1,027 Matching Annotations
  1. Apr 2020
    1. Each URL also includes acontentTypeparameter, whichindicates how that document should be rendered in the userinterface. This parameter is part of the URL, not the docu-ment content, because the same document content may berendered differently in different contexts. For example, Push-Pin could be extended to support flashcards for languagelearning. In one context, the document containing the data-base of flashcards could be rendered as a list of entries, whilein another context it might be rendered as a quiz interface,presenting one side of one flashcard at a time.

      I had no idea that there was a separate 'viewer' concept. Neat

    1. People make light of the idea that digital should be the most basic of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs — over food, water, shelter, and warmth — but there is evidence that people do, to an extent, prioritise connectivity over food and comfort. Some refugees, for instance, are known to have asked for Wi-Fi or charging services ahead of food or water on arrival in a new country.

      🤯

    1. Globally, Amazon has 86 solar and wind projects that have the capacity to generate over 2,300 MW and deliver more than 6.3 million MWh of energy annually—enough to power more than 580,000 U.S. homes.

      The use of "has the capacity to" here is misleading.

      Capacity factors for renewables range betweeen 15 and 40, so this makes it sound like amazon has paid for and used 6.3 MWh of power when it's likely to be a fraction of this.

      By comparison, Microsoft, report on how much power they did use each year, and how much of that was renewable. Last year they reported using around 7m MWh of power, and buying almost this figure in renewable energy.

  2. www.gitops.tech www.gitops.tech
    1. Additionally the image registry can be monitored to find new versions of images to deploy.

      Ahh, so this is how you might make it possible for a developer to just push changes, and not have to have access to the environment repository.

    1. For now, suffice it to say that Tailscale uses several very advanced techniques, based on the Internet STUN and ICE standards, to make these connections work even though you wouldn’t think it should be possible. This avoids the need for firewall configurations or any public-facing open ports, and thus greatly reduces the potential for human error.

      I wonder how this relate to VOIP and so on?

    2. Here’s what happens: Each node generates a random public/private keypair for itself, and associates the public key with its identity (see login, below). The node contacts the coordination server and leaves its public key and a note about where that node can currently be found, and what domain it’s in. The node downloads a list of public keys and addresses in its domain, which have been left on the coordination server by other nodes. The node configures its WireGuard instance with the appropriate set of public keys.

      So it's a little bit like a private DNS server?

    3. Sadly, developers have stopped building peer-to-peer apps because the modern Internet’s architecture has evolved, almost by accident, entirely into this kind of hub-and-spoke design, usually with the major cloud providers in the center charging rent.

      This is such a quote.

    1. A breadcrumb in this case is a single pixel that you can place in a precise location on a webpage. Placing a breadcrumb could be as simple as Option + click. While navigating the web, you could leave breadcrumbs on different pages you find interesting over the course of a browsing session. When you're done, that sequential "trail of breadcrumbs" would be saved. You could then jump back into the trail and navigate "forward" and "backward" through the things you found interesting in that browsing session. Or share the trail with a friend, and they could step through your spatial path of navigating the web.

      This isn't a million miles away from how hypothesis allows you to annotate specific sections, although much more lightweight.

      It's plausible to show a set of thumbnails of a pages with the highlights ... highlighted for others to see.

    2. When you run a standup at a technology company, you typically go around a circle and each person gives their daily update. But in Zoom, there is no circle. You get confused about who is next. Two people start speaking at the same time. It's awkward and confusing. Eventually, you realize that one person, probably the manager, just has to dictate who goes next, at the risk of seeming bossy.

      Just having a line from left to right would be an improvement, or some consistent, implied order

    1. Since emission reduction projects registered under crediting programmes to date have been mostly developed in the context of cost-saving, rather than ambition-raising mechanisms, we understand that there are very few, if any, examples of existing credited projects that represent those high-hanging fruits, and which could be considered truly additional in the context of the Paris Agreement. Given the difficulty in objectively determining additionality in line with this definition, we consider that only a niche and ever reducing number of activities could count for this, and that this does therefore not represent a viable option for rapidly increasing demand volume of the market.

      This is a really important point, that the current "offsets" framing undermines.

    2. A climate responsibility approach needs to first and foremost incentivise and facilitate the reduction of one’s own emissions.

      I can't help thinking they should have lead with this

    3. Emissions from project-specific activities, such as project-related travel, are attributed as cost items to their respective project cost lines.

      Project level carbon budgeting?

    4. We recognise that some of the activities with the highest transformation potential – and therefore with high suitability for supporting the objectives of the Paris Agreement – may be at early stages of development and/or may carry a risk of not delivering attributable emission reductions.

      This addresses some of the issues around needing to get a definite amount of emissions drawn down, when the science makes this very very hard to measure

    1. The High-Level Commission on Carbon Prices surveyed the available scientific literature, concluding that the explicit carbon-price level consistent with the Paris Agreement temperature objectives is at least US$40–80/tCO2 by 2020, provided that a supportive policy environment is in place (High-Level Commission on Carbon Prices, 2017). Informed by this report and allowing for its uncertainties, NewClimate Institute has imposed a price level of EUR 100/tCO2e for the 2014-2019 period. This is also in-line with the central estimate of climate change avoidance costs over the period to 2030 used in the European Commission’s 2019 Handbook on the External Costs of Transport (European Commission, 2019).

      Holy biscuits. They're not fucking about. Microsoft just increased their price for carbon to 14 USD per tonne, by comparison.

    2. This methodology for the estimation of GHG emissions includes the estimated equivalent climate impact of non-carbon climate forcers from aviation, such as condensation trails, ice clouds and ozone generated by nitrogen oxides and results in emission estimates approximately three times greater than if calculating only direct CO2 emissions (Atmosfair, 2016).

      Wow, they use the updated science

    1. For the moment, the main take-away is that there is a goodargument that registration fees should ​not​​be set at $0, even this year. Rather, organizersshould look at their existing budgets, and rework them by eliminating the costs associated withthe physical event. Virtual conferences that do choose to set their prices low should be carefulnot to encourage an expectation that other virtual conferences (or future instances of this one)will always be free or cheap. (For example, one of the suggestions heard by the ASPLOSorganizers was “keep it free;” obviously, this may not be financially sustainable.)

      I'm really glad this is mentioned, as it provides a chance to talk about actually paying presenters for their time, increasing the likelihood of new voices speaking at conferences.

  3. Mar 2020
    1. He mentioned a few examples where the AI fallacy is already playing out. One is the idea from the national statistician that we might not need to keep doing a census, because there will be lots of data from other sources. Neil pointed out that we actually need more classical statistics than ever, to verify all this machine learning and data. He calls this the “Big Data Paradox” - that as we measure more about society, we understand less. We need to be able to sanity check our large complex systems - the census is still valuable.

      The census as a calibration tool

    2. In the section on technical debt, the mythical man month, etc, I was amused to note that Neil called out Amazon's fabled "two pizza team" as American cultural imperialism. The problem arising from the separation of concerns and specialisation of teams is that no one is concerned with the whole system.

      This is such a good quote and helps explain so much.

    1. GENEVA (Reuters) - European countries need to invest to prepare their transport infrastructure for the impacts of climate change or face hundreds of millions of dollars in repair costs, a U.N. regional commission said in a study it says is the first of its kind.

