Guest essay by Eric Worrall
All those long flights to remote observatories ensure Astronomers have an outsized carbon footprint. And Astronomers keen to reduce their carbon footprints are being advised to abandon software languages like Python, in favour of compiled languages like C++.
‘We’re part of the problem.’ Astronomers confront their role in—and vulnerability to—climate change
By Daniel Clery
Oct. 7, 2020 , 11:30 AMAstronomers have a climate problem. Not only is global warming increasing the frequency of wildfires and the strength of hurricanes that physically threaten observatories, but a changing climate could mar their views by bringing higher temperatures, humidity, and turbulent air closer to their mountaintop perches. Astronomers are also adding to the climate problem themselves, with long flights to remote facilities and meetings and heavy use of energy-hungry supercomputers for cosmic simulations. “We’re part of the problem, not of the solution,” says Leo Burtscher of Leiden University.
Those concerns were cast in sharp relief by six papers published last month in Nature Astronomy. One, on the carbon costs of meetings, emerged directly from the 2019 European Astronomical Society (EAS) meeting in France, which took place during a record-breaking heatwave when temperatures exceeded 45°C. “We were sitting with no air conditioning, sweating through all these interesting talks,” Burtscher says. Discussions turned to climate change and the carbon emitted getting everyone to the meeting, and they inspired Burtscher and his colleagues to size up the meeting’s travel emissions. They added up to nearly 1900 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent or about 1.5 tons per delegate—roughly the same as emitted by an average resident of India in a whole year.
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Astronomers are now taking steps to reduce their carbon footprint. In another of the six studies, Simon Portegies Zwart of Leiden University calls for changes in computing strategy. Astronomers should avoid traditional computers and instead use ones that rely on more efficient graphical processor units, Zwart says, although they are harder to program. Astronomers should also abandon popular programming languages such as Python in favor of efficient compiled languages. Languages such as Fortran and C++, Zwart calculates, are more than 100 times more carbon efficient than Python because they require fewer operations. Another option, says MPIA’s Knud Jahnke, is to set up supercomputers in Iceland, with its carbon-free geothermal power and cold climate, which reduces cooling needs, or in other countries with plentiful renewable energy.
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This month, Lick workers cleared brush and trees around the site to lessen the risk of future fires. Astronomers need to take action, too, Burtscher says. It’s a moral decision—and a practical one, he says. “We need to change in order to continue our professions.”
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Read more: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/10/we-re-part-problem-astronomers-confront-their-role-and-vulnerability-climate-change
As a software developer who has worked with many people with academic qualifications in Astronomy, Physics and Mathematics, I feel qualified to comment on the advice to Astronomers to switch to C++. Just don’t.
“Not only is global warming increasing the frequency of wildfires and the strength of hurricanes”
Not supported by data or observation. Therefore, the article is moot, or bogus, take your pick.
What’s wrong with C++ ? I’ve got a lifetime of libraries full of Objects.
https://xkcd.com/353/
print “Hello, world!”? Oh gawd that brings back bad memories of BASIC.
Peek and Poke 😀
Are all astronomers this dumb and gullible? I suspect not, in fact as was pointed out this looks like a feeble and pathetic attempt to gain entry to climate change monarchy on the part of Daniel.
Why would a supposed scientist start an essay by repeating a pack of lies?
I sincerely hope for mankinds future that more scientists can find it their consciences to speak truth and shun the greed that is “climate change”.
Yes-just virtue signalling with a little hint of ” can we jump on to the gravy train too. ”
Merchant bankers.
Huh?
Merchant banks were the beating heart of the gold standard monetary system.
For a while, Vanguard’s Prime Reserve Fund was the last remnant of a genuine market in commercial paper (circulation credit for the core survive & prosper economy). This month they threw in the towel and went into US gov’t obligations, confirming that Modern Monetary Theory has finally arrived, and the end is getting very near. Signal your virtue with some other invective.
