We finally get to the bottom of the biggest question facing mankind - and, yes, global warming is real, and yes, we're the cause. But it's not about cars or flatulent cattle on corporate forms or anything like that. No, it's much, much worse. Much.
First of all, it’s the first of April and it’s snowing here in New England. But I wouldn’t ignore the rest of this posting just because you still need an extra pair of socks this late in the season. In fact, you’d better wear those socks out as soon as you can, because you won’t need them much longer.
Oh, I know, there’s a lot of controversy surrounding global warming, but, yes, such is indeed real. The earth, or, at least the part we really, really care about, is getting hotter, and we have the data that shows that unequivocally. Now, I know many of you are skeptics and will likely point out that the earth has heated and cooled over quite a range, and many times, in fact, without human contribution, over its history. So what? That was then; this is now. And now is about us heating up the planet, with our handsets, tablets, notebooks, PCs, Internets, routers, switches, appliances, servers, firewalls, coffee makers (to keep the operation staff on their toes), urinal autoflushes (for managing a key stage in what scientists call the “Coffee Cycle”), microwave ovens (to test wireless LANs), and video games, which remain unquestionably civilization’s highest achievement ever.
But behind every single one of those is the Number One source of global warming – disk drives. Sure, they’re getting faster, denser, and cheaper, and even more power-efficient. But they still give off a lot of heat – a lot of heat. How much? Well, in Dynes per (thermal) Erg, about 2.7 Fermis/Newton/Maxwell/second2. You do the math (and don’t forget to divide by two the amount of Promethium in the Earth’s crust – even seasoned agronomists miss that one), but consider regardless that each day over 3,000,000,000 new disk drives, like those sucking down and kicking out Watts at Apple’s massively-unnecessary data-center expansion in North Carolina, which, by the way, occupies an entire county in that state, spin up for the very first time. So, can you say crisis with a capital K? I sure can.
But it gets worse. It’s not just all that heat – it’s the angular momentum of all those disks affecting the Earth’s orbit. More Krisis – no cidding! Because all disk drives spin in the same direction (what were they thinking ?!?!?!?), their angular momentum subtracts from that of the Earth. The math is way too complex to illustrate here (and I have no idea how to draw an integral in WordPress regardless), but suffice it to say that the Earth will in fact come to a complete, grinding halt on 21 December 2012 – precisely the day predicted by the Mayan calendar, and based on calculations done by the Mayans with their own computers and disk drives (all 286s and 5.25-inch SCSI drives, BTW, real junk in modern terms, but I digress), so they knew, first hand, what they were talking (and etching) about. Look carefully at the Mayan calendar – see the little symbol that looks like an IT manager pouring a cup of coffee (they invented coffee, too, by the way)? The coffee was presumably hot, but the image is positively chilling, which is what half the planet will be doing on 22 December 2012. Guess which half. Go on, guess. Well the other half, let’s just say, won’t have any trouble keeping the coffee warm, let me tell you. And you can ditch the socks.
Knowing this, then, why are we committing suicide, I must stress, as a planet? Facebook. Twitter. YouTube. Not really MySpace so much anymore, but their hands aren’t entirely clean here, either. It’s great to know that human life is doomed because everyone on Earth absolutely must know that Aunt Doris’ beloved toy poodle, Muffin, has learned to use the litter box (formerly the exclusive domain of her cat, Ruffian, who has since, well, moved on apparently due to chronic heat stroke), or that that slut Tina is now dating that dreamy Tim from third-period French, or endless replays of the worst music video ever. Oooh, I just can’t wait for what’s next. Apart from the end of the world, anyway.
Flash memory, on the other hand, just sits there all cool and sophisticated, knowing positively deep down in its little silicon heart that it could indeed save us – but where are the massive government spending programs when we really need them? Ain’t gonna happen. So, enjoy the earth slowly spining down over the next year and a half. And, of course, we’ll cover it live right here at Nearpoints up until the very end. Stay tuned. I mean, what else do you have to do? Oh, sorry, Facebook and Twitter. I forgot. Just like I wish I could forget yet another April First snowstorm.
