Rampant BSOD’s expected in a warmer future?
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
In a mind aching exercise in recursion, the United Nations’ International Telecommunication Union has released a report based on computer projections of future climate change, to provide direction on how climate change will affect computers.
According to the report:
“That path forward must be low-carbon and high-resilience. We must move on curbing emissions to mitigate climate effects and we must move to adapt to the climate impacts we know are coming. Technology and ICT in particular is a powerful force that can put us squarely on the path to a climate resilient future.”
Computer infrastructure owners are advised to find ways to reduce emissions, and are warned they will have to prepare for greater climatic extremes – so where possible, cables should be buried underground, and short range radio links should be considered to improve resilience. The report also mentions the risk of supply chain disruption, and risks to support personnel forced to endure severe weather while travelling to perform their duties.
Some other interesting highlights:-
Plans to expand UN bureaucracy:-
“In the current setting, UNESCO is working towards the establishment of a Climate Change Consortium with the aim of supporting the professionalization of public and private decision-makers. Within the context of global development, the Consortium will implement a leadership training programme on best practices and comprehensive decision-making on scientific and managerial issues related to sustainable development, its economic and social aspects.”
Section 1.1.6 mentions changes in snow and ice
“The IPCC Fourth Assessment Synthesis Report does not specifically mention ice storms in the context of climate change but it is mentioned in Reference20 as “an extreme event with a large spatial scale (as in an ice storm or windstorm) which can have an exaggerated, disruptive impact due to the systemic societal dependence on electricity transmission and distribution networks”.
and in section 4.2.7:-
“No information could be found on the change of risk of ice storms and heavy snowfall due to climate change. However, it seems likely that extreme events are increasing as a consequence of climate change. A recent example of the consequences of ice storm is noted in the New York area. ”
So no “end of snow” prediction in this report, at least.
Section 5.1 contains a suggestion that the electricity grid may be less reliable in the future:-
“Decouple communication infrastructure from electric grid infrastructure to the extent possible, and make both more robust, resilient, and redundant. ”
Source:
http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/climatechange/Documents/Publications/Resilient_Pathways-E.PDF
As I said, most of the report appears to be general advice to make computer and communication infrastructure more resilient – increasing backup power supply capacity and duration, making linkages between systems more robust, improving adaptability to outages, that kind of thing.
I can’t help feeling though, that the UN is missing the real risk to global IT and communications infrastructure, by focusing attention on the climate non-issue. The real risk being the very real possibility of another Carrington event, which, when it occurs, will destroy much of the world’s electronic infrastructure in just a few seconds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859
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LOL not far away the Wikipedia is being castigated, while Myth Busters is touted technology truth.
Doug Huffman
LOL not far away the Wikipedia is being castigated, while Myth Busters is touted technology truth.
I’m inclined to believe the demonstration – I have fried plenty of delicate electronic components by applying the wrong voltage to the wrong pin.
Modern ICs have over voltage protection, but they are still very easy to damage. Electronic assembly plants have their workers use anti-static wrist straps, to prevent damage from ESD when assembling delicate components.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antistatic_wrist_strap
Eric;
You are correct, a large EMP weapon, or solar flare will reek havoc. Just a question of how big the pulse is and how much havoc. There are historic records of telegraph systems being fried (with no semiconductor components used back then) from solar flares.
“I’m inclined to believe the demonstration – I have fried plenty of delicate electronic components by applying the wrong voltage to the wrong pin.”
Back in the old days there was a device known as the EPROM (Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory). By applying the correct sequence of voltages (with an EPROM programmer circuit) you could “trap” electrons in the memory cells. These electrons “turned” ON/OFF little switches that “replayed” whatever you programmed into them.
These electrons where actually “trapped” (for a couple of thousand years or so) not like “trapping” heat with a gas.
To erase them you hit them with UV light through a little quartz (transparent in the UV) window. This energized the gate structure and the electrons “escaped”. Then you could “trap” a new program into the EPROM.
Boy, if you plugged them in backwards in the programmer they gave off a beautiful crimson glow, for a few seconds, ha ha ha. I sent a few EPROMs to the great electronic graveyard in my day, yes I did.
