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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.
That explains the infinite improbability factor that gives links to pron sites from nearly every innocent search.
I find it somewhat hard to believe that this study will change anything; the number of searches are not going to decrease, and people are probably not going to stop drinking tea. So even if each search released fifteen times more CO2, would that change anything?
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.
According to my google search history I am responsible for about 112 kg of carbon. I wonder how long I have to hold my breath to off set that.
This one's tricky. You have to use imaginary numbers, like eleventeen... --Hobbes
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.
I'd like to see the in-depth math on this, I don't buy these numbers, its smells of environmental-shock-value reasoning... Example - if they are dividing the total power used by google by the number of searches, that would only be applicable if google were working at 100% capacity and if *all* they did was searches...
This is kinda like the Greenpeace founder who hated nuclear power till they read a freaking book. Boo.
Time to have a global boston tea party and dump all the tea into the ocean. With roughly 2-3 billion less tea drinkers in the world, think of how many more searches we can do without impacting the environment! And think of those who drink multiple glasses. It's like a critical hit against tea/energy expense. Booyah! problem solved.
I'm on this advisory group of 6 people and we wanted to participate in a 2 day conference by flying a representative there or through video conferencing. For some reason the carbon footprint argument was used IN SUPPORT of flying because of that recent news about data-centres being polluters. There was news that IT are going to be the 2nd largest cause of pollution in a few years, and therefore flying was somehow comparably damaging to IT.
I thought that this was against common sense, but it was surprisingly difficult to understand the difference. If an ISP wanted to 'go green' what kind of carbon offset would they need to invest in, per Gig? I found a Harvard study[***] on banner ads that seems to be applicable to internet traffic in general.
It's difficult to quantify and compare the two scenarios[*] but flying to London and back releases about 4,000 kilos of CO2[**] whereas sending 10G of data (video conferencing of youtube-quality video for 16 hours to 7 people) releases about about 100 kilos of CO2[***] + 30 kilos to run 7 computers for two days. While the plane's CO2 cost is only in terms of fuel (and not airports or surrounding infrastructure) the data CO2 from the Harvard study[***] is inclusive of wider infrastructure. Also planes releasing CO2 into the upper atmosphere do more damage than CO2 being released on the ground due to Radiative forcing.
One interesting thing from the Harvard study relates to Moores Law, "we calculate that energy intensity of the internet declined by approximately an order of magnitude from 2000 to 2006. While energy use approximately doubled in that time period, data traffic grew by more than a factor of 20". Now I know that Moores Law is purely about transistor chip density so please don't misunderstand me -- I just mean that as computers and networks get faster the energy needed for 1 gig of traffic will decrease.
So it's about 4000 kilos for flying ONE PERSON vs 130 kilos of video conferencing FOR ALL PEOPLE.
[*] because of course it depends on how wide you consider the effects. Flight pollution should of course include airport pollution but how far do we go? Does it include power company polution for the power needed in the airport? It seems that a lot of IT studies are wider in scope than that of flight.
[**] http://www.cheap-parking.net/flight-carbon-emissions.php for flying half way around the world and back.
[***] Harvard Study on CO2 for data: http://www.imc2.com/Documents/CarbonEmissions.pdf
ps. In New Zealand? Sign up to http://CreativeFreedom.org.nz
Right, because Microsoft would benefit from people using computers less.
While I agree with the sentiment I cannot go so far as to be guilted into not using Google. This craziness stretches into other areas. Large plasma TVs are facing face being banned in the EU. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/giant-plasma-tvs-face-ban-in-battle-to-green-britain-1299665.html
There is talk about heavily taxing the airline industry to bring down the number of miles flown.
There seems to be no middle ground. Either its denial of global warming or banning major economic and social activity in the name of the environment.
Of course we can solve the problem. We need to use non carbon emitting sources such as nuclear power, solar and wind power. Instead the greenies on Europe want to guilt anyone who uses energy. In the end all that does is to depress the economy, raise unemployment and lower standards of living.
Its also ironic that the greenies always try to inhibit the green power they always go on about. The have stopped wind power on top of mountains in Vermont ( http://www.windaction.org/news/3653 )and filed lawsuits against solar power in the Nevada desert. http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2008/09/25/are-some-solar-projects-no-longer-%E2%80%98green%E2%80%99/ They even oppose wind power out at sea - Nantucket sound. http://www.nesea.org/publications/NESun/cape_controversy.html Why? Because it's development and they hate ALL development. They always have some objection.
