Does Googling Hurt Mother Nature?
Posted 01/13/09 at 08:33:22 AM by Paul Lilly
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In a time when the tech industry has been making concerted efforts in going green, startling new research reveals that we may be mucking with mother nature simply by using Google. Alex Wissner-Gross, a Harvard physicist researching the environmental impact of computing, claims that for every two Google searches performed, the same amount of CO2 (carbon dioxide) is burned as it would take to boil a kettle for a cup of tea, which is about 7g.
"Google operates huge data centers around the world that consume a great deal of power,” said Wissner-Gross. "A Google search has a definite environmental impact."
Wissner-'Gross isn't the only one to question what impact Google searches might be having on the environment. According to an estimate from John Buckley, managing director of carbonfootprint.com, CO2 emissions of a Google search sit at anywhere from 1g to 10g, depending on whether or not you have to start your PC. And Chris Goodall, author of Ten Technologies to Save the Planet, puts the average higher at 7g to 10g.
For Google's part, the company hasn't disclosed its energy consumption or carbon footprint, nor has the search giant revealed the locations of its data centers. That makes it hard to come up with a clear consensus on how much CO2 emissions Google searches create, but the company did say Wissner-Gross' estimation is many times too high. Instead, Urs Hölzle, senior VP of operations at Google, says the actual number is equivalent to about 0.2g of CO2, and that it would take roughly a thousand Google searches to produce as many greenhouse gases as an average car driven for one kilometer.
Google has responded
Submitted by Devo85x on Wed, 01/14/2009 - 5:19am
Google has responded to this saying "each google search uses about the same energy that a body uses in 10 seconds"... better stop living people, you making a carbon footprint by breathing
Not quite the full facts!
Submitted by Nick Burns on Tue, 01/13/2009 - 7:23pm
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090111/2340393357.shtml
http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/65794.html
The doctor never mentioned Google by name.
Submitted by KaylaKaze on Tue, 01/13/2009 - 6:09pm
I used to think people interested in tech were intelligent, but the numerous comments I've been seeing on MaxPC from Reich wing nutjobs has convinced me otherwise. This whole story is silly. It doesn't matter if you're sane or a right-winger, it's a nonsense story and no one cares and nothing can be done about it except improving all our power sources.
Submitted by Devo85x on Tue, 01/13/2009 - 3:08pm
How many times did this guy use google to help him find this?... and if he didnt use google then he was probibly using ask.com, in which case he would be compleatly off since ask cant find shit... OH NO! THIS COMMENT MADE A CARBON FOOTPRINT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! woops...
Since George Carlin is no
Submitted by Keith E. Whisman on Tue, 01/13/2009 - 1:56pm
Since George Carlin is no longer with us I think I'll do what he would do with this new knowledge. I'm going to google like crazy now. I'm going to google it, the, poop, dog, cat, apple, orange and you name it. It's going to be my lifes mission to destroy the Earth one google search at a time. I will attempt to google no less than 100times a day. If you can still breath it means I'm not googling hard enough.
Submitted by Marcbman on Tue, 01/13/2009 - 12:29pm
http://www.energyinnovations.com/documents/release_06_18_07.pdf
Submitted by C6FLYBY on Tue, 01/13/2009 - 9:40am
And I absolutely couldn't care less about my carbon footprint.
Who cares??
Submitted by Naphtali14 on Tue, 01/13/2009 - 9:37am
There is no way that one google search produces that much.. Google wouldn't be able to keep up with the bill.. Instead of worrying about small things like google searches people should concentrate on things like cars.
Submitted by MaxFan on Tue, 01/13/2009 - 8:33am
Ok, Left Leaning liberal mantras have no place in a tech mag or on its website. Most Especially UNFOUNDED UNSOURCED UNDOCUMENTED Left Leaning liberal mantras. You would think MPC was headed to become the replacement for Atlantic Monthly, or The New Yorker. Alexander Wissner-Gross is a confirmed Climate Change Carbon footprint conspiracy idiot, right up there with Jerry White and Albert Bell and Al Gore jr.. He is by his own admission a socialist. His research (if you want to call it that) is tainted by his own agenda. In short its JUNK SCIENCE!!!! The story and Wissner-Gross's publication points the finger of blame at us (general populace) but if you read the article with the Jaundiced eye of critical skepticism and Wissner-Gross's publication, what is really happening in the article and what Dr. (boy i really hate applying an undeserved title like that) Wissner-Gross's publication makes perfectly clear is that he is stumping for a government, ostensibly the United States Government, to write legislation that will make it more difficult for Google to do business or to profit from that business. The surface of that article suggests that whenever WE do a search on Google we use create some form of Greenhouse Gas in some specific amount based on a computer model profiling googles business practices and energy conversion.
