back to article Greenpeace calls out cloud names on green claims

In spite of claims that cloud computing is getting “greener”, Greenpeace has launched a campaign calling on Apple, Amazon and Microsoft to improve their performance. In its How green is your cloud? report, Greenpeace has also criticized the industry as a whole, saying that cloud providers and data centre operators need to be …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Pleeeeez get off our case

    Are'nt there some whales out there to save or some nuclear power plants or oil wells to tie yourselves to.

    PS For every down vote I'm going to cut a tree down :-)

  2. Don Mitchell

    Why do we care what Greenpeace thinks?

    Greenpeace: misanthropic, anti-growth, anti-technology, dogmatic, puritanical, zealous, upper-middle-class-white, romanitic pasturalists.

  3. Mussie (Ed)

    DIE HIPPY SCUM

    The sooner we poison the hippys lentel supply the better......

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Paris Hilton

      So much hate!

      Is El Reg the "Talk Radio" for techies?

      Stay tuned....

    2. h4rm0ny

      Re: DIE HIPPY SCUM

      It's spelt "lentils". And please don't confuse Greenpeace with real environmentalists. Greenpeace represent us about as well as the BNP represent the people of Britain. Yes, the names of both suggest otherwise. That's the idea.

    3. Armando 123
      Coat

      Re: DIE HIPPY SCUM

      Now now, without these people and their stereotype, would The Young Ones have been as funny? As such, I plan to release rattlesnakes in their HQ instead of hungry wolves and bears. Much more humane, although the wolves and bears might think twice about such smelly food.

      Mine's the one with the P.J. O'Rourke book in the right pocket

  4. Charles Manning

    Perhaps they should look in the mirror

    Greenpeace: Green? Peace?

    I was a GP paying supporter for 16 years. They did some fantastic stuff. They have lost their way.

    1. Armando 123

      Re: Perhaps they should look in the mirror

      Around the time the Berlin Wall fell, IIRC. It's like a lot of hippies and commies got caught with their politics round their ankles and had to take their idiot civilization- and technology-hating elsewhere. (I was living in Boulder, CO, when this happened; I saw it daily.)

  5. adrian sietsma

    To be fair, if company x says "we are as green as grass", that is meaningless without adequate metrics, and the report attempts to address that. It's worth a glance.

    quote :

    There have been increasing attempts by some

    companies to portray the cloud as inherently “green,”

    despite a continued lack of transparency and very

    poor metrics for measuring performance or actual

    environmental impact.

    And running telecoms on diesel generators is FAIL on so many levels.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Holmes

      "People need energy to do stuff" shocker

      "Running telecoms on diesel generators is FAIL on so many levels."

      How is that then?

      You may not have the luxury to have a gas turbine trucked in and connected to a large preexisting infrastructure or even power your hardware off a reliable electricity cable.

      Things that look like FAIL to well-pampered central europeans may make perfect economic and logistic sense elsewhere.

    2. Jellied Eel Silver badge
      FAIL

      reliable telecoms needs reliable power.

      "And running telecoms on diesel generators is FAIL on so many levels."

      oH NOES, brownout. Quick, cutover to the windmill. What do you mean there's no wind! Go to solar, now! Oh.. It's dark.

      Diesel gensets sales have been great because of renewables.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: reliable telecoms needs reliable power.

        @Jellied Eel

        That would be running them from Diesel generators, not using generators as a fallback power supply.

        1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

          Re: reliable telecoms needs reliable power.

          It's still about reliable power. The report cites India's diesel consumption, but India doesn't have reliable power or a very reliable grid. So telcos do the usual and install DC powered kit, batteries, rectifiers and gensets. Smoother power and fewer interruptions. We're getting the same situation in the UK. Cheap power is on interruptable contracts and if you have a datacentre anywhere near Stratford, you'd have been told already to expect interruptions. Olympic power is special, reserved power.

          Greenpeace is just doing more greenwash. It really hates ISO14001 EMS and is simply trying to repeat the scam they pulled with the FSC certification for timber. IaaS systems are fundamentally "greener" than much DIY IT because the system components can be more efficient, and operated at greater efficiency levels.

          And gas turbines are for wimps. My datacentre would be the one with a Core H PWR2, if I could buy it, and face the paperwork :p

      2. Armando 123

        Re: reliable telecoms needs reliable power.

        "Diesel gensets sales have been great because of renewables."

        That's why a friend bought stock in diesel companies. Right now places like Cummins, Komatsu, and Caterpillar can't make enough engines.

  6. Neoc

    I want to drink the blood of a Hippie

    ...An enema, not love, is what the world needs NOW!

