By Jo Nova
So you hit “Reply All” and ten years later the heatwaves begin. You know it makes sense — the global cloud is full of cat videos, and storing the code that made Socks sing Bohemian Catsody in a million emails requires another data centre. And as the old copies accumulate the “dark data” that no one looks at piles up. And those servers need electricity.
If only we had cheap reliable, renewable energy sources that worked 24 hours a day, we wouldn’t have to worry, would we? But data centers that only work when the wind blows are not much use to anyone (except maybe Hillary and Hunter). But the awful truth is that the more data we store the more CO2 we produce. Thus in the cult of climate change, the O-so-human quest to connect needs to be suppressed so we can cool the world by a thousandth of a degree in 2143.
Anyone who liked humans would just say “build a nuclear plant”. (Anyone who liked plants would say “build a coal one”). That would solve it. But here we are in the modern era and professors are effectively telling us that our emails are killing koalas.
Excess memes and ‘reply all’ emails are bad for climate, researcher warns
Most data stored on power-hungry servers is used once then never looked at again
By Helena Horton, The Guardian
… research has now found that the vast majority of data stored in the cloud is “dark data”, meaning it is used once then never visited again. That means that all the memes and jokes and films that we love to share with friends and family – from “All your base are belong to us”, through Ryan Gosling saying “Hey Girl”, to Tim Walz with a piglet – are out there somewhere, sitting in a datacentre, using up energy. By 2030, the National Grid anticipates that datacentres will account for just under 6% of the UK’s total electricity consumption, so tackling junk data is an important part of tackling the climate crisis.
Ian Hodgkinson, a professor of strategy at Loughborough University has been studying the climate impact of dark data and how it can be reduced. He discovered that 68% of data used by companies is never used again, and estimates that personal data tells the same story.
Hodgkinson said: “If we think about individuals and society more broadly, what we found is that many still assume that data is carbon neutral, but every piece of data whether it be an image, whether it be an Instagram post, whatever it is, there’s a carbon footprint attached to it.
Send less emails, and save the world!
One thing people can do to stop the data juggernaut, he said, is to send fewer pointless emails: “One [figure] that often does the rounds is that for every standard email, that equates to about 4g of carbon.
Think of all the days you wake up saying to yourself, I’d like to send 100 pointless emails. Well, those days are over.
Imagine how much better our quality of life will be if we have a struggle session and self-assess every SMS, every message, wondering if we deserve to share a funny story when it might inundate the nursing home in fifty years? The Green philosophy is so uplifting.
Good luck to any EcoWorrier who has to convince their teenage daughter not to share memes to save the planet. What are they going to do, drive their offspring in a car to visit their friends instead? Lordy, think, of the carbon penance! Not that it would be a bad thing if we spent more time visiting real people instead of “sharing” with electric gadgets, but that’s the thing about the carbon religion, it’s not giving us more freedom to do anything at all.
Soon the social credit score will tell you how many messages you can send and how many photos you can store.
First they came for the cars, and then they came for the emails. It only ends when we make them stop.
Anyone who believes that BS,shouldn’t be allowed out on their own.
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I think that’s the idea.
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Any part of the planet that is being destroyed by my comments needs to be destroyed.
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How’s the euthanasia legislation progressing??😁😇😇
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” …for every standard email, that equates to about 4g of carbon.”
Carbon or Carbon Dioxide?
It must seem really important to someone that a message to friends that I can (or cannot) see them this coming Wednesday is stored until the Sun goes bang. A 7-day storage ought to be plenty for 97% of messages.
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My email says anything I send to the bin will be deleted in 30 days. Why not delete it when it goes to the bin? We used to burn our newspapers and unimportant letters regularly, only the most important documents being kept so the idea is not new it is just the mechanism.
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Where are Hilary’s emails?
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Hillary {2 Ls} used a dish towel to wipe them clean.
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Of course this won’t apply to AI or government activity
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Most of the data on the Internet is a combination of 1) very inefficient protocols, 2) Big Tech – advertising (videos etc), data mining (Microshite ‘backing’ up PCs to the cloud) etc. AI will add to that. Emails use very little data – like CO2 causes very little temperature variation. A video call, a WiFi telephone call, typical smartphone use uses far more data.
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why the companies that provide ad blockers for your browser are so “popular”.
