So, even though the Earth cooled this year, we still have this “global warming”, oops, I mean “climate change” issue to figure out. So, I, your trusty, authoritative advisor on all things both real and imagined have a real, substantive resolution to this whole global warming…damn it…climate change issue.
OK, so the whole…c l i m a t e c h a n g e…issue is quite simple. Because I am a technologist, it is obvious to any self-respecting egocentric human that technologists such as myself must be causing global change, I mean, climate warming, I mean, oh, forget it. Look, it is perfectly obvious. Computers convert electrical energy into…heat!! That’s right, who cares about carbon dioxide levels. Here we have a direct link between human activity and the warming of the Earth. Think of it, millions of computers consuming electrical energy and essentially converting that energy into heat which, obviously, would warm the Earth’s climate. I mean, why do you think they have all of those air conditioning units connected to computer data centers?
I’m too lazy to make up facts and statistics like Al Gore, but I bet if you manipulated the data sufficiently you could show a direct correlation between the increase in computer data processing to the increase in global temperatures. It is obvious. You take all of the heat generated by producing the electricity needed to power all of those computers and then add to that all of the actual heat generated by those computers and viola! you have your increase in global temperatures.
Think about it. You have a machine that is specifically engineered to convert electrical energy to heat. What do you THINK is going to happen when you put one of those in every household along with a miniature version of that same device that connects that computer to a global network? Of course you are going to heat things up! Whether it is a room or a planet, you are adding heat to the environment when you power up hundreds or tens of thousands of electrical to heat generating appliances such as TV’s, monitors, routers and computers. It’s simple thermodynamics people.
Let’s face it. The computer is an amazingly efficient electrical to heat generating appliance. It kicks the ass of a dish washer or clothes dryer in this category. I mean, at least those appliances actually accomplish something other than delivering a daily porn fix or entertaining the typical overweight shut-in living in his/her parent’s basement with his/her daily MMORPG fix. Computers are amazingly efficient in this category of delivering such little real value as compared to their electrical consumption and heat generation.
So, because I am a technologist and therefore myopic in my view of the world as pertaining only to the things that I feel I know about, the issue of climate change is obviously the result of my activities and has nothing to do with anything unrelated to me such as “sunspot cycles” or “bovine methane emissions” or anything else. Obviously, the climate change issue must be solely controlled by something that I can influence and control because I am the center of the universe. Obviously.
Therefore, to combat this issue of climate change, I have THE solution that will rectify the climate change issue once and for all. It is a simple solution really that I call “Cap and Code”. You see, the root cause of the problem is not computers but the actual code that runs the computers. Just like a car isn’t damaging the environment unless it is running, a computer isn’t doing much damage to the environment unless it is running code. Therefore the basic premise behind “Cap and Code” is that since computers run code in order to convert electrical energy to heat, if you have less or more efficient code, you will have less heat production. Simple.
Therefore, the obvious solution is to create a huge bureaucracy that will be responsible for registering, bonding and licensing every developer, both open source and actual professional. Then, each developer would be granted a set number of “coding credits” by the government.
Each of these credits could represent a certain number of lines of code, but that would probably just lead to perl-style “cheating”. So, it would make much more sense that each credit would represent a certain number of processor cycles and each developer would have to submit their code to the central bureaucracy for testing along with a plan as to how that code would run in production. The code would be tested, the plan analyzed and be assigned a number of credits that it consumed. Of course, such a testing system and facility would require a significant bureaucracy to ensure that coding testing standards were fair and performed properly.
Once developers reached their allowed number of credits, they would not be able to write any more code, or they would have to buy/trade credits with other developers who didn’t need their extra coding credits. An exchange would be created, along with the proper bureaucratic oversight committee, to oversee and approve these coding credit exchanges.
Now, I can hear the cries now regarding how to pay for all of this governmental oversight but the answer to that is also quite easy. The government would simply tax the coding credits so that the consumption of those credits required the developer to pay an appropriate tax. In this way, the entire system could be self funding and the production of code would be appropriately depressed. I mean, that code is destroying the entire planet, so it makes sense to tax it into oblivion, right? Of course it does.
In this way, the entire planet can be saved from destruction. And this is the only way mind you. Rampant use of code is destroying the planet and it must be stopped. I urge legislators in Congress to write and pass this bill to establish this coding credit and trading system. And if you oppose coding credits, then you are nothing other than a greedy, self absorbed developer pig that is out to destroy the planet all for the sake of a line of code. Shame on you.
Originally published 2013
The Objective Observer 
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