Greenpeace has created a short animated film called “The So Coal Network”, which attacks the social network for its use of coal-fired electricity, although Greenpeace says its data centre is one of the world’s greenest. The Greenpeace movie is timed to coincide with the release of “The Social Network” – a movie about the founders of Facebook.
The Social Network, due for release in October, is based on Ben Mezrich’s 2009 book The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding Of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal. The film stars Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg and former pop-sensation Justin Timberlake as Sean Parker – founder of Napster and one-time Facebook president.
Meanwhile, Greenpeace’s two-minute spoof animation tells the story of how Facebook has picked dirty coal power instead of clean energy to power its first data centre, located in Prineville, Oregon. The film is part of Greenpeace’s Cool IT campaign, in which the environmental campaign group calls on IT giants to become climate champions.
Earlier this month, Greenpeace International Executive Director Kumi Naidoo wrote an open letter to the founder and chief executive of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, following news that Facebook was planning to double the size of its Oregon data centre.
“Greenpeace regularly uses Facebook to engage its supporters and their friends to hold corporations accountable for their environmental impact,” wrote Naidoo. “Facebook is uniquely positioned to be a truly visible and influential leader to drive the deployment of clean energy.”
500,000 people – 0.1 percent of Facebook’s membership – also joined a Facebook group, asking the company to “unfriend coal”. Objections centred around Facebook’s choice of PacificCorp as an energy provider which, according to Naidoo, “runs an electricity mix that is disproportionately powered by coal, the largest source of global warming pollution”.
However, Facebook was quick to defend the efficiency of its data centre, pointing out that it uses modern cooling methods and has a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) measure of 1.15, making this one of the world’s greenest data centres.
Greenpeace has maintained the pressure, arguing that Facebook’s iconic status means it should do better. Previous Greenpeace attacks on Facebook were described as “a drive-by shooting” and “hypocrticial” by green data centre providers, given Greenpeace’s own failure to use clean power for its IT.
Facebook says it is concentrating on using power effectively, rather than getting involved in how it is produced, according to a statement, and chose the Oregon site because the “temperate” climate would allow it to operate without mechanical chillers – normally one of the biggest detractors from efficiency in a data centre.
A report by Greenpeace in March calculated that, at current growth rates, data centres and telecommunication networks will consume about 1,963 billion kilowatt hours of electricity in 2020 – over triple their current consumption and more than France, Germany, Canada and Brazil combined.
As well as Facebook, Greenpeace is also running separate campaigns targeting Samsung, Dell and Apple. During a meeting of Dell executives in March to discuss the companies plans to cut the use of toxic materials, campaigners unfurled huge banners on Dell’s offices in Bangalore, Amsterdam, and Copenhagen calling on chief executive Michael Dell to “Drop The Toxics”. Greenpeace also singled out the “cloud” infrastructure behind Apple’s iPad, which relies on energy-hungry data-centres.
Watch “The So Coal Network” here:
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The year 2009-10, India suffered its worst drought in almost four decades, with monsoon rains 22% below average. As seen in the photo, Greenpeace activists then hung an 80-foot banner from the Mumbai-Thane Bridge addressed to the Indian prime minister on June 4, 2009. It requested him to save our monsoons given the drought situation. How mischievous this tactic is illustrated by their article 29th June 2009, titled “It’s anomaly reigning” posted 29th June 2009 in the Greenpeace India website - just a few days after this stunt:
“On assessing the historical data, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its fourth Assessment Report suggested, “warming in India is likely to be above the average for South Asia, with an increase in summer precipitation and an increase in the frequency of intense precipitation in some parts.” That the Indian monsoons are going to undergo gross changes as a direct result of climate change – rainfall will increase by ~ 20 per cent overall in the summer monsoon, but the distribution of this increase will not be evenly spread across the country.”
So what's Greenpeace's actual position any way? Does global warming cause increased or decreased rainfall? They say both. This is not strange, as global warming according to its proponents can do almost everything and anything like simultaneously making sea water more salty and less salty! But it does not matter really as global warming or CO2 has nothing to do with monsoon intensity. But it finds a perfect 1:1 correlation fit with ENSO - El Nino (La Nina) Southern Oscillation.
However, if the IPCC painted scenario had only been true, an increase by 20% in rainfall could have given India a double digit growth rate for agriculture and at least double of that in terms of GDP. Such stupendous growth could have wiped out the face of poverty within 5-10 years in our country. If this is “climate change”, Indians should be welcoming it with open arms. But alas, more than a decade has passed after the IPCC had predicted such a scenario but we find practically no such change in our rainfall long period average (LPA). The LPA, even factoring the current “exceptional” summer rainfall, remains still a tad below 100%.
This typical means justify end tactics not only eats into the credibility of not only Greenpeace but the entire NGO and environmental organizations. What public credibility has NGO/environment groups left with if NGOs and environmental groups pursue advocacy clams that have no factual basis? If they tout they follow evidence based M&E then they should ensure their advocacy campaigns reflect this value as well.
Read more: http://devconsultancygroup.blogspot.com/2010/09/how-silly-can-greenpeace-climate.html