1. Using ICT to “adapt” rather than
“mitigate” Global Warming
Bill St. Arnaud
Bill.st.arnaud@gmail.com
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2. We need a new nuclear plant per day
to keep stabilization at 2C
Source: Roger Pielke Jr 2

3. How fast can decarbonization occur?
• The honest answer no one knows
• Historical rates of 1-2% have occurred in developing
countries – mostly by outsourcing manufacturing to China
• For short periods some countries have achieved rates > 2%
e.g. France nuclear program
• US need to achieve 17% reduction while maintaining
modest economic growth which requires rates of
decarbonization of >5% per year
– Need to shut down over 20 coal plants per year to meet this
target
3

4. Climate Forecasts
• MIT report predicts median
temperature forecast of 5.2°C
– 11°C increase in Northern Canada
& Europe
– http://globalchange.mit.edu/pubs/abstract.p
hp?publication_id=990
MIT
• Last Ice age average global
temperature was 5-6°C cooler than
today
– Most of Canada & Europe was
under 2-3 km ice
• Nearly 90 per cent of new scientific
findings reveal global climate
disruption to be worse, and
progressing more rapidly, than
expected.
• http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/Freud
enburg_2010_ASC.pdf

5. Probability of extreme heat waves
the probability of an extreme heat wave has
increased enormously… by about 40 times
(4000%) in the last 50 years
http://www.slideshare.net/Revkin/a-defense-
5
of-jim-hansens-climate-conclusions/download

6. Future Droughts
• Palmer Drought Severity Index,
or PDSI.
• The most severe drought in
recent history, in the Sahel region
of western Africa in the 1970s, had
a PDSI of -3 or -4.
• By 2030 Western USA could see
-4 to -6. Drought in Texas clearly
caused by global warming:
http://goo.gl/QjHRS
• By 2100 some parts of the U.S.
and Latin America could see -8 to -
10 PDSI, while Mediterranean
areas could see drought in the -15
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39741525/ns/us_new
or -20 range. s-environment/

7. Utilities biggest source of CO2
http://www.oecd-
ilibrary.org/docserver/download/fulltext/5k9h2q8v9bln.pdf?expires=1327
005403&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=DFE9FB35608FEA0C67713C5
8F2952625
7

8. New Challenge: Climate Adaptation
• Obama’s National Science Advisor John Holdren
“Mitigation alone won’t work, because the climate is
already changing, we’re already experiencing
impacts….A mitigation only strategy would be
insanity,”
• Equal emphasis given to adaptation – avoiding the
unmanageable, and adaptation – managing the
unavoidable.”
• Obama’s Climate Adaptation Executive Order
– http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1tU8go/www.good.is/post/obama-s-secret-climate-adaptation-plan/

9. We need to get off the electrical grid
• Biggest source of CO2 emissions because of coal plants – even in places
that use hydro and wind e.g. Quebec and Denmark
• Coal plants will be most likely targets of protestors and governments
– If Germany and Switzerland are willing to shut down nuclear plants then
someday they will realize coal plants are much worse for health, safety and
environmental reasons
• A good adaptation strategy can also be a good mitigation strategy
• Adaptation strategy means using only distributed renewal resources
disconnected from the grids
– Will most likely survive severe weather events
– Will not be subject to outages when governments are forced to shut down
coal plants
• But how do you reliable and robust telecommunications and Internet
when only sources of power are intermittent and unreliable wind and sun?
9

10. OpenFlow Follow the wind/Follow the sun
Canadian GSN European GSN
Domain Domain
Export VM
Notify EU
Cloud Manager
Cloud Manager Cloud Manager
Internet
Dynamically Configure
IP Tunnel
Host Network Host
Resource Manager Resource
• Shudown VM
• Copy Image • Update VM Context
Mantychore2 • Start VM
Shared
VM storage
Shared
storage VM
Lightpath
Optical switch Optical switch
Host Cloud Proxy
Cloud Proxy Host

11. AMD, HP & Clarkson U GreenCloud
•Demonstrate the feasibility of deploying a network
of Performance Optimized Datacenters (PODs),
geographically distributed to exploit the availability of
renewable energy for its operation.
• Optimizing the utilization of the available renewable
power for computing by intelligently redistributing
computational load;
•Minimizing losses associated with power
transmission by placing the PODs near the power
source;
•Providing energy and design efficiency through the
use of additional passive cooling for the PODs
•Use the wind power that is currently stranded, i.e.
not-delivered to the grid due to the T&D constraints.

12. National GreenCloud Vision

13. Let’s Keep The Conversation Going
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Bill St. Arnaud
http://green-broadband.blogspot.com
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