The irony is that we cannot address global warming BECAUSE of the opposition to environmentalists. Indeed if we are to use electric cars we are going to need many more (non carbon emitting) power stations which the experimentalists fight against tooth and nail.
And then I am always amazed by how so many people seem to forge that China is the number one emitter now and that India will soon be number two. If you cannot get these countries on board you are wasting your time. So while the EU impoverishes itself trying to reduce its carbon emissions by 1% China happily adds 10 times that every year anyway.
A new study shows that using Google will destroy the planet. A typical Google search on a completely random topic such as "charlot chirch sex tape" produces enough carbon for 98 pencils or seventeen boiled kettles and brutally murders an average of two point four cute fluffy things.
"A Google search has a definite environmental impact," said Alex Wissner-Gross of Harvard University. "Instead, you should use Windows Live Search — to be renamed Windows Love Search — which produces butterflies and baby seals. That's instead of whatever you were looking for, but hey — it's for the planet."
Google is "secretive" about its energy consumption and carbon footprint. "Or at least, they told us to fuck off when we asked how many endangered species they'd killed off today. This proves their inherent malice. If you search using Google you may as well be strangling kittens. You should go to a trustworthy company of demonstrated moral fibre, like Microsoft."
A recent Gartner report said the global IT industry generates as much greenhouse gas as the airlines industry. "Primary in this is the large quantities of hot air produced by completely independent analysts to support the views of the highest bidder."
The Home Office welcomed the findings. "This proves that Internet users might as well be terrorists," said Jacqui Smith, "and so we'll treat them like they are. All Internet access in the UK will be run through Cleanfeed filters and your electronic ration book ticked off per web page used. Reading Wikipedia or the Guido Fawkes blog will, of course, be declared capital offences."
Microsoft has demonstrated its environmental credentials by recycling Vista, its huge and lumbering Hummer of an operating system, as Windows 7. "All new and yet ... old," said marketing marketer Steve Ballmer. "Save the planet with Windows 7! Requires 4 core processor 2 gigabytes memory 500 gigabyte hard disk and basement nuclear power plant. Power plant sold separately."
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Which are more valuable to our overall environment? A few less cubic feet of CO2, or a few more salmon, a couple of ducks, some crayfish and a sturgeon?
I would say the former. Increased levels of greenhouse gases will have a far more global consequences and cause global damage than building a few damms here and there. The power has to be generated somewhere. IMHO it's a sensible and logical choice to trade local landscape change for global climate change.
If I do enough google searches, the amount of emissions required to boil my kettle is reduced as the water is warmer to start with thanks to global warming..
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
I drink iced tea, you insensitive clod!
I don't buy these numbers. Assuming the summary is correct and one search uses as much energy as boiling half a cup of water, then the total energy dissipated is;
W=delta_T*specific_energy*mass
Which for water gives (assuming 80 degrees of temperature difference and 75g of water, or about half a small cup of tea);
80*4.18*75=25kJ
A few google searches I just did took on average 0.2 seconds each, as reported by google.
This would give a power draw of 125kW, for just running the services that handled my single request!
Now, I must say that I don't now a lot pertaining to how much power google's servers draw, and of course running the search engine servers ism't enough, google needs to update it's database and do lots of other maintanence. All in all this strikes me as far too much.
Does anyone happen to have any real knowledge about this?
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.
Now lets be really pessimistic on the Google front. Suppose my search takes Google 1 second, and the search is distributed over ten 500W servers. That's 5 kJ expended. Lets double that to allow for the costs of spidering and indexing, and double again since the article mentions two searches per cup. Thats 20 kJ. Assume I spend a minute on my 30W laptop viewing the search results; thats another 2 kJ.
So We have 84 kJ verses 22 kJ.
In fact, in the time it takes to do a Google search, your own personal computer will use more energy than we will use to answer your query.
From http://www.google.com/corporate/datacenters/
What are the odds the US Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers is federally funded? Let's hope the economy will soon cut funds for wastes of time like this.
The Eco nuts don't really care about saving the environment. They are basically just whiners. You'll notice that what they love to do is point out problems. Well that's easy because there is a problem with everything. EVERYTHING has a cost. Doesn't matter what it is, there is a cost, a tradeoff, to everything. So it is pretty easy to just pick out the cost of everything and scream about it. Much harder is to actually be constructive and come up with solutions. That means evaluating different options, figuring out the relative costs, including indirect costs, and then choosing the best combination. That's not what these people are interested in. They just want to hate on everything. So no matter what you do, they'll not be happy about it.
