The Times and Telegraph have picked on some rather dubious stats on Google energy use:
a typical search generates about 7g of CO2 Boiling a kettle generates about 15gbut
Wissner-Gross has also calculated the CO2 emissions caused by individual use of the internet. His research indicates that viewing a simple web page generates about 0.02g of CO2 per second. This rises tenfold to about 0.2g of CO2 a second when viewing a website with complex images, animations or videos.
So client-side, a search costs 0.02g/s - to get to 7g you look at it for 350s, or nearly 6 minutes. But hang on:
A separate estimate from John Buckley, managing director of carbonfootprint.com, a British environmental consultancy, puts the CO2 emissions of a Google search at between 1g and 10g, depending on whether you have to start your PC or not. Simply running a PC generates between 40g and 80g per hour, he says. of CO2 Chris Goodall, author of Ten Technologies to Save the Planet, estimates the carbon emissions of a Google search at 7g to 10g (assuming 15 minutes’ computer use).
He's using it for 15 minutes per search? That gives 0.01g/s, or half the other chap's estimate.
Google's data centre's are carbon neutral, so it is only the client end you do have to worry about. However, breathing generates about 6g of Carbon every 10 minutes. Or about as much as they estimate computers do.
So I suggest you hold your breath while you search Google, to offset your carbon use. As searches return in well under a second, whatever these newspapers say, this shouldn't be any hardship. Or search from your Android or iPhone instead.
Update: Urs Hölzle gives some actual figures for searches energy use
7 comments:
Nice demonstration ;)
However, holding breath won't help... Your body will still consume the remaining oxygen there is in your blood (and the air between your mouth and lungs) (until there is no and then you're in trouble).
When you'll start breathing again, your first "expulse" wil just have more CO2 than the regular ones!
Who says they're carbon neutral? They do. But there is no standard for carbon neutrality.
For example, Dell says it is carbon-neutral, yet according to the WSJ's recent story, what Dell covers in their stance is only 5% of what they really produce.
Saying Google is carbon-neutral, thus invalidating the Time story, is uninformed, at best, and ludicrous, at worst.
I don't have a car, dishwasher or dryer so I am going to continue my Google searches!
Julien, you have a point, but you're not breathing in Oxygen while holding your breath, so I think it balances out mostly.
Renata - do follow that link and read about all the things Google is doing to reduce energy use and fund renewable energy. If you're going to complain about computers' energy use, Google is a long way down the list.
I think there's a vast difference between the carbon emitted by breathing and that used in power generation or for materials manufacturing. Breathing is generally carbon neutral since the dominant source of carbon in your body is things you've eaten, so you're recycling free carbon over a period of years. By contrast, power generation using fossil fuels is converting sequestered carbon in coal and oil into additional free carbon in the atmosphere.
Wait, didn't posting to this blog leave a carbon footprint as well? So by us even discussing this we are contributing to the problem?
Oh well, I guess it is one thing to be 'aware'.
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