Bias in Environmental Headlines

Environmental writers are judged in the same way that TV shows are judged: by their popularity. So who do you think will grab more attention, reasonable writers or sensationalists? Blame who you want, but sensationalism sells, and I am hoping to open a dialogue on Steem platforms which can delve into the environment in a reasonable manner.

The New York Times wrote a piece demonizing Microsoft for using fossil fueled backup generators so frequently at their data center in Washington State. Like many data centers, they run off cheap electricity due to the hydroelectic power plant nearby. It makes sense to use renewable power over dirty backup generators, but the generators must be run during outages and maintenance procedures.

The article from the New York Times slowly paints a picture of doom and gloom if we don’t comply with exceptional energy efficiency standards. That sounds fine enough until they end the article with the idea that we have no future at all if we don’t build the future just right. The writer also thinks that the internet isn’t the single greatest achievement of civilization, because he thinks that vaccinations have earned that spot. Seemed like an obscure comparison to me, but the article had some valid points and made me contemplate the future of technology and civilization.

He calls for better use of electricity in operating the “cloud”, but never nods to the cloud for how much electricity it can save due to making in-house servers less common (almost obsolete). This article presented a damning view of Microsoft for its intentional overuse of electricity at a data center in Washington State. But upon a cursory inspection, the article appeared to have some biased arguments. For example, the New York Times demonizes Microsoft for the incident, but if they conserved electricity, they would have been fined about $200,000 by the UTILITY. Who’s really the bad guy here?

First came the attack on Microsoft for intentional overuse of energy, then came the comparison to Yahoo, which has a data center across the street from Microsoft. NYT states:

“For example, Yahoo’s Quincy data center, which expanded around the same time, ran its generators just 65 hours in 2010, state records show. Microsoft’s generators operated for a combined total of 3,615 hours that year, the records show.”

I’m no mathematician, but 65 hours sounds like a big difference from 3,615. Too bad that is intentionally misleading. 3,615 hours ÷ 24 Generators = 150.625 hours of use. Microsoft ran its gens for just over 150 hours, and Yahoo ran theirs for 65 hours... That's not a HUGE difference! 150.625 ÷ 65 = 2.3 so as you can see, Microsoft used their generators for 2.3 times the duration that Yahoo did. The article never mentions how much Dell (the competitor across the road from Yahoo) utilized their generators.

Mathematicians might call this type of writing, “incomplete information” while other majors may refer to it as a “red herring” fallacy. Perhaps the true lesson of reading these articles has been that environmental writers are so biased, that a mechanic can make a mockery of their arguments with just the information provided in their own articles.

Article referenced above:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/24/technology/data-centers-in-rural-washington-state-gobble-power.html?_r=0