Right now the top stories on Techmeme revolve around a new piece in The Sunday Times of London that focuses on The Environmental Impact of Google Searches. In it, physicist Alex Wissner-Gross (a star MIT graduate who is now at Harvard) posits that a single Google search generates 7g of CO2, versus around 15g for a tea kettle - something he calls a “definite environmental impact.”
That sounds bad, right?
There’s no doubt that Google consumes a massive amount of energy, with hundreds of millions of searches conducted every day and data centers scattered across the globe. But let’s try to shed a little perspective on things.
A single book runs around 2,500 grams of CO2, or more than 350 times a Google search. By some estimates, a single cheeseburger has a carbon footprint of around 3,600 grams - over 500 times larger than a Google search. Granted, meat in general has a notoriously large carbon footprint, but if you’re genuinely concerned about your environmental impact then try cutting a burger from your diet every week and search guilt-free (you may even lose a few pounds).
And isn’t it possible that Google may actually be helping the environment in some ways? I can’t count how many times I’ve been able to use Google in lieu of driving to the library to look up a fact (each car trip would have had carbon costs orders of magnitude larger than that Google search). I’ve used Google Transit dozens of times to figure out train and bus schedules so that I wouldn’t have to drive my car. And surely the search engine has helped countless green-minded folk find a website where they could purchase carbon credits.
My issue with the article isn’t that it is factually incorrect - it’s that it paints Google as a malevolent force shrouded in secrecy, and that every time you use it (or one of the other mentioned companies like Twitter), you’re adding to the problem. In a word, it’s alarmist. Google could probably become more energy efficient, but I fear that articles like this will lead people to shy away from the Internet. Unlike gas guzzling SUVs, the web helps connect and enrich humanity. By all means encourage web companies to become as carbon neutral as possible, but don’t make energy-conscious consumers afraid of their browsers.
And finally, one last bit that is more concerned with the journalistic practices of The Times than Google. Alex Wissner-Gross co-founded an interesting startup called CO2Stats that we’ve covered a few times in the past (it was also a finalist in The Crunchies). The site helps websites stay as green as possible by offering carbon credits as well as badges to help promote the cause. The Times article only mentions the site in passing, and fails to acknowledge that CO2Stats is a company that earns money, not just an informative website. I sincerely doubt there is anything sinister going on, but such a major potential source of bias seems worthy of more than just a mention.
Update: Google has responded to The Times article, stating that a single search is actually equivalent to a mere 0.2 grams of CO2. The blog post also details some of Google’s efforts to further green technology as well as the energy efficiency of its own data centers. Also please note that while this post originally said that the article was from ‘The Times’, it is actually from The Sunday Times, a sister paper.
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These people are nuts and would rather see us all live in grass huts on the prairie.
=
LOL, compare a google search to the amount of CO2 produced if we all had to go to the library to look up information.
I bet the author of that article emits more CO2 gas from the juicy BS-farts he produces, than all google searches combined.
There’s a point where the baby is thrown out with the bath water. This article unfortunately seems to have tossed more than one toddler. Interesting none the less.
-J
Pretty soon, the globe will be powered by the farts of earthlings who live on it.
Position yourself to get farted on - FartLocator.com
@CO2-this: lol… you are hilarious. The article is on the topic of all this going green movement… the author just decided to bring in Google to this discussion…
Greg
Jason, you are worried the article cited is alarmist? What about your article? Breaking things down into grams and carbon footprints? Is this where we are headed (where you would like us to head?)?
First, check the facts on the major causes percentage-wise of CO2 rises (humans NOT being one of them). Then realize that the earth goes through natural cooling and warming cycles. Then realize that rises in CO2 historically follow warming cycles by, most recently, a 40-year lag period. Also, you may want to look into the cooling cycle that occured in the post-economic boom of WWII, where millions more ‘things’ were made than in the warming period pre-WWII and in the short economic depression of the 70’s.
Al Gore invented Global Warming. If we don’t realize certain agendas being played out on a global level, then we might as well go dress like hipsters, be pro-Barry bin Biden, or any other “in” thing these days.
Then they say, “What do you mean? You’re into killing the planet?” No. What I’m into is critical thinking and not falling within the dialectic. Our heroes and our ideas are given to us. Lets think for ourselves and not trust one person’s (nor one group’s) opinion without first doing some digging. Yes, I’m saying don’t listen to me. Check what I’m saying, make up your own mind.
Here’s a great place to start.
http://www.green-agenda.com/
Also, search for the Google Video “The Great Global Warming Swindle”…but first you should weigh the options…pollute the planet by doing a Google search or learn some real facts about the planet by watching the video.
My 2 cents. Thanks
you’re an idiot!
Am I the only one who find it odd to hear TC criticize the journalistic principles of the times? Come on, talking about glass houses…
The fact that you trot out ‘Barry bin Biden’ simply elucidates what a moron you are.
You guys continue printing scare headlines and scare pictures to liven up a discussion of a misleading article read by a small number of people, and I’m outa here. I’m all for correcting bad reporting, but not by duplicating it and then offering a limp and naive response.
The carbon you save will surely be squandered by someone else, so your net savings are zero. This is simple economics.
Study journalistic principles at professional sites like this: http://www.spj.org/ethics.asp
We studied Global warming as children since primary school, all over the world, as fact.
How could you possibly, possibly, possibly claim that some presidential nominee from your country that NOBODY else cares about has anything to do with it, and then use him as an excuse to ignore what any science teacher will tell you.
Get a grip on reality outside your country.
Right on!! Finally someone with real world perspective! What everyone else forgets as well is how many aircraft pollute our upper atmosphere! I can’t see air travel coming to end any time soon! People like the convenience of flights, I like the convenience of Google!
Lets review the first 3 thoughtful responses so far…
Anne - Waste of time.
Ahmed - I take it you are pro-Barry Soetoro, anti-Tim Osman. Your choice. If you wish, I can offer you educational sources that could occupy a fair amount of your time.
Simon - I suppose you haven’t heard the line “Al Gore invented the Internet” so I’ll let that pass. Perhaps you should ask yourself some poignant questions, such as “who wrote the science books I read in primary school?” or maybe “from which institutions did my science teachers receive their education?…and just for kicks, lets add, “Why should I trust those institutions?”
I get an overwhelming sense of safety and relief when I see people accepting what they are given without questioning the idea and its source.
Pretty easy.
1. The fact that you call him ‘Barry bin Biden’ shows that you suffer from derangement syndrome. Anyone who exhibits derangement syndrome goes nuts against what someone says, no matter how true (or false) it may be. For example, Bush has done a admirable job of cutting down homelessness in the US. Bush-derangement syndrome does not let that get recognized. You suffer from the same, except for Obama
2. http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp - Al Gore ‘inventing’ the internet.
Great false logic
“You’re an idiot!”
And yet his comment is more substantive than yours.
“We studied Global warming as children since primary school, all over the world, as fact.”
Children in Galileo’s time were taught that the sun revolved around the earth. Your point?
Adam - so you’re asking why we should trust the institutions we were taught in, the institutions our teachers and tutors were taught in and so on.
Being curious is one thing - throwing out the consensus of the vast majority of the world’s leading scientists because it doesn’t fit with your world view is naive at best, despite the fact that you seem to be telling the rest of us how naive we are.
If you’re dismissing what you’ve been told about global warming from practically every credible scientific source out there, then why not also believe that the sun revolves around the earth like the poster above has mentioned. It might sound ridiculous, but then so is your tired and blinkered philosophy.
I hate to tell you guys but Adam is right. Nothing you do can actually effect the global warming, the glass house effect doesn’t exist. Watch the documentary movie he told you to watch, I watched it a long time ago and it opened my eyes.
“the glass house effect doesn’t exist”
Sigh…
Adam,
The point that they are making, is that by referencing “Barry Bin Biden” you are ignoring the actual issues. I mean, it’s great to blame politicians who aren’t actually in power, for the past what..5-10 years. I mean, this discussion on global warming really hasn’t even been run by Obama or Biden and your insinuation of some muslim tie is insulting and as others have said retarded. At least leave out your feelings.
