CNN just posted a very interesting article about the Bush administration applying pressure to mislead the public about the effects of global warming.

“Among those scheduled to make comments were two presidential hopefuls — Sens. John McCain, R-Arizona, and Barack Obama, D-Illinois. Both lawmakers favor mandatory reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, something opposed by President Bush, who argues such requirements would threaten economic growth.”

This just makes me mad! Too many politicians are afraid to take a stand. Take coal for example. Coal is extremely messy to burn, and yet 50% of the electricity generated in the Us is from coal burning plants. Any politician who would take a stand against burning coal would be faced with great opposition from the Coal industry. They would distort facts about global warming, scare those who work and live in coal mining regions, and attack the politician on a personal level. I know that you might not think of the Coal lobby as being very powerful, so let me repeat myself: 50% of the electricity generated in the US is from Coal burning plants. That’s a lot of coal being bought and sold.

The simple fact is, environmental science helps the economy. It’s been a fact of history, new technologies in general promote economic growth. One industry may die, but a new one (or more) takes it’s place.

Example: US car manufacturers can’t sell their products in many foreign countries because they are not “clean” enough. Better fuel efficiency would allow us to sell cars overseas, which in turn helps the economy.

You can read the article on CNN’s website here.

I just found this clip on http://www.youtube.com/ from An Inconvenient Truth. This is where Al Gore discusses the relationship between CO2 levels and global temperature. He also pretty clearly shows that Global Warming is real. Anyone who can look at this data and deny that we are having a major effect on the planet is simply refusing to accept responsibility. To accept that global warming is real means we have to change, and change scares many people.

Change the way you live and work.

I just read an article on “The Huffington Post” regarding a professor who “has accepted upwards of $150,000 from coal interests and coal-burning electric utility companies, for his advocacy against the overwhelming scientific consensus on global warming”.

This doesn’t really suprise me. Acknowledging that the planet is warming and we are the causing it is difficult. Especially when you stop and think about the what’s going to happen. It’s real easy to stick our heads in the sand and pretend that it isn’t real.

The problem is, it is real. Ignoring it won’t solve it. Ignoring it won’t make someone else solve the problem. The coal industry isn’t going to admit that their product causes global warming. All of the coal miners aren’t going to demand that their Congressional Representatives write legislation that would eliminate their jobs. It’s not going to happen.

We the people need to demand that our leaders acknowledge global warming, and develop real solutions. We need to not only work to eliminate the burning of coal, but also provide a realistic program to to retrain coal miners and ensure that they stay employed.

I’m just scared that this isn’t going to happen. In the meantime, we need to make buy our power from environmental suppliers, reduce our personal carbon emissions, and try to educate our peers.

You can read the article full article here.

My good friend Rich over at http://www.gotitsolutions.org/ recently posted this screencast on performing Windows 2K3 using Legato Networker. The reason I’m posting about it here is because he used VMware Workstation as his platform.

A lot of people are concerned with backing up and restoring their VM’s, so this should be helpful.

You can read the original post here.

The state of California has a program that will help pay for the installation of solar energy systems. For more information:

http://www.gosolarcalifornia.ca.gov/

To find out about programs in your area go to:

http://www.votesolar.org/index.html

I’ve received a few emails asking why I’ve been posting about environmental issues over the past week.

The first reason should be pretty obvious, because I’m concerned about what we’ve done to the environment. I think that we’ve got to make some changes before it’s too late.

The other reason is that virtualization can have a very positive impact on the environment. I’ve been in a lot of data centers where they are maxed out on electrical capacity. When their data center was designed, nobody could possibly predict the enormous growth that would occur. Virtualization allow companies to grow their data center without incurring the same costs as a traditional physical environment. A big part of those costs is in HVAC and kWh. Virtualization takes advantage of a very simple fact, reducing the # of servers in your data center means fewer BTU’s and fewer kWh consumed.

The environmental impact of this is, the fewer kWh consumed, the fewer that need to be generated. The fewer kWh generated means fewer pollutant released by coal or gas burning power plants.

Today I was searching for more information on US electrical generation and the impact of Coal burning electrical plants. My search brought me to the Environmental Protection Agency’s website.

While there I found their “Power Profiler” tool. You can use tthis tool to learn about how “clean” the enery you use is. I entered my zip code and selected my supplier and received the following reports:

I’m glad to see that I’m in an area that’s better than the rest of the nation, but then I think about a report I read:

“The average emission rates in the United States from coal-fired generation are: 2,249 lbs/MWh of carbon dioxide, 13 lbs/MWh of sulfur dioxide, and 6 lbs/MWh of nitrogen oxides.”

You can find the Power Profiler here.

With Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) announcing rebates for customers who adopt virtualization in their data centers, VMware has been receiving a lot of press in regards to the environmental aspects of with solutions. I recently watched Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”. Watching this scared me a little, but it also made be glad I’m working with virtualization technologies.

Here’s scary facts I scared up this morning:

49.7% of all Electricity Generated in 2005 was from Coal!

Coal emits nearly 2 times as much carbon as Natural Gas and 125% more than oil.

93% of Carbon Dioxide emissions from electrical generation.

In 2005 the US generated over 4,054,688,000 megawatts of electricity, of which 2,013,179,000 was from coal.

Now turn and look at your data center. Consider the total kWh that’s being consumed in there. Imaging those kWh in terms of CO2 and soot generation. Nearly 50% of the power they are consuming is coming from the worst possible source, COAL!

So how much of the US’s power consumption is from data centers? I haven’t found any numbers online, but I’m apparently not the only one. President Bush recently signed a law that would study data center power usage. This is great news, especially from a President who’s administration and Republican Party associates have tried so hard to distort the truth about environmental issues like global warming.

So this makes virtualization technologies like VMware not only technically and financially smart, but now environmental.

 

Source: US Energy Information Administration