      This is for transport. What about networks?

  4. www.fairphone.com www.fairphone.com
    1. GWPkg CO2e43.8535.98-1.115.983.00100.0%82.1%-2.5%13.6%6.8%

      These figures here, for a smart phone from 2016 put the use phase at around 6kg of CO2 over a 3 year life cycle.

      That's fairly close to the Shift Project figures in their Lean ICT report.

    2. The following use pattern is applied for the Fairphone 2:

      This assumes similar energy use figures to the Shift project of 5.9kwH per year

    1. The quantification of this unit impact is done in kWh/byte. Three contributions are considered:The electricity consumption associated with using the terminal on which the action is performed;The electricity consumption generated by the activity of the data centers involved in transferring the data;The electricity consumption generated by the activity of the other network infrastructures during the transfer of the data.

      Awright. So, reading this makes me think all the numbers from the 1byte model that are being cited appear to be concerned with the use phase, not the actual production phase.

  5. Feb 2020
    1. Fundamental requirement:Climate-neutral datastorageand transfer

      I'm curious about how this is measured and managed.

    1. Data centres and telecommunications will need to become more energy efficient, reuse waste energy,anduse more renewable energy sources. They can and should become climate neutral by 2030

      For maddie

    2. Destination Earth, initiativeto develop a high precision digital model of Earth (a “Digital Twin of the Earth”) that would improve Europe’s environmental prediction and crisis management capabilities (Timing: from 2021

      Good heavens, a digital twin of Earth

    3. A circular electronics initiative, mobilising existing and new instruments in line with the policy framework for sustainable products of the forthcoming circular economy action plan

      I wonder if the restart project gang have seen this

    1. Climate change poses an unprecedented threat to humanity in the 21st century. In the period up to 2030, an estimated $3.5 trillion is required for developing countries to implement the Paris climate pledges to prevent potentially catastrophic and irreversible effects of climate change.

      Ah, that's where it comes from

    1. Methodology and sources The analysis of the carbon intensity of streaming video presented in this piece is based on a range of sources and assumptions, calculated for 2019 or the latest year possible. Bitrate: global weighted average calculated based on subscriptions by country and average country-level data streaming rates from Netflix in 2019; resolution-specific bitrates from Netflix.Data centres: low estimate based on Netflix reported direct and indirect electricity consumption in 2019, viewing statistics and global weighted average bitrate (above); high estimate based on 2019 cloud data centre IP traffic from Cisco and energy use estimates for cloud and hyperscale from IEA.Data transmission networks: calculations based on Aslan et al. (2017), Schien & Priest (2014), Schien et al. (2015), and Andrae & Edler (2015), and weighted based on Netflix viewing data by devices. Devices: smartphones and tablets: calculations based on Urban et al. (2014) and Urban et al. (2019), iPhone 11 specifications (power consumption and battery capacity), and iPad 10.2 specifications; laptops: Urban et al. (2019); televisions: Urban et al. (2019) and Park et al. (2016), and weighted based on Netflix viewing data by devices. Carbon intensity of electricity: based on IEA country-level and global data, and 2030 scenario projections.

      Let's roll these into the new model

    1. Aristotle’s view of the process: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”

      This is a really handy quote. totally borrowing it.

    2. Buying carbon offsets might still have greater impact in the short run, but you can’t see them, so their purchase is less likely to be contagious.

      I've never thought of them in terms of 'contagion' like this. interesting

    1. Today the average carbon intensity of electricity generated is 475 gCO2/kWh, a 10% improvement on the intensity from 2010.

      There is more recent data, but it's not for the whole world. Should come out around March 2020.

    1. It is relevant to estimate how much data is generated by - and associated electric power used - normal behavior like video streaming several hours every day.

      If we assume video streaming is 'normal behaviour' like web surfing and working online, then these numbers are probably the safest to use for now.

    Annotators

    1. TechnologyIntensity [kgCO2eq/MWh]solar0.00410geothermal0.00664wind0.141nuclear10.3hydro16.2biomass50.9gas583unknown927oil1033coal1167

      The proportions of each are going affect this.

      What would a global average (mean) figure be for renewable energy (i.e. not including nuclear)?

    2. Fig. 1. The 28 areas considered in this case study, and the power flows between them for the first hour of January 1, 2017. The width of the arrows is proportional to the magnitude of the flow on each line. Power flows to and from neighboring countries, e.g. Switzerland, are included when available, and these areas are shown in gray. The cascade of power flows from German wind and Polish coal are highlighted with blue and brown arrows, respectively.

      I had no idea Germany sold so much power, net to other countries. Always assumed it bought loads of France's power

    1. So energy consumption in the oil and gas sector, into which Google Cloud is selling its cost-reducing services, is four orders of magnitude larger than Google’s data center decarbonization efforts. The harm that Google Cloud will do to the planet, if it reduces underlying costs of this industry by even a small percent, completely dwarfs the data center decarbonization work.

      This is the first time I've seen numbers putting these into perspective. I wonder how these compare for Amazon and M$ ?

    1. Therefore, we estimate an advertising share of 50% for the traffic class web, email, and data in 2016, with an uncertainty range of [25%–75%]. The share is the same for both mobile and fixed traffic.

      Holy biscuits, HALF OF WEB TRAFFIC as ads?

    2. According to a Solarwinds company 2018 study, the average load time for the top 50 websites was 9.46 s with trackers and 2.69 s without.

      Trackers have a 4x impact on performance compared to not having them

    3. The Internet's share of the global electricity consumption was 10% in 2014 (Mills, 2013): As a reference, the entire global residential space heating in 2014 consumed the same amount (International Energy Agency, 2017a).

      Heating ALL the homes in all the world is about the same as the internet's carbon footprint according to this paper

  6. Jan 2020
    1. How to Build Data Visualizations in Excel

      Does this exist for Google Spreadsheets or Libreoffice?

    1. . In particular,on the host, we propose a first configuration of a software-defined power meter that builds on a new CPU power modelthat accounts for common power-aware features of multi-core processors to deliver accurate power estimations at thegranularity of a software process. In the VM, we introduce asecond configuration of a software-defined power meter thatconnects to the host configuration in order to distribute thepower consumption of VM instances between the hosted ap-plications. The proposed configuration can even be extendedto consider distributed power monitoring scenarios involvingapplication components spread across several host machines.

      So, this would be the app level metering you would want.

    2. WhileBITWATTSis a modular framework that can accom-modate different power models (includingrunning averagepower limit(RAPL) probes and power meters), we propose aprocess-level power model, which is application-agnostic andaccounts for virtualization—i.e., for emulated cores withina VM—and for the power-aware extensions of modern pro-cessors, notably hardware threading anddynamic voltageand frequency scaling(DVFS).

      Ah, so this is the key difference and the reason for the Smartwatt formula business

    1. the politics of the armed lifeboat

      I expect to use, and hear this term a lot in 2020, as people realise the implications of changing climates on how we live.

    1. For Apple, this may be a feature rather than a bug: Documents obtained by Motherboard in 2017 revealed that the company requires its recycling partners to shred iPhones and MacBooks so that their components cannot be reused, further reducing the value recyclers can get out.

      not great for a parts market

    2. So, Apple has started collecting that scrap, melting it down and forming new hunks of aluminum that can be used to carve more gadget husks.

      Wait, this is the recycling?

    1. In February 2018, she published a report — titled Mission-Oriented Research & Innovation in the European Union — that defined five criteria missions should obey: they must be bold and inspire citizens; be ambitious and risky; have a clear target and deadline (you have to be able to unambiguously answer whether the mission was accomplished to deadline or not, Mazzucato says); be cross-disciplinary and cross-sectorial (eradicating cancer, for example, would require innovation in healthcare, nutrition, artificial intelligence and pharmaceuticals); and allow for experimentation and multiple attempts at a solution, rather than be micromanaged top-down by a government.
      1. bold and inspiring to citizens
      2. ambitious and risky
      3. clear target and deadline
      4. cross disciplinary and cross sectortial
      5. allow for multiple approaches and experiments
    2. Mazzucato traced the provenance of every technology that made the iPhone. The HTTP protocol, of course, had been developed by British scientist Tim Berners-Lee and implemented on the computers at CERN, in Geneva. The internet began as a network of computers called Arpanet, funded by the US Department of Defense (DoD) in the 60s to solve the problem of satellite communication. The DoD was also behind the development of GPS during the 70s, initially to determine the location of military equipment. The hard disk drive, microprocessors, memory chips and LCD display had also been funded by the DoD. Siri was the outcome of a Stanford Research Institute project to develop a virtual assistant for military staff, commissioned by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The touchscreen was the result of graduate research at the University of Delaware, funded by the National Science Foundation and the CIA.

      This paragraph.

  7. Dec 2019
    1. Just this month it was announced that over half of the power plants operated by China’s Big Five state-owned utilities are running at a loss. The government has plans for up to one third of them to shut by 2021, removing 15% of the country’s coal capacity.

      🤯

    2. No matter that there is no single robust methodology: internalizing Carney’s three types of climate risk – physical, liability and transition – will inevitably work through to large-scale asset disposals and new reinvestments; it will without doubt affect the cost of capital of high-carbon businesses.

      This taxonomy of risk sounds useful to talk about.

    3. No single “sneeze” will wipe out fossil fuel use across energy and transport; It will occur sector by sector, country by country. Over the past six years, LED light-bulbs have gone from less than 5% global market share to over 40%; coal power in the U.K. from 40% to a couple of percent; plug-in vehicles in Norway from less than 5% to over 50%. In each case, there was a slow start, an agonizing wait, and then the sneeze. Bless you!

      Good reference for explaining a punctured equilibrium

    4. The average capacity factor of the world’s hydro plants is 42%; gas peaking plants 15%. Even so-called baseload coal plants run on average only 54% of the time. If technology is cheap, and demand or supply are intermittent, we overbuild. Wind and solar are no different.

      Cripes. I didn't know that even baseload coal runs so infrequently. From the public discourse you'd assume it was 24/7

    5. economic drag caused by resource waste

      I've never heard of this, but I assume it's basically shifting from saying "we'd grow faster if only we had another two power stations" to "we'd grow faster if we used energy create the effect of having two more power stations of useful energy"

    1. THE DESIGN OF BROWSING AND BERRYPICKING TECHNIQUES FOR THE ONLINE SEARCH INTERFACE by Marcia J. Bates

      Seminal paper on how we navigate online with search

    1. Starting with a small cohort, we’ll refine the patterns and practices that sustain learning. We will see case studies of how the organizing model is made locally relevant. Globally, we will be a large peer learning community. And we’ll also have smaller, local peer learning communities connected and experimenting in a place.

      This is very applicable in CAT. Get a small core to make the ground game.

      lol… ground CATs

    2. For our community that teaches the web, we understand ourselves as participating in i) a global network and ii) a local context.

      What is the narrative for CAT like this?

    1. The general argument I see in this paper is largely:

      • most companies end up reporting CO2 emissions from energy use misleadingly, because the standards allow them to claim credit using a financial instrument that's not proven to be very effective.
      • worse, reporting like this causes double counting elsewhere, as other companies rely on an average figure that doesn't take into account these RECS
    2. However, to be accurate and relevant, GHG inventories must reflect the emissions caused by the reporting entity. The fundamental issue with the contractual method is that it does not represent any causal relationship between the reporting entity and the emissions reported.

      OK, so this is little bit like, like how a lagging indicator, reported at a low enough resolution won't provide enough of a signal to actually drive changes in behaviour for an org or team

    3. The distinction between attributional and consequential GHG accounting is well understood in some fields, such as life cycle assessment (LCA), but much less so in the area of corporate GHG accounting, which has traditionally used attributional accounting (Brander et al., 2015).

      Attribution and consequential accounting. Need to research these phrases

    4. However, in reality, contractual emission factors represent a market failure, because the implied goal (actual reduction of emissions to the atmosphere) is in fact not delivered by contractual emission factors (as discussed in Section 2), and therefore the approach has only the appearance, and not the substance, of a market-based solution.

      Eep.

    5. Further, for Company A's use of contractual emission factors not to lead to double-counting of the claimed renewable attributes, the method requires all other reporting entities to also apply a ‘residual grid mix’ emission factor. As this emission factor would be higher than the grid average, due to removing some renewable generation from the calculation, Company B's performance is again made to look worse, although its actual contribution to reducing emissions is greater than Company A's.

      So if they claiming the market based figures here, the avg figures on the grid would need to look dirtier, for everyone else, but it doesn't.

    6. Electricity generation accounts for approximately 25% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, with more than two-thirds of this electricity consumed by commercial or industrial users

      Two thirds comes from industry - useful figure when talking smart meters in the home

    7. This issue is highly topical as recently published reporting guidance from the GHG Protocol (WRI, 2015) has endorsed the market-based approach, while the forthcoming update of ISO 14064-1 for corporate GHG inventories provides an opportunity to establish a more robust approach.

      This was last year. I wonder if the guidance has been watered down, or made stronger.

      Recent reporting suggests not.

    8. The GHG Protocol's Scope 2 Guidance, published in 2015, requires that companies use both the locational grid average method and the market-based method to report scope 2 emissions (i.e. dual reporting). However, the guidance also allows companies to choose a single method for meeting their reduction targets and for reporting their supply chain emissions (WRI, 2015). The same guidance has been adopted by CDP, formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP, 2016a).

      This doesn't seem clear. This means that for reporting, they need both - if this is the case then companies that publish only one are basically not following the guidance properly.

    9. Moreover, in many countries the amount of renewable generation is increasing due to the other drivers, such as government subsidies (IEA, 2016b), and therefore the point at which additionality might be achieved (i.e. beyond Q1) is continually advancing further beyond the reach of voluntary market demand for contractual emission factors.

      So, they're changing anyway, and the RECs don't have much impact.

    10. ET Index Research data, which includes 2000 of the world's largest listed companies, shows 97 companies using the market-based accounting method to report lower emissions, equating to 22.2 million tCO2e/yr.2 This approximates to ~ 1% of globally available renewable electricity generation in 2015,3 and therefore demand for contractual emission factors would need to increase a hundred-fold to reach the existing supply threshold for renewable attributes (which is continually increasing anyway), and only once above that threshold would demand cause a fractional increase in renewable generation.

