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Why Hamsters Cannot Save the Planet
(Dick Selwood)
While low power was officially the theme of only a panel session at Globalpress Electronics Summit, it was also frequently the theme, sometimes explicit and frequently implicit, of much of what was discussed.
The most striking performance was by John East of FPGA company, Actel. He spoke mainly from the perspective of the USA, which is probably appropriate, as the US, with around 5% of the world's population, daily consumes 20.7 million barrels of oil, or 25% of world consumption. “This 20-million-barrel-a-day habit costs $1.4 billion a day,” East said, but that was when oil was at $70 a barrel; today it is twice that, so to feed their habit costs the population of the USA around $9 a day for every man, woman and child. Feeding the habit requires the US to import oil and has adverse effects “on the environment, the economy, and the political landscape.”
Where does this oil go? Well 45-50% of fossil fuel pollution is caused by road vehicles, and around 45% is caused by generating electricity. While half of this is used in electric motors, computing and telecoms are growing their share rapidly, and East stated that server farms alone, running search engines, e-commerce, and design applications, are now responsible for burning 1.2% of the US electricity. (Server farms recurred as a topic – see later.) [more]
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