Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[Tim Starling]

Aryeh Gregor wrote:
> I said "directly".  Militaries kill people directly.  Global warming
> kills people indirectly.

I'll take my reply offlist. I have a blog post at tstarling.com where
I've been canvassing this issue, I think that would be a better home
for this debate than private email, since other people will be able to
read it and comment.

-- Tim Starling


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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[Pharos]

Might I suggest that we're getting a bit off-track here with these
broad debates on climate change issues?

I think if we're considering spending $20k/yr on environmental
initiatives, then the most effective way for us and the path most in
line with Wikimedia's core mission would be to spend that money
directly on special efforts to increase high-quality free content
about environmental topics on Wikipedia and the other projects.

Thanks,
Pharos

On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 11:04 AM, Aryeh Gregor
 wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 8:13 PM, Tim Starling  wrote:
>> It's a big deal already, and by the time it becomes an even bigger
>> deal, it will be too late to act. The global climate takes decades to
>> respond to changes in forcing factors. Even if we stopped all
>> greenhouse gas emissions now, the earth would continue to warm for
>> decades because the heat capacity of the ocean slows down the lower
>> atmosphere's response to increased radiation.
>
> Then we agree that cutting greenhouse gases is not a very effective solution?
>
>> The World Health Organisation disagrees:
>>
>> http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs266/en/
>> 
>
> I said "directly".  Militaries kill people directly.  Global warming
> kills people indirectly.
>
>> You just sound gullible when you recycle such claims without showing
>> any awareness the opposing viewpoint.
>
> I don't think I'm recycling claims.  I have a fairly unusual view on
> global warming, actually.
>
>> Like what? Nuclear fusion? Talk about pie in the sky.
>
> Or just more effective photovoltaic cells.  Or, well, anything other
> than fossil fuels.  Solar and wind power, for instance, are much more
> viable now than they were thirty years ago.  Wikipedia says global
> photovoltaic power production was 500 kW in 1977.  It's not a stretch
> to suppose that they or other energy sources will be much more viable
> thirty years from now.  In fact, it would be very surprising if we
> didn't have much better alternatives to fossil fuels by then than we
> have now.
>
>> And cause famine due to a reduction in tropical rainfall?
>>
>> http://edoc.mpg.de/376757
>
> Sure, maybe.  Maybe not.  Everything has costs and benefits.  Blocking
> sunlight is a scheme that can be deployed very quickly and cheaply,
> and could not just completely stop future warming, but reverse warming
> that's already occurred before deployment.  Cutting CO2 is immensely
> more expensive, slower, and less effective.  You were just telling me
> how cutting carbon will never stop warming, and many people will die
> to famine if warming doesn't stop.  Doesn't that imply people will die
> of famine either way?  The costs need to be weighed against the
> benefits.
>
> Of course, the experts at large-scale cost-benefit analysis are
> economists, not climatologists.  One panel of economists that set out
> to systematically examine the issue based on data provided by
> climatologists is the Copenhagen Consensus:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_Consensus
> http://fixtheclimate.com/
>
> The Copenhagen Consensus' Climate Change Project asked a panel of five
> economists (three of them Nobel laureates) to consider the costs and
> benefits of various schemes to mitigate or prevent global warming.
> They took climatologists' predictions for granted, and all agreed that
> anthropogenic global warming is occurring.  The number one solution
> was to reflect more sunlight (by cloud whitening).  Seven of the
> fifteen schemes involved carbon-cutting; they placed at positions nine
> through fifteen.
>
> The Copenhagen Consensus was and is controversial, of course.  But the
> issue is far from open-and-shut.  Even if cutting GHG emission is part
> of the solution, it's not at all clear that it makes sense to spend
> money on it now, rather than invest in alternative energy so we can
> make larger-scale cuts later.
>
> Are you aware of any groups of experts that have done a systematic
> cost-benefit analysis on the various options, and reached opposite
> conclusions to the Copenhagen Consensus?  "Experts" here means, say,
> economists, not climatologists.  (And preferably not political
> appointees either.)  Climatologists are experts at predicting climate
> outcomes, not evaluating the quality-of-life effects of those
> outcomes.  They have no expertise in that.  Economics is the
> discipline concerned with welfare assessment.
>
>
> By the way, you didn't actually address the point of my last post.  If
> involuntarily releasing greenhouse gases creates a moral obligation to
> undo the harm caused by that, why doesn't involuntarily paying taxes
> create the same moral obligation?  This is independent of whether
> cutting GHGs is actually effective (which isn't something I meant to
> get into, but oh well).
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[Aryeh Gregor]

On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 8:13 PM, Tim Starling  wrote:
> It's a big deal already, and by the time it becomes an even bigger
> deal, it will be too late to act. The global climate takes decades to
> respond to changes in forcing factors. Even if we stopped all
> greenhouse gas emissions now, the earth would continue to warm for
> decades because the heat capacity of the ocean slows down the lower
> atmosphere's response to increased radiation.

Then we agree that cutting greenhouse gases is not a very effective solution?

> The World Health Organisation disagrees:
>
> http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs266/en/
> 

I said "directly".  Militaries kill people directly.  Global warming
kills people indirectly.

> You just sound gullible when you recycle such claims without showing
> any awareness the opposing viewpoint.

I don't think I'm recycling claims.  I have a fairly unusual view on
global warming, actually.

> Like what? Nuclear fusion? Talk about pie in the sky.

Or just more effective photovoltaic cells.  Or, well, anything other
than fossil fuels.  Solar and wind power, for instance, are much more
viable now than they were thirty years ago.  Wikipedia says global
photovoltaic power production was 500 kW in 1977.  It's not a stretch
to suppose that they or other energy sources will be much more viable
thirty years from now.  In fact, it would be very surprising if we
didn't have much better alternatives to fossil fuels by then than we
have now.

> And cause famine due to a reduction in tropical rainfall?
>
> http://edoc.mpg.de/376757

Sure, maybe.  Maybe not.  Everything has costs and benefits.  Blocking
sunlight is a scheme that can be deployed very quickly and cheaply,
and could not just completely stop future warming, but reverse warming
that's already occurred before deployment.  Cutting CO2 is immensely
more expensive, slower, and less effective.  You were just telling me
how cutting carbon will never stop warming, and many people will die
to famine if warming doesn't stop.  Doesn't that imply people will die
of famine either way?  The costs need to be weighed against the
benefits.

