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Greenpeace pushes Ballmer to intervene on climate

The efforts of climate activists to turn the CEOs of international IT megacorps into atmosphere-hugging greenies are having little impact, according to Greenpeace. The results of the pressure group's Cool IT Challenge (geddit?), released today, awarded IBM's Sam Palmisano and Sun's Jonathan Schwartz top spot among green IT …

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WinHatter
Thumb Up

M$ eco friendly

What ??? M$ wasting CPU cycles ... no way. Have a look at Vista, it is wasting CPU cycles, plastic cases, and most of all, because of the downgrade, the amount of CO2 I'm producing everyday fulminating against XP is massive.

Danny
Coat

Every real IT professional knows...

Real computers take in trees on one end and blow black smoke out the other!

Mine's the one with the "Advanced BOFH" manual in the pocket.

Wade Burchette
Black Helicopters

I could take them seriously if ...

I could take Greenpeace and other eco-nazis seriously if they had verifiable proof for climate change. If you ask the eco-nazis for proof, they shout insults at you and brand you as a climate heretic. Any true science would welcome debate. If the science is sound and proof available, it cannot be disproven. Only the faux sciences, like climate change and phrenology, suppress debate because any debate will expose them. Why doesn't Al Gore discuss the climate with those who disagree with him? Why does James Hansen refuse to disclose his algorithm for calculating global temperature? I'll tell you why, because Steve McIntyre will come along and quickly disprove it, like he did with Michael Mann's hockey stick. McIntyre at climateaudit.org found out that no matter what numbers you put in, a hockey stick always comes out.

CEO's must make the company money. Taking into account a sham and a lie is not in the interest of the company. Of course, if capitalism was no more ...

EdwardP
Flame

Bored of explaining it to people...

...so now I just point them to this:

Apocalypse? No!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5206383248165214524

Michael Hall
Jobs Horns

Leik wow!

Oooh while they are at it maybe they can help the worlds blood banks by squeezing blood from the worlds mountain ranges.

Don Mitchell

Pfft!

It's understandable that a political organism like Greenpeace wants to extend its influence and generate publicity. Computers and the internet are a big part of our economy and society now, and Greenpeace wants a piece of the action, and they want people to think they are important, even though the actual environmental impact of the software industry is relatively small compared to most other industries.

As for Vista or any operating system wasting cycles, that's nonsense. Anyone with a CPU usage widget knows that applications consume almost all the CPU and GPU resources.

Gerard Allwein

language

I think if we could encourage Ballmer to reduce his methane production, it would really save the planet.

Ken Hagan
Jobs Halo

Missing the point, as usual

"While governments across the globe are debating climate-saving policy, it is disappointing that innovative IT companies who stand to profit handsomely from tech solutions that reduce [greenhouse gases] are sitting on the fence when it comes to advocating for science-based greenhouse gas emissions cuts,"

Er, no. What's disappointing is that so-called 'green' organisations are wasting their time bullying the millions of consumers of electricity rather than effectively lobbying the few hundred producers and their governments. Asking the entire human race to voluntarily lower their energy consumption to levels last seen in the 19th century is not unadjacent to asking the entire third world to either stay dirt poor or perhaps even die off. It won't happen. On the other hand, switching to CO2-neutral forms of electricity generation and an infrastructure that plugs in rather than burning fuel is both economically and technically feasible.

If you are worried about global warming, choose nuclear next time you need to replace a power station and choose the electrical alternative next time you need to replace some infrastructure. By 2050, you'll find that there's bugger all left of that smelly fossil-fueled equipment cluttering up society and the national carbon footprint is less than half of what it is today. Since you didn't replace anything before its time, it won't have cost you much either. Actual energy consumption will almost certainly have risen, but that's not a problem if it is generated cleanly.

If you don't like that plan then you aren't terribly concerned about global warming.

St Steve icon because I so rarely get to use it, but he is innocent on this occasion.

Anonymous Coward
Happy

You guys

have so totally made this up. Haven't you? Is it April the first again?

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

Apple

No Apple. I guess having Al God on your board gives you infinity greenie points.

http://www.apple.com/pr/bios/gore.html

But then Al did invent the internet so he should really pick up all the bad karma for Google and all the internet connected PCs in the world.

Being a long-time Greenpeace supporter it saddens me that they've dropped their broad environmental focus and throwing so much effort into the "me too" global warming game.

Chewy

@Wade Burchette

But surely you should also provide evidence that it isn't happening?

As for Al Gore, I've no interest in listening to the "do as I say, not as I do" brigade which Prince Charles is a member of.

You also say that the job of a CEO is to make money, but this surely covers cutting costs and since energy is expensive it makes sense to waste less energy.

Colin Barfoot
Alien

our green overlords

IT workers of the world

the time has come for change.

With statistical algorithms gathering data from the web our intellectuals have proved that our program is correct: we cannot fail.

No Blog shall go unrecognized.

No Tweet shall remain insignificant.

No tide shall deny the Wiki-edit when commanded to turn.

If it is Wiki-said then so shall it be.

For is it not writ that the geek shall inherit the Earth?

From their netbooks and Macs the e-crowd shall shape the world in their image and IT workers shall be their kings.

* * * * * * * *

From Greenpeace's FAQ, "The global IT sector is in the unique position of being able to provide wide scale solutions needed to cut greenhouse gas emissions..."

Jim

@Ken Hagen

"Er, no. What's disappointing is that so-called 'green' organisations are wasting their time bullying the millions of consumers of electricity rather than effectively lobbying the few hundred producers and their governments."

Er, no. Electricty producers are in business to supply a demand. No matter how much lobbying you do to generators and governments, the bottom line is that demand has to be met or the supply collapses - a technical limitation of a grid based electricity distribution system. The only way to reduce demand is to encourage the user to use electricity more economically or less wastefully.

"Asking the entire human race to voluntarily lower their energy consumption to levels last seen in the 19th century is not unadjacent to asking the entire third world to either stay dirt poor or perhaps even die off."

Hmm. Your argument is a bit tenuous so why not just all-out lie? Greenpeace is not requesting anything of the sort. Maybe you should try reading their actual output rather than just relying on someone else's interpretation?

"If you are worried about global warming, choose nuclear next time you need to replace a power station and choose the electrical alternative next time you need to replace some infrastructure. By 2050, you'll find that there's bugger all left of that smelly fossil-fueled equipment cluttering up society and the national carbon footprint is less than half of what it is today."

By 2050, everyone will be panicking that there is no more U235 to put in those beautiful reactors and wondering why the thorium economy just hasn't happened. In the same way the plutonium economy never happened and technical failings were covered up by claiming that FBRs where a security risk - nothing to do with the fact they didn't actually work with breeding factors getting nowhere near the claimed 1.3 theory. Nuclear is a sort term strategy and effective waste management has been promised in 20 years, every 20 years since the 1940s.

As for the 'Cool IT Challenge', I just don't get it. I don't see a carrot and I don't see a stick so just how is pressure being applied to IT CEOs?

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