The energy cost to run a home computer is modest enough that it's easy to forget, for example, that the two big server farms that keep Yahoo's family of web services online use more electricity between them than all the televisions on Earth put together. Multiply that out by the tens of thousands of server farms that keep today's online economy going, and the hundreds of other energy-intensive activities that go into the internet, and it may start to become clear how much energy goes into putting these words onto the screen where you're reading them.
holy cow! is that true, anyone know? ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
On top of that most servers are running several processors, so on top of probably at a low end 500w per server, you've then got to take into account the aircon required to keep massed ranks of boxes and power supplies cool. Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
We've discussed this before http://www.eurotrib.com/comments/2009/4/28/31445/9658/28#28 In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
