Mar 26, 2023 | Posted by Abdul-Rahman Oladimeji
After a power failure knocked down its data center, the Internet Archive's digital library was offline for many hours. Free public entry to backups of websites, software programs, games, music, movies, photos, and millions of books is offered by the California-based non-profit. The Bay Area has been battered by severe winds over the previous two days, leaving more than 180,000 electrical users without power. Stanford University canceled final examinations and shuttered its offices because its campus was among those affected. Falling trees have caused at least two fatalities and three critical injuries. Winds caused an Amtrak train to derail. Thousands lost power in California due to a storm last week.
Due to anthropogenic climate change, storm frequency and severity are rising. In its most recent assessment, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a dire warning that to keep global warming to 1.5°C; humanity must implement significant, swift, and sustainable reductions in greenhouse gas emissions across all sectors. Climate-related events have a growing influence on PG&E's grid, which has endured decades of underinvestment and has started several destructive wildfires. To reduce the possibility of its grid starting another fire, PG&E 2020 preemptively turned off the electricity for millions of its customers. However, fires continued to burn that year, resulting in a supercomputer outage at NERSC. The downtime this week coincides with the Archive's having to defend its digital library in court against a historic copyright action brought by publishers that questions libraries' authority to scan their own book holdings.