      We're massively under reporting corporate CO2 emissions from energy use, and the majority of companies are basically hiding the real figures

    1. New School’s Digital Equity Lab

      I had no idea this existed! Greta sounds like a cool cat

    2. Chris Adams, a web designer and climate activist in Berlin, tells me he thinks a green internet must be free of advertising. “Ninety percent of a web page being ads requires servers, and those servers are taking electricity, and that electricity is generated by burning coal,” he says. Adams has written that the European site for USA Today is a model of efficiency. It removed all of its tracking scripts and ads to be compliant with recent General Data Protection Regulation legislation in the European Union. The site size immediately shrank from 5 megabytes to 500 kilobytes, but it still basically looks the same—there are just no ads.

      I don't think the internet should be free of all advertising, and I have never said this. I'm not sure it CAN be.

      That said, not all advertising is equal - some is really scummy, invasive stuff that can get in the sea, but to say I think this feels like a reach.

    1. Describing the move as an industry first, Repsol said it wanted to lead a wider transition to renewable energy, in line with the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement to avert catastrophic climate change.

      Oil companies are getting out of oil, and still people frame access to energy in terms of getting cheap out the ground oil.

    2. Giving extra impetus to its new goals, Repsol will link at least 40% of managers’ long-term variable pay to its emissions reduction targets.

      HOLY BISCUITS

    1. Build on narrative that integrates the two approaches, probably building oncircularity (be part of the coming standard) and efficiency of services (e.g. theexample of interface not knowing their impact in services besides havingenvironmental product declarations for all their products).

      Key thing. Inward sustainability focus misses the big picture

    Annotators

    1. In short, Nordhaus, who is mentioned both in my 2007 and 2012 pieces, tells us not to worry too much about climate change. It will be cheaper to adapt to it than to prevent it or slow it down.

      Oh jeez, so THIS is where that adaptation vs mitigation meme came from. In the context of what research gets funded, why he got the Nobel prize is making more sense now.

    1. Basically, all services in public administration will moveinto the cloud, which means that a huge amount of data will be digitalised. This has huge implications forthe security of the data (which can quickly translate into national security matters). Most of the services are now provided by companies outside Europe, which raises questions aboutdata sovereignty, ownership, transpar-ency, etc. Also, as recently proposed by Germany (GAIA-X project), the European Union should re-gard the cloud as a critical infrastructure which should be developed within Europe.

      eeep

    Annotators

    1. Almost a third of UK boards (32%) feel little or no responsibility for the climate crisis, according to a global survey of 640 chairs and non-executive directors by recruitment firm Harvey Nash and London Business School’s Leadership Institute.

      😬

  8. Nov 2019
    1. The emissions from onereturn ticket from London to New York are roughly equivalent to that of heating a typical home in the EU for a whole year (European Commission, 2019).

      Holy balls. I've never seen it compared in those terms before.

    1. Those instances of decoupling that can be observed (like the UK or Germany in past years) result mainly from deindustrialisation and the outsourcing of energy-intensive industrial production to other countries.

      I haven't found a good rebuttal to this. I'd love to find one.

    1. energyusage.evaluate(exp, 10)

      So, you work out the figures by passing the function and the params for it.

    1. The questions within this Guide are organized into three relevant impact areasto assist with this evaluation: EnvironmentalPractices and Policiesof the Cloud Service Providers; Data Center Facility Management and Equipment; and Data Center Power Sources.

      So, basically:

      • policy
      • how they provision capacity
      • how they source power
    2. In the Fallof 2017, GECsponsored an Arizona State University(ASU) graduate capstone project that foundthatCloud Service Providers’publicly available sustainability data was limited,and that thesustainabilitymetrics and terminology used by those providers wereinconsistent and confusing. The ASU research findings assisted in thedevelopment of this Guide.

      So, basically every group say it's a trainwreck right now, transparency-wise.

    3. We meet our mission by supporting institutional purchasers in leveraging their purchasing power forsustainableproductsand servicestoadvance the market for those products.

      Procurement as a lever, then.

    1. easyJet’s aircraft carbon emissions in the 2018 financial year were 7.6 million tonnes, compared to 7.1 million tonnes in the 2017 financial year. easyJet’s calculation of emissions is based on fuel burn measurement, which complies with the EU’s Emissions Trading System requirements.

      7.1m in a year in 2018. That's about 3 and a half Googles.

    1. More figures extracted from the EURECA project, 2018. 40% of servers in public sector data centres were over 5 years old. These performed 7% of compute but used 66% of power.

      Wow, that's a stat.

    2. UK Government departments are required to report energy usage and explain how they are reducing their respective carbon footprints and this obligation to understand and report scope 3 emissions is likely to become more widespread, given UK government commitments to climate change targets and increasing observance of UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It is also a requirement of the Science Based Targets methodology.

      Ah, it's a requirement of the Science Based Targets methodology. So any company signing this will need to ask the questions.

    Annotators

    1. or

      So OR is important. If you're an EU citizen and self employed and working, you have the right to stay.

      Even if you're an EU citizen, and not working, as long as you have enough money to support yourself, you have the right to stay.

    2. The right of residence provided for in paragraph 1 shall extend to family members who are not nationals of a Member State, accompanying or joining the Union citizen in the host Member State, provided that such Union citizen satisfies the conditions referred to in paragraph 1(a), (b) or (c).

      OK, so the folks at the Auslandeborde basically lied to our faces. Jeez, all this stress the last few weeks.

    1. Amazon's carbon intensity metric, measured as grams carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) per dollar of Gross Merchandise Sales (GMS), equals 128.9 g CO2e per dollar (USD).

      My guess is that AWS's emissions per unit of spend will be lower. Reporting only market based emissions makes it hard to tell how much energy is really in use, but for e-commerce companies, more than half the CO2 comes from delivery.

    1. For example, spending on parcel delivery by third-party carriers is mapped to the couriers and messengers sector (i.e., 224 grams of CO₂e per dollar) and shipping boxes are mapped to paperboard container manufacturing (i.e., 807 grams of CO₂e per dollar).

      This makes me think there's a figure for the use of AWS itself too.

    1. However, the table and figure below both use 2012 datapublished in 2014for all three different approaches to reporting emissions.

      Basically, embedded emissions are 10-20% more than the UK environmental account ones

    2. Embedded emissions3”, published by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)–these measureemissions on a “consumption” basis, and take account of the emissions embedded within the manufactured goods and services which the UK imports and exports.

      AHhh! this sounds like the thing that would be ideal if it was on a per sector basis.

  9. Oct 2019
    1. If the current de-velopments determined by Borderstep continue, the energy consumption of data centers will double by 2030 compared to today.

      So, doubling from today assumes around 700 kWh in 2030

    2. While Shehabi et al. assume that maximum power consumptionis constant[4], the Borderstep model assumes an increase in maximum power consumption due to a significant increase in the average amount of RAMs and multiprocessor systems.

      Ah! That makes sense - a big load out in a server, with loads of cores and RAM is deffo gonna make it need more juice.