Of course, the experts at large-scale cost-benefit analysis are
economists, not climatologists.  One panel of economists that set out
to systematically examine the issue based on data provided by
climatologists is the Copenhagen Consensus:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_Consensus
http://fixtheclimate.com/

The Copenhagen Consensus' Climate Change Project asked a panel of five
economists (three of them Nobel laureates) to consider the costs and
benefits of various schemes to mitigate or prevent global warming.
They took climatologists' predictions for granted, and all agreed that
anthropogenic global warming is occurring.  The number one solution
was to reflect more sunlight (by cloud whitening).  Seven of the
fifteen schemes involved carbon-cutting; they placed at positions nine
through fifteen.

The Copenhagen Consensus was and is controversial, of course.  But the
issue is far from open-and-shut.  Even if cutting GHG emission is part
of the solution, it's not at all clear that it makes sense to spend
money on it now, rather than invest in alternative energy so we can
make larger-scale cuts later.

Are you aware of any groups of experts that have done a systematic
cost-benefit analysis on the various options, and reached opposite
conclusions to the Copenhagen Consensus?  "Experts" here means, say,
economists, not climatologists.  (And preferably not political
appointees either.)  Climatologists are experts at predicting climate
outcomes, not evaluating the quality-of-life effects of those
outcomes.  They have no expertise in that.  Economics is the
discipline concerned with welfare assessment.


By the way, you didn't actually address the point of my last post.  If
involuntarily releasing greenhouse gases creates a moral obligation to
undo the harm caused by that, why doesn't involuntarily paying taxes
create the same moral obligation?  This is independent of whether
cutting GHGs is actually effective (which isn't something I meant to
get into, but oh well).

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[David Gerard]

2009/12/15 Tim Starling :
> Aryeh Gregor wrote:

>> In contrast, by emitting
>> carbon dioxide, you're contributing to an effect that won't be a big
>> deal for at least a few more decades.

> It's a big deal already, and by the time it becomes an even bigger
> deal, it will be too late to act. The global climate takes decades to
> respond to changes in forcing factors. Even if we stopped all
> greenhouse gas emissions now, the earth would continue to warm for
> decades because the heat capacity of the ocean slows down the lower
> atmosphere's response to increased radiation.


I commend to you all John Birmingham's take:

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/blogs/blunt-instrument/the-sky-is-falling--oh-wait-its-just-an-apocalyptic-asteriod/20091214-kr6c.html

(huh, so Blunt Instrument runs nationally? Good stuff!)


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[Tim Starling]

Aryeh Gregor wrote:
> In contrast, by emitting
> carbon dioxide, you're contributing to an effect that won't be a big
> deal for at least a few more decades.  

It's a big deal already, and by the time it becomes an even bigger
deal, it will be too late to act. The global climate takes decades to
respond to changes in forcing factors. Even if we stopped all
greenhouse gas emissions now, the earth would continue to warm for
decades because the heat capacity of the ocean slows down the lower
atmosphere's response to increased radiation.

> And that will probably become
> no big deal again a few decades after that when everyone's adapted to
> it.  

Increased temperatures will cause a drop in rainfall and thus a
reduction in food generating capacity in Australia, the Mediterranean,
Mexico, and north-west and south-west Africa. High temperatures also
damage crops directly. In the no-mitigation case, the Garnaut Review
(which I've recently been reading and linked to earlier) projects a
loss of half of Australia's agricultural capacity by around 2050.

Also in Australia, species will be lost as cooler mountain habitats
disappear from the continent, the Great Barrier Reef will be
destroyed, and significant freshwater coastal wetlands will be
inundated by the sea.

> And that won't directly kill anyone in any event, mainly just
> cause economic harm.  

The World Health Organisation disagrees:

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs266/en/


You just sound gullible when you recycle such claims without showing
any awareness the opposing viewpoint.

> And that might not happen anyway if some clever
> soul comes up with a good enough fossil fuel replacement at any point
> in the next thirty years.  

Like what? Nuclear fusion? Talk about pie in the sky.

> Or if it becomes economical to pump
> greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere.  

The Garnaut Review suggests that it may well become economical in a
few decades, but only because mandatory targets will raise the price
of carbon to several times its current value. This will happen when
cheaper measures, like shutting down fossil fuel power stations, are
exhausted. Economical doesn't mean cheap.

> Or if some cheap scheme is
> devised to reduce warming some other way, like releasing particles to
> block sunlight.  

And cause famine due to a reduction in tropical rainfall?

http://edoc.mpg.de/376757

> Or if some unforeseen negative feedback causes
> warming to not get too bad after all.  

The other side of that probability distribution, of course, is that
positive feedback will cause it to be even worse than the high-end
IPCC predictions and that the sea level will rise by tens of metres.
There are studies on which of these two outcomes is more likely. Some
of us do not want to roll the dice.

> And of course maybe we've
> already hit a critical threshold and cutting emissions is pointless by
> now.

There isn't such a threshold. The more you emit, the hotter it gets.
As the temperature rises, the outcomes for both humans and for
biodiversity become steadily worse.

> Plus you can add the fact that Wikimedia's contribution to the affair
> isn't likely to be even measurable, especially if the major damage is
> from catastrophic changes (e.g., ice caps melting) rather than
> incremental ones.  How much money do you owe for increasing mean
> global temperature by a billionth of a degree fifty years from now?

The cost per capita can be derived from the total cost using a complex
mathematical process known as "division". Maybe you've heard of it?

-- Tim Starling


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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[Aryeh Gregor]

On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 8:50 AM, Tim Starling  wrote:
> While the major program spending that Wikimedia performs should be
> defined by its mission, I think small spending decisions, relating to
> day-to-day operations, can be made without recourse to our mission.
> For instance, the office staff should be able use recycled paper
> without there being a Board resolution to put it in the mission statement.

If the sums we're discussing are so small that they can be reasonably
compared to the difference between using recycled and regular paper, I
don't think they're worth spending much time or effort on either way.
How much money would we be talking about to offset Wikimania alone?

> In terms of the ethics, there's a big difference between inaction on
> an issue, say poverty in Africa, and taking direct action in order to
> make things worse. Wikimedia is not paying people to take food from
> children's mouths, but it is paying people to burn coal for
> electricity. I don't think we can claim to be mere bystanders.

By that logic, Wikimedia is actively supporting war (or whatever other
government policy you dislike) by withholding income tax from its
employees' paychecks to give to the US government.  Sure, it has no
real choice about paying taxes; but it has no real choice about using
electricity, either.  If using electricity makes you personally
responsible for funding renewable energy, why doesn't paying taxes
make you personally responsible for funding antiwar organizations?

