I read in the news this last week that Sir Tim Berners-Lee, a Brit 
and the inventor of the World Wide Web, has confessed that the // in a web address were actually “unnecessary”…
and it seems that polar ice will be gone in the summer, perhaps by as early as 2020, opening the arctic ocean to shipping.
At the same time I’m writing this on my laptop, the fan’s just cut in. Hmmm…
The Berners-Lee story is about the hassle and small increase in the use of ink and paper printing information from the internet because the // in the standard http://… URLs are actually unnecessary. A much more significant consumer of resources is the internet itself, the popularity of which has made computing what it is today, social media and all.
Data centers have been estimated to account 1.5% of the entire electricity usage of the US, which is probably dwarfed by the consumption of powerful computers connected to it, so the total impact on electricity consumption is probably much more significant. If you happen to know some data, then please comment on this entry. With more than 1.5 billion people online around the world, scientists estimate that the energy footprint of the net is growing by more than 10% each year, so it’s a growing problem.
I appreciate that home computing and the internet is a small contributor to our plant’s (or more accurately mankind’s) problems with global warming, but it’s an area in which the Mechanical Analysis Division makes a significant contribution. By helping companies design more thermally-efficient electronic products, fewer raw materials are consumed and less energy is required to cool equipment – a double wammy for global warming. We even help data center operators improve the efficiency of their facilities, saving even more energy.
The Mechanical Analysis Division has recently diversified to provide CFD to mechanical design engineers by embedding this into the mechanical CAD systems they use in their day-to-day work, making the same benefits possible across all industry sectors, not just electronics. According to Wikipedia, a 2009 study from McKinsey & Company identified the replacement of old appliances as one of the most efficient global measures that could be taken to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.
FloEFD can help designers produce the next generation of energy efficient appliances by optimising their design.
The latest in a series of FREE web seminars describes how FloEFD can be used to simulate and optimise heat transfer, which is critical to many industrial and consumer products, including domestic appliances such as fridges and dishwashers.
Dr. J, Hampton Court