Second, humans obviously do impact their environment. There are reasons the skies are brown in certain heavily populated cities. That directly affect the environment around them and human health. If you think that humans are unable to affect their environment you are mistaken. I will say that some of the global warming stuff probably is inflated, but people being aware of their impact on the environment is important regardless. And thinking about your impact on the environment isn’t “alarmist”.
Ahmed,
1. I think the more fitting term is open-eyed syndrome, but thats another story. Politics (especially the two-party kind) being my real qualm.
2. I wrote ‘line’ for a reason.
Christopher,
I’m not simply curious, I’m open to new ideas and not stuck in the Hegelian dialectic (something Ahmed may benefit from understanding). More than saying trust or don’t trust, I’m asking people to be informed on all possible sides of the issue, not only the sides which they were given by arms of the media or government. I also think we use different definitions of ‘credible..source’. In lingusitic pragmatics, that’s called a presupposition.
If anyone actually clicks the link I offered and spends 10 minutes reading it or if anyone watches the documentary I mentioned, my work is done, so to speak.
Driftwood,
Agreed on the ‘leaving out my feelings’ part…but nonetheless telling, how a certain number of people respond to that part only and not the meat of the issue. I wasn’t making a Muslim tie, aside from the ‘interesting’ full name (presented name, at least) of the president-elect, which rhymes with a major goal of the Bush admin, connecting Iraq (Barrack) with Saadam (Hussein) and Hussein with Osama (Obama), in addition to Biden having the word ‘bin’ in it. Just a coincidence theory for the ‘crazies’ among us.
On the second point, its more the proposed proportionate human impact I’m concerned with, as the ideas of the group are pushing out room for any other possibility to exist. I believe in global cooling and warming cycles, just not that humans are the main cause. Yes, we make an impact, but other things not in our power eclipse what impact we do make. As for being ‘alarmist’, I said that in reference to counting carbon footprints, etc…not about being cautious of our impact. Not only is this movement alarmist but its also set to become the largest taxation scam the world has ever seen, as people start to be shamed into caring about the environment by paying extra for everything in order to offset their ‘wrong-doing’. Time will tell.
Well, what I didn’t include that I meant to, was that the “bin” part has nothing to do with his given name or Hussein, but has to do with Osama I would assume. That is offensive. You can say it has to do with a rhyme, or the “sound”, but I think you know that it’s an obvious reference.
Also, I’m just saying, argument about global warming aside, you can clearly see how humans affect their environments by going to a city. You can visibly see pollution in the air, you can look at the water around large cities, you can look at how it affects plant life and buildings. It’s all a very tangible thing.
To just shrug your shoulders and go, “we can’t affect the environment” I think is a bit much when people can observe physical changes around us and our health, based on human actions…which affects people and their lives. Thus being aware of how you affect the world around you is a valid concern.
I personally have never been a big proponent of “global warming”, but I do think about 90%-95% of people in the United States (or anywhere), simply don’t care. So I don’t think making 5% make wiser decisions on using energy and not making large negative consumptive impacts on the world around them is alarmist or is negative.
But if that group of people urge companies to output less harmful chemicals/whatever and helps them find more efficient technology to use, then all it can do is help in the long run for both our cities and for future business.
So let’s say we’re not sure about global warming, fine. But I don’t think that mutes our affect on the environment and the importance of at least being conscious of it.
mmmmm….
Adam, you’re a close minded moron. Take a trip to the arctic and talk to the inuits. Take a trip to countries facing famine and experiencing sudden changes in weather patterns and then we’ll talk.
You talk about cycles, yet the only way such drastic changes happen in the climate is due to significant events. In the past, cooling occured due to massive volcanic eruptions etc. This sudden warming has to do with carbon footprints.
If you still want to live in disbelief, at least look at it from a health point of view. We’re not doing ourselves a favor by pumping these noxious and toxic gases into the environment.
Geez- get your head out of your rear end.
Adam, I have a good friend that makes the same claims as you do and I think at times he has points but progression ends, not the day when those who know nothing take over, but the day when those who think they know everything decide not to listen to anyone else and lead the blind into darkness.
There’s a book called “Capitalism as if it matters” by Jonathon Porritt and he writes that it doesn’t matter what measurement you impose on quantifying the human impact on global warming or climate change, the fact of the matter is, the population is growing and needing an infinite amount of resources in a finite world.
Yes, some things such as the amount of green house gasses from animal dung cannot be directly controlled by us. They eat -> they poop. However, we eat meat -> we demand meat -> farmers grow more meat -> more animals -> more poop. I am not praising veganism as I consume meat myself, although I do it in modest amounts. My point is that humans are the first species that have the ability to realize humans are a part of the problem and no matter how you spin it or which politician you blame, we are all a part of systems that feed off each other and effect each other for the better or worse.
As far as why I should trust the Science Teachers, when they were taught by the institution- Science is based on fact. It’s very hard to get someone who’s studied theories down to the molecular level to change their mind because of irritating things like political or religious agenda.
My main point was that your country is years behind the rest of the world in this respect, and there are a lot of explanations, none of them scientific, and people seem to bring terms like ‘liberal’ into discussions- which always makes me angry about what it must be like there.
And the main argument that keeps coming up is that we make an impact, but only a small one compared to natural heat cycles.
The numbers I’ve heard are around 3%…
Now maybe some people think that’s negligible, but when I hear people use that number, the earths ENTIRE ecosystem, and the word ‘only’, I think “we are so screwed”.
At least we know Yahoo search isn’t doing any harm. Nobody uses it!
everyone know what’s right thing to do, but since we dont have a leader for us human(human are group animal) we usually dont take affect to make a change, so all i can say is live like how u live and hope u wont see the end of the earth =)
Create or join a TechCrunch chat group at http://groups.im/
Thanks You
http://kisalt.us/590/
Good thing we can all buy carbon offsets like these retards: http://www.f2bbs.com
This is something of a “save no matter how much you spend doing so” finding. Meh.
Lets, compare a google search vs. the amount of CO2 it took to write the Times article. Just a thought!
Devin Willis
Pretty soon, the globe will be powered by the farts of earthlings who live on it.
Position yourself to get farted on - FartLocator.com
THIS POST COST 2 grams of CO2 TO POST.
Google is the Internet.
The times article sounds just sensationalist–alarmism, however weakly, implies there’s something to be alarmed about.
When you say Google could probably become more energy efficient, have you considered that their servers are probably orders of magnitude more efficient than any other data center in the world?
http://www.google.com/corporate/datacenters/
I hate the way newspapers doesn’t get the big picture…
newspapers get big picture
no one wants to publicize their own demise
Well, given that approximately 97% of the CO2 in the atmosphere is naturally occurring (i.e., unrelated to human activities), I think it’s quite an act of hubris to think that our Google searches are killing the environment by causing global warming … Nevermind the fact that 30 years ago the hype was all about global cooling and how we were headed into another ice age …
I definitely believe in global warming and it is most certainly not an act of hubris to think that humans are having an effect. Google searches probably are too, to some extent, but no more than many things we do on a daily basis.
It’s hubris to think that we’re affecting the environment any more than has been naturally occurring on a vastly greater scale than we’re seeing now, and its been going on for billions upon billions of years.
It’s great to worry about impacting the environment, but stupid to think we can control the weather in the long term, or even in the short term.
It should be pointed out that this article is published by Times Online, the digital arm of UK-based The Sunday Times, which is part of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp empire.
This article reads like an Onion’s fake news at best. At worst, it is pure quack science. Singling Google searches out as having “environmental impact”, yet making no mention of the arguably more “polluting” activities on MySpace (owned by News Corp), is fundamentally suspicious. Oh, wait, they’re going to claim that News Corp’s digital enterprises own no data centers at all?
As they say in Fox News (another piece of the Murdoch Puzzle): “We report. You decide.”
@fighting words
Give me a break. News Corp has a $1 billion search deal with Google. Do some research before claiming conspiracy.
@Steve Bartz
In the business world, we have a term for partners who do these things to each other, it’s called “backstabbing”.
I seriously doubt that people at Google, upon reading this article, would chuckle and say, “That sly old Rupert, ha, ha, ha.”
@fighting words
I’m just really confused about the incentive Murdoch would have to do such a thing. He wants people not to search the web and read his print publications instead? He wants people to use Myspace instead of Google? … It doesn’t add up the way you claim even if it’s backstabbing.