Of course, paying taxes funds war in a very direct way.  The money
goes to the feds and then straight to the military, where a large
fraction is immediately spent on guns and bombs, which are possibly
used to kill people within a year or two.  In contrast, by emitting
carbon dioxide, you're contributing to an effect that won't be a big
deal for at least a few more decades.  And that will probably become
no big deal again a few decades after that when everyone's adapted to
it.  And that won't directly kill anyone in any event, mainly just
cause economic harm.  And that might not happen anyway if some clever
soul comes up with a good enough fossil fuel replacement at any point
in the next thirty years.  Or if it becomes economical to pump
greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere.  Or if some cheap scheme is
devised to reduce warming some other way, like releasing particles to
block sunlight.  Or if some unforeseen negative feedback causes
warming to not get too bad after all.  And of course maybe we've
already hit a critical threshold and cutting emissions is pointless by
now.

Plus you can add the fact that Wikimedia's contribution to the affair
isn't likely to be even measurable, especially if the major damage is
from catastrophic changes (e.g., ice caps melting) rather than
incremental ones.  How much money do you owe for increasing mean
global temperature by a billionth of a degree fifty years from now?

All in all, I'd say Wikimedia has a lot more culpability for people being shot.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[Philippe Beaudette]

I strongly encourage those who are interested in this to create a  
proposal for strategic planning consideration... Http://strategy.Wikimedia.org 
.

The strategic planning initiative is thinking about the wmf's next  
five years... This type of conversation is very welcome there.


Philippe Beaudette
phili...@wikimedia.org

On Dec 14, 2009, at 12:50 AM, Tim Starling   
wrote:

> Teofilo wrote:
>> You have probably heard about CO2 and the conference being held these
>> days in Copenhagen (1).
>>
>> You have probably heard about the goal of carbon neutrality at the
>> Wikimania conference in Gdansk in July 2010 (2).
>>
>> You may want to discuss the basic and perhaps naive wishes I have
>> written down on the strategy wiki about paper consumption (3).
>
> Paper production has a net negative impact on atmospheric CO2
> concentration if the wood comes from a sustainably managed forest or
> plantation. As long as people keep their PediaPress books for a long
> time, or dispose of them in a way that does not produce methane, then
> I don't see a problem.
>
>> Do we have an idea of the energy consumption related to the online
>> access to a Wikipedia article ? Some people say that a few minutes
>> long search on a search engine costs as much energy as boiling water
>> for a cup of tea : is that story true in the case of Wikipedia (4) ?
>
> No, it is not true, which makes what I'm about to suggest somewhat
> more affordable.
>
> Given the lack of political will to make deep cuts to greenhouse gas
> emissions, and the pitiful excuses politicians make for inaction;
> given the present nature of the debate, where special interests fund
> campaigns aimed at stalling any progress by appealing to the ignorance
> of the public; given the nature of the Foundation, an organisation
> which raises its funds and conducts most of its activities in the
> richest and most polluting country in the world: I think there is an
> argument for voluntary reduction of emissions by the Foundation.
>
> I don't mean by buying tree-planting or efficiency offsets, of which I
> am deeply skeptical. I think the best way for Wikimedia to take action
> on climate change would be by buying renewable energy certificates
> (RECs). Buying RECs from new wind and solar electricity generators is
> a robust way to reduce CO2 emissions, with minimal danger of
> double-counting, forward-selling, outright fraud, etc., problems which
> plague the offset industry.
>
> If Domas's figure of 100 kW is correct, then buying a matching number
> of RECs would be a small portion of our hosting budget. If funding is
> nevertheless a problem, then we could have a restricted donation
> drive, and thereby get a clear mandate from our reader community.
>
> Our colocation facilities would not need to do anything, such as
> changing their electricity provider. We would, however, need
> monitoring of our total electricity usage, so that we would know how
> many RECs to buy.
>
> I'm not appealing to the PR benefits here, or to the way this action
> would promote the climate change cause in general. I'm just saying
> that as an organisation composed of rational, moral people, Wikimedia
> has as much responsibility to act as does any other organisation or
> individual.
>
> Ultimately, the US will need to reduce its per-capita emissions by
> around 90% by 2050 to have any hope of avoiding catastrophe (see e.g.
> [1]). Nature doesn't have exemptions or loopholes, we can't continue
> emitting by moving economic activity from corporations to charities.
>
>
> [1] , and see chapter
> 4.3 for the impacts of 550 case.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[William Pietri]

On 12/14/2009 05:50 AM, Tim Starling wrote:
> In terms of the ethics, there's a big difference between inaction on
> an issue, say poverty in Africa, and taking direct action in order to
> make things worse. Wikimedia is not paying people to take food from
> children's mouths, but it is paying people to burn coal for
> electricity. I don't think we can claim to be mere bystanders.
>

I think that's the key distinction here. Our mission is to make the 
world better in a pretty specific way, and we should stick to that. 
However, that's not a license to make the world worse in other ways.

For example, when we get rid of old servers, we can't just dump the 
toxic components in the nearest river, even if that's cheaper. We have 
to dispose of them responsibly, even if polluting is nominally better 
for our mission. The same principle would seem to apply to the CO2 we 
currently emit. The tricky part is the extent to which it's practical 
for us alone to take action, as opposed to waiting for society to catch up.

Assuming Domas's number (which seems ballpark correct) and the numbers 
in our article on green tags, we'd be looking at an expense of circa 
$20k/yr. That's real money, but at 4% of our hosting budget, it doesn't 
seem crazy. There are definitely a lot of thorny questions about the 
quality of the tags, so good ones could be more, but perhaps not much more.

If we get interested in this, I know an expert in the field, and I'm 
glad to put someone at the foundation in touch.

William

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[Alexandr Romanov]

I personally support any initiative that would reduce energy consumption. I
wonder though (in the pure sense of the term, i.e. I have no idea) if the
biggest consumption of energy for the Wikimedia Foundation isn't actually
travel. Cars consume huge amounts of fossil fuels, and don't get me started
on airplanes (I do seem to recall reading somewhere though that the next
Wikimania aims to have near zero impact, which is a Good ThingTM).