You would think that astronomers would have a good intuitive grasp of magnitude; but no, they seem to be nibbling at molecules and nanoseconds to “save” an entire planet.
This just highlights that there is no correlation between intelligence and sound, practical judgement.
So now it’s astronomer guilt. Who’s next? If all these learned people took time to really study AGW there’d be less guilt being passed around.
If astronomers want to fell gulity let them have that privilege. They can all shut down and get real jobs but please keep Hubble running.
It looks like saving the planet that does not need saving is an exercise in suffering and regression.
Simple simon science.
Astronomers are some of the worst climateers. Jim Hansen is commonly knighted as the guy that got it rolling and how about preparing for the big speech to congress in 1988 by turning off air conditioners and opening windows on a hot day to enhance the effect.
How about the linear thinking that Venus’s CO2 atmosphere and 700C temp was what we were up against in a fossil fuel burning earth? All astronomers and physicists before the Great Woke Dumbing down K-PhD of the past couple of generations were very smart people. With doors thrown wide at universities to accommodate the left side of the bell curve, this is no longer reliably true. Long corrupted social science virus has wedged it’s way into everything. The learned societies, institutes and faculties of science are run by marxbrother social scientists.
Social media and crypto currencies
The two biggest culprits in increased power needs in the west
Massive Data farms that must have continuous reliable power and massive cooling.
Facebook, Twitter, Google etc cannot exist with renewable unreliable power
Charles, are there any papers out there in the carbon footprint of these internet giants?
When it comes to faddish conceptions that waste lots of energy, cryptocurrency “mining” occurred to me as well. Here is an article on the high energy cost of “mining” a Bitcoin currently (note that I can’t think of even one everyday practical advantage for cryptocurrency vs. regular money, although I understand that criminals find it convenient):
https://futurism.com/analysts-bitcoin-mining-costs-more-worth
As for astronomers, couldn’t they be proud of applying resources such as energy toward real science.? They are doing something neither faddish nor criminal, an honest living to the extent that they are adding to human knowledge?
This just proves that astronomers are idiots. The number of astronomers in the world is insignificant. Nothing they do can possibly have any noticeable effect on carbon emissions.
If efficiency is the only thing that matters, why not require everyone to program using assembly language?
Oh wow, we agree on something. I was going to say that.
I think we can offset all the CO2 footprint of all the astronomers for at least ten years or so, by eliminating one, just one, Global Warming (or is it Climate Change? I get so confused!) Conference, with all those private jets going to luxury spots on the globe.
Not that I’m against private jets, I hope to ride on one someday.
Ya, know, this sounds like a bunch of Americans touting wind power to cut the US carbon footprint while ignoring what’s going on in China.
I suspect that the number of computes chewed up by astronomical simulation is a small fraction of the computes chewed up by BitCoin miners. They already have massive systems built in cold climates.
From a couple years ago, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/manitoba-bitcoin-1.4457486 says
As the buzz around bitcoin continues to reverberate across the globe, many large global cryptocurrency players have been quietly building inroads in Manitoba in search of cheap electricity to run their power-hungry operations.
Following several interviews with commercial real estate companies, economic development organizations, cryptocurrency industry players and Manitoba Hydro, CBC News has learned that several dozen out-of-province and international investors view Manitoba as a top-tier location to establish their cryptocurrency operations.
CentrePort Canada, which manages 20,000 acres of low-cost industrial land in Winnipeg, says early on the interest came from Chinese investors, but they’re now seeing curious investors from Argentina and companies in other South American countries.
What an utter load of tosh.
So, why do they bother at all about any science? Just write a story, then vote by delegates, and this becomes scientific truth. Like Councils in the Church, in the past. Who needs some science – the WORD of WISE MAN is enough. They are already the Keepers of The Truth, so be consistent, and don’t fuzz about some computers or programming languages – it is a post-science time.