I agree with you that it’s a rubbish article, but I think it’s reasonable that the article singled out search and Google, as it is synonymous with search. People take search for granted. The amount of infrastructure to do a seemingly simple operation is not apparent to most.
@Steve Bartz
The traditional paper press, on which News Corp empire was built, has no warm feelings toward Google due to the latter’s aggressive digitization program.
An ink-and-paper journalist is likely to have a wide-eyed “a-ha” moment when he hears that some “scientist” has a theory linking Google searches to environmental impact, and feels that he, by golly, must write a piece about it, for the simple reason that his trade has been linked too often (probably unfairly) to the images of tall oaks being cut down.
And considering that only 0.0384% (according to Wikipedia) of the atmosphere’s volume is CO2, it’s a bit of a stretch to prove causality in such a complex system.
Kudos to you for using your real name to post against the global warming hyperbole. I stay anonymous because of the backlash it creates to ever question the status quo. Gore’s followers are just as brainwashed as Bush’s followers — very little, flimsy evidence.
Thanks fb1113, Stephen and Noone.
and Stephen, as for weather control, I think HAARP technology has got that taken care of.
Intro to HAARP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnRPZOUVhJ4
whaddya know, a few comments later and you’re still an idiot and some of you idiot cousins have come to play.
Please stop parroting the “global cooling” myth. A good place to start hearing the truth about the “global cooling myth” is by reading this.
You know, actually going back and LOOKING at the research that went on back then. A novel concept, huh?
Also a novel concept, in the true sense, is to think for yourself and not accept what a bunch of scientists have said…if, in fact, they said it. I tend not to place all my trust in “experts”, waiting for them to tell me the truth about the world and how I should live. Of course, in a culture where doctor dramas and police dramas are everywhere, and where government just keeps overstepping its boundaries, I expect ‘group think’.
If you have done some research and that is your stance, then thats fine. I just have a different one.
I didn’t propose any myth on global cooling, I merely said there are natural cooling and warming cycles. Both cycles have happened and will continue to happen, no matter how much we discuss it.
@adam
hmmmm, please explain how exactly you think for yourself? you just wake up every day and claim that you are an innate expert on the world simply because you “think for your self”? if you dont believe that current science (true or false) is the closest we are to touching truth, you are either a religious zealot or ignorant and foolishly narcissistic.
sure you may argue there are companies and political groups lobbying for “science” to be on their side but coming from within the scientific community, i would have to say that money and politics are not the primary motivation behind research. yes grants and funding are paramount but you simply do not find true researchers fabricating studies to pay for more fabricated studies. if your theory wasnt so full of holes wouldnt the oil companies have us drinking sweet crude with every meal?
please show me an overwhelming consensus from reliable publications such as science or nature to support your points concerning global “climate change”.
while this may be a flat earth scenario that is disproved in years to come, science is the best chance we have to fully understand for now.
your comments are honestly a bit on the scary side of caviler cocky ignorance.
disappointing and simply time wasted.
Adam,
Think of the implications of what you are saying:
“We can’t trust over 95% of the world’s best and brightest scientists because they are totally corrupt, and are colluding together across international and cultural boundaries to form a massive conspiracy unlike anything ever seen in the history of mankind, all in the greedy pursuit of more money for themselves.”
Is that really the position you are putting forward here? Really ?!?
Threehe (and Markus too),
I’m saying in effect that science has become a new religion. There’s a problem when I see anyone blindly taking a person’s word for something when they have never met this person or done the digging to see their background and funding sources. I claim not to be an expert of any kind, nor would I want to be, as that assumes too much. The whole “oh, he/she is an expert?….phew, thought I had to think for myself for a second!” kind of thinking is what will doom us, especially since it takes place subconsciously.
