Using ICT to “adapt” rather than “mitigate” Global Warming

Bill St. ArnaudBill.st.arnaud@gmail.com

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We need a new nuclear plant per day to keep stabilization at 2C

2Source: Roger Pielke Jr

How fast can decarbonization occur?

• The honest answer no one knows

• Historical rates of 1-2% have occurred in developing countries – mostly by outsourcing manufacturing to China

• For short periods some countries have achieved rates > 2% e.g. France nuclear program

• US need to achieve 17% reduction while maintaining modest economic growth which requires rates of decarbonization of >5% per year– Need to shut down over 20 coal plants per year to meet this

target

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Climate Forecasts

MIT

• MIT report predicts median temperature forecast of 5.2°C– 11°C increase in Northern Canada

& Europe– http://globalchange.mit.edu/pubs/abstract.p

hp?publication_id=990

• Last Ice age average global temperature was 5-6°C cooler than today– Most of Canada & Europe was

under 2-3 km ice

• Nearly 90 per cent of new scientific findings reveal global climate disruption to be worse, and progressing more rapidly, than expected.• http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/

Freudenburg_2010_ASC.pdf

Future Droughts• Palmer Drought Severity Index, or PDSI.

• The most severe drought in recent history, in the Sahel region of western Africa in the 1970s, had a PDSI of -3 or -4.

• By 2030 Western USA could see -4 to -6. Drought in Texas clearly caused by global warming: http://goo.gl/QjHRS

• By 2100 some parts of the U.S. and Latin America could see -8 to -10 PDSI, while Mediterranean areas could see drought in the -15 or -20 range.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39741525/ns/

us_news-environment/

Utilities biggest source of CO2

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http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/download/fulltext/5k9h2q8v9bln.pdf?expires=1327005403&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=DFE9FB35608FEA0C67713C58F2952625

New Challenge: Climate Adaptation

• Obama’s National Science Advisor John Holdren “Mitigation alone won’t work, because the climate is already changing, we’re already experiencing impacts….A mitigation only strategy would be insanity,”

• Equal emphasis given to adaptation – avoiding the unmanageable, and adaptation – managing the unavoidable.”

• Obama’s Climate Adaptation Executive Order– http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1tU8go/www.good.is/post/obama-s-secret-climate-adaptation-plan/

We need to get off the electrical grid• Biggest source of CO2 emissions because of coal plants – even in places

that use hydro and wind e.g. Quebec and Denmark

• Coal plants will be most likely targets of protestors and governments– If Germany and Switzerland are willing to shut down nuclear plants then

someday they will realize coal plants are much worse for health, safety and environmental reasons

• A good adaptation strategy can also be a good mitigation strategy

• Adaptation strategy means using only distributed renewal resources disconnected from the grids– Will most likely survive severe weather events– Will not be subject to outages when governments are forced to shut down coal

plants

• But how do you reliable and robust telecommunications and Internet when only sources of power are intermittent and unreliable wind and sun? 8

OpenFlow Follow the wind/Follow the sun

Cloud Manager

Host Resource

Cloud Manager

Network Manager

VM

Mantychore2

Host Resource

Canadian GSN Domain

European GSN Domain

Dynamically ConfigureIP Tunnel

• Shudown VM• Copy Image • Update VM Context

• Start VM

Export VM

VMVM

Internet

Notify EU Cloud Manager

Cloud Proxy Host Cloud Proxy

Lightpath

Optical switch Optical switch

Shared storage

Shared storage

Host

AMD, HP & Clarkson U GreenCloud

National GreenCloud Vision

Let’s Keep The Conversation Going

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