Tim McDonnell

Climate Desk Associate Producer

Tim McDonnell joined the Climate Desk after stints at Mother Jones and Sierra magazine, where he nurtured his interest in environmental journalism. Originally from Tucson, Tim loves tortillas and epic walks.

Get my RSS | Follow @timmcdonnell

Apple, Google, Facebook: Whose Data Centers Are the Dirtiest?

Apple's iCloud is at the vanguard of personal computing. It also relies on a lot of dirty energy.

—By Tim McDonnell and James West

| Tue Apr. 17, 2012 7:00 AM PDT

Climate Desk You've heard about the Foxconn factory in China where your iPad is assembled. But have you ever considered the energy required to store your emails, photos, and videos in the cloud? As worldwide demand for data storage skyrockets, so do the power needs of the servers where all our digital archives live. While some companies (like Facebook) have made great progress in ditching dirty fossil-fuel energy for cleaner renewables, a few internet giants lag far behind. Climate Desk visited Maiden, North Carolina, for a close-up view of what will soon be one of the world's biggest data centers—owned by Apple and powered by the coal-heavy power behemoth Duke Energy.

UPDATE: A spokeswoman for Apple pushed back in a statement to Climate Desk after publication that the Maiden facility will be the "greenest data center ever built," and released figures that dispute Greenpeace's report. Greenpeace's report estimates the facility will draw 100 megawatts of power. Apple says the facility will use 20 megawatts at full capacity, and is on track to supply more than 60 percent of that power on-site from renewable sources including a solar farm and fuel cell installation, "which will each be the largest of their kind in the country." Suzanne Goldenberg from Climate Desk partner site The Guardian, quotes Greenpeace's Gary Cook as remaining skeptical about Apple's internal numbers: "I do feel that's a bit of a lowball number. That would be a very empty building they are putting there in terms of power demand if it's only 20MW. That seems disproportionally small," he said.

Apple's new data center is only one of many coal-fueled server farms across the country. The map below shows 52 of the largest, owned by companies like Google, Amazon, Apple, and Twitter. Mouse over a point on the map to see who owns the plant, and how reliant on coal it is, according to Greenpeace estimates. (Some data centers are clustered close together; zoom in on a particular area to see each one in more detail.)

See a full-screen version here.

The figures in the map are for individual data centers. To give you a better sense of the big picture, here's an overview of how much of each company's overall energy comes from coal, according to Greenpeace estimates:

1. Apple: 55.1 percent
2. HP: 49.7 percent
3. IBM: 49.5 percent
4. Oracle: 48.7 percent
5. Facebook: 39.4 percent
6. Microsoft 39.3 percent
7. Twitter: 35.6 percent
8. Amazon: 33.9 percent
9. Rackspace: 31.6 percent
10. Google: 28.7 percent
12. Dell: 20.1 percent

To see how other tech giants stack up against Apple, look through the Greenpeace report here.
To read about companies' energy use, check out this table from Greenpeace's report here.
Learn more about how Apple powers its facilities in its 2012 Facilities Report.
Learn more about Duke's renewables development, emissions reductions, and more in its 2011 report.
Check out these sweet aerial photos of the iDataCenter from Climate Desk partner Wired.

Advertise on MotherJones.com

Why Gas Prices Are High, Explained

Is it Obama's fault? Iran's? BP's? And what can we expect down the road?

—By Tim McDonnell and James West

| Tue Apr. 3, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

This interactive explainer was produced by the Climate Desk. (Don't worry, it may take a few seconds to load.)

Front page image: Karin Hildebrand Lau Shutterstock

WATCH: Can Pond Scum Save You From $5 Gas?

—By James West and Tim McDonnell

| Thu Mar. 22, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

In the spectrum of alternative fuel sources, biofuel made from algae is perhaps the most easily mocked. How could the slimy green muck that grows in your aquarium and washes up on the beach be a future cornerstone of American energy independence? So when President Obama stood before the University of Miami recently and said algae could provide up to 17 percent of our transportation fuel, we wanted to know: Is he right? Here's what we found out:

In February, President Obama announced the Department of Energy would allocate $14 million in new funding to develop transportation fuels from algae. DOE is already supporting over 30 such projects, together worth $94 million. Click through the map below to learn more about these projects.

Introducing the New Climate Desk: Stories for a Changing World

—By James West and Tim McDonnell

| Thu Mar. 22, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

Climate change is one of the defining stories of our time: rising sea levels, bigger storms, peak oil, colder winters and hotter summers. That begs the questions: Why aren't we talking about it more, and what the hell are we going to do about it?

Fortunately, there is a host of scientists, politicians, educators, artists, entrepreneurs, community leaders, journalists, and others who spend every day thinking about the answers to those questions. Maybe you're one of them. Ultimately, the story of climate change is their story—your story. But the media could still do a better job of telling it.

That's where the Climate Desk comes in.

Two years ago (the hottest year on record, by the way), a group of forward-thinking news outlets (The Atlantic, Center for Investigative Reporting, Grist, Mother Jones, PBS' Need to Know, Slate, and Wired) launched an innovative journalistic collaboration to explore the impact—human, environmental, economic, political—of a changing climate. Climate Desk has been gathering pace ever since, and today we're proud to announce our revamped website and the addition of a new partner: The Guardian. It's one of the UK's oldest and most distinguished newspapers, and has a substantial digital footprint in the US. The first UK newspaper to launch a dedicated environment section, the Guardian has one the biggest and most prolific environmental coverage teams in the world.

We're here to sift through the policy, protests, and polar bears to bring you the most important climate change stories: the ones that affect you, your corner of the world, the changes in your own backyard.

Check out our latest video, Pond Scum to the Rescue, to understand how algae might battle political derision to become a vital fuel source. Your Town Is Fracked shows how Pennsylvania limits local control over oil and gas drilling—potentially jeopardizing residential neighborhoods, watersheds, and even school zones. Climate Desk's one-on-one with Michael Mann, reported and written by Suzanne Goldenberg, of the Guardian, is the climate scientist's account of attacks by entrenched interests seeking to undermine his “hockey stick” graph.

We want to hear from you. What are you concerned by, or want to know more about? Tell us and keep checking back with the Climate Desk for more from this unfolding story .

Catching Up With the Shins' James Mercer

—By Tim McDonnell

| Mon Mar. 12, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

James Mercer

The Shins' 2007 album Wincing the Night Away got rave reviews and debuted at number 2 on the Billboard 200, spawning a yearlong tour and snagging a Grammy nomination for Best Alternative Music Album. It was a wild ride for a band that had spent nearly a decade working its way up from obscurity in Albuquerque, and front man James Mercer came away from it exhausted and ready to quit. The last thing on his mind was the next Shins project. "It was a bit of a crisis in a way," he says. "What do you do if you decide the band you've been with for the last 10 years, you just suddenly don't want to do?" So Mercer took a breather in the form of Broken Bells, an excellent collaboration with Brian Burton (a.k.a. Danger Mouse), as a way to "open up my horizons." A few years later, with a new label and rejiggered lineup, Mercer has decided to take a fresh crack at the Shins. The band's new album, Port of Morrow, out next week, takes a smoothed-out, matured approach to the Shins' characteristic electro-folk-rock. I spoke with Mercer about his favorite rock and roll singers, being raised a military brat, and why you can't get a decent American-made microphone anymore—dammit!

Mother Jones: So after the Wincing tour, you were hitting some roadblocks with the Shins?

James Mercer: Mainly I was tired of being right in the middle and everything sort of revolving around me, including the friendship dynamics-slash-bandmate dynamics and the creative aspect. It was a bit much. It had never been so big, and I had never been someone who was ever in the center of any kind of social circle. And in the midst of that, Brian Burton kind of came up with the idea of us working on a new band where he was writing in a more traditional sense. It was kind of perfect timing. I was a bit intimidated by it, but I had also recently decided to start saying "Yes" to things.

MJ: Musically, or in your life in general?

JM: Life in general.

[Read more in the Mixed Media blog]