First, a story from The Guardian, who give props to Greenpeace for making sure that social media are in harmony with the environment, if not your parents’ basement:
Social media explosion powered by dirty energy, report warns
… Amazon Web Services, which provides a cloud platform for Netflix, Tumblr and Pinterest, was singled out for being secretive about its energy use, and for siting data centres in areas that rely heavily on coal.
The company lagged “far behind its major competitors, with zero reporting of its energy or environmental footprint to any source or stakeholder”, the report said.
Twitter and Oracle were also faulted. Microsoft and Yahoo received middling grades in the report, which looked at energy use by 300 tech companies.
[Links, ironically, in the original. – Ed.]
Prompted by that, the new owners of RedState.com asked me, its erstwhile energy guru, to conduct an energy audit of the site and report to the stakeholders (i.e., the editors, the contributors, the diarist community and the Disqus trolls) what more we can do to for the planet.
The findings:
- RedState’s bank of servers is located as closely as possible to their main source of fuel, the Athabasca Tar Sands of northern Alberta. 100% of power consumed is generated by antiquated steam boilers running at 3% efficiency.
- All moving parts in the antiquated electrical dynamos must be lubricated by oil from sperm whales or baby seals.*
- All workers at the site are housed in buildings constructed entirely of old-growth teak from the jungles of Sumatra (former orang-utan habitat). The teak is harvested using state-of-the-art Slash & Burn™ techniques, leading to fires in the 500 foot-thick peat beds.
- The electrons from deleted posts are ground, composted and recycled as new, sustainable posts. (H/T Erick Brockway via twitter.)
- Strict standards are set for the use of renewable energy. For example, any wind turbines used to generate energy must be certified to have already killed the USF&WS-mandated quota of eagles, condors and endangered bats.**
- Erick Erickson’s daily commute (Macon, GA-DC round-trip) is in an aging Gulfstream G650. He buys his carbon indulgences in such quantity that he qualifies for a volume discount.
- RedState’s policy discourages site contributors from reusing hotel towels while at the site’s Annual Gathering, leading to an estimated decline of 20% in the global polar bear population.
In summary, the entire RedState enterprise has a carbon footprint roughly half that of former Vice-President and Nobel Laureate Al Gore.
*Note: No baby seals were clubbed during the preparation of this report.
**However, no extra points for vultures. See video below.