Research has found that the vast majority of data stored in servers is "dark data", data that will never be accessed again after being used once. However, all of these emoticons, jokes, and movies that we like to share with friends and family are stored on servers in a data center somewhere, constantly consuming energy. According to National Grid, by 2030, UK data centers will account for nearly 6% of the UK's total electricity consumption. As a result, researchers believe that processing garbage data is now an important part of responding to the climate crisis.
Reported that Ian Hodgkinson, professor of strategy at Loughborough University in the UK, has been studying the impact of "dark data" on climate change and how to reduce it. He said,"This question may be easy to answer at first glance, but it is actually much more complex and the data does have a negative impact on the environment." Hodgkinson found that 68% of the data used by most companies was never used again, and the same was true for personal data.
In Hodgkinson's view, every piece of data, whether it's an image, a post posted on a social platform or something else, has a carbon footprint. When people store data in the cloud, people often associate it with white fluffy clouds, but the truth is that these data centers are "very hot" and they consume a lot of energy. "It's true that one photo doesn't have a huge impact, but when you turn on your phone and look at all the photos you have stored in the cloud, they add up to have a considerable impact on energy consumption," Hodgkinson explained.
Reported that for economic reasons, cloud operators and technology companies are trying to prevent people from deleting spam data, because the more data they store, the more people will pay to use their systems. Hodgkinson said his team believes that digital data is an important factor in increasing greenhouse gas emissions, and it will continue to grow. Forecasts show that in the next one to two years, even if people use all the world's renewable energy sources, they may not be able to meet the amount of energy needed for digital data."This is a pretty scary problem."
Reported that one of the measures people can take to stop the torrent of data is to reduce sending meaningless emails. Hodgkinson said each email sent requires about 4 grams of carbon emissions, and he strongly recommends not using the "scary" reply all button. (Zhou Yang)