Your ’sweet crude with every meal’ comment as a concept, happens in many ways all the time…people just need to ask more ‘why’ questions and follow them up.
adam
if you are suggesting that mathematics, the language of science, is in fact a religion (beliefs and practices, often with a supernatural quality) then im glad we build our space ships and nuclear reactors under this doctrine rather than something thousands of years old! and if you argue that science is no more than a hocus pocus religion reclaimed from thousand year old burning bushes, where are the sects of judeo christian rocket scientists?
the one bit of reason that you are clinging to is that of thinking for yourself. my interpretation of this is that one should not merely ingest and regurgitate factoids spread across the news and internet, one should gather as many perspectives on the subject as possible with consideration to context, audience, and purpose of the statement of research. but again, these facts (all of them), come from scientists.
when was the last time you saw an abundance of wealthy scientists paid by the oil industry to condone carbon emissions or oil spills? if this is the “funding source” you are referring to i fail to see an overwhelming connection.
please tell me who is paying and what the financial motivation is for scientists to claim that we need cleaner more efficient energies.
“It also refuses to divulge the locations of its data centres.”
royal.pingdom.com/2008/04/11/map-of-all-
google-data-center-locations/
You have to give the Times credit, they didn’t research it on Google. True to the spirit of the article.
You have to wonder what else they refuse to research due to carbon footprints of electronic transmissions.
http://www.google.com/search?q.....+locations
There we go.
stupid article, obviously everything pollutes to an extent, would they like us to shut down Google now..?
… and kill everyone. People also produce carbon dioxide.
it is starting to feel like we are addicted to bad news. Get real
Jason,
You say “My issue with the article isn’t that it is factually incorrect” and then go on to make some very valid point.
I would be inclined to think that the numbers are factually incorrect. Since Google is secretive, how can they really tell what the numbers are? If a single page view consumers 0.02G and a complex one 0.2G, I find it really hard to believe that a search consumes two order of magnitude more. Using caching and other techniques they can bring the cost of a search to be much closer to a static view.
I would assume they’ve taken some reported amount of electricity Google uses per year, converted that into CO2 emissions (using some rule-of-thumb CO2/W ratio) and divided that by the total number of Google searches in 2008 (for example).
I mean, I would like to think that’s not how they came up with 8g/search, but it probably was something like that.
Google is much more than search these days. There’s no way for an outsider to tell how much energy is divided between search, gmail, docs, etc.
Newspapers will survive based on the fact that they are one of the few places to get reliable local news. Whether they are still printing the news remains to be seen.
Google is GOD!
don’t you think TechCrunch should also shut down.
bcoz everytime a reader request a page their servers also produce Carbon.
C’mon TechCrunch shut yourself down b4 asking Google, Yahoo! or MS to think abt this
Dude, read the post. Seriously.
It’s not Google and its not CO2.
The culprit is population explosion & manufacturing. No amount of concern for the environment and this footprint bullshit will work if population and manufacturing keeps rising out of control.
Morons!
It goes deeper than that. It’s a cosmological problem. Most people have no idea how planets are formed and their states. We are living on a tiny slice of what is a long history of the earth and the universe.
Yes, I am a Carl Sagan junkie.
Still, what we are doing is extremely tiny, and we’re likely to destroy each other into extinction anyway.
Eat that whipped cream on your cinnamon pancakes at iHop. Oh wait, then you won’t be able to have sex. Nevermind, but I’m right about the warming thing though.
These greentards…
you fucktard
Google is already very energy efficient.
They realized a couple years ago that running on consumer hardware would be just too expensive because your average consumer PC is not very green. If you’re building data centers all around the world power usage is a simple cost factor.
This is the way to get an effect and have people pay attention. The fact is that without bringing this to the attention of the world the average person has no idea of the impact.
I’m sure Google could significantly reduce their power consumption and use more expensive green energy but their must be public pressure for them to do so.
Perfect time for Yahoo or Live Search to offer carbon offset searches?
Maybe something as simple as these companies being accountable for their energy usage - force them to publically list their energy usage by type?
Windows 7 Fan Page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/.....321?ref=ts
you’re an idiot spamming a**hole!
This is a joke right? C’mon, you’ve got to be kidding me…
This year Google has invested more than $45 million in startup companies with breakthrough wind, solar and geothermal technologies through our Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal initiative
http://tinyurl.com/3t9mga
That asshole also used a shitload of co2 by sending us to his webpage and having us render all the HTML in our browsers. What a douche
I’d like to charge Al Gore’s carbon account please. I did like ten searches today.
Yawn… this CO2 Stats thing is the biggest canard I’ve seen in a while.
Just plain FEAR MONGERING… nothing more.
