Tag Archives: Climate change

Environmentally sustainable computing 

Did you know that it is approximated that you, a scientist, have a carbon footprint which is between 2 and 12 times higher than the set carbon budget per person to keep global warming below 1.5 °C [1]? 

Background

Global temperatures are rising. This has direct effects on the planet and contributes to increasing humanitarian emergencies. These include more frequent and intense heatwaves, wildfires, and floods [2]. The impact of climate change is already severe, with around 20 million internal displaced persons in 2023 alone due to those disasters [3]. 

Global warming and climate change are caused by the emissions of carbon dioxide and methane, known as carbon emissions. There are different ways in which you could minimise your carbon footprint. For example, I try to reduce the energy usage in the house, try eating mainly plant-based, and travel by train instead of by plane to family and for holidays and conferences. However, up until organising a Green Lecture with the Department of Statistics Green Team I never thought of my computational PhD as a major contributor to my carbon footprint. That doesn’t mean the work I, and all other scientists, do is not important and necessary. But the lecture on principles for environmentally sustainable research given by Loic Lannelongue made me aware of carbon costs of computing, which I would like to share with you. 

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Climate Change @ ISMB

Another special session I was listening to at ISMB 2020 was the Green stream. Several talks dealt with climate change and its relation to bioinformatics and computational biology. Two of them I found particularly interesting, one calculating the carbon footprint of ISMB itself and the other calculating the footprint of specific bioinformatics tools.

I believe most people have realised how important the issue of human-made climate change is and I assume that everyone has heard about some aspects of our life that are causing particularly many emissions compared to certain alternatives. For example, train rides vs. short-haul flights, eating the food’s food (veggies) vs. mass production of meat or renewable energies vs. coal plants, just to name some that are rather easy to change. Admittedly, I have also underestimated the urgency of the issue and I found this plot quite convincing:

(Screenshot from Alex Bateman’s talk)

What can we as computational researchers do about it?

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