Alison Wheeler <wikimedia@...> writes: [cut] Putting a logo or some sort expression on a WMF website is independent from the issue. This is not about putting logo's on websites but to be aware of the environment impact of the WMF-projects. And to try include those aspects as a factor when making decisions like buying hardware to consider the energy consumption as a factor. If the WMF would become carbon neutral then that could be included in the relevant Wikipedia articles and on some page on the Foundation website. I personally would not mind to show that by putting a logo on the website but there is no need to do that. Greetings, Walter

On 6/8/07, Walter Vermeir &lt;walter(a)wikipedia.be&gt; wrote: Though I support the principle of reducing environmental impact, I am skeptical of this proposal. We use a large amount of power. I imagine the expense of buying carbon offsets to become "carbon neutral" would be a significant one, and I think using our resources for something not directly related to the mission would not be responsible. (And would we have to account for all of the energy used by contributors to the site, also?) (I am skeptical of carbon offsets in general. I think they are a fad and have read that many of the programs set up to sell them are only dubiously effective; I'd personally rather simply conserve power where possible and support environmental causes as appropriate.) There are a lot of good causes that we do not support directly because they are not in line with the fairly narrow mission of WMF, all of which you could say contribute in a broad sense -- feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, and disaster relief, for example -- and I don't think it is a failing if we do not attempt to tackle all of them. We are currently motivated to conserve energy simply because it costs less if we are efficient, and certainly I think we should take care not to be wasteful! But anything beyond that is using the money that people have given to us to further the creation and distribution of free reference works, and putting it to another purpose -- as if we had given it directly to an environmental organization. And I don't think that this is something we should do. -Kat -- Wikimedia needs you: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage | (G)AIM:Mindspillage mindspillage or mind|wandering on irc.freenode.net | email for phone

Kat Walsh wrote: There are a couple of important differences between electricity pricing and ecological cost: 1. electricity at knams and yaseo is donated 2. electricity at pmtpa is charged by peak power usage rather than by energy usage Thus we waste energy in two ways: 1. we keep more servers switched on at knams and yaseo than we need 2. we make no effort to conserve power during off-peak times, beyond what the servers do by default -- Tim Starling

Andrew Gray wrote: Yeah, we will probably do. In the past the community got quite upset whn some users decided to personalize the logo for Christmas, Halloween or World AIDS day, so definitely any logo will be considered advertising :p. I think endorsing any (good) cause goes against NPOV policy. Why should global warming be more important than feeding the hungry or getting a person his/her first million before he/she turns 30? Cruccone

Thomas Dalton schreef: Yes, sorry about that. -- Contact: walter AT wikizine DOT org Wikizine.org - news for and about the Wikimedia community English - Deutsch - Español - Indonesia

Could that money then be used to get the Tampa server cluster to use renewable energy, e.g. (quick Google, I'm not connected to them) the Tampa Electric's Renewable Energy program <http://www.tampaelectric.com/environmental/renewableenergy/>? -- Jeandré du Toit

We could instead include on the donations pages <http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising> that donations that start off with "May be used to reduce WMF's ecological footprint" in the public comment edit boxes, may be used by the foundation for greening itself. -- Jeandré du Toit

{{OFF-TOPIC}} Instead of discussing whether the greenhouse effect is really based on CO2-emissions, what renewable resources are, what the latest developments are for nuclear plants, I think we should consider the following questions: * What are the benefits for the Wikimedia Foundation? ** Good Feeling ** Good Publicity * What are the disadvantages for the Wikimedia Foundation? * It costs money * It might damage the neutrality of the projects if announced publicly * Possibly problems with the tax status (might have to be checked) If anybody has to add possible advantages or disadvantages, please do so. I capture the future for our children etc under "Good Feeling", please read that in the broadest sense of the word. (we are talking about an organization here, so it might be about feelings of it's board, staff, volunteers etc) Thanks for the move to on-topic. BR, Lodewijk 2007/7/7, Peter Halasz &lt;email(a)pengo.org&gt;rg>:

On 7/10/07, Peter Halasz &lt;email(a)pengo.org&gt; wrote: If we banned people from making pointless tiny changes with automated tools, we'd probably cut our electricity consumption in half. -- Stephen Bain stephen.bain(a)gmail.com

Hi! There is easy way to be carbon-neutral and still do what we do. Nuclear energy. -- Domas Mituzas -- http://dammit.lt/ -- [[user:midom]]

Hi! Dutch also have no such concept as 'landscape' or 'nature'. The country would have the problem as well if it didn't reclaim land from sea. Cheers, -- Domas Mituzas -- http://dammit.lt/ -- [[user:midom]]

On Tue, 10 Jul 2007, GerardM wrote: Domas is confused with the thought that Polish countryside is without peer, whereas this is still a subject of active peering [Wilkowski and Pulecka, 2002]. And haven't all countries reclaimed land from nature to turn it into beautiful farms, terraces, and parking lots? SJ

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 GerardM wrote: I think this would cause power surges during hurricane season. ;) - -- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org)

To reply to a number of people again Point taken, however... 1. Dumping chemicals has not always been illegal, and is still not illegal everywhere, and 2. dumping CO2 is becoming illegal -- carbon trading schemes (like Kyoto) already put a price on "dumping" carbon in most countries by creating a global cap. It is true, however, that the Unites States has not, as yet, ratified any such agreement, and dumping of CO2e is very much legal there. The real place where my analogy breaks down is when we consider the cleanup strategies. Unlike a creek, the atmosphere is a global "reservoir", so paying to lessening pollution on the other side of the world has an equivalent effect (of course not identical) to lessening pollution you produce yourself. As I mentioned before, uranium is not a renewable resource. However, as we're not trying to debate specific carbon-offsetting methods or technologies at this point, I will try my best to refrain from starting a debate about nuclear's environmental, economic, and proliferation issues. However, I will say that even if nuclear were to be considered, good carbon offset schemes will invest in new renewable energy programs, rather than than simply giving money to established industry. It is possible for the WMF to stop its own carbon emissions: We could put a wind turbine on the roof, as suggested by GerardM. But more seriously, we could neutralize our carbon emissions through investment in renewable energy programs (carbon offsetting). The major problem with carbon credits (yes, I'm saying it has a problem) is that many investments made today will not reduce global carbon emissions until some time in the future, and AFAIK this is generally not taken into account (but correct me if I'm wrong). So there is a delay between the investment and the payoff. For example, trees planted today may take tens of years to offset the carbon they were planted to offset. Is this what you mean by "stalling"? 100%. We can reduce our effective carbon emissions to zero. We can measure the cost effectiveness of engineering an energy efficiency solution by comparing the cost of implementation to the cost of the electricity (with carbon offsets) it saves. However, As our electricity is largely donated, and the workforce is largely volunteer, attempts to manage the process at such a level would be misguided. Instead we can simply aim for low hanging fruit: Tim Starling already suggested some problems to be solved: I'm not sure what the discussion of the Netherlands has to do with anything, but despite their land reclaiming practices and supposed lack of 'landscape' or 'nature' concepts, they appear to have quite large remaining forested areas and national parks, especially for a European nation. As discussed, to begin with we can ask donors if it's ok to use part of their contributions to offset our emissions, until such a time as we become comfortable with budgeting it as a normal expense. Peter Halasz [[user:pengo]]

A wind turbine on the roof will eliminate our carbon emissions from electricity usage. What about travel? Manufacture of various things used around the office? Hell, what about people breathing while contributing? Offsetting is a stall tactic because it will only work for a limited amount of time. There are only so many trees that can be planted, only so many light bulbs that can be replaced by energy saving ones, etc. The cost of carbon offsetting will steadily increase in price as the "low hanging fruit" is all picked until the cost becomes too great for us to be able to afford it. After that point, will be no longer be carbon neutral. Becoming carbon neutral is not simply a matter of writing a cheque and being done with it. It is an ongoing quest for perfection that will never be reached. Deciding how far along that quest we want to go is not a simple matter.

