Weather supercomputer used to predict climate change is one of Britain’s worst polluters
Excerpts from the story by the Daily Mail See WUWT’s original story on this
The Met Office has caused a storm of controversy after it was revealed their £30million supercomputer designed to predict climate change is one of Britain’s worst polluters.
The massive machine – the UK’s most powerful computer with a whopping 15 million megabytes of memory – was installed in the Met Office’s headquarters in Exeter, Devon.
It is capable of 1,000 billion calculations every second to feed data to 400 scientists and uses 1.2 megawatts of energy to run – enough to power more than 1,000 homes.
The computer used 1.2 megawatts to run – enough to power 1,000 homesThe machine was hailed as the ‘future of weather prediction’ with the ability to produce more accurate forecasts and produce climate change modelling.
However the Met Office’s HQ has now been named as one of the worst buildings in Britain for pollution – responsible for more than 12,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.
It says 75 per cent of its carbon footprint is produced by the super computer meaning the machine is officially one of the country’s least green machines.
Green campaigners say it is ‘ironic’ that a computer designed to help stave-off climate change is responsible for such high levels of pollution.
But Met Office spokesman Barry Grommett said the computer was ‘vital’ to British meteorology and to help predict weather and environmental change.
He said: ‘We recognise that it is big but it is also necessary. We couldn’t do what we do without it.
‘We would be throwing ourselves back into the dark ages of weather forecasting if we withdrew our reliance on supercomputing, it’s as simple as that.’
The figures have been published by the Department of Communities and Local Government which calculated the ratings and emissions of every public building in the country.
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“We couldn’t do what we do without it.” – like botch the BBQ summer forecast?
“wattsupwiththat (14:55:52) :
One or two megawatts is not significant? Tell that to people in Zimbabwe that have no power.”
Not only Zimbabwe, here’s an e-mail fragment to my wife from our friend in Ethiopia;
” So today I and Lili wanted to surprise you by calling you instead of sending the usual e-card. So we met on our lunch time but you know this country! No power! No generator so No call! YOu have no idea how I squeezed my time to make it. Unfortunately we couldn’t. That was why we sent you a text message.”
Clearly Mr Palmer has been living a the life of Rielly on all that carbon pollution.
[Mr Palmer’s welcome has expired]
Hi Andrew-
Oh, I’ve been kicked.
It’s just as well.
I was spending too much time over here, arguing with people whose minds are set in cement on this subject, and whose chief preoccupation is finding scientific sounding reasons to act in unscientific ways – to engage in commercially promoted psychological denial.
I do hope that you are able to live with yourself, Anthony, when global warming turns out to be both real and more catastrophic than you can apparently imagine.
We both should be around to see it, whatever happens.
REPLY:I agree you were spending too much time here and your view is cemented. I’m perfectly able to live with myself, because the science (that you ignore in favor or Gaia theory) tells me that CO2’s LWIR effect is limited by a logarithmic curve. Sayonara – A
Hi Anthony-
And a sad goodbye to you, as well.
CO2’s effect is limited by a logarithmic curve, but deniers have been using an incorrect value for the initial concentration of CO2. The correct value is 280 ppm, or so, and in order to get the sort of curve you showed me, you need an initial value of CO2 to be close to zero.
If you use the wrong value for the initial concentration, say 1 ppm instead of 280, it makes the CO2 effect tail off 280 times as fast as it should.
Sleep well. 🙂
REPLY: That’s the best comment you’ve made yet, its a keeper! 🙂 -A
Hi Anthony-
Oh, surely not the best. 🙂
But, if past experience is any guide, this will not stop you from using that same climate denier talking point logarithmic argument again on other posts, even though discrediting it just requires going to Wikipedia, getting the equations, and doing a very small amount of math. 🙂
REPLY:I’m not a denier. I don’t deny the CO2 has a role in warming the planet, it does. In fact the graph I showed you proves that it does. Just not the way you think.
Disproving it? Sure whatever you say, in fact if it is just that easy, feel free to do just that, showing the Wikipedia links (note showing the Mauna Loa CO2 Graph is not the same) show your math and work that disproves that CO2 has a logarithmic response in our atmosphere. -A
“Leland Palmer (17:09:41) :
But I think our “geologically instantaneous” release of something like 300 billion tons of carbon from fossil fuels has destabilized it, and we are seeing the initial stages of runaway global warming right now.”
Runaway global warming? Did Mr. Palmer really say that? I think this is a potential candidate for “Munted Quote of the Week” IMO.
SNIP
Mr Palmer, if you ever want to post anything here again, you’ll have to stop using the term deniers in the same sentences with explanations. You don’t come into people homes and insult them do you? So why should you do the same to me and other here in our home on the Internet?
Learn some manners.
If you want to discuss science, that’s fine. If you want to call me and everyone else here names while trying to push your explanation and agenda, bugger off.
– Anthony Watts
I used to be an MVS sysprog, but now I work in the “Wintel/Unix” space. Just found out my biggest client uses a mainframe, and IBM one too, which has 186000 megabytes. This MET office system is huge and clearly the UK taxpayer has plenty of money to spend.
How can these guys think that more computing power will help when the most basic underlying processes are not well understood? As I mentioned before, protein folding is much better understood and unlimited computing power still doesn’t work to model it. Are there any really compelling cases where highly complex systems are successfully modeled by digital computers? This is an interesting question, but I fear no one with an interest in self preservation can pursue an answer because any negative results will upset too many powerful people with too much money.
Probably old news, but it looks like UK Met now has some competition to see whose supercomputers can produce the largest carbon footprint.
“NOAA’s Powerful New Supercomputers Boost U.S. Weather Forecasts”
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/20090908_computer.html