    <with thanks to D*A*A*S>

  7. h4rm0ny
    Mushroom

    Nuclear

    If Greenpeace want cleaner energy (and that's a laudable goal), then they can stop being so bloody anti-nuclear.

    Mushroom cloud, because that's what the Greenpeace leadership think of when you say the word "nuclear".

    1. itzman
      Mushroom

      Re: Nuclear

      Tell them that some bunch of idiots is proposing to generate power from a totally unshielded nuclear reactor that has no waste control, no shielding and no plans to ever decommission that will kill 3000 people a year in the UK alone from radiation* and what are they going to do about it?

      And when they ask who these dangerous idiots are, tell them its 'Greenpeace, FoE and the renewables lobby'.

      *That is a pretty accurate description of the sun isn't it? Death rate from sun induced skin melanomas is about 3,000 a year.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Happy

        Re: Nuclear

        Your post reminds me of an excellent episode of "Penn and Teller's Bullsh*t" where they went to an enviromental festival and managed successfully to launch a campaign to ban "dihydrogen monoxide" which highlighted the lack of real knowledge of some enviromentalists.

        Some groups do very good work but legitimate work and issues can often be buried by less important but headline-grabbing issues and Greenpeace are becoming more and more gulity of that.

    2. ja
      Go

      Re: Nuclear

      Is there any energy source anywhere that has not been through a nuclear chain reaction somewhere ?

      Hydrogen, obviously but you need energy to separate it so you depend on nuclear directly or on wind or solar, which are caused by the sun (our giant fusion reactor) or fossil fuels which were originally created by photosynthesis (the sun).

      Nuclear is the ONLY energy source.

      http://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/graphics/icons/comment/go_32.png

      1. Armando 123

        Re: Nuclear

        "Is there any energy source anywhere that has not been through a nuclear chain reaction somewhere ?

        Hydrogen, obviously "

        I dunno, the big bang might qualify. And some hydrogen is produced as a byproduct of radioactive decay and fusion.

  8. Lazy Gun
    Stop

    Communists...

    ...don't you just hate them?

    Greenpeace was an environmental movement for about 5 minutes in the 1970s, now they, and the rest of the crooked "green" bastards, are nothing more than front organisations for the hard left.

    You don't need to read very hard between the lines of anything the "greens" say to discern their real agenda: the destruction of democracy and the free market. What the commies failed to achieve with tanks, they now want to achieve using lies about any and all aspect of the natural world.

    Nuke them from orbit - it's the only way to be sure.

  9. Josh 15

    Marxists...

    Expect to hear much more of this kind of drivel from 'green' NGOs in the run-up to the Rio+20 Earth Summit in June. Of course, behind it all lies Agenda 21, the UN-sponsored Marxist social/political experiment in 'wealth redistribution' and taking all developed economies to Hell in a hand-cart - but nobody mentions Agenda 21 (especially not the mainstream media). Look it up online. It's real, it's alive and it's coming to tax you for your evil, materialistic ways.

    Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Oxfam, WWF, etc. Shameless rent-seekers, all.

  10. Elmer Phud

    Blimey

    Have I stumbled across Fox News comments or sutin ?

    It's the 'fuck everybody - I want my porn' attitude that stinks.

    Everyone wants the benefits and would prefer to not hear about the costs.

    Or, rather, would prefer that the air looks like that of the permanent haze seen on TV at the Chinese Grand Prix - as long as it's 'there and not here'.

    Yup, fuck everyone else, I don't care.

    How that makes Greenpeace a bunch of Communists or Marxists I have no idea.

    Sarah Palin must love you lot.

    1. itzman

      Re: Blimey

      "Everyone wants the benefits and would prefer to not hear about the costs."

      That is an accurate summary of Greenpeace, yes.

      I have finally worked out a sort of rough working definition of what makes an Ecotard/Greentard.

      Their creed is based on the simple proposition that what you want is achievable if only you spend enough of someone else's money on it.

      We all in the end would like the same things.

      Some of us sadly know enough science physics and engineering and human psychology to know that we can't have it all, and just to get a little bit of it is hard enough. and most tellingly, of all, if we try and get it all the Greentard way, we will actually end up with *nothing whatsoever* of any value..

    2. Lazy Gun

      Re: Blimey

      @Elmer Phud:

      Greenpeace opposes, at every turn, economic progress. Without exception, wealthy countries are cleaner and exhibit far greater awareness of the environment, lower pollution levels etc.

      If you oppose economic growth, you therefore oppose improvements to the environment. Ergo, Greenpeace are environmental criminals who, by opposing growth and wealth creation, actually retard the cause of a cleaner environment.

      Simple economics, oh and a little thing called the truth, something you will not find in anything published or broadcast by the left/green f*ckwits.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Nuclear fusion

    Greenpeace lost the final shred or credibility with me after this comment on nuclear fusion in the link from el reg below.

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/22/fusion_greenpeace_no/

  12. Luther Blissett

    Common business oriented language

    Apple, Amazon, Microsoft... what's common? Global and distributed. No street presence. Monopolistic. Cash rich.

    The first three make it very difficult for the Greenpiece mafia to obtain the last item - which is what their game is. Their usual tactic of threatening adverse publicity campaigns in exchange for cash is not going to work well against companies whose products and services are globally demanded and whose utility is considered to exceed the value of brownie points self-awarded by not shopping with them. Despite being a global octopus, Greenpiece is just not as well organized - hence the current feeble bluster.

    Should we expect to hear Greenpiece shouting net-neutrality next?

  13. billse10
    Alert

    Confused report?

    I sort of felt a need to read the report before commenting. Got as far as page six before finding unsubstantiated abuse using undefined terminology. Pages one to four are cover sheets and contents pages: page five I admit I skipped based on a view that anything that's printed entirely in bold and entitled "Executive Summary" (aka "the Janet and John bit") just begs to be ignored.

    Page six: "rely heavily on dirty energy to power their clouds." - define 'heavily', define 'dirty'. No, too one-sided to do that. Then we have a company described as "first IT company to begin reporting its carbon intensity under the new Carbon Utilization Effectiveness (CUE) standard." - ignoring the minor detail that it's not a standard, it's a metric, the two being entirely different if one speaks the English language rather than Newspeak or 'propagandese'..

    Page seven is quite amusing: the entire "headline" column in the table (by which I mean the highlighted, leader column laid out on page such as to get attention) is based on estimates. That's just poor: either base it on facts, or don't include it in a report that's supposed to be taken seriously. Then we have "A and B were provided facility power demand estimates to review, both responded they were not correct, but neither provided alternative estimates" - well, pay them for their time, they might do so: demand co-operation from a negative and unrealistic position, why should they respond? [Unlike the report, I'll happily define terms - "negative" position is based on their use of undefined terms like 'dirty energy', which shows no open minds looked at this issue in the drafting of the report, and "unrealistic" is based on the fantasy that intermittent renewables are suitable base-load power).

    Somehow I managed to keep going a little further.

    It also quotes reports that are based on estimates, others published by Greenpeace themselves (that's just lazy), and manages to ignore 90% of the world's countries. Covers Germany, Ireland, Hong Kong SAR (although they forgot the SAR bit, which is a bit silly), Netherlands, Sweden and the US. No mention of China (as a whole), Japan, the whole of Eastern Europe and South America, skipped Africa, India, UK, France, the rest of Europe and Australia/NZ. - actually, the whole of the southern hemisphere. In other words, they've focused on places that are the best prospects for media coverage.

    I have a long train journey tomorrow: will try to read the rest, and if I find they clarify these points, explain the omissions, and apologise for the undefined terminology later on in the report then I will gladly retract this. Happily, almost : I object strongly to this being presented as a serious report - based on what I've read so far it clearly is not worthy of consideration as such if the first 10-20 pages are a fair reflection of the rest of the report - and I hope I'll be proven wrong when I read the rest of the paper. Important issues are opened to discussion by properly drafted and evidence- (not estimate- ) supported reports; both the IT industry and the generating companies can work together to address power-related issues and in both cases there are genuine reasons so to do. If the campaigning organisations (such as Greenpeace) genuinely want to see a reduction in the use of carbon-intensive power (such as coal), then they should support further research into reliable, base-load alternatives and stop asking for inordinately large subsidies for unreliable - i.e. non base-load - sources. Thorium-cycle nuclear (using waste from older reactors or from deactivated weapons, as well as new fuel) or pebble-bed would be interesting (and if those two could be combined that would be very much so), but perhaps more beneficial would be a serious effort into researching new storage technologies - funded by the companies receiving subsidies for intermittent power sources such as wind (putting a requirement on those companies to guarantee 24x7x52 base-load power in return for subsidies), or by simply diverting those subsidies to fund the research. At the very least they should accept that common sense dictates unreliable, intermittent power sources cannot provide 24x7 power, and contribute to an open-minded debate about base-load generation (with a positive contribution that does not include any unpredictable or intermittent source, and offers practical, technically feasible and properly costed options). That's a debate worth having; this report does not help make the case for such a debate.

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