    3. According to a Borderstep Instituteestimate, worldwide energy consumption of server data centers increased by about 30% to 287 billion kWh between 2010 and 2015 [9]. This in-crease accelerated once again in the last two years. A current TEMPRO project estimate concludes that between 2015 and 2017 theenergy consumption of data centers worldwide in-creased by approx. 20% to 350 billion kWh

      By comparison, the IEA figures generally say energy use has stayed around 200 kWh in 2020.

    4. The analyses and results presented in this article were pro-duced as part of the project TEMPRO –"Total Energy Man-agement for professional data centers." TEMPRO is supported through the 6th Energy Research Programme of the German FederalGovernment.

      Are there similar studies in other countries?

    Tags

    Annotators

    1. Online video viewing, which represents 60% of the world’s data traffic, generated more than 300 MtCO2e during 2018, i.e. a carbon footprint comparable to the annual emissions of Spain

      This here is the stat I link in this talk:

      http://bit.ly/fest-maint-reduce-carbon

      As far as I can tell, it's using the 1bit model from the shift project. Other methodologies give different examples, but it's at least documented.

    1. “The horror of climate change isn’t in the intrinsic violence of hurricanes or heat waves, but in the ways societies choose to deal with and prepare for them.”

      This quote. wow.

    1. Taking into account the global electricity mix, the share of greenhouse gas (GHG)emissions attributable to the Digital era would thereforeincrease from 2.5% in 2013 to 4% in 2020(2.1 Gt)

      This is the figure for Sal.

    1. ⁴ Amazon reports emissions according to the GHG Protocol’s “market-based” method, which accounts for renewable energy Amazon purchases to support its operations.

      Market based then.

    1. MORFBEATS Where art meets sound

      These are the horror music devices

  10. Sep 2019
    1. GHG EMISSIONS WITH RENEWABLEENERGY PURCHASES

      ~1.2m with market based adjustments

    2. GHG EMISSIONS WITHOUT RENEWABLEENERGY PURCHASES

      4.9 without market based adjustments

    3. Our carbon footprint

      Before offsetting, but after market based emissions, it's about 1.2m tonnes of CO2

    1. It derives emission factors from contractual instruments, which include any type of contract between two parties for the sale and purchase of energy bundled with attributes about the energy generation, or for unbundled attribute claims. Markets differ as to what contractual instruments are commonly available or used by companies to purchase energy or claim specific attributes about it, but they can include energy attribute certificates (RECs, GOs, etc.), direct contracts (for both low-carbon, renewable, or fossil fuel generation), supplier-specific emission rates, and other default emission factors representing the untracked or unclaimed energy and emissions (termed the “residual mix”) if a company does not have other contractual information that meets the Scope 2 Quality Criteria

      Blimey, this could be much more than using RECs.

    2. Not having contractual data for every site will not cause noncompliance with the GHG Protocol Corporate Standardand Scope 2 Guidance

      This is how amazon can still pass the audit. It's not strictly necessary, but it's a bit sneak to not do it. Amazon, after the using instruments to make it look like it uses less electricity, appears have had used a similar amount to google did, before, google applied their own market based methods.

    3. Companies with any operations in markets providing product or supplier-specific data in the form of contractual instruments shall report scope 2 emissions in two ways and label each result according to the method: one based on the location-based method, and one based on the market-based method. This is also termed “dual reporting.”

      So, here's the thing. You really should report both figures, as it gives an idea of the impact of the different instruments in use, like purchasing renewable energy credits, and so on.

      If you report location based, it at least shows how much electricity you might be using, before the market based approach of buying RECs or similar brings the figure right down.

      If you don't know what market based instrument a company is using, you have no idea if they're using some skanly RECs bought in some rando part of the world, to give artificially low figures.

    1. there will also be a smaller event in 2019 as part of the Dutch Design Week programme, a Service Design Challenge for social design based on a real-life challenge on Saturday October 26.

      Okay, this is worth keeping an eye on

    2. Many large organisations have embedded service design standards and methods into their corporate procedures — such as Transport for London — reflecting a significant increase in their internal capacity.

      Oh, I did NOT know this. Cool

    1. In a perfect CE the residence time of a unit of material in thetechnosphere would be indefinite.

      technosphere presumably means, in use?

    2. At the same time, due to the higher specific GHG intensity of alu-minum, the GHG emissions of vehicle manufacturing would increase toenable life cycle savings in future years

      So this is what the chart is showing. lightweighting makes the production phase more carbon intensive, to make the use phase lower

    3. Monitoring and managing the de-velopment of in-use stock is thus central to the transition to a morecircular socioeconomic metabolism, which is why a separate stock ca-tegory is part of the dashboard.

      so it's like limited WIP, but for steel

    Annotators

    1. When we purchase solar and wind energy, we use the GHG Protocol’s market-based method to demonstrate how renewable energy purchases—from Amazon Wind Farm Texas, for example—reduce our consumption of grid electricity.9

      this is new to me.

    2. Amazon Devices: We developed a specialized carbon footprint model to address the complexity of the manufacturing, use, and end-of-life of Amazon devices, including Echo devices, Kindle e-readers, Fire Tablet, Fire TV, Ring, Blink, and all others. This starts at the component level—including where components are sourced and how they are manufactured into products—and extends to customers’ use of the product and the eventual product end-of-life.

      Okay, and these here sound like bespoke models like you might make using AMEE

    3. Financial: We combine data on Amazon’s spending with industry-specific, dollar-based emissions factors (e.g., a standard amount of carbon dioxide pollution associated with every dollar of spending on a particular activity). We use this model to capture carbon emissions from activities like the construction of Amazon buildings, the manufacturing of Amazon’s Private Brands products, equipment used in our warehouses, office supplies, and other purchased goods and services.

      And this here sounds like they're using an input/output based approach like industrial ecologists are doing.

    4. Our approach to quantifying our carbon footprint reflects the complexity of our business. Our team of researchers and scientists have combined cutting-edge life cycle assessment (LCA) science and Amazon Web Services (AWS) big data technology to develop a robust software solution that processes billions of operational and financial records from Amazon’s operations across the world to calculate our carbon footprint. The software estimates carbon emissions for all activities within our system boundary using a dollar-based environmental assessment model, then enhances the accuracy of carbon-intensive activities with detailed, process-based LCA models.

      This sounds a lot like a top down approach as outlined by systems like Ecocost or Trucost, then supplemented with bottom up modelling of specific processes

    1. The Panoply, a Code of Conduct that encompasses environmental and ethical standards.

      This links results in a 404 file not found message right now.

    2. “It’s pretty easy to decarbonise,” says Adams. “We’re just not doing it fast enough right now.”

      Oh wow, without the rest of the sentence, this sounds really out of context.

      It's HARD to decarbonise in general (steel, shipping, aviation for example are all really tough) but tech by comparison has it easy.

      Cloud and IT services are much simpler to decarbonise than the other sectors, partly because our experience of a site doesn't really change depending whether it's running on green power or not.