“Modern ICs have over voltage protection” (usually only on the input/output pins), “but they are still very easy to damage. Electronic assembly plants have their workers use anti-static wrist straps, to prevent damage from ESD when assembling delicate components.”
Yes, and air ionizers (reduces the charging ability of air), conductive plastic packaging (carbon filled plastic), grounded workstations and conductive tools (mostly metal or conductive filled plastics). ESD is especially problematic since the damage may only be “partial” and the component works fine for a while then fails totally months later.
EMP and solar flares are a real threat to electronics.
Satellite designers worry a great deal about shielding on-orbit electronics so they can survive. It is one of the reasons satellite electronics are usually redundant and very expensive. Many satellites have a “highly” shielded side, and there is a satellite out there between the Earth and the Sun that gives a few minutes warming of a “incoming” solar flare. This gives you a chance to turn the highly shielded side towards the Sun.
A few satellites have been lost from high energy particles and fields.
Cheers, Kevin (BSEE, MSEE 1980’s).
It’s absolutely crazy that governments around the world are not building the necessary electrical-grid infrastructure to avert the devastating effects of an EMP event like Carrington.
I read somewhere that the cost to modify US transformers to deal with Carrington Event would only cost about $5 billion….
Hell, the US government spends over $10 billion per day, so just 1/2 a day’s spending would be enough to avert $trillions in economic damages an EMP event will cause and it is a 100.00% certainty that a natural EMP event will occur some time in the future….
$5 billion is probably about what US government hacks spend annually on hookers in the DC area alone…
$5 billion on hookers! Gee, they must be sexual athletes. LOL
@bushbunny – Or expensive hookers
bushbunny says:
April 29, 2014 at 7:57 pm
$5 billion on hookers! Gee, they must be sexual athletes. LOL
================================================
Here is a great photo op of a Gold Medal winning DC sexual athlete with some $1,000/night pros:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2570912/Bill-Clinton-poses-PROSTITUTES-charity-event.html
Political hacks do two things very well: 1) spending other people’s money and 2) well…, I think we know what that is…
We had a case here Craig Thomson an ex union secretary turned Fed.MP. He thought it was ok to spend union money on escorts and other personal items, and he was found guilty. He lied to parliament crying on how he was so wrongly blamed etc., had the cheek to stand again but got few votes. He was committed to trail in two states and found guilty in NSW, and smarmy had his appeal put back to November. We haven’t heard anything from Victoria who are waiting to try him too.
Rules for one and rules for another.
I agree that electronic devices handle ESD/EMI/EMP exposure better these days, but they are not immune IMO. That is why these devices are assembled in static electricity free evironments where the workers wear anti-static straps, work on anti-static workbenches, stand on anti-static mats etc. I’ve seen what ESD can do to semi-conductors through a microscope and it looks like a battle field bombed in WWI from the air.
Presstitutes, prostitutes….
and here I thought the politicians were just screw–g us….
As the saying goes, follow the money….
“Patrick says:
April 30, 2014 at 12:38 am”
Good points….carpets are not our friends with regard to ESD…was in a hotel in Holland in the middle of a FRIGID and dry winter…went to my room to open the door and got a shock that almost knocked me down…never expected that…sometimes static charges come from unexpected sources….my bank just installed little static-discharge pads next to its automatic teller machines on the drive-through lanes so that you can touch the pad and not get zapped when you put your card in the reader….saves irritation and unintentionally wiped cash (or credit) cards…kinda cool that they thought of that…
Anymore I just touch my keys to the metal surface (doorknob, etc.) to avoid the “shocking, positively shocking” effect….
Good idea to have a small set of ESD tools, a wrist strap, and a little mat for when you’re working on your PC or whatever…it only takes once….
“Jeff says:
April 30, 2014 at 2:46 pm”
I recently had to ask at work to borrow an ESD strap from the guys that install and build PC’s all day to install some RAM in a new test PC for our team. My action was questioned but I knew what I was doing.
With ESD, be careful in petrol stations when filling up. Most fires are started with a static discharge.