Александр Дмитрий
Alexandr Dmitri

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[Robert Rohde]

On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 5:50 AM, Tim Starling  wrote:
> Aryeh Gregor wrote:
>> On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 1:50 AM, Tim Starling  
>> wrote:
>>> I'm not appealing to the PR benefits here, or to the way this action
>>> would promote the climate change cause in general. I'm just saying
>>> that as an organisation composed of rational, moral people, Wikimedia
>>> has as much responsibility to act as does any other organisation or
>>> individual.
>>
>> Even accepting the premise that subsidizing renewable energy is a
>> moral duty, that doesn't mean Wikimedia should fund it, any more than
>> it should be spending its budget on feeding starving children.
>> Wikimedia should not be spending any significant amount of donated
>> money on things that do not directly advance its mission, because
>> people donate to fund its mission, not unrelated causes (however
>> important).  It's very different from a private individual or company
>> in this respect -- Wikimedia has a duty to spend its money on the
>> things it's accepting donations for.
>
> While the major program spending that Wikimedia performs should be
> defined by its mission, I think small spending decisions, relating to
> day-to-day operations, can be made without recourse to our mission.
> For instance, the office staff should be able use recycled paper
> without there being a Board resolution to put it in the mission statement.
>
> In terms of the ethics, there's a big difference between inaction on
> an issue, say poverty in Africa, and taking direct action in order to
> make things worse. Wikimedia is not paying people to take food from
> children's mouths, but it is paying people to burn coal for
> electricity. I don't think we can claim to be mere bystanders.

I agree with both of you.  Funding renewables isn't really a small
thing, and so doesn't seem discretionary.  At the same time, Wikimedia
isn't a bystander, and it does contribute to the problem.

We are a charity distributing a free public good to the world.  I
don't think it is out of whack with that to want to also act as
responsible citizens.  So perhaps something like this actually should
be in the mission.  Would it be crazy to have a board resolution that
said, in essence, "Wikimedia should take reasonable and cost-effective
steps to reduce or offset its carbon footprint and other impacts on
the environment"?  Assuming the Board and the executive director can
share a similar idea of what is "reasonable" (a few percent of the
budget perhaps?), then taking a position like that actually feels like
a responsible thing for a thoughtful charity to do.

-Robert Rohde

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[Ilario Valdelli]

On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 5:32 PM, Teofilo  wrote:
>
> How about moving the servers (5) from Florida to a cold country
> (Alaska, Canada, Finland, Russia) so that they can be used to heat
> offices or homes ? It might not be unrealistic as one may read such
> things as "the solution was to provide nearby homes with our waste
> heat" (6).
>

Or Switzerland not only because it's a cold country but in Switzerland
it's already in place the idea to use "green energy" with a small
additional cost.

In this case the power supplier assure that this energy is produced
with zero CO2 emission (i.e. hydroelectric energy).

In my case (I am IT manager) I have provided my data center with a
system of air conditioned with "free cooling", in this case when the
external temperature is lower than 17 °C, the system of air
conditioned is supplied with external air without consumption of
energy.

I have the energy costs reduced of 40% (my location in Switzerland has
less than 17 °C at least for 50% of total days because the nights in
Switzerland are cool). It could be 50% but I reuse the 10% to have
"green energy".

In any case the total amount is more than 50% of savings because the
hot air is addressed in the offices (only during the Winter and
Autumn) and the maintenance of system of air conditioned is
drastically reduced with less problem of damage.

At start it's a big cost to have a system of free coling, but after
two or three years it's already refunded with the saved money.

Ilario

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[Tim Starling]

Aryeh Gregor wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 1:50 AM, Tim Starling  wrote:
>> I'm not appealing to the PR benefits here, or to the way this action
>> would promote the climate change cause in general. I'm just saying
>> that as an organisation composed of rational, moral people, Wikimedia
>> has as much responsibility to act as does any other organisation or
>> individual.
> 
> Even accepting the premise that subsidizing renewable energy is a
> moral duty, that doesn't mean Wikimedia should fund it, any more than
> it should be spending its budget on feeding starving children.
> Wikimedia should not be spending any significant amount of donated
> money on things that do not directly advance its mission, because
> people donate to fund its mission, not unrelated causes (however
> important).  It's very different from a private individual or company
> in this respect -- Wikimedia has a duty to spend its money on the
> things it's accepting donations for.

While the major program spending that Wikimedia performs should be
defined by its mission, I think small spending decisions, relating to
day-to-day operations, can be made without recourse to our mission.
For instance, the office staff should be able use recycled paper
without there being a Board resolution to put it in the mission statement.

In terms of the ethics, there's a big difference between inaction on
an issue, say poverty in Africa, and taking direct action in order to
make things worse. Wikimedia is not paying people to take food from
children's mouths, but it is paying people to burn coal for
electricity. I don't think we can claim to be mere bystanders.

-- Tim Starling


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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[Aryeh Gregor]

On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 1:50 AM, Tim Starling  wrote:
> I'm not appealing to the PR benefits here, or to the way this action
> would promote the climate change cause in general. I'm just saying
> that as an organisation composed of rational, moral people, Wikimedia
> has as much responsibility to act as does any other organisation or
> individual.

Even accepting the premise that subsidizing renewable energy is a
moral duty, that doesn't mean Wikimedia should fund it, any more than
it should be spending its budget on feeding starving children.
Wikimedia should not be spending any significant amount of donated
money on things that do not directly advance its mission, because
people donate to fund its mission, not unrelated causes (however
important).  It's very different from a private individual or company
in this respect -- Wikimedia has a duty to spend its money on the
things it's accepting donations for.

(If anyone else wants to spend money on this sort of thing, though, I
entirely agree that subsidizing renewable energy makes much more sense
than trying to cut power usage.  Society is not just going to cut its
energy usage by 90% -- the resulting drop in quality of life would
probably exceed any caused by global warming.  The only way to achieve
drastic cuts in CO2 emissions is to stop using fossil fuels for power,
and that will only happen when there are economical alternatives.
Widespread private subsidization of renewables is a relatively direct
and reliable way to help make that happen -- although breakthroughs in
fundamental research would obviously be preferable, they're
uncertain.)

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[Tim Starling]

Teofilo wrote:
> You have probably heard about CO2 and the conference being held these
> days in Copenhagen (1).
> 
> You have probably heard about the goal of carbon neutrality at the
> Wikimania conference in Gdansk in July 2010 (2).
> 
> You may want to discuss the basic and perhaps naive wishes I have
> written down on the strategy wiki about paper consumption (3).

Paper production has a net negative impact on atmospheric CO2
concentration if the wood comes from a sustainably managed forest or
plantation. As long as people keep their PediaPress books for a long
time, or dispose of them in a way that does not produce methane, then
I don't see a problem.

> Do we have an idea of the energy consumption related to the online
> access to a Wikipedia article ? Some people say that a few minutes
> long search on a search engine costs as much energy as boiling water
> for a cup of tea : is that story true in the case of Wikipedia (4) ?

No, it is not true, which makes what I'm about to suggest somewhat
more affordable.

Given the lack of political will to make deep cuts to greenhouse gas
emissions, and the pitiful excuses politicians make for inaction;
given the present nature of the debate, where special interests fund
campaigns aimed at stalling any progress by appealing to the ignorance
of the public; given the nature of the Foundation, an organisation
which raises its funds and conducts most of its activities in the
richest and most polluting country in the world: I think there is an
argument for voluntary reduction of emissions by the Foundation.