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According to startled BBC presenters on a Science show, their examination showed that a search using AI rather than a Straightforward google search, used 100 times more energy.
One big culprit of this is Bings co pilot but they are all moving to an AI assistant.
Highly ironic that those thinking that using digital means is saving the planet are doing nothing of the sort.
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This actually saves on the cost of propaganda or re-education as they call it in Canada.
The journalist aree much less likely to have an original thought since they are using the same AI to produce their stories.
If you do not believe me then believe ChatGPT:
I expect anyone who asks ChatGPT “in 6 lines, tell me why journalist use chat gpt”. will get same or similar answer. Who needs original thoughts anyway!
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I wonder what Grok would answer? I would ask it except I haven”t paid the X tax.
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Mark Mills has said in a quote about a year ago that “the cloud” now uses about the same energy as the country of Japan.
It seems incredible if true and he also stated that AI has only started to use energy. And businesses like Amazon are using a lot more energy and will probably consider SMR when they are available to buy off the shelf.
Who knows but I can’t see any country generating their energy from toxic, unreliable W & S and backed up by toxic, unreliable batteries by 2040.
Of course it will cost endless trillions of $ and all those countries will go down the plug hole in a very short space of time.
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Like all industry, the search for human productivity inevitably results in using machines to convert energy to output. Data is getting close to pure energy now.
My computers are now close to a decade old and the main software they are running is older. The only new part is the energy they used on a daily basis and the different keystrokes I use to interact with them.
Ans speaking of Japan, I always thought the last living person of Japanese heritage would be very wealthy but it is quite likely machines will inherit Japan.
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Machines will inherit everywhere. Which is why this idea we must import masses to fill the jobs is the worst planning ever. New jobs are not going to keep replacing old ones has they have done in the past.
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I am with the Amish on this one! Some machines are allowed but let’s value human energy input at a premium and charge for good quality food and products accordingly?
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Bill Gates believes this – or just wants to build a nuclear plant in Wyoming for the fun of it.
The Natrium plant is unusual in that it doesn’t make electricity directly, it uses the heat generated in the reactor to heat a molten salt storage. This storage supplies energy to a gas turbine generating electricity.
While it seems a cumbersome way it allows the storage of heat when electricity demand falls, and extra heat when demand increases. It also makes the reactor run more efficiently, with less variable output. Thus something which needs reliable supply (like a computer data store) would be a customer.
I am pretty sure that Bill Gates knows something about computers and the problems with failures.
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As an added bonus you can say the electricity is generated by molten salt.
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But suppose your message was one of those 3% and got deleted with everything else?
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That will be the convenient excuse in the future for certain people suspected of doing something dodgy.
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Mass surveillance supercomputer data centres are groaning under the sheer weight of all the exponentially growing communications and consequent data storage requirements. They can’t keep up. We’ll have to erase non-essential information and historical data to save the planet. But endless wars are ok, and ostentatious displays of wealth, private jets and mega yachts.
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No surer way of getting rid of W & S, than telling the command and control mob. It can’t handle their public surveillance.
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Yeah For every ligit email I receive – I get 20 spam.
I’m sure the people behind all that spam, are oh so very concerned about the climate.
And will take note of Professor Hodgkinson.
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Here’s Mark Mill’s recent video of the world’s energy needs today and the extra energy needs in the next few years and beyond.
BTW his quote about Japan V the cloud was actually about electricity used today. See after 4 minutes.
But toxic W & S are a very sick joke and I’m sure the clueless Harris and tampon Tim Wilz are great believers in this toxic lunacy.
Anyway Mark packs a lot of info into this 5 minute video and everyone will learn something.
https://energynow.com/2023/07/watch-how-much-energy-will-the-world-need-mark-mills/
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A dose of reality as usual. It is a pity that Bowen and his ineffective staff don’t watch these doses of facts. It is always stupefying that those who want electric vehicles are opposed to mining the necessary materials. Then again they might just be useful idiots for China which dominates in both production of the EVs as well as the materials to make them. When the EV market collapses, as it seems to be doing, those who might have invested in mining in the US and here can breathe a sigh of relief that they didn’t waste their money.
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[from the main article]
Virtue signalling from Pollyanna. There is no way we can make it stop. We are not offered that choice at elections, nor will ever be (Brexit, anyone ?). The UK is currently showing us in real time what happens to “direct action”.