The servers should be fed from a nuclear power plant. Problem solved. On topic: If we would have the funds to do something about the environment, it would be great. But we don't. And buying carbon permissions is a waste of money, that could be spend on real environmental saving, such as machines that require less power. On 6/8/07, Thomas Dalton &lt;thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

On 6/8/07, Lars Aronsson &lt;lars(a)aronsson.se&gt; wrote: Printing on paper can create quite a considerable offset. Since people tend to hang onto books you can get a fair bit of carbon locked up in them. The internet on the other hand well: http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/12/avatars_consume.php -- geni

All emissions come from a country, so if every country does their bit, emissions are greatly reduced. Not all emissions come from an individual, so even if every individual in the world did their bit, it wouldn't make as much difference. What I'm asking is how much of a difference that is. Is it worth individuals doing their bit, or should we be concentrating on getting industry, etc., to do theirs? If only 1% of emissions come from individuals, then there is really little point trying to reduce it - we should put the effort in elsewhere.

It's not emissions that are important, it's unnecessary emissions. While all emissions end up being caused by a person, not all unnecessary emissions are.

To reply to a few random bits, while trying to avoid another rant on why we should try to reach zero-emissions: 1. Nuclear power is not a renewable energy source. 2. Tim Starling's estimate of $200 per month ($2400 year) to become carbon neutral doesn't sound like a lot of money to me, even if the total is three times this. Of course he's said it was an underestimate, but it gives a possible ballpark figure. I can't imagine it would be difficult to raise as part of the next fundraiser, whether it's asked for explicitly as a separate fund or simply made part of the budget. 3. I know it was said in jest, but to correct a misconception, and have a bit of an off topic rant: paper production actually releases a surprising amount of carbon. Especially when the woodchip for the pulpmill was from an old growth forest that will take hundreds of years to regain its previous level of carbon storage in the trees and soil. A large part of the carbon of a forest is found in the soil, and this is often burnt after the wood is harvested, releasing massive amounts of carbon (at least from what I understand of the situation around here in Australia. Probably different elsewhere). A large percentage of the wood does not end up in paper or wood products either (I've heard numbers upwards of 90%, but I don't know where they were pulled from). I understand there are some papers coming out about this soon. A huge amount of carbon dioxide emissions can be saved simply by not cutting down trees and unfortunately the value of not logging forests was left out of the Kyoto protocol. (plantations are a different matter). </rant> 4. It's much much more than 1%, It is, however difficult to answer because they don't seem to divide up usage into "individuals" and "other".. (and Wikipedia isn't a "person")... but to quote the IPCC: In 1990, industry accounted for two-fifths of global primary energy use, residential and commercial buildings [that'd include Wikipedia] for a slightly smaller amount, and transportation for one-fifth of the total. That's from: http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc/emission/067.htm#tbl34 For other ways to divide it up, see: http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc/emission/118.htm I'm sure there's better stats around. I've seen a nice graphical chart in one of these reports once but I can't seem to find it again. 5. That's the point of carbon trading schemes and creating a market for carbon. The world says: this is our target for total emissions, if you're going to go over your quota, you'll have to buy some from someone else. If the prices are going up, then there's more incentive to find better ways of not polluting, which brings prices down again. It's a market. 6. Suggestions to consider the efficiency of the servers (and not only the $ cost) is good. We could consider raising money to pay for the work that needs to be done on that too, if necessary. How easily would this work be transferable to other (non-WMF-related) projects? For example, could we build a --sleep-server-when-not-needed switch into Mediawiki, or otherwise what level is the code for it done at? (Or is it not something you'd automate?) I think that's all for now :) Peter Halasz user:Pengo

geni a écrit : This is science-fiction upto now. No fast breeder nuclear reactor in the world has produced more energy than it has used, and it will be like this for any foreseeable future. Pretending the opposite is just propaganda. Regards, Yann -- http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclopédie libre http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Bibliothèque libre http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres

geni a écrit : You have to take into account energy used for research, building the reactor, for fluel production and reprocessing, and the future energy used for dismantling the plant. When this is accounted, very little is left if any for a single reactor. The interest of fast breeder reactor is really for producing military grade plutonium. Energy is at best a by-product. Regards, Yann -- http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclopédie libre http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Bibliothèque libre http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres