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Excess memes and ‘reply all’ emails are bad for climate, researcher warns (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 2 months ago by gytrash@feddit.uk to c/climate

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"... research has now found that the vast majority of data stored in the cloud is “dark data”, meaning it is used once then never visited again. That means that all the memes and jokes and films that we love to share with friends and family – from “All your base are belong to us”, through Ryan Gosling saying “Hey Girl”, to Tim Walz with a piglet – are out there somewhere, sitting in a datacentre, using up energy..."

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[–] zerakith@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

This is a consistent misunderstanding problem I wish people understood.

Manufacturing things creates emissions. It costs energy and materials. Something could have absolutely no emissions in usage and still be problematic when done on growing scales because the manufacture costs energy emissions and resources. Hard drives wear out and die and need replacing. Researchers know how to account for this its a life cycle assessment calculation they aren't perfect but this is robust work.

IT is up to 4% of global emissions and the sector is growing. People consistently act as if there is no footprint to digital media and there is. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666389921001884

Yes the headline is a little silly but we actually do need think strategically about the sector and that starts by actually realising it has an impact and asking ourselves what are the priorities that we went to save whilst we decarbonise the industry that supports it.

There's no wiggle room left - no sector or set of behaviours that can afford to be given slack. We are in the biggest race of our life's and the stake are incomprehensibly huge.

[–] Telorand@reddthat.com 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I agree, but the key point of the story isn't IT in general as a growing problematic sector, it's specifically storage. IT is a broad category that can include a lot of different technological modalities (ICT according to that study you linked), but whinging about memes stored somewhere forgotten is pretty low on the list of practical concerns.

[–] zerakith@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 months ago

Yes I agree that the headline and article is silly to reference memes and undermines the study as a whole which seems more sound.

I know loads of people of take hundred of photos a day and then pay a cloud hoster (or use a "free" service) to store it indefinitely and never look back at it again.

Cloud storage isn't straight forwardly just hard storage because its kept in data centers such that it can be downloaded at any point.

Cloud storage is replacing any sense of needing a digital archivist processes for people and businesses because it much cheaper and easier to store it just in case the data is needed again rather than actually strategetically thinking about what data is important to keep and what isn't.