Carbon Dioxide, or CO₂, is a natural byproduct of nature.  Nature produces CO₂ in large quantities during volcanic eruptions, geo-thermal events, and other processes as simple as breathing and normal chemical breakdowns of other elements.  It is an essential component of photosynthesis, which is the process of plants changing CO₂ into oxygen, and an essential component of the "carbon cycle."  At proper levels, CO₂ is a requirement to sustain life.

When the ratio of CO₂ to other elements becomes disrupted, the carbon cycle is also disrupted. The earth's eco-system may not be able to absorb the excess CO₂ present within the system, and the cycle is changed to account for disruption in the status quo of nature. 

One byproduct of excess CO₂ in nature may be excess "greenhouse gases," which may have the effect of retaining heat within the earth's atmosphere.  This is widely accepted as being the main cause of global warming, which many scientists believe is causing much of the world's problems with deforestation, drought, and melting of the polar ice caps.

While researching some electricity and power issues for a data center project, I stumbled over a couple of statistics that may keep me up tonight.

The first deals with efficiency of servers within large organizations.  This is from a Forbes article "Servers: Why Thrifty Isn't Nifty." (11 Aug 2008).

"A rule of thumb for organizations with 5000 servers is that 30 percent of them are technologically obsolete - that's 1500 servers that could be unplugged with little or no effect.