I don't mean by buying tree-planting or efficiency offsets, of which I
am deeply skeptical. I think the best way for Wikimedia to take action
on climate change would be by buying renewable energy certificates
(RECs). Buying RECs from new wind and solar electricity generators is
a robust way to reduce CO2 emissions, with minimal danger of
double-counting, forward-selling, outright fraud, etc., problems which
plague the offset industry.

If Domas's figure of 100 kW is correct, then buying a matching number
of RECs would be a small portion of our hosting budget. If funding is
nevertheless a problem, then we could have a restricted donation
drive, and thereby get a clear mandate from our reader community.

Our colocation facilities would not need to do anything, such as
changing their electricity provider. We would, however, need
monitoring of our total electricity usage, so that we would know how
many RECs to buy.

I'm not appealing to the PR benefits here, or to the way this action
would promote the climate change cause in general. I'm just saying
that as an organisation composed of rational, moral people, Wikimedia
has as much responsibility to act as does any other organisation or
individual.

Ultimately, the US will need to reduce its per-capita emissions by
around 90% by 2050 to have any hope of avoiding catastrophe (see e.g.
[1]). Nature doesn't have exemptions or loopholes, we can't continue
emitting by moving economic activity from corporations to charities.


[1] , and see chapter
4.3 for the impacts of 550 case.

-- Tim Starling


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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[Magnus Manske]

On Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 1:22 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
> 2009/12/13 Teofilo :
>
>> But the best is to use no energy at all : see the OLPC project in
>> Afghanistan (A computer with pedals, like the sewing machines of our
>> great-great-great-grand-mothers) (1)
>> (1) 
>> http://www.olpcnews.com/countries/afghanistan/updates_from_olpc_afghanistan_1.html
>
>
> That's the answer! Distributed serving by each volunteer's pedal power!

And you automatically become an admin after 5MW!

Magnus

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[Domas Mituzas]

Hi!

> In cold countries, energy can have two lives : a first life making
> calculations in a computer, or transforming matter (ore into metal,
> trees into books), and a second life heating homes.

One needs to build-out quite static-energy-output datacenters (e.g. deploy 10MW 
at once, and don't grow) for that. Not our business. 

> But the best is to use no energy at all : see the OLPC project in
> Afghanistan (A computer with pedals, like the sewing machines of our
> great-great-great-grand-mothers) (1)

Do you realize that in terms of carbon footprint that is much much less 
efficient? Look at the title of the thread. 

Domas
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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[Domas Mituzas]

Dude, I need that strong stuff you're having. 

> Let me sum this up, The basic optimization is this :
> You don't need to transfer that new article in every revision to all
> users at all times.

There's not much difference between transferring every revision and just some 
'good' revisions. 

> The central server could just say  : this is the last revision that
> has been released by the editors responsible for it, there are 100
> edits in process and you can get involved by going to this page here
> (hosted on a server someplace else).

Editing is miniscule part of our workload. 

> There is no need to transfer
> those 100 edits to all the users on the web and they are not
> interesting to everyone.

Well, we may not transfer them, in case of flagged revisions, we can transfer 
in case of pure wiki. Point is, someone has to transfer. 

> Lets take a look at what the engine does, it allows editing of text.

That includes conflict resolution, cross-indexing, history tracking, abuse 
filtering, full text indexing, etc. 

> It renders the text.

It means building the output out of many individual assets (templates, 
anyone?), embed media, transform based on user options, etc. 

> It serves the text.

And not only text - it serves complex aggregate views like 'last related 
changes', 'watchlist', 'contributions by new users', etc. 

> The wiki from ward cunningham
> is a perl script of the most basic form.

That is probably one of reasons why we're not using wiki from Ward Cunningham 
anymore, and have something else, called Mediawiki. 

> There is not much magic
> involved.

Not much use at multi-million article wiki with hundreds of millions of 
revisions.  

> Of course you need search tools, version histories and such.
> There are places for optimizing all of those processes.

And we've done that with MediaWiki ;-) 

> It is not lunacy, it is a fact that such work can be done, and is done
> without a central server in many places.

Name me a single website with distributed-over-internet backend. 

> Just look at for example how people edit code in an open source
> software project using git. It is distributed, and it works.

Git is limited and expensive for way too many of our operations. Also, you have 
to have whole copy of GIT, it doesn't have on-demand-remote-pulls nor any 
caching layer attached to that. 
I appreciate your will of cloning Wikipedia. 

It works if you want expensive accesses, of course. We're talking about serving 
a website here, not a case which is very nicely depicted at: 
http://xkcd.com/303/

> There are already wikis based on git available.

Anyone tried putting Wikipedia content on them, and try simulating our 
workload? :) 
I understand that Git's semantics are usable for Wikipedia's basic revision 
storage, but it's data would still have to be replicated to other types of 
storages, that would allow various cross-indexing and cross-reporting. 

How well does Git handle parallelism internally? How can it be parallelized 
over multiple machines? etc ;-) It lacks engineering. Basic stuff is nice, but 
it isn't what we need. 

> There are other peer to peer networks such as TOR or freenet that
> would be possible to use.

How? These are just transports. 

> If you were to split up the editing of wikipedia articles into a
> network of git servers across the globe and the rendering and
> distribution of the resulting data would be the job of the WMF.

And how would that save any money? By adding much more complexity to most of 
processes, and by having major cost item untouched? 

> Now the issue of resolving conflicts is pretty simple in the issue of
> git, everyone has a copy and can do what they want with it. If you
> like the version from someone else, you pull it.

Who's revision does Wikimedia merge? 

> In terms of wikipedia as having only one viewpoint, the NPOV that is
> reflected by the current revision at any one point in time, that
> version would be one pushed from its editors repositories. It is
> imaginable that you would have one senior editor for each topic who
> has their own repository of of pages who pull in versions from many
> people.

Go to Citizendium, k, thx. 

> Please lets be serious here!
> I am talking about the fact that not all people need all the
> centralised services at all times.

You have absolute misunderstanding on what our technology platform is doing. 
You're wasting your time, you're wasting my time, you're wasting time of 
everyone who has to read your or my emails. 

> A tracker to manage what server is used for what group of editors can
> be pretty efficient. Essentially it is a form of DNS. A tracker need
> only show you the current repositories that are registered for a
> certain topic.

Seriously, need that stuff you're on. Have you ever been involved in building 
anything remotely similar? 

> The entire community does not get involved in all the conflicts. There
> are only a certain number of people that are deeply involved in any
>

Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[David Gerard]

2009/12/13 Teofilo :

> But the best is to use no energy at all : see the OLPC project in
> Afghanistan (A computer with pedals, like the sewing machines of our
> great-great-great-grand-mothers) (1)
> (1) 
> http://www.olpcnews.com/countries/afghanistan/updates_from_olpc_afghanistan_1.html


That's the answer! Distributed serving by each volunteer's pedal power!


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[Teofilo]

2009/12/13, Andre Engels :
> I don't think that's a practical solution. It's not because they need
> to be cooled that computers cost so much energy - rather the opposite:
> they use much energy, and because energy cannot be created or
> destroyed, this energy has to go out some way - and that way is heat.

In cold countries, energy can have two lives : a first life making
calculations in a computer, or transforming matter (ore into metal,
trees into books), and a second life heating homes.

But the best is to use no energy at all : see the OLPC project in
Afghanistan (A computer with pedals, like the sewing machines of our
great-great-great-grand-mothers) (1)

(1) 
http://www.olpcnews.com/countries/afghanistan/updates_from_olpc_afghanistan_1.html

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[Teofilo]

2009/12/12, Geoffrey Plourde :
> With regards to Florida, if the servers are in an office building, one way to 
> >decrease costs might be to reconfigure the environmental systems to use the 
> >energy from the servers to heat/cool the building. Wikimedia would then be 
> able >to recoup part of the utility bills from surrounding tenants.

I am not sure the laws of thermodynamics (1) would allow to use that
heat to cool a building. You would need a cold source like a river to
convert heat back into electricity. But it might be more cost
efficient to have the water from the river circulate directly into the
building, so that your extra heat is still remaining unused.

This is why I think it is more difficult to find solutions in a hot
country like Florida than in a cold country (as long as you don't
question the very existence of heated homes in cold countries, leaving
aside the possibility of moving people and their homes from cold to
warm countries).

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_thermodynamics#Second_law

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[jamesmikedup...@googlemail.com]

Let me sum this up, The basic optimization is this :
You don't need to transfer that new article in every revision to all
users at all times.
The central server could just say  : this is the last revision that
has been released by the editors responsible for it, there are 100
edits in process and you can get involved by going to this page here
(hosted on a server someplace else). There is no need to transfer
those 100 edits to all the users on the web and they are not
interesting to everyone.


On Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 12:10 PM, Domas Mituzas  wrote:
>> 4. The other questions are, does it make sense to have such a
>> centralized client server architecture? We have been talking about
>> using a distributed vcs for mediawiki.
>
> Lunatics without any idea of stuff being done inside the engine talk about 
> distribution. Let them!

I hope you are serious here,
Lets take a look at what the engine does, it allows editing of text.
It renders the text. It serves the text. The wiki from ward cunningham
is a perl script of the most basic form. There is not much magic
involved. Of course you need search tools, version histories and such.
There are places for optimizing all of those processes.

It is not lunacy, it is a fact that such work can be done, and is done
without a central server in many places.

Just look at for example how people edit code in an open source
software project using git. It is distributed, and it works.

There are already wikis based on git available.
There are other peer to peer networks such as TOR or freenet that
would be possible to use.

If you were to split up the editing of wikipedia articles into a
network of git servers across the globe and the rendering and
distribution of the resulting data would be the job of the WMF.

Now the issue of resolving conflicts is pretty simple in the issue of
git, everyone has a copy and can do what they want with it. If you
like the version from someone else, you pull it.

In terms of wikipedia as having only one viewpoint, the NPOV that is
reflected by the current revision at any one point in time, that
version would be one pushed from its editors repositories. It is
imaginable that you would have one senior editor for each topic who
has their own repository of of pages who pull in versions from many
people.

>> 7. Now, back to the optimization. Lets say you were able to optimize
>> the program. We would identify the major cpu burners and optimize them
>> out. That does not solve the problem. Because I would think that the
>> php program is only a small part of the entire issue. The fact that
>> the data is flowing in a certain wasteful way is the cause of the
>> waste, not the program itself. Even if it would be much more efficient
>> and moving around data that is not needed, the data is not needed.
>
> We can have new kind of Wikipedia. The one where we serve blank pages, and 
> people imagine content in it. We\ve done that with moderate success quite 
> often.

Please lets be serious here!
I am talking about the fact that not all people need all the
centralised services at all times.

>
>> So if you have 10 people collaborating on a topic, only the results of
>> that work will be checked into the central server. the decentralized
>> communication would be between fewer parties and reduce the resources
>> used.
>
> Except that you still need tracker to handle all that, and resolve conflicts, 
> as still, there're > no good methods of resolving conflicts with small number 
> of untrusted entities.

A tracker to manage what server is used for what group of editors can
be pretty efficient. Essentially it is a form of DNS. A tracker need
only show you the current repositories that are registered for a
certain topic.

Resolving conflicts is important, but you only need so many people for that.

The entire community does not get involved in all the conflicts. There
are only a certain number of people that are deeply involved in any
one section of the wikipedia at any given time.

Imagine that you had, lets say 1000 conference rooms available for
discussion and working together spread around the world and the
results of those rooms would be fed back into the Wikipedia. These
rooms or servers would be for processing the edits and conflicts any
given set of pages.

My idea is that you don't need to have a huge server to resolve
conflicts. many pages don't have many conflicts, there are certain
areas which need constant arbitration of course. Even if you split up
the groups into different viewpoints where the arbitration team only
deals with the output of two teams (pro and contra).

Even if you look at the number of editors in a highly contested page,
they are not unlimited.

>From the retrospective you would be able to identify what groups of
editors are collaborating (enhancing each other) and conflicting
(overwriting each other). If you split them up into different rooms
when they should be collaborating and reduce the conflicts, then you
will win alot.

Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[Domas Mituzas]

Hi!!!

> 1. Php is very hard to optimize.

No, PHP is much easier to optimize (read - performance oriented refactoring). 

> 3. Even python is easier to optimize than php.

Python's main design idea is readability. What is readable, is easier to 
refactor too, right? :) 

> 4. The other questions are, does it make sense to have such a
> centralized client server architecture? We have been talking about
> using a distributed vcs for mediawiki.

Lunatics without any idea of stuff being done inside the engine talk about 
distribution. Let them!

> 5. Well, now even if the mediawiki is fully distributed, it will cost
> CPU, but that will be distributed. Each edit that has to be copied
> will cause work to be done. In a distributed system even more work in
> total.

Indeed, distribution raises costs. 

> 6. Now, I have been wondering anyway who is the benefactor of all
> these millions spend on bandwidth, where do they go to anyway?  What
> about making a wikipedia network and have the people who want to
> access it pay instead of having us pay to give it away? With these
> millions you can buy a lot of routers and cables.

