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The Environmental Impact of Google Searches
paleshadows writes "The Times Online reports that researchers claim that each query submitted to Google has a quantifiable impact. Specifically, two queries performed through a desktop computer generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a cup of tea. From the article: 'While millions of people tap into Google without considering the environment, a typical search generates about 7g of CO2 [whereas] boiling a kettle generates about 15g [...] Google is secretive about its energy consumption and carbon footprint. It also refuses to divulge the locations of its data centers. However, with more than 200m Internet searches estimated daily, the electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emissions caused by computers and the Internet is provoking concern. A recent report [argues that] the global IT industry generate[s] as much greenhouse gas as the world's airlines — about 2% of global CO2 emissions.'" Google makes an interesting focus for such claims, but similar extrapolations have been done before about, for instance, the energy costs of sending a short email.
Were there not a Google (or internet equivalent), I wouldn't sit back in my rocking chair, exclaim "Oh, well," and have a cup or two of tea. Instead, I'd get in my car and drive to the library to look whatever it was up in a reference book, or search the catalog for a book I could borrow on the topic.
In that way, Google (or equivalent) saves energy.
Now that said, I expect Google to do their best to minimize energy consumption. Given that their electricity costs directly hit their cost of doing business, I suspect they agree with this goal.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
A recent report [argues that] the global IT industry generate[s] as much greenhouse gas as the world's airlines â" about 2% of global CO2 emissions.
Oh, that's not bad. Considering how huge a positive impact the IT industry has, that honestly seems like a relatively acceptable amount. And I'd rather have two googles than a cup of tea any day.
Let's just shut down every piece of modern technology and revert to a hunter-gatherer civilization. Will that make the enviornmentalists finally shut up? Why not stop people from breathing too, since that produces C02.
That doesn't sound right to me. Must be at least ten times that.
I expect our shiny new government is going to start taxing us on carbon soon. They are throwing money at failing businesses by the billions, while the tax base is collapsing. They are going to need to try to replace that cash somehow.
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
1. Exposing corporations for the evil bastards they are has much less impact when you make up all the numbers.
2. In the Dalles here in Oregon, their project 02 datacenter pulls all of it's power straight from the hydro dam next door. In fact, the whole reason they built there was because of all the dark fiber underneath, and the hydroelectric dam adjacent. Google didn't get rich by making shitty decisions when it comes to power consumption.
You don't know this either. You've just been told by people who want to disagree with the media and organizations like the U.N.
It would take spectacular dishonesty to fudge the energy to make a cup of tea an order of magnitude lower.
The skepticism shown in this thread is fully justified.
Efforts to operate more efficiently are not helped by fallacious arguments and mindless cheerleading.
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I posted a very long list of scientific articles and papers that refute the CO2 and other greenhouse warming models. Saying that "nobody who's seriously studied it disagrees" is simply a false statement. Look it up if you want to.
That sounded like an incredibly reasonable statement, so I went ahead and clicked on your link to take a look at the articles and papers you talked about.
Turns out you had a bunch of links from obviously biased websites like "heartland.org" who seem to be some bullshit about how the free market is the solution to all problems, forces.org which has some bullshit "scientific evidence" that smoking is not really that bad for you, a republican senator's speech as some type of authority on the subject (not to mention that Jim Inhofe has a history of citing the Bible as support for his stance on issues...how scientific of him), and a blog.
You didn't cite a single peer-reviewed article, and you excuse yourself for not doing that by first posting a bunch of links that aim to prove peer-review is flawed. I've been in academia, so I know it's not perfect, but peer review is sort of like democracy. It's the worst possible method to do things, except for all the others.
And by the way, I am also seriously tired of -- and pissed off about -- being constantly modded as "troll" or "flamebait" for simply mentioning things that are backed by science and which I can support with plenty of evidence
You don't post anything backed by science, though. If you want anybody to take you seriously, you must use peer-reviewed sources and only from reputable journals at that. Otherwise, your evidence amounts to shit kooks believe in.
Now, that said, I'm not unsympathetic to the ultimate goals places like forces.org and hell, even heartland.org have. However, they need to accomplish their goal by not trying to bs the public. The evidence clearly points that smoking is horrible for your health. However, if people want to smoke, it's their goddamn life, and it's their right to risk it if they want to, I don't need some article showing some fake evidence that you're actually better off not quitting because the health risks of quitting are worse.
Similarly, the evidence clearly points in support of greenhouse global warming. However, it makes absolutely no sense for us to leave less convenient lives and use less energy in an attempt to curb it. Even if all of us cut our energy usage by half, population growth and continued development of third-world countries will quickly cause total energy usage to grow significantly beyond current total usage. We need to control population growth by supporting birth control and improving economic conditions (developed nations actually have negative growth if you don't count immigration). We need to quit our fear of nuclear and build a bunch of breeder reactors, which are actually efficient with their nuclear fuel and have very low emissions.
Basically, have the courage to say, "yes, global warming is real, but who the fuck gives a shit if polar bears go extinct? They're not the first species on the planet to do, and they won't be the last. Don't be a moron trying to claim "scientific" evidence exists while simultaneously claiming the only thing that makes scientific claims valid (peer-review) doesn't work and dismissing all the peer-reviewed papers because of it. You're just showing your ignorance.
> We need to use non carbon emitting sources such as nuclear power, solar and wind power.
None of these are 0 carbon if you look at the full life cycle: building, transporting the materials (and fuel and waste), storing the waste and then decommissioning. What you try to do is *reduce* the carbon output. And not consuming energy is the best for that. And the quickest.
> Its also ironic that the greenies always try to inhibit the green power they always go on about.
There is nothing ironic about it: "greenies" are not some kind of homogeneous blob: they are different people with different priorities and ideals, same as all groups of people.