Some facts as I understand them snarfed from the web - corrections welcomed...
rough cost of (wholesale) energy per kilowatt hour (kwh): ~5c
CO2 cost per kwh: ~1kg (coal power: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/pns/faq.html)
time for my (small) 1 litre (~ 1kw) kettle to boil when full is ~ 5 minutes which compares well with the theoretical energy for a 1litre at ~350kj, or 350 seconds time for 1kw . Hence power for a small boiled kettle is a killowatt for 1/10 of an hour, or 0.1 kwh
So I get... ... the article says a kettle take 15g, which I don't get even close to; maybe clever people boil just enough to make single cups only?
Kettle boiling: costs ~.5c, and ~ 100g,
If the article was true, Google doing "more than 200m" searches a day would spend ~ $20m a day on power, or ~ $7billion a year, consuming 100,000 megawatt hours, or a continuous drain of 4,000 megawatts (about the power output of a small US state). On the authors figures, total power consumption would be ~ 650 megawatts, which is still pretty huge, and would still be spending ~ $1billion a year.
Google use cheap, mass produced low power units in gigantic numbers - estimates are hard to come by, I will estimate 200,000 based on inflating some public estimates (e.g. http://arnab.org/blog/how-many-computers-does-google-have).
Energy cost of networking is significant, but I do not believe as great as machines; I'll add 50% for good luck. Utility server machines are dropping in power (~100-200w) but also require cooling, UPSs and network etc., so let's call it 500w all up (figures are difficult to get; everyone is selling something power center wise) - so I get 100 megawatts; or 1/6th of the author's estimate, or 1/40th of the true kettle figure.
I'd say that the author is overstating the case to make a political point - if I was cynical I'd point out the author has also just launched a business to 'green your web site' by installing monitoring software, estimating the energy cost of searches to it, and then buying carbon offsets on your behalf, so it is in his interests to overestimate such usage..
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird.
You do not know this. You have been told this by media and organizations like the U.N., not by scientists, many of whom have been criticizing the greenhouse-gas warming model.
Further, you missed the whole point of my statements. The immediate changes might be mostly local, but have far-reaching consequences. (Bought any salmon in the store lately? How about caviar? Lumber?) Further (as someone else mentioned), dams have a significant carbon footprint! What happened to all the land that was flooded when the dam was put in? In most cases it was forested or at least green. Not so once it's flooded.
This is where you are wrong. Some time back, in a discussion about greenhouse gases, 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. It did not take me long at all.
If you are a subscribed member of slashdot, you can find my post with all the references very easily. For that matter, even if you are not, you can still find a link to my slashdot post on Google.
I can offer a great deal better than just criticism from non-scientists. How about some of the scientists who worked on the original IPCC climate change report from the U.N.? Some of whom have tried to have their names removed from the report for the simple reason that "our science does not support the published conclusion"?
I will be honest with you: I have grown tired of re-publishing this information for everybody who has sucked up the mainstream media view and refuses to believe anything else. I have done so many times already. Nevertheless, I will link to it one more time. If you actually read these articles (not all of them are peer-reviewed but they reference other peer-reviewed papers, some by the same authors), you will see that there are a LOT of reputable scientists who do in fact disagree. I do not expect to sway your opinion, but if you really do read this material, and come back still believing that "greenhouse global warming" is an established reality, then you will not have been honest with yourself.
I have not updated this in a while but then I have had no need:
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=591545&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=nested&cid=23930415
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... as I did here, yet again. All that shows is the general level of ignorance of the typical slashdot reader. I am not pointing fingers at anybody who has actually participated in discussion here.
He did point out this is an apples-to-oragnes comparison. The flight calculations considered only fuel. The IT calculations were wider in scope (power, manufacture, various infrastructure).
Airlines actually do not fly jets in the most fuel-efficient manner possible. There is a cost index calculation they perform that takes into account just about the entire airline infrastructure that dictates how they fly their planes. Flying slower saves fuel, but it costs more to pay the flight crew, increases time on the aircraft (maintenance and lifetime is based on hours of flight), and ties up the plane longer (which might in the aggregate require more planes to cover the routes). The result is they actually fly planes fairly close to their maximum speeds (the big exception would be on very long routes - where the added range could make the difference in needing one more leg). On a per-passenger basis an airliner is about as fuel-efficient as an SUV - so it shouldn't be surprising that fuel is only one of many costs that need to be considered.