LOL. There's quite some competition in network department, and it has become 
economy of scale (or of serving youtube) long ago. 

> 7. Now, back to the optimization. Lets say you were able to optimize
> the program. We would identify the major cpu burners and optimize them
> out. That does not solve the problem. Because I would think that the
> php program is only a small part of the entire issue. The fact that
> the data is flowing in a certain wasteful way is the cause of the
> waste, not the program itself. Even if it would be much more efficient
> and moving around data that is not needed, the data is not needed.

We can have new kind of Wikipedia. The one where we serve blank pages, and 
people imagine content in it. We\ve done that with moderate success quite 
often. 

> So if you have 10 people collaborating on a topic, only the results of
> that work will be checked into the central server. the decentralized
> communication would be between fewer parties and reduce the resources
> used.

Except that you still need tracker to handle all that, and resolve conflicts, 
as still, there're no good methods of resolving conflicts with small number of 
untrusted entities. 

> see also :
> http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:A_MediaWiki_Parser_in_C

How much would that save? 

Domas
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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[jamesmikedup...@googlemail.com]

On Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 10:30 AM, Nikola Smolenski  wrote:
> Дана Saturday 12 December 2009 17:41:44 jamesmikedup...@googlemail.com написа:
>> On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 5:32 PM, Teofilo  wrote:
>> > Do we have an idea of the energy consumption related to the online
>> > access to a Wikipedia article ? Some people say that a few minutes
>> > long search on a search engine costs as much energy as boiling water
>> > for a cup of tea : is that story true in the case of Wikipedia (4) ?
>>
>> my 2 cents : this php is cooking more cups of tea than an optimized
>> program written in c.
>
> But think of all the coffee developers would have to cook while coding and
> optimizing in C!

But that is a one off expense. That is why we programmers can earn a
living, because we can work on many projects. Also we drink coffee
while playing UrbanTerror as well.

1. Php is very hard to optimize.
2. The mediawiki has a pretty nonstandard syntax. The best that I have
seen is the python implementation of the wikibook parser. But given
that each plugin can change the syntax as it will, it will get more
complex.
3. Even python is easier to optimize than php.
4. The other questions are, does it make sense to have such a
centralized client server architecture? We have been talking about
using a distributed vcs for mediawiki.
5. Well, now even if the mediawiki is fully distributed, it will cost
CPU, but that will be distributed. Each edit that has to be copied
will cause work to be done. In a distributed system even more work in
total.
6. Now, I have been wondering anyway who is the benefactor of all
these millions spend on bandwidth, where do they go to anyway?  What
about making a wikipedia network and have the people who want to
access it pay instead of having us pay to give it away? With these
millions you can buy a lot of routers and cables.
7. Now, back to the optimization. Lets say you were able to optimize
the program. We would identify the major cpu burners and optimize them
out. That does not solve the problem. Because I would think that the
php program is only a small part of the entire issue. The fact that
the data is flowing in a certain wasteful way is the cause of the
waste, not the program itself. Even if it would be much more efficient
and moving around data that is not needed, the data is not needed.

This would eventually lead, in an optimal world to updates not even
being distributed at all. Not all changes have to be centralized. Lets
say that there is one editor who would pull the changes from others
and make a public version. That would mean that only they would need
to have all data for that one topic. I think that you could optimize
the wikipedia along the lines of data travelling only to the people
who need it (editors versus viewers) and you would optimize first a
way to route edits into special interest groups and create smaller
virtual subnetworks of the editors CPUs working together in a peer to
peer direct network.

So if you have 10 people collaborating on a topic, only the results of
that work will be checked into the central server. the decentralized
communication would be between fewer parties and reduce the resources
used.

see also :
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:A_MediaWiki_Parser_in_C


mike

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[Andre Engels]

On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 5:32 PM, Teofilo  wrote:

> How about moving the servers (5) from Florida to a cold country
> (Alaska, Canada, Finland, Russia) so that they can be used to heat
> offices or homes ? It might not be unrealistic as one may read such
> things as "the solution was to provide nearby homes with our waste
> heat" (6).

I don't think that's a practical solution. It's not because they need
to be cooled that computers cost so much energy - rather the opposite:
they use much energy, and because energy cannot be created or
destroyed, this energy has to go out some way - and that way is heat.

-- 
André Engels, andreeng...@gmail.com

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[Nikola Smolenski]

Дана Saturday 12 December 2009 17:41:44 jamesmikedup...@googlemail.com написа:
> On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 5:32 PM, Teofilo  wrote:
> > Do we have an idea of the energy consumption related to the online
> > access to a Wikipedia article ? Some people say that a few minutes
> > long search on a search engine costs as much energy as boiling water
> > for a cup of tea : is that story true in the case of Wikipedia (4) ?
>
> my 2 cents : this php is cooking more cups of tea than an optimized
> program written in c.

But think of all the coffee developers would have to cook while coding and 
optimizing in C!

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[Jussi-Ville Heiskanen]

Teofilo wrote:
>
> Do we have an idea of the energy consumption related to the online
> access to a Wikipedia article ? Some people say that a few minutes
> long search on a search engine costs as much energy as boiling water
> for a cup of tea : is that story true in the case of Wikipedia (4) ?
>
> How about moving the servers (5) from Florida to a cold country
> (Alaska, Canada, Finland, Russia) so that they can be used to heat
> offices or homes ? It might not be unrealistic as one may read such
> things as "the solution was to provide nearby homes with our waste
> heat" (6).
>   
Heh. That brings some old memories right front to center.

I used to be a hang-around member of this hacker collective
here in Finland. (Intsu -> The Hole -> Cute - as its designation
evolved)

While in The Hole phase, we had a rented basement space,
and turned down all the heating in the space, after receiving
a donated old mainframe. I think you can guess why.


Yours,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen


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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[Benjamin Lees]

On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 11:32 AM, Teofilo  wrote:

> How about moving the servers (5) from Florida to a cold country
> (Alaska, Canada, Finland, Russia) so that they can be used to heat
> offices or homes ? It might not be unrealistic as one may read such
> things as "the solution was to provide nearby homes with our waste
> heat" (6).
>
I imagine the average Wikimedia user is more concerned with whether his
requests are optimized to be fast than with whether they're optimized to be
environmentally friendly.  Or, to add a coat of greenwash, remember that
power consumption is going to be greater if you have more latency.

If the WMF had $130 million lying around, I would rather they used it to
actually serve their mission.

