Apple: Greenpeace's Cloud Critique Driven By Bogus Numbers 188
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."
Re:What it really means: (Score:1, Informative)
Greenpeace: "Here are some numbers we pulled out of our asses -- I mean, 'estimated'. Apple is bad."
Apple: "Here are the actual numbers."
Re:Excellent... (Score:5, Informative)
Greenpeace lied about Apple to get attention? No way! That's never happened before [roughlydrafted.com].
Re:What it really means: (Score:4, Informative)
Greenpeace? Is this the same group that "rescues" animals from lab experiments or farm slaughterhouses, and then gasses them in a room (because they have no place to put these animals they "saved")? I recall the founder of Greenpeace now speaks-out against them.
Re:What it really means: (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Excellent... (Score:4, Informative)
For several years in a row when the Wii was at it's popularity peak, the greenpeace "report card" gave Nintendo a failing grade
Do you own a Wii and a power consumption meter? I do (my electricity supplier gave me the meter, the government required it. It's supposed to help people reduce consumption).
Anyway, the Wii uses about 10-15W while on standby (I can't remember how much exactly). That's a huge amount, compared to almost everything else in the house. My bedroom is lit with less power!
Re:Greenpeace is not credible (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Excellent... (Score:5, Informative)