Amazing to myself as I was from about 15-20 years ago, but the New World Order in all its’ nastiness is happening as we watch helplessly. The WEF has won.
Doubtless there will be replies here along the lines of “Well, I won’t give up”. My response is obvious: what clear, practical, useful actions will you implement, then ? To that question, dead silence is always the courageous reply.
Want a clear sub-set issue as an example ? Is there anyone who really believes that a public pro/anti nuclear power grid “debate” will be conducted with scrupulous honesty, all relevant data available from the MSM ? (Try telling Maude Q Public to use Google Scholar).
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ianL: Hillary thanks you. So does President Xi. Defeatism is exactly what the parasites want. They depend on “learned helplessness”. Their biggest fear is that the 70% they steal from will wake up and realize how easy it is to cast them off their thrones.
It’s so much easier to make excuses to give up rather than man up to the task.
If we could talk to the people in Soviet Gulags 60 years in the past, do you think they would tell us to give up, or do you think they would say — with our emails, blogs, phones, and relative freedom — that we have tools and wealth beyond their imagining.
We are in an information war. I write a blog that more than a million people read each year. Is that not a practical step? Many people share the links, share the messages, donate real money, retweet the info that exposes the tactics and lies. Every time you speak up at a BBQ, you help the cause. Every time someone calls you a denier or a racist and you smile, you win. Just say you are not afraid of their namecalling and their cheap stunts lose their power.
In the last five years the word ESG has become a dirty word, 60% in the US have said “climate is a religion”. The share prices of solar, wind, and sales of EVs are falling. The WEF has become something to mock, and half the crowd has realized their most cherished institutions have failed them.
It is a dark time, but the cheating minority depend on bullying, witchcraft and petty names. All you have to do is point that out…
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@ianl
>We are not offered that choice at elections
The bully seldom asks whether you would prefer to not be bullied.
>nor will ever be (Brexit, anyone ?)
You do realise, (don’t you?) that you just gave an example of when we WERE “offered that choice at elections”! (Brexit). Another example is ‘The Voice’. Both times the people’s choice was ignored. Both times that sent a strong message to everyone that, hey, this isn’t really a democracy, they’re asking what we want and then doing what THEY want. That wakes up more people to what’s actually going on. The battle is raging!
>The UK is currently showing us in real time what happens to “direct action”.
You haven’t lost until you’ve given up.
The battle is being fought within you.
I strongly recommend you read, The Indoctrinated Brain, by Michael Nehls.
It gives you a detailed, evidence-rich explanation of what’s been done to you and how to overcome it.
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ianl. Bottom line is, you are giving in to the media. The media drives most of what ails the democracies by being censorious in what, who and how it talks about and supports. It has to pay a huge price for this to ever change.
Stop buying its products. Stop consuming the propaganda and counter it its own commentary sections. Applaud as it falls over or gets financially stressed. Only by fighting back against the power of the very few that see themselves as elites, those that use their wealth to provide the products YOU buy to spread their ambitions for more power over most of the nation. With the WEF its power over the Democracies. Fight at elections for corrections of the damages politicians are doing to the nation; politicians loathe being cornered and having to explain in depth why they are harming the nation. It appears to me that Elon Musk is setting up ‘X’ to take on the rest of the MSM that have got up his nose.If he could be induced to become involved deeply in the climate argument, that alone, if successful, would be as a battering ram through the midst of those trying to take down the democracies, in one big hit.
We need someone like that to get dedicated to a fight that is capable of throwing open the climate argument. Get real scientific debate going that enthralls a huge membership of young, bright people en masse. Suddenly teachers and indoctrinated (by propaganda) true believers start questioning their religion and their leaders run for cover – especially those political leaders that cast this trouble on us in the first place. No politician will want to be the last man standing for ‘Climate change due to humans’.
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The UK appears to be goose-stepping backward through its own “strange eventful history”.
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I am actually impressed that someone as galactically dense as Ms. Horton can remember to breathe.
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She doesn’t have to. CO2 does it for her 🙂
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More wonderful news that another major USA solar company has filed for bankruptcy after California strips subsidies.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/08/07/major-solar-company-files-for-bankruptcy-after-california-strips-subsidies/
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great news, a big one too.