A few things are missing from that model though. Things that would be necessary to convict Google or any other company or person of what Dr. Wissner-Gross acuses.
1. Any observation that unindelibly coroborates the argument that the activities of mankind as a whole and Google as a subset of those activities have materially altered the composition, distribution, or state of our current environment.
2. The valid documented expiriment that Dr. Wissner-Gross used detailing all aspects and variables encountered and the margin of error used for his sampling data in his expiriment and what he used for controls. (a computer Model sounds nice but is at the mercy of the subjectivity or objectivity of the person who created the model
3. Objective measurement of data gathered from experimintation, which can then be reproduced by other scientists independently of Dr. Wissner-Gross.
Without any one of these steps (there are others but these are KEY and lack of them negates the validity of the authors conjecture) the argument that Dr. Wissner-Gross makes is invalid. Any publication of his research through peer reviewed, or worse yet, general publications would only serve as anecdotal information at best and possibly steer the lay person (me or someone like me) to an erroneous conclusion. Should a lay person (again me or someone like me) then act irrevocably upon that information it is not the actor but the messenger that is at fault.
But that was the intent of Dr. Wissner-Gross's publication. Misinformation widely publicized and sensationalized will serve to suppress actual information and actual science will succumb under the iron bootheel of science by consensus. And as we all know, or should know by now, That is the first link in the chain that binds us into dogmatic slavery that becomes socialism or communism. Remove the ability to criticly think from the population at large and they must then rely on mob mentality for their individual direction. Thus was the basis of Marxism
Although I have never seen a number of a reviewed product below a 4, and if I remember correctly, anything lower than that standard is only given if the product is so bad it causes damage rather than does the job its makers advertise, Im going to have to give MPC a big 2/10 on this article
Dr. Richard P. Feynman: None not a single outstanding positive thing can be gleaned from this article STAY AWAY. Dr.'s Pons and Fleischman: No credible observations, Subjective Publication, Agenda Driven Science, Junk Science.
Slow Down Sparky
Submitted by One4yu2c on Tue, 01/13/2009 - 8:57am
Never do we conclude one way or the other on Wissner-Gross' claims, or others who purport similar findings. Likewise, we take the same stance with Google's rebuttal. In other words, don't shoot the messenger.
I'd type more, but doing so might be detrimental to the environment.
Submitted by Velcrow on Tue, 01/13/2009 - 7:58am
Seems like at least some of the estimates, if not all, include the emissions of the client computer as well. I feel this is misleading, because if the person isn't Googling, they'd be doing something else ANYWAYS and would burn the same CO2 if not more (gaming). So it's likely that Google's estimate on their side of being 0.2 is probably accurate, since that's the price we pay for actualling pinging Google for info. The other CO2 is just the base amount for running your PC and should NOT be included. Very misleading to the public, especially those who don't know better.
Submitted by gumbo87 on Tue, 01/13/2009 - 7:32am
It's amazing how this story has managed to, by and large, fly under the radar. If it was a non-tech (non-liberal) company, this story would be trumping Somali pirates who can't swim, crazy investment bankers parachuting out of airplanes, and the Obama's choice for a dog. But no, Google is so cutting, edge, so progressive we can't attack that which we aspire to.
People like to talk about "going green" and reducing their carbon footprint, but the truth of the matter is (nevermind the negligible effects on the environment), if you really wanted to accomplish this I would recommend finding a length of rope. Hang yourself not because you're a fucking idiot, but because so long as you breath, you're emitting greenhouse gases! Oh, and as you decompose your body releases more of said gas. If you want to cut down on energy consumption to save money, fine by me. But don't do it because it makes you feel self-righteous like this Wisner-Gross person. I wonder how much CO2 this Wisner-Gross douchenugget released just to perform this study.
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