You can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs, so mucking up the environment even more to prevent pollution wasn’t a hard sell for this company.
To calculate precisely how much climate change will affect Britain, the Met Office has purchased a $47 million supercomputer that should be up and running by 2011.
Using the upgraded technology, the company will be able to measure carbon dioxide (CO2) output nationwide, as well as predict extreme events like localized storms and cloudbursts.
One catch: The amount of energy needed to keep the supercomputer running means it’ll emit 14,400 tons of CO2 per year — equivalent to the amount of CO2 given off by 2,400 homes and businesses in the same time frame.
Met Office’s Director of Science and Technology Alan Dickinson says the new computer, which is as powerful as 100,000 PCs, will help the country cut carbon emissions on a greater scale than those it puts out.