I suspect that all those other costs also have substantial carbon footprints associated with them. I wouldn't be surprised if the fuel only represents maybe half of the carbon cost of a flight. It is just very dramatic to think about 50,000kgs of diesel going up in smoke.
Did the author read Google's on pages on energy usage?
http://www.google.com/corporate/green/energy/reducing.html
http://www.google.com/corporate/datacenters/index.html
Think Deeply.
That changes environments, it does not destroy them. How is a school of salmon worth more than a school of trout, or a deer worth more than a bass? Are trees more valuable than algae too (well, yes lumber, but then a reservoir shelters from drought). How is hunting and hiking inherently better than boating and fishing? It is of course destructive for anyone who had property, or lived where there's now water, but beyond that it is merely change (excepting endangered species/migratory path situations). The change can be damaging if uncontrolled of course but we are (usually) able to control changed much easier with a dam then by spewing waste products into the air. A few of our natural and artificial lakes are quite toxic thanks to mercury poisoning at this point.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
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.
Think about this logically: someone, somewhere, has to pay for the electricity for all that. It trickles down to the consumer or the company fails. So: where is the massive cost from the rough equivalent to 400-odd cups of tea I boil every day?
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
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.
The assertions you make here are simply false. The very first link I made was to an open letter by Chris Landsea, who is not only a reputable scientist, but whose work was referenced by the UN in the very IPCC report that popularized the whole "global warming" thing. Excuse me, but you do not get to accept the one thing (the UN IPCC report) as a "reputable source", then turn around and say the author of that very work is not a "reputable source". That is simply contradicting yourself. This is a reputable scientist whose work was used by the UN itself as being authoritative in the field... but you say his statements are not "good enough" for you. Well, you can't have it both ways.
Other articles to which I have linked are also by scientists who worked on those very same climate reports that have been cited by the UN and other "warmers"... irresponsibly and incorrectly. And the articles cite a number of peer-reviewed reports that have appeared in reputable journals. Your statement that my evidence did not include same merely indicates that you did not actually read the material I made available to you.
The part of my post about problems with peer review had to do with the PRIOR discussion that the old post was a part of. I did not use it to make excuses as you claim. In fact, it had no relevance to the current discussion whatever. I am frankly amazed that you did not realize this. That was a link to an OLD post of mine, 6 months or so old. I was not about to re-type those links merely to put them in the current discussion. Other statements I made in that post are also completely irrelevant to what has been discussed here. Generally, I credit slashdot readers with enough intelligence to separate the wheat from the chaff. Obviously, you got some chaff in your eyes.
Regardless of that, since you did read the old post, why did you apparently not see the part in which I wrote that some of the sources might well be biased? I did clearly state as much. However, I also offered the caveat: sources of contradictory information are similarly biased. I was merely trying to offer an alternative view, and show that it did indeed have some validity (and it does). And not all the sources are biased by any means, many of them are quite reputable (again, look at the scientists who describe their own experiences with the IPCC).
If you feel "the evidence clearly points in support of greenhouse global warming", then you haven't done your homework, which is precisely what I was pointing out here. In order to make a statement like that, it is clear that you did not even read all the material that I made available to you. Further, it completely ignores the inverse correlation of warming with sunspot activity, which is a much stronger correlation than greenhouse gases could ever pretend to be, or other possible causes that have greater credibility. You also ignore the reports (again, by reputable sources) that have been claiming that the "evidence" presented by the "greenhouse warmers" has largely been faked or exaggerated.
Why do you think the UN retracted, just one year later, the conclusion of that original Assessment Report that got all the "warmers" so up in arms? Do you think they made the retraction arbitrarily? Because they had all the evidence they needed, but wanted to just "get along" with everybody else? Not fucking likely. They retracted their original conclusion in the face of well-supported accusations of irresponsible science, distortion of data, conclusions that did not follow the evidence, and yes, in some cases, even outright fraud.
The UN retracted their original conclusion because they DID NOT actually have evidence to back up their claims. They DID NOT have data that withstood the claims of fraud by other scientists. They DID NOT publish conclusions that were actually justified by the science they referenced. As the very scientists who gathered that data themselves testified, publicly.
While I agree with many of your statements above, your kn
"what it doesn't say is that the website--and Wissner-Gross-- directly benefits from this kind of research. C02Stats offers clients plans, ranging from $5 a month to $100"
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