I think Domas hit the nail on the head in May:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-May/051656.html
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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[David Gerard]

2009/12/12 masti :
> W dniu 12.12.2009 22:36, David Gerard pisze:

>> Iceland! Geothermal energy!

> but we need to cool not to heat our servers :)


I think they've got some of that there too ;-)


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[masti]

W dniu 12.12.2009 22:36, David Gerard pisze:
> 2009/12/12 Geoffrey Plourde:
>
>> The only reason the servers and internet access produce CO2 emissions is 
>> because of the defective and antiquated energy production systems we use 
>> across the world. As we move towards more efficient and "cleaner" means of 
>> energy production, the carbon footprint should decrease.
>> Moving servers to Scandinavia would be interesting, but a unsound logistical 
>> idea. I agree that it would be a effective reuse of energy, but I am 
>> concerned about the access problem of relocating assets in one region. Now, 
>> placing new servers in Scandinavia on a grid so that the energy production 
>> can be reused is not a bad idea, but would be something for the chapters 
>> there to look at.
>
>
> Iceland! Geothermal energy!


but we need to cool not to heat our servers :)

masti
DataCenter Manager :)

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[David Gerard]

2009/12/12 Geoffrey Plourde :

> The only reason the servers and internet access produce CO2 emissions is 
> because of the defective and antiquated energy production systems we use 
> across the world. As we move towards more efficient and "cleaner" means of 
> energy production, the carbon footprint should decrease.
> Moving servers to Scandinavia would be interesting, but a unsound logistical 
> idea. I agree that it would be a effective reuse of energy, but I am 
> concerned about the access problem of relocating assets in one region. Now, 
> placing new servers in Scandinavia on a grid so that the energy production 
> can be reused is not a bad idea, but would be something for the chapters 
> there to look at.


Iceland! Geothermal energy!


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[Geoffrey Plourde]

The only reason the servers and internet access produce CO2 emissions is 
because of the defective and antiquated energy production systems we use across 
the world. As we move towards more efficient and "cleaner" means of energy 
production, the carbon footprint should decrease. 


Moving servers to Scandinavia would be interesting, but a unsound logistical 
idea. I agree that it would be a effective reuse of energy, but I am concerned 
about the access problem of relocating assets in one region. Now, placing new 
servers in Scandinavia on a grid so that the energy production can be reused is 
not a bad idea, but would be something for the chapters there to look at.

With regards to Florida, if the servers are in an office building, one way to 
decrease costs might be to reconfigure the environmental systems to use the 
energy from the servers to heat/cool the building. Wikimedia would then be able 
to recoup part of the utility bills from surrounding tenants. 

However, engineering input would be most beneficial to considering these 
interesting proposals. 

Geoffrey




From: Teofilo 
To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Sat, December 12, 2009 8:32:12 AM
Subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

You have probably heard about CO2 and the conference being held these
days in Copenhagen (1).

You have probably heard about the goal of carbon neutrality at the
Wikimania conference in Gdansk in July 2010 (2).

You may want to discuss the basic and perhaps naive wishes I have
written down on the strategy wiki about paper consumption (3).

Do we have an idea of the energy consumption related to the online
access to a Wikipedia article ? Some people say that a few minutes
long search on a search engine costs as much energy as boiling water
for a cup of tea : is that story true in the case of Wikipedia (4) ?

How about moving the servers (5) from Florida to a cold country
(Alaska, Canada, Finland, Russia) so that they can be used to heat
offices or homes ? It might not be unrealistic as one may read such
things as "the solution was to provide nearby homes with our waste
heat" (6).

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Climate_Change_Conference_2009
(2) 
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2010/Bids/Gda%C5%84sk#Environmental_issues
(3) 
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Environmental_policy_for_paper_products
(4) http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5489134.ece
(5) http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_servers
(6) 
http://www.greenercomputing.com/news/2009/12/08/giant-data-center-heat-london-homes

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[William Pietri]

On 12/12/2009 08:32 AM, Teofilo wrote:
> Do we have an idea of the energy consumption related to the online
> access to a Wikipedia article ? Some people say that a few minutes
> long search on a search engine costs as much energy as boiling water
> for a cup of tea : is that story true in the case of Wikipedia (4) ?
>

I don't have time to do the math right now, but I believe this could be 
estimated from publicly available data. You'd take the pageview numbers:

http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportRequests.htm

You'd look up our various servers:

http://wikitech.wikimedia.org/view/Main_Page

And then make some reasonable guesses as to actual power consumption. 
(Sysadmins often measure this, so I'm sure some Googling would turn up 
good approximations.) Divide one number by the other and you've got a 
reasonably good guess at power usage per pageview.

You could take that a step farther by looking up the power composition 
where the server farms are and estimating CO2 output.

If anybody tries to do this and gets stuck, drop me a line.

William

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[geni]

2009/12/12 Teofilo :

> How about moving the servers (5) from Florida to a cold country
> (Alaska, Canada, Finland, Russia) so that they can be used to heat
> offices or homes ? It might not be unrealistic as one may read such
> things as "the solution was to provide nearby homes with our waste
> heat" (6).
>

Alaska has seriously expensive construction systems and the others
listed have unacceptable legal systems.


-- 
geni

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[jamesmikedup...@googlemail.com]

On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 5:32 PM, Teofilo  wrote:
> Do we have an idea of the energy consumption related to the online
> access to a Wikipedia article ? Some people say that a few minutes
> long search on a search engine costs as much energy as boiling water
> for a cup of tea : is that story true in the case of Wikipedia (4) ?

my 2 cents : this php is cooking more cups of tea than an optimized
program written in c.

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[Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[Teofilo]

You have probably heard about CO2 and the conference being held these
days in Copenhagen (1).

You have probably heard about the goal of carbon neutrality at the
Wikimania conference in Gdansk in July 2010 (2).

You may want to discuss the basic and perhaps naive wishes I have
written down on the strategy wiki about paper consumption (3).

Do we have an idea of the energy consumption related to the online
access to a Wikipedia article ? Some people say that a few minutes
long search on a search engine costs as much energy as boiling water
for a cup of tea : is that story true in the case of Wikipedia (4) ?

How about moving the servers (5) from Florida to a cold country
(Alaska, Canada, Finland, Russia) so that they can be used to heat
offices or homes ? It might not be unrealistic as one may read such
things as "the solution was to provide nearby homes with our waste
heat" (6).

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Climate_Change_Conference_2009
(2) 
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2010/Bids/Gda%C5%84sk#Environmental_issues
(3) 
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Environmental_policy_for_paper_products
(4) http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5489134.ece
(5) http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_servers
(6) 
http://www.greenercomputing.com/news/2009/12/08/giant-data-center-heat-london-homes

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