From our Swindon Correspondent:
Streaming online pornography produces the same amount of carbondioxide as Belgium, according to a new report by French think tank The Shift Project.
Researchers found that overall online videos emit 300 million tonnes of carbon each year and a third of this comes from streaming videos with pornographic content.
The research, which was lead by engineer Maxime Efoui-Hess who specialises in computer modelling, found that the energy consumption of digital technologies is increasing by nine per cent a year. Sixty per cent of world data flows come from online video.
The digital sectors needs to be more heavily scrutinised in light of urgent need to reduce global emissions, researchers say. They write: “The direct and indirect environmental impacts (“rebound effects”) linked to the uses of digital technologies are both unsustainable and increasingly rapid.”
In 2014, Netflix infrastructure generated only 0.5g of CO2e emissions for each hour of streaming. The average human breathing emits about 40g/hour, nearly 100x as much. Sitting still while watching Netflix probably saves more CO2 than Netflix burns.
The language we use matters - it provides clarity to our own thoughts and enables…
It is now generally acknowledged that the structure of the NHS needs to be overhauled…
In the film Apollo 13, a loss of oxygen causes the crew to start inadvertently…
There's an idea out there which seems intuitive but then so many ideas do seem…
When we think about the darkly opaque goals of modern central bankers as they relate…
As the papers recently filled with the distressing images of desperate souls looking to escape…
View Comments
While watching a TV proggie about an eco-family of seven trying to "live green" the only think I could think was "one child equals seventeen-umpty-million air liners!!!!!"
It's in New 'Scientist' and from a French think tank, so that's two strikes against it. I call bullshit. How much additional power does a server or router use if it's handling an extra gigabit stream? Anyway, we know the answer to CO2 from electricity generation - it's called nukes.
Agree with comments. Generally the 'Climate change fanatics' concentrate in the wrong area.
As an aside and because I don't seem to be able to contact you any other way (other than write - your form on your contact contact page doesn't work) and I cannot find your email address - my newsletter subscription from yourselves has stopped working - I have tried different email addresses with no success. What changed ?
Existence requires carbon as the building block of life and oxygen as the power behind its' use. It is so blatantly obvious that every activity, animal,vegetable or mineral involves these two elements; axiomatically producing and watching movies, blue or otherwise, has an impact, equally so does The Independent when reporting about Maxime Efoui-Hess's ludicrous research or indeed publishing any of its' other comical output.
As mentioned before, termites emit 1000% more of the life sustaining gas than humans do, and they don't even watch porno.
The only interesting issue that the research highlights is that a lot of people watch porno, which might well be a contributory factor in declining birth rates in industrialised digital societies, a phenomena that reduces emissions. It is the not unlikely that digital pornography is a green as well as blue activity? Might the real situation be that rather than increasing CO2 levels, digital representation of human sexual activity on the internet is reducing our carbon footprint?
While I agree, I must point out that termites don't dig up coal and burn it. All the methane they emit* is from vegetation that extracted the carbon from the atmosphere by photosynthesis. But the same is true of farm animals, yet they're a huge problem, apparently.
* Actually from bacteria in their guts, very similar to those inside cows - the only living creatures that can truly digest cellulose.
True, but coal is from trees, which also extracted carbon from the atmosphere.
The carbon captured into coal over hundreds of millions of years has been released over a few centuries.
Also true, and thank goodness for that, all those life giving elements being released from dangerously high levels of sequestration.
Ok, but as it turns out we here are not "worried about CO2". Thanks for the heads up just the same.