    1. While in some parts of the world, you can buy power from a company that only sells renewable power, there are other parts of the world where the grid is regulated to the point that you don’t even have choice of supplier – if they burn coal, and you need to run a server in that part of the world, there’s no other option. Elsewhere, there may be places where company A sells renewable power, but also sells the fact that energy has been generated with renewable power separately, so that another company B, can buy this credit, and then say they use green power, even if the supplier they use is relying on fossil fuels to generate electricity for their servers .
    1. I was given new language that helped described my own personal experiences of how care services (for example) are often designed for the individual when in fact they need to be designed for the system, unit or in systems coaching language, ‘the third entity.’ The Third Entity is that which lives outside the individuals in a particular relationship system whether a work team, family, community or society at large.

      the third entitiy is the outer ring

    1. Purchase green power certificates. In July 2017, China launched a pilot program that permits voluntary trade of green power certificates from solar and wind power. Each certificate represents 1 MGh of electricity. Buying green power certificates allows companies to claim environmental benefits associated with renewable energy generation, even if electricity from a renewable power plant does not feed directly into a data center facility.

      Oh, wow, they do RECS too now? I wonder if they publish them too

    2. 196.96

      this forecast is almost the same as the IEA's earlier report for global demand for energy from datacentres

    1. 194

      This basically says that efficiency gains, mainly from cloud, are holding back absolute growth in energy use.

  11. Aug 2019
    1. Much of this will be lost if the quiet time and ability to think independently is taken away, and if, in particular, the discussion portion is lost.

      quiet time is disrupted when people are writing into the same mutually visible section of a google doc, or mural for example.

    2. act and influence

      There's a deliberate decision not to talk about the things you have no control over right now

    3. Everyone can vote all at once. Are the consequences positive, negative, or both?

      Okay, this is useful prompt, rather than just saying "what are the good things, and are the bad things?"

    4. A copy of your company’s vision, mission and values

      This is good to mention, based on an earlier run through we did.

    Annotators

    1. This is where the insight from Web IDL comes in. When you squint at it, Web IDL kind of looks like an IR.

      wow, this is much more ambitious than I first realised

    1. The energy consumption of ICT equipment in times of low utilization is still a big issue, even if the 2019 ecodesign regulation on servers and storage products will lower the idle consumption.

      ecodesign regulation? what is the equiv outside of yurp?

    2. Server utilization has long been an important issue, as many servers are often idle and although they do not do any work, they still consume power

      what is typical utilisation here?

    3. For 5G mobile radio it is already clear that the energy consumption per GB will be considerably lower than in previous generations,

      Why would this be?

    Annotators

    1. While this is absolutely true, if you care about performance, you should be running your own content from a CDN already. With the price of modern hosting solutions being what they are (this site is fronted by Cloudflare which is free), there’s very little excuse for not serving your own assets from one.

      You can run a CDN without needing to have a different origin to download from

    2. In short, although nice in theory, there is no evidence that cross-domain caching is in any way effective.

      Useful to know. Goes against common assumptions

    1. In DynamoDB, tables, items, and attributes are the core components that you work with. A table is a collection of items, and each item is a collection of attributes. DynamoDB uses primary keys to uniquely identify each item in a table and secondary indexes to provide more querying flexibility.

      A-ha! Wow, it's JUST like Redis. I had no idea!

    1. If you’re part of an existing climate campaigning group, think of how you can participate in or help organise around September 20 to keep the momentum going. Link your action explicitly to the school strikes (“We’re doing this because we’re answering the call of the striking students, and taking action”).
    1. Stronge said the reason most people are not aware of these failures is because the whole industry is designed with it in mind. Companies that rely heavily on undersea cables spread their data across multiple routes, so that if one goes down, customers are not cut off.

      okay, so part of the statement, in Maddie's piece about not being exposed by a falling cable is more than bluster

    2. with many in recent years being funded by internet giants such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Amazon

      So, does FANG own these too?

    1. At least one telecommunications company is now explicitly planning for future climate disruptions. Earlier this year AT&T partnered with Argonne National Labs to build a “Climate Change Analysis Tool,” which Chief Sustainability Officer Charlene Lake told Gizmodo will allow the company “to visualize the risks of sea-level rise—at the neighborhood level and 30 years into the future—so we can make the adaptations that are necessary today in order to help ensure resilience.” Lake added that AT&T is also piloting the tool for high winds and storm surges, and in the future plans to incorporate other climate impacts, like drought and more severe wildfires.

      Is this public? It seems like a public version of this would bring action more quickly - if you can see your supply chain will be underwater you're gonna want to speak to them

    1. Memory safety is a property of programming languages where all memory access is well defined. Most programming languages in use today are memory-safe because they use some form of garbage collection. However, systems-level languages (i.e., languages used to build the underlying systems other software depends on, like OS kernels, networking stacks, etc.) which cannot afford a heavy runtime like a garbage collector are usually not memory-safe.

      OK, so the garbage collector imposes a large overhead here

    1. The current rise of eco-minded white supremacy follows a direct line from the powerful attorney, conservationist and eugenicist Madison Grant – a friend of trees, Teddy Roosevelt, and the colonial superiority of white land stewardship. Grant, along with the influential naturalist John Muir and other early Anglo-Saxon conservationists, was critical in preserving the country’s wildlands for white enjoyment. Muir, who founded the Sierra Club environmental group in 1892, was disturbed by the “uncleanliness” of the Native Americans, whom he wanted removed from Yosemite. Grant successfully lobbied, in equal measure, for the creation of protected national parks and the restriction of immigration by non-whites.

      SHEESH

    1. Control Center for Offset Earth

      Metrics showing how many people are subscribing, and so on.

    1. Unfortunately, as I understand, AWS Event Bridge does not support CloudEvents for the time being. Though of course it may change. For example Azure Event Grid suppports CloudEvents, beside its own proprietary schema.

      Cloud Events as a standard/convention for multi cloud triggers. I didn't know this existed.

    1. InnovationThis ice-making submarine would pop out bergs to help fight climate changeThe proposed vessel would ply polar waters, but scientists have their doubts about its effectiveness.
  12. Jul 2019
    1. If you are an individual working, or planning to work, in this industry, then by signing your declare you won’t work on fossil fuel clients. No one is policing you or checking up, this is a promise to yourself.

      Explicit about the monitoring here.

    2. If you lead an agency, by signing you promise to disclose your turnover by sector, and highlight any climate conflicts. Check the Client Disclosure Reports on this site to see what we mean. Your deadline is end 2019 to disclose.

      Simple, explicit. Disclose turnover by sector, they have an example.

    3. Our the ultimate goal is to divest creative talent from destruction.

      This is some good wordsmithery

    1. The backend data repository is based on MySQL. Therepository contains 16 tables that captures the varioussource information described above. The current size of therepository (excluding the real-time data) is 92 MB.

      100mb for all the data, mapping all that infra?

    2. Provider maps often contain additional information aboutnetwork node resources. This information can range from lo-cation (potentially down to Lat/Lon coordinates), to IP ad-dresses, to resource or service types. Our ability to extractnetwork node information from the discovered resources isdependent on an assembly of scripts that include Flash-based extraction and parsing tools [3], optical characterrecognition parsing tools [7], PDF-based parsing tools [8],in addition to standard text manipulation tools. This li-brary of parsing scripts can extract information and enterit into database automatically. For instances where none ofthe tools or scripts are successful on the provider data, wemanually parse and enter the data.

