[HN Gopher] Turn off that camera during virtual meetings, enviro...
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Turn off that camera during virtual meetings, environmental study
says
Author : giuliomagnifico
Score : 14 points
Date : 2021-01-20 19:56 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.purdue.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.purdue.edu)
| unforeseen9991 wrote:
| Kill all humans, environmental study says.
| melling wrote:
| Another little idea... Why can't we just _stop using coal_ all
| over the world?
|
| http://h4labs.org/ive-got-another-stupid-idea-to-deal-with-c...
| bioinformatics wrote:
| I think it would be great, all the Zoom servers in China might
| be moved to some place with better standards.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Because it takes work and capital to replace that generation
| with cleaner alternatives. It's already being done; have you
| considered working towards speeding up the transition?
| melling wrote:
| I've been waiting over 20 years.
|
| You might not have noticed but we are increasing the number
| of coal power plants globally.
|
| The decrease in natural gas prices has accelerated the
| closing of coal in the US, ...
|
| anyway, I would suggest that you look into this a little
| more.
|
| We've know about this for problem for quite some time
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2014/11/30/why-.
| ..
|
| None of these little ideas come close to the damage done by
| coal power
| mmglr wrote:
| > Just one hour of videoconferencing or streaming, for example,
| emits 150-1,000 grams of carbon dioxide (a gallon of gasoline
| burned from a car emits about 8,887 grams), requires 2-12 liters
| of water and demands a land area adding up to about the size of
| an iPad Mini.
|
| Out of curiosity what is the water used for? Is it from
| hydroelectric power? Also, what is "land area adding up to the
| size of iPad Mini" referring to?
| stunt wrote:
| We aren't particularly efficient species if you look at anything
| that we do.
| Rochus wrote:
| I don't know if this is significant compared to other, much more
| effective measures (see e.g.
| https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541), or
| other energy wasters in IT (see e.g.
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320436353_Energy_ef...).
| manfredo wrote:
| I think a lot of these claims can make sense on paper, but often
| don't really add up to meaningful impact if actually implemented.
| Hypothetically, turning off your webcam reduces overall network
| traffic and would reduce the resources required to deliver
| adequate connection speeds. But in reality, modest reductions in
| internet traffic won't impact the datacenters and network
| infrastructures that have already been built. A more likely
| outcome is that network traffic is used for other applications.
|
| Similar situations exist when pointing to the environmental
| impact of meat production, for example. Not consuming meat would
| reduce transportation of feed, and transportation accounts for
| almost all of the carbon emissions from meat production. But that
| only actually reduces emissions if we assume that the total
| amount of transportation would go down, rather than the same
| transportation capacity being used for other goods.
| Tarsul wrote:
| The assumption that freed capacity would be gobbled up by other
| consumption (100% of it) is a strong one that I wouldn't agree
| on. Reducing consumption (e.g. internet, meat) means that less
| would be produced in the long run, thus it does have a positive
| impact on the climate. We can talk about details or exceptions
| but the general idea that less consumption = less consumption
| [sic] = less climate warming is firm. I think the greater point
| is that we have to look at a long time horizon with long
| lasting changes to really see this, that's why we as humans
| have trouble implementing these changes.
| t-writescode wrote:
| I think it's easily to correlate internet speed availability
| to road breadth.
|
| Increasing the number of lanes on a road does not reduce
| traffic, it adds more cars. It's a common, unfortunate
| phenomenon.
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _But in reality, modest reductions in internet traffic won 't
| impact the datacenters and network infrastructures that have
| already been built._
|
| It's easy to measure. Camera and incoming video on is about 30
| watts more power consumption on my Mac. I can see this on the
| LCD on the UPS. It's not just about the datacentre.
| orev wrote:
| It doesn't get into the details of what "processing" means, but
| I suspect the processing of the video data itself adds
| significantly to the overhead. Cameras may (probably) don't
| have hardware video encoders for the best codecs, so the
| processing on the CPU would use quite a bit of power. And on
| the servers, depending on what you're doing, there's a lot of
| mixing and reprocessing that may need to be done on the
| streams. My own laptop isn't that old, and the fan spins up
| often enough on calls that you know the CPU is chugging more
| than usual.
| _Microft wrote:
| > transportation accounts for almost all of the carbon
| emissions from meat production.
|
| Couldn't be farther from the truth. Let me get the link...
| t-writescode wrote:
| Doesn't this work out to just mean our electronics grid needs to
| become more carbon neutral, especially in places that house
| internet infrastructure and data centers?
|
| It doesn't seem like "use less YouTube and video chat" is the
| most impactful answer here.
|
| Also, the comparison to 1 gallon of gas is a bit disingenuous
| when a car probably uses 2 or more gallons of gas when driving
| continuously for an hour (60mph, 30mpg)
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Why stop there? just cancel the meeting entirely and your meeting
| emissions drop to zero.
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