You only get to vote if you are invited into their club. And the club will not allow anyone in without correct political credentials, like promoting “racial diversity”. While having a diverse work force is generally good, using discriminatory policies to actively pursue it mens discriminating against the best qualified applicants and candidates for tenure to pursue a ideological agenda. Very bad to try and chase a desired outcome. It is socialism to try and chase a desired equality of outcome over equality of opportunity.
OTOH, what is the need for astronomy at all? Discovering planets we can never get to does us what good?
These guys ought to just give it up.
Rhoda: There hasnt been much to do in physics and astronomy since 1950, during which time their numbers have swollen exponentially to many times over the number of same that have lived and died over centuries.
At the turn of the 19th to 20th century an intelligent person could read virtually every scholarly paper ever written. Today, there are over 50 million papers published and new papers are growing by 2.5 million a year (estimated in a 2009 study)
http://blog.cdnsciencepub.com/21st-century-science-overload/
To be really knowledgeable, one should read every paper written to the year 1900 and then add Einstein, and a dozen more.
Something similar happened in the arts. Classical composers wrote and performed the great works largely before 1900. Today classical music is now a performance art (not a creative one) replaying the great works of long dead creators. I submit that this has happened to physics/ astronomy- it is now a performance art with models as their instruments. ‘Discovery’ is unproved things found by models. Dark Matter, strings, alternative universes and stuff are their despairing offerings.
ASCII wastes a lot electricty!
How? Digital 0 to 9 is ASCII 48 to 57.
The constant conversion between digital value and its screen representation is a waste.
Also unicode is a waste. We need a global script, one that can fit in 8 binary digits.
China, Korea, Japan are the greediest!
“We need to change”. Fine, moron, change. Just leave the rest of us the hell alone.
+100 !!
Just outlaw Bitcoin-type currencies because they consume 1000+ times the electricity / carbon as is talked about in this article — from the math algorithms which generate new Bitcoins, etc.
Or clear out the ruinables and get cheap dispatchable electricity back to 7cents/kWh and let people use it and pay for it.
I program pretty much exclusively in c++. The recompile of our code is pretty resource intensive, takes a few hours each night on one machine with 32 cores.
What will use the electricity are high cpu applications. Things like bitcoin mining or searching for prime numbers.
Most code written is inefficient where people just use brute force algorithms. I have seen coders query a database in a loop over and over again each minute looking for a change in query results. This is when query results only change once per day.
That alcohol based compound is for cleaning the telescope’s optics. Just a reminder…
The CO2 footprint.
I think, already before this, have commented here that the CO2 footprint can be a valuable tool in
the value assessment for a given “product”, if played correctly though.
In proposition of energy and resources, there could be a workable way to apply the CO2 footprint as a parameter for value assessment, as already a lot it is spent in the merit of assessing the CO2 footprint for the given energy and resource expenditure.
If there is a way to apply this correctly without biases, especially in the means of comparing with given established “universal “standards, another way of a value assessment for any given product could be possible to apply.
For example, if these smart guys are saying that they have a larger CO2 footprint than affordable,
then this may translate as,
that the value of their product is not affordable… maybe even an unnecessary waste, at some point.
Technically these guys are spending more than they are worth of.
If this applied every where correctly and independently, as an internal self assessment, a
“good” amount of worthless will cease to persist.
So, if Mann’s CO2 footprint happens to be non affordable, then Mann not worth it, valueless… 🙂
Again, just saying, another way of looking at.
And I think this well resonates with;
“be aware and careful with what asking for”. 🙂
cheers
This sounds similar to the idea that we could save Biafran children from starvation by eating all of our dinner, especially the vegetables.
How many Chinese astronomers agreed with the idea that everyone should cut down on CO2 emissions immediately?
C++ is for pussies. Real hardcore programs use assembly. Go away now.
In ‘Climate Change’ it seems that, as with Astronomers, the solutions. like solar and wind power, are actually part of the problem. Saving Earth from ‘Climate Change’ always requires much suffering and pain for the non-Elite.