paper is about 4*500*(2000/20)=200000 sheets. The energy cost per sheet of recycled paper is about the same as the savings (because 40% and 64% are both close to 50%), so the energy cost per recycled sheet is about 15GJ/200K=75KJ. The energy cost per non-recycled sheet is about twice that, or 150KJ. About half of the paper produced in the US is made from recycled materials, so the weighted average energy cost per letter-sized sheet of paper is a little over 100KJ. You can quibble with the details, but that should be the right order of magnitude.

The second claim, that a Tweet costs about 100J, is a little more questionable:
http://www.greenm3.com/2010/04/carb...et-energytweet-approx-100j-co2-002-grams.html

Sorry I should have specified which claim....

Maybe we shouldn't be comparing tweets (small messages on a micro blogging service) but full length paper with emails/online newspapers. http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/01/information-dam.html

 

[Dancing David]

Yes, I know that as well. I'm not sure what your point is though?

Why would the small energy cost of the internet matter compared to all the bigger energy consumers?

 

[W.D.Clinger]

Maybe we shouldn't be comparing tweets (small messages on a micro blogging service) but full length paper with emails/online newspapers. http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/01/information-dam.html

Here's the technical article to which you referred, complete with appendices:
http://www.sustainablecommunication...inted-web-based-and-tablet-e-paper-newspaper/

That's the second edition of an article published in 2007. From its new preface:

We made the revision as we wanted to make clear that the calculations regarding web based newspapers in the report are based on a computer and screen with high energy use....
Today’s PCs and especially laptops without additional screens have substantially less energy use while reading....
To this should be added home equipment for accessing the internet...

Here's another article by the same authors, from 2009:
http://www.sustainablecommunications.org/printed-and-tablet-epaper/
From its abstract:

The printed newspaper in general had a higher energy use, higher emissions of gases contributing to climate change and several other impact categories than the tablet e-paper newspaper.

The first article found that the 542 MJ of energy needed to produce the newsprint accounted for the majority of the 859 MJ per reader per annum consumed by the newspaper (Appendix 4.1). For the web-based newspaper, with 30 minutes of reading, the 862 MJ of energy per reader per annum mostly consists of the 613 MJ needed to power the computer and monitor for an average of 4 hours per day (Appendix 4.6), even though only 30 minutes are spent reading the electronic newspaper.

Those numbers assume the computer consumes 160 W and a separate CRT display consumes another 120 W. A modern MacBook Pro laptop consumes about 20 W during passive display, less than a tenth of what they assumed in their 2007 article. You can see why their more recent article came to a rather different conclusion.

 

[TFian]

Why would the small energy cost of the internet matter compared to all the bigger energy consumers?

Is it really so small though? With the embedded cost of manufacturing digital technology, along with the centralized internet network, doesn't it amount to a rather sizeable chunk of our energy usage?

 

[TFian]

Here's the technical article to which you referred, complete with appendices:
http://www.sustainablecommunication...inted-web-based-and-tablet-e-paper-newspaper/

That's the second edition of an article published in 2007. From its new preface:



Here's another article by the same authors, from 2009:
http://www.sustainablecommunications.org/printed-and-tablet-epaper/
From its abstract:



The first article found that the 542 MJ of energy needed to produce the newsprint accounted for the majority of the 859 MJ per reader per annum consumed by the newspaper (Appendix 4.1). For the web-based newspaper, with 30 minutes of reading, the 862 MJ of energy per reader per annum mostly consists of the 613 MJ needed to power the computer and monitor for an average of 4 hours per day (Appendix 4.6), even though only 30 minutes are spent reading the electronic newspaper.

Those numbers assume the computer consumes 160 W and a separate CRT display consumes another 120 W. A modern MacBook Pro laptop consumes about 20 W during passive display, less than a tenth of what they assumed in their 2007 article. You can see why their more recent article came to a rather different conclusion.

Thanks for that, explains a lot. I guess digital magazines stand the ecotest of time

 

[TFian]

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I went to the blog to read more. Paragraphs 7 and 8 are filled with gross errors. The author believes that the energy contraction will take place on a scale ranging from weeks to months. Such a contraction would take place over the course of decades. When Grand Archdruid John Greer asserts that electrical grids that supply power to homes and businesses across the industrial world will very likely stop being viable early on in the process of contraction, he is very much mistaken. As the price of oil rises to the point that energy costs are significantly impacted, other energy sources become more economically viable - sources such as wind, nuclear, geothermal, and tidal power, which would all make use of an energy grid that has already been put in place. Some types of solar power would also use the current grid.

Why would such a contraction happen on the scale of decades, rather than weeks and months?

 

[TFian]

Why would the small energy cost of the internet matter compared to all the bigger energy consumers?

*Since I can't edit a previous post, I am forced to make a new one here. Sorry*

Now that I think of it, we have a very rapid proliferation of data (blog posts for example), which must be stored somewhere, necessitating the building of many new data centers. One of the primary considerations in siting a data center is where power is available. Since a single data center gobbles power by the megawatt, this problem is only going to get worse, and it is considerably aggravated by the advent of cloud computing. NSA is building a new data center out in Utah because there is no more power available near their headquarters. From what I can see, the internet doesn't have a small energy cost at all.

 

[Dancing David]

You haven't answered my question, have you? If there are larger consumers of energy that the internet, why would the internet contract first?

 

[TFian]

You haven't answered my question, have you? If there are larger consumers of energy that the internet, why would the internet contract first?

Who said it'd contract first? The topic is whether it would survive contraction, not if it would be the first thing knocked off by such a contraction. I'm not sure why the internet not being the first to contract is important anyway?