      This sounds like an meaningful thing you could use OSM to augment, and the argument for doing it makes sense - "you like the internet right? So help map it, before you lose it"

    3. Visualization-centric representations often reveal no in-formation about link paths other than connectivity (e.g.,line-of-sight abstractions are common). For these we en-ter the network adjacency graph by hand into Atlas. How-ever, some maps provide highly detailed geographic layoutsof fiber conduit connectivity (e.g.,Level3 [5]). We transcribethese, maintaining geographic accuracy, into the Atlas us-ing a process and scripts that(i)capture high resolutionsub-images,(ii)patch sub-images into a composite image,(iii)extract a network link image using color masking tech-niques,(iv)project the link-only image into ArcGIS usinggeographic reference points (e.g.,cities), and(v)use linkvectorization in ArcGIS to enable analysis (e.g.,distanceestimation) of the links.

      So, it sounds like they're using some kind of computer viz to pull compare a set of tiles to some other image showing the infrastructure, to work out the rough coords to project onto a map

    4. In addition to Internet search, we appeal to the largenumber of existing Internet systems and publicly availabledata they provide. This includes PeeringDB [9], NetworkTime Protocol (NTP) servers, Domain Name System servers(DNS), listings of Internet Exchange Points (IXPs), Look-ing Glass servers, traceroute servers, Network Access Points,etc.Beyond their intrinsic interest, it is important to rec-ognize that NTP servers [6] often publish their Lat/Lon co-ordinates and are typically co-located with other network-ing/computing equipment. Similarly, DNS servers routinelypublish their location via the LOC record [18]. In total, over4,700 network resources of various types are annotated inthe Internet Atlas database.

      Okay, this is properly smart, and use pretty much all the data sources I would have thought to look at.

    5. Third, the de facto useof IP addresses gathered from TTL-limited probing cam-paigns as the basis for inferring structure has inherent diffi-culties. These include the well known interface disambigua-tion problem [26], widely varying policies on probe blockingamong providers, and difficulties in managing large scalemeasurement infrastructures [24]. We believe that a differ-ent approach to building and maintaining a repository ofInternet maps is required.

      So, this basically says traceroute by itself isn't enough

    1. Given the large number of nodes and miles of fiberconduit that are at risk, the key takeaway is thatdevelopingmitigation strategies should begin soon.

      So, I guess this would be a reasonable question to ask, right?

    2. To localize overlap we develop a Coastal Infrastructure Risk(CIR) metric that highlights the concentration of Internetinfrastructure per geographic location (e.g., city). The CIRmetric will be used to elucidate the impact of sea level riseon Internet assets temporally. Using CIR, we identify the top10 major geographic locations most at risk, and thus in needof action by municipalities and service providers to secureexisting deployments and plan for new deployments.

      Wow, this is equal parts fascinating and horrifying

    3. The firstis the communication fiber conduit and termination pointdata in Internet Atlas

      AH HA! THAT'S Where the data is from.

    4. We also quantify therisks to individual service provider infrastructures and findthat CenturyLink, Inteliquent, and AT&T are at highest risk.

      Would these show up in their SASB or Climate Risk Reporting (i..e Task Force on Climate Risk)

    5. In this paper we consider the risks to Internet infrastructurein the US due to sea level rise. Our study is based on sealevel incursion projections from the National Oceanic andAtmospheric Administration (NOAA) [12] and Internet in-frastructure deployment data from Internet Atlas [24]. Wealign the data formats and assess risks in terms of the amountand type of infrastructure that will be under water in dif-ferent time intervals over the next 100 years. We find that4,067 miles of fiber conduit will be under water and 1,101nodes (e.g.,points of presence and colocation centers) willbe surrounded by water in the next 15 years.
    1. incorporate suppliers with negative impacts on sustainability (identified in level 1) into the audit process as part of risk management.

      This seems to imply suppliers who can't disclose emissions would be seen as a risk in future

    1. Mark Parrington, a senior scientist at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast, said the amount of CO2 emitted by Arctic wildfires between 1 June and 21 July 2019 is around 100 megatonnes and is approaching the entire 2017 fossil fuel CO2 emissions of Belgium.

      Fuuuuuuuucking hell. The last 20 days of Arctic wildfires is the same as all the fossil fuel emissions from Belgium last year.

    1. provide a regularly refreshed set of minimum ICT sustainability provisions (including energy/carbon reporting)

      OK. Here's what I would ask to see in an FoI. I imagine any other organisation thinking about the emissions from digital services would also benefit from seeing these, as

      a) they're likely covered by the binding legal targets set for the UK b) I've spoken to a few asking me for some myself

    2. quantify and report on its e-waste and energy and carbon footprint of the digital and technology services used and their sustainability impacts

      So, this looks like a pretty explicit commitment to measure the carbon footprint of digital services to me.

      It seems like it might be FOI-able, as Paul suggested. Anyone?

    3. adopt an “e-conferencing facility first” approach/policy to meetings, seeking to positively impact reduction of journeys with a target of 40% reduction

      This is the first time I've seen explicit recommendations from a public sector org on this.

    1. KLM has stated it is against this type of national CO2 aviation tax, because it believes Dutch passengers would travel by car to neighbouring countries, and continue to fly from there. On the company’s website, it says: “A global approach makes more sense. If the tax is implemented, we believe that it should be invested in sustainability of the aviation industry. National taxes will just go into the national coffers and won’t do anything to combat climate change.”

      This sounds like a delaying tactic

    1. Integration with local cloud providers is also being carried out. In addition, unlike Kubernetes, which only allows you to optimize resources within an existing cluster, MELODIC allows you to dynamically add cloud resources as the application needs, as well as delete them when they are not needed

      This is a thing K8s can't do? I though the point was that you can add new nodes to a resource group.

    1. Having determined the most suitable (i.e. ‘greenest’) dat-acentre location, the program sends a request to the cloudKubernetes or IaaS management API to provision a ResourceGroup at that datacentre, then verifies that this was successful.Upon confirming the success of Resource Group creation arequest to provision a Kubernetes cluster is sent. Typically,a new cluster takes around 10 minutes to provision and forthe credentials to be agreed upon9, and often an additionalminute or two for all of Kubernetes’s internal components tobe in a ‘Ready’ status.

      So, this presumably this is the collection of nodes you might drop pods into is they're particularly green when scheduling

    2. Secondly, electric energy is alsoconsumed during transmission over the network of any data(input to or results of computation), labeledEN(energynetwork). This energy consumption is proportional to thevolume of data transferred [49]. Finally, there is a ramp-upoverhead from deploying the Kubernetes service in the targetlocationER.

      Oh wow, so this scheduler takes into account the cost of shunting workloads into more distant but greener areas?

      That's clever.

    3. This,coupled with Kubernetes’s support for extendability and plug-ins makes Kubernetes the most suitable for which to develop aglobal scheduler and bring about the widest adoption, therebyproducing the greatest impact on carbon emission reduction.

      Okay, this IS interesting. Improving this makes in possible to improve ALL the k8s installs

    4. Hasan et al. discuss green cloud computing from a businesscloud user’s perspective: companies may choose to specifya requirement for green energy usage in their Service LevelAgreements (SLAs) with cloud computing providers [28]. Inthe paper they extend the Cloud Service Level Agreement(CSLA) language in order to incorporate two new thresholdparameters that ensure that more environmentally sustainablepolicies are adhered to.

      New language for me - Cloud Service Level Agreement

    5. ‘Green geographic load balancing’ was also used in apaper by Islam et al. [24]; however, this was with the aimof rationing water consumption in datacentres rather thanreducing carbon emissions. This is especially important duringperiods of drought, as experienced in California in recentyears

      Did not expect. Shifting workloads in DC to avoid worsening droughts

    1. The case studies highlight methods for increasing GPP through thorough evaluation of the cost and benefits of sustainable purchases and the engagement of the market in the tendering process. The life-cycle costing (LCC) approach to promote the mass purchase of energy-efficient, compact fluorescent lamps by Indian Railways was accompanied by an awareness campaign to demonstrate the ir economic benefits despite their high upfront cost

      I wonder if this is a vector for the Solar trains idea from @crisortunity...

    2. Given that ÖBB Infra’s annual investment expenditure amounts up to EUR 2 billion (approximately 1% of Austrian gross domestic product), procurement is deemed as an important lever for the development of sustainable economic operations throughout the enterprise, so as to reduce the consumption of energy and resources. A guidance note on sustainable procurement was published in 2011.

      These are the night train peeps

    3. According to the Act of 2005, state agencies should purchase green products and services for which the eco-label criteria exist. In 2012, there were about 870 umbrella organisations comprising about 30 000 subsidiary organisations subject to the Act of 2005. Green procurement can be made in two ways. Each organisation can directly purchase green products and services. If the total amount of purchase exceeds a certain threshold, the purchase is commissioned by the Korea Public Procurement Service (PPS), the central public procurement agency. Otherwise, each organisation can require contractors to purchase green products in delivering their services (e.g.construction, maintenance, repair and operation services) by including special conditions or green specifications in the contract.

      Wait they automatically need to prioritise green products over others? Did not expect.

    1. Argument maps can be structured as text but can also be produced as a specialised form of mindmap

      argument maps exist? wow

    2. Using structured questions (for instance, a series of yes/no questions related to the area of theassembly), software such as pol.is can be used to identify ​different clusters of opinions​ . Thismeans the assembly can be presented with the different kinds of views that are present, without alarge number of people who have been mobilised for one category artificially dominating theagenda.

      so this makes it clear that loads of opinions come from one group rather than it looking like an artificial consenus

    3. Potential uses are divided into three broad areas covering the use of digital tools before, duringand after a Citizen’s Assembly.

      prep - bringing people in internal - facilitating external - sharing products

  13. greening.oecd.org greening.oecd.org
    1. 78% of the total emissions reported in 2017 was linked to air travel.

      WAAAAAAAT

    1. CHÔRA is a space of intense creative and entrepreneurial activities and effects, and InnoSPACES are different from the standard “garage”-like innovation labs and accelerators on account of the distinctly strategic nature of this context of activities: the level of intelligence, of sollicitations, of contaminations and fertilisations and the febrile intensity with which they are pursued mean that the InnoSPACES enjoy a uniquely privileged context in which to operate and generate value.

      SO my reading here is that this InnoSpace is essentially a well run coworking space, with explicit provision of specialist services to the people in the program

    2. The primary effect of Users accessing the Capability is to design and activate Options and use them to articulate Portfolios

      So, in digital terms, build collections of useful products in there org

    3. It is a design principle of CHÔRA that Founders should not be exclusive owners of the system, but rather that ownership should evolve to adequately represent engagement, which could occur by establishing rights of ownership accrued through terms of usership

      ok, so this interesting, and acknowledges that you need more than founders, if say… you're talking about growing a space of companies, NGOs etc.

    4. The flat image that Platform carries is a semantic legacy of the “grounded” meeting place that markets used to be, a legacy that has recently been reduced into the “motherboardness” of technology platforms and of technology enabled two sided match-making exchanges.

      JEEEZ

    5. Robust Strategic Arguments articulate and support new intents, determine strategic commitments, allocate resources and effectuate innovation

      Okay, so this is a bit like an investment thesis, or an underlying world view that would inform activity. I think

    6. The core activity that the Capability enables is the design of Strategic Options and the dynamic management of Strategic Portfolios

      Okay, now we're talking. This talk of strategic options reminds me of the black swan chat about options in product management

      http://blackswanfarming.com/product-development-payoff-asymmetry/

    Annotators

    1. This requires a molecular approach to the generation of scale and the production of impact effects, and a system capability to generate the internal fastening, a sap that nourishes and holds together the elements, the liquid binding that enables intermolecular bonds to occur and build scale and density.

      ?

    2. The deliberate design of cross-fertilising effects, of exchange and integrated outcomes is what ultimately builds up to a core density of assimilated experiences, and it is at this stage that the system will begin to generate scaling and exponentially growing outcomes.

      so far, the key diff seems to having projects talk to each other more, and try to share what they learn so patterns are revealed quickly. this doesn't seem all that new

    3. It is an effect of dynamic accrual, of a pelleting that produces an organic thickening, a coming together around attractors, a scaling up through molecular composition of the forms with which we seek impact effects

      ?

    Annotators

    1. And what happened when they started building this line was that the farmers got so upset and once again I mean this is exactly what we saw in Arkansas, felt that they were being taken advantage of, felt that they were being taken for granted, that their land wasn't valuable and he leads a mini revolt. I mean he literally took his tractor and ran over some of the tribox and they surveying equipment and the people came out, chasing people off, was arrested for that. And this protest movement grew and grew and to the point where there was a winter where several of the new lattice steel towers were toppled and hundreds of glass insulators shot out.

      Waaaat. So we've seen people attacking infra before in the states

    1. urkhardt and her colleagues used a computer model of the atmosphere to estimate how much warming contrails caused in 2006 – the latest year for which a detailed air traffic inventory is available – and how much they will cause by 2050, when air traffic is expected to be four times higher.

      I wonder what the radiative forcing figures might be for 2020?

    1. The noise issue remains, and Boom estimates of 1,000 to 2,000 orders (versus 14 Concordes), assume the plane won’t initially be able to operate over land.

      Oh wow, it's still really loud too?

  14. Jun 2019
    1. Recruit enough volunteers to staff all waste stations throughout facility during heavy traffic times; goal of 250 volunteers for waste bins throughout the event

      Wow. Staffing the waste stations?

    2. Use sustainability clauses in all hotel contracts

      What do these look like?

    3. 50% GreenLeader certified hotels

      Presumably this?

      https://www.tripadvisor.com/GreenLeaders

      You can't seem to filter a search based on this.

    4. No red meat at any catered event, concession and not available on menu

      So, this was in Atlanta, at a 15k person conference.

    5. 70% GMEGG audit participation for show management

      So, nearly 3/4 of the orgs paying to be there filled out the stats

    6. Collect and dispose of 99% of gaffing tape to avoid recycling stream contamination

      Never really thought of the difficulty of recycling gaffer tape, but…

    7. Increase carbon offset program to $15 and provide backstory in registration of what project we are supporting for a stronger message to attendee

      So they deliberately had it in, or people had control over whether they took part or not?

    8. Emission factors for electricity consumption at venues were obtained from EPA eGRID V1.0 (2010 Data)

      Given the decarbonisation of the energy grid since 2010, these are likely overestimates now, as coal comes off the grid

    9. reported by hauler

      ok. so this would involve getting these stats from the commercial waste provider for the venue