Ignore this BS.
…………….
Carbon footprints are, like, so 2008. We need to move past quantifying our daily minutia in such meaningless terms. I think I generated 10x as much CO2 from that overstuffed burrito I just ate.
Any kid in high school knows this was nothing more than a link-bait article. Thanks to Google and the web, we don’t go to the library, we don’t print stuff off, blah blah blah.
TC got sucked into writing about it and giving Wissner-Gross free coverage.
Unbelievable.
George
I’m horrified to think of all the CO2 I must produce every day watching porn, especially considering the high bandwidths and hours involved. I propose a “low-tech” co-operative behaviour modification solution that could have a significant impact on CO2 emission reduction.
We could enlist young female environmentalist volunteers who wish to contribute to greenhouse gas reductions and help their fellow man at the same time. Whenever a person felt the need to ‘increase his emissions’ through online porn, he would instead enlist a volunteer who would collaboratively assist him in meeting his sexual needs without the use of electricity. The volunteers would also benefit as they would reduce their consumption of batteries, which only serve to fill our landfills.
If this initial program is successful, it may be expanded to include further behaviour modifications designed to replace greenhouse gas producing activities with the low-tech alternative the volunteers could provide.
Thus I call on environmentally minded young females to step forward and make a difference not only in CO2 emissions, but also in the quality of life of your fellow man. If you suspect your neighbour may be engaging in some emission producing activity, volunteer your services to help with a low tech solution.
L-M-A-O!
Lol, I can’t use Google search
The truth is, just cause you goto MIT or Harvard, doesn’t mean you have real world sense….. it just means you paid a lot for school, and you have an excellent ability to retain information and recall at a later date on a test, etc….. life experience makes you savvy enough to even make a claim like that. Nerds (the bad kind, not the groovn’ kind like me) are so caught up on breakthru’s and math that they miss the entire point!!
I know some guy who went to harvard for internet marketing — he and I both launched a website at the same time. He targeted his site domain name as the base keyword for his launch campaign…. i targeted words based on experience in knowing what people look for and not a bunch of equations…. I had 7k traffic / day … he gets 64-100 hits tops!!! go figure.
The dinosaurs had their time and now I have mine. Nothing is forever.
Great… a bit of fatalism added to the table. Well I don’t want my children to suffer for the sins of our generation. Tss, tss. Narrow minded, selfish folks.
hehe
Excellent post, Jason.
i wonder what’s the carbon footprint of 1 print copy of the “Times” is…
Google is nothing to worry about because for them, emissions = power usage = cost. They already have a direct incentive to minimize their footprint. But car drivers and many industries don’t have such a correlation between cost and footprint - and that’s the root of the whole problem. In fact, focusing on Google is a waste of scarce attention that needs to focus on CO2 sources where footprint costs are externalized.
True, true… it’s kind of the “tragedy-of-the-commons”. Some business don’t have to pay for the harm they produce so they have no incentive for changing their production habits be it CO2 or anything else that harms the environment.
I am unable to comment intelligently to anything but would like to say that I use Google search to much to count.
→See what Roger photographed←
Global warming caused by man is a farce made up by a UN report using selective data from limited time periods that only include very recent history.
If you look at the data, man made global warming does not exist. There is no evidence at all to support it.
http://findarticles.com/p/arti.....tBody;col1
31,000 top scientists also agree
http://www.petitionproject.org/
Google searches use energy, yes. So does heating our houses, travel and most other things that we use in our daily lives. Conserve the environment by all means, but do it for the right reasons, not for global warming’s sake.
mad made global warming is true. does anyone feel guilty and want to buy carbon offsets from my website?
ha, you find it ironic that only 2% on that list are atmospheric scientists that actually know what they are talking about?
nooooooo, couldnt be ironic……..
What? An alarmist article about global warming! No way!
By the way, how many grams of CO2 do we generate each time we breathe out?
clearly, we need to do our searches on the local GOOG sites in countries we don’t like to cripple their grids and environs.
This website has was TOO many ads.
Seriously. Pimp yourself much?
Obama’s stimilus plan needs to implement renewable energy for everything including for powering data centers. And Obama needs to regulate the amount of power consumed by mass