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A New Model Of Climate Change

A couple of weeks ago, David Cameron decided to say “vote blue, go green” or somesuch. Emporer Menzies Campbell then decided to make some sort of green statement, and tell the world that he was selling his Jaguar XJS. And then Gordon “Gordon” Brown told the world that he was very green indeed, as he remembered to unplug his mobile phone charger when his phone wasn't actually being charged. It is the little things, said Gordon, that make the difference, especially when everyone does it.

Which brings me to the BBC's Climate Change modelling screensaver. Whenever you aren't using your computer, the screensaver takes over, and runs a series of complex mathematical tasks, to model climate change. Apparently, the complex mathematical tasks are so complex, and so mathematical, that your computer may start to run very hot, and the fans may start to run very noisily (or so the FAQ says).
Hmm. Have we found the real culprit behind global warming?
There are over 150,000 people in the UK running this screensaver, whose computers will now be running flat out for much of the day. Rather than idling, each CPU is using (say) 100W, and its fans are now running at full blast. That's an awful lot of extra power used. And whereas the idle temperature of each CPU might be ~35 degrees, the “series of complex mathematical tasks” temperature is more like ~65 degrees. So, that's 30 degrees, for each of the 150,000 computers in the UK which are running the screensaver. Here's the maths bit…

30 degrees x 150,000 = 4,500,000 degrees. That is four and a half million degrees. To compare, the outer layer of the sun is only 6000 degrees, so this is 750 times hotter
than the surface of the sun.

So, why aren't we all burning up? The answer can be found in geometry.

The sun is a circle, and there are 360 degrees in a circle. So, dividing our temperature by 360 degrees:-

4,500,000 degrees / 360 degrees = 12,500 degrees, which is only about twice as hot as the sun. Now we are getting closer to the truth. The sun is extremely big, far bigger than 150,000 processors. It is also very far away, unlike processors (a recent study hypothesized that on the UK mainland, you are never more than 3 metres from a processor, which suggests that processors have many of the same characteristics as rats). Even when the appropriate multipliers are applied (maths too complicated to show here), we would still expect a temperature change in excess of 1100 degrees. So why don't we see this in every day life?

The answer lies in the cooling power of the Moon. But that is a discussion for another day.

Bibliography
The Moon's Temperature at l =2.77cm
Moon disc temperature as a function of phase at 1700 MHz
Moon Landings Faked!