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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.
You think like a ReThuglican Jew
Sounds like your the victim of poor engineering, not hydroelectric power.
And to nitpick the article:
...with more than 200m Internet searches estimated daily...
If you mean million, say million, not meters. Are you recommending the search field be restricted in size?
Modding me -1 troll doesn't make me wrong.
No. Fuck you, punk. Stop wasting our entropy.
The conventional wisdom is that CO2 is causing global warming. That is to say, the "ordinary" position is one of the "hype."
Dude, you are a nigger.
One of the consequences of enlightened armchair scientists... Give the researchers some fucking credit please. Harvard physicists, submitted for peer review probably don't make such a retarded mistake. Um, 1st year physics students probably don't make that mistake... Of course it happens, but it's a safe bet that it hasn't. My particular armchair analysis could swing each of your numbers by an order of magnitude in any arbitrary direction so let's give the researchers who considered this more than 3 seconds some real credit.
The defensive posture adapted by the majority of this thread is pathetic. I know we all like to think differently but this funny crowd proves yet again to be a bunch of tribal primates reacting on blind, unconscious emotion. Clearly any effort that targets reducing the energy it takes for a network to operate is a good thing. In order to make such a "leap" you will necessarily need people far from the fence concerned about the issue. In conclusion, eat shit and die you shit-flinging pin head mother fuckers. Sorry for tagging your post specifically. LuLz.
You are so full of shit as to boggle the mind. Yeah, you're such a huge environmentalist, you microwave your water for tea in the microwave to save energy to reduce your carbon footprint. Fuck you. Oh, and riding the bus to the library is hardly that efficient, you're still dumping a bunch of carbon dioxide into the air. If you're so concerned about your carbon footprint you should sell all of your possessions and move to sub-Saharan Africa, either that or you could kill yourself, which would reduce your carbon footprint to zero.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.