My neighbour had a solar panel install business, “saving the planet one panel at a time” was the motto. Past tense, went broke. Now is training for NDIS work. Notice any connection? Subsidy harvesting. It’s all lefties are good at (and not so good).
Notice how many people work for the NDIS now? “Sixty bucks an hour” is the common call. There is no economy in doing each others laundry.
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There is no economy in doing each others laundry.
But there is quite a tax break for renting each others homes. If you can trust the other?
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I don’t think this will become a thing.
If they can’t store all your electronic utterances for Inquisitional review … how can they enforce the social credit system?
After all, it’s not about the carbon, it’s about the social credit system.
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This is the cost of the “cloud” . Most of the power is used by AI machines sorting through the massive pile of data . Google is saving power by feeding us what it wants instead of what we want (Propaganda V Truth) . Use your own intelligence…
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If anyone needs a good explanation of the cloud , could I just refer you to Kamala Harris. My goodness that lady is so knowledgeable, and she’s black, did I say that?
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She’s certainly got a good handle on it, I look forward to further ‘explanations’ of technical things.
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incorrect grammar. It’s actually “she black”
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According to Kamala”the cloud is up there somewhere” – how can it be using energy?
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Isn’t she really more of a high caste Indian than black?
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Who knows? It depends on the expediencies of the moment.
She is actually more of a phony than Hillary. Or Liz Warren.
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Well there you go … now The Guardian is complaining about wasting electrons on bad writing which no one is interested in.
Makes a change from the government upset over too much misinformation and Joe Biden decrying old white men in politics.
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I used to be green, and it was so boring, everything you do or that is done you judge and analyse. Then you realise (hopefully) the analysis is fundamentally flawed anyway, so you begin to enjoy life.
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Environmentalism is all about the non intended consequences. Weren’t emails supposed to save paper? And then…another problem. Like how coal saved the trees, and then…
Green kids and local councillors around here still want to end forest logging, the only “carbon positive” industry in the world.
Environmentalism is just an act of innate negativity that exists in the mind. Nothing to do with environment.
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John D Rockefeller saved the whales.
Greenpeace has never forgiven him.
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Altogether now: save the planet this instant! Let’s make our next Email our last Email.
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Joanne writes this:
I keep thinking that this Nuclear power plant debate is a ‘red herring’ being used to distract away from new tech coal fired power, and frankly, the technology surrounding coal fired power is advancing at a faster rate than Nuclear power plant technology, and the cost of those Coal fired plants is so much less than for a Nuclear power plant.
Tony.
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Coal is still King.
We are being scammed.
The problem with democracy is the sheep are so easily led to the slaughter.
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So Tony can you give us a good link or two about reducing co2 by the best modern HELE plants etc?
And what would be the cost compared to Nuclear and the time to build both?
And what about Gas and the cost and co2 emissions?
We’ve been told that the latest coal plants built by China and India are low co2 HELE plants with similar co2 emissions to a Gas plant. Is that correct?
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Neville,
Here’s a link to a Post from Joanne’s site back in March of 2013 no less, so eleven years ago now.
Upgrade coal power and cut 15% of emissions. Where is the Green applause?
And here’s another on where coal fired power is up to now, 40% less CO2 emissions no less, and in fact in the same range as Natural Gas Fired power.
Coal Fired Power Dying – Not So Fast – Part Four – SteamH, The Future For Coal Fired Power
Costs can be arbitrary, because whatever they are building them for elsewhere in the World, you can bet that the Green supporters here in Australia will just multiply that by five, like they did with Nuclear power plant costings.
Tony.
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Thanks for that Tony and please watch the short video I’ve linked to below about a working zero co2 emission gas plant in Texas.
What do you think?
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Why bother?
CO2 is plant food. Is great for growing things. Make more, not less.
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A little factoid I picked up years ago- “Key pollutants that adversely affect human health include carbon monoxide, lead, sulfur dioxide (SO2), oxides of nitrogen (NOX), ground level ozone and particulate matter (PM). A new pulverized coal plant, with flue gas scrubbers, fabric filters, catalytic reduction and other control equipment and processes, reduces NOX by 83%, SO2 by 98% and PM by 99.8% compared to a similar plant without such pollution control features. (US Dept of Energy)”. So, not only can you relatively easily improve the efficiency of coal, it can be deemed ” clean” as well. The Australian coal fleet could be upgraded to get to the “HE” part of HELE. Forgot about the “LE” part, that’s just nonsense.
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Hmmm!
“Now your emails and memes are destroying the planet”
No mention of the piles of “global warming garbage” that is also stored there?
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A simple text email is estimated to emit about 4 grams of CO2, equivalent to the energy used by a standard light bulb in about 6 minutes.
However, the scenario changes drastically when we attach files to our emails.
An email with a large attachment could have a carbon footprint up to 50 grams of CO2, reflecting the increased energy required to transmit, process, and store the additional data.
https://greencitizen.com/blog/email-carbon-footprint/
Lessee now:
In 2024, an average of 360 Billion emails are sent per day so that’s 18 Billion kilos of CO2 per day, or 180 million tonnes a day, or around 66 Billion tonnes a year.
The volume of Earth’s atmosphere is around 5,000 trillion tonnes, so that’s around 833 years to fill her up!
Live in fear! Lol.
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BTW this group claims they have already built a Nat Gas Plant that produces zero co2 emissions.
The co2 is saved and has many customers for this cheaper co2 or it could be injected later deep underground in Iceland.
This Texas group using a UK blokes ideas and design have already built a plant and demonstrated that the process works.
The only downside is using a donkey like “upside down Mann” to be part of the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zDZmIDbDO0
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BTW I just noticed that this another Bloomberg video, but I’m fairly sure this is a genuine story.
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Watched the first few minutes: wasn’t sure that my leg wasn’t being pulled.
?
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Absolutely no corporation involved in AI is going to care. They will rationalise it away.
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Here’s Rodney Allam MBE who has invented the Allam Cycle and he claims this is the cheapest energy and has zero co2 emissions.
I’m a very sceptical bloke but he doesn’t come across as a typical con merchant to me, but I’m just an ordinary bloke watching a video.
He mentions that he was part of the Gore team who was awarded the Nobel prize, but that doesn’t impress me at all.
Anyway he describes how his idea works near the end of his very short video. Who Knows?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KavdYJMoGR4
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Here’s a longer version of the Allam Nat Gas plant and is a 10 minute April 2024 presentation.
They claim they have orders for a thousand of these plants around the world and quite a number are marked on the Aussie map, including some in WA. Any ideas Jo?
If this is a con it’s a good one, but again who knows?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo26hQcXkcM
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Sorry. I’ll try to cut down the verbiage.
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The truth is that the so called dark data is also a big part of the many and several building blocks of internet and if you shift/obliterate/alter the wrong thing then it could start a dominoes effect with largely unknown consequences. Now if the dark web became much more popular than TikTok etc then that would be great fun and mind blowing…
But the space equation worries people with their AI dreams which is the reason why we may eventually need so many new data centres. Our emails are not at all a huge part of the junk. An average email is tiny in terms of storage space but an AI image sent to several others and posted on social media may not be so small at all not to mention all the chat bot stuff recently added. They are much more needy of precious storage space.
All in all I get tired of stuff like this appearing everywhere as if it is fact when it is, at best, half truths because the authors have no idea what the bigger picture looks like and haven’t the brains to find out and in turn make a difference.
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Hilarious! I wonder what the tonnage of CO2 is for the billions of “…Save Trees – Save the Planet – Don’t print this email…” comments added to the end of all the corporate emails over the last 40 years…
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>I wonder what the tonnage of CO2 is for the billions of…
Not to mention the sheer weight in hot air, wasted breath, and CO2-laden sighs and exhalations of exasperation and resignation added to the digital, verbal, and printed preambles and annotations in acknowledgement of the Traditional Owners of the lands we meet, visit, use, and occupy; not to mention our respects we dutifully and obsequiously pay to Ancestors and Elders, past, present, and future, whose strength and guidance continually guide and nurture us.
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From Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of the UN on a LinkedIn post- Quote “I must call out the flood of fossil fuel expansion we are seeing in some of the world’s wealthiest countries.
In signing such a surge of new oil and gas licenses, they are signing away our future. Countries must phase-out fossil fuels – fast and fairly.”
This post has 1800+ likes and rising, 229 comments- far too many in a positive affirmation and 143 reposts- this is an indication of how much stupid is out there, especially in the corporate white collar world. That people wouldn’t immediately pile on in condemning that post /comment as inherently stupid and dangerous for all of the world’s citizens if countries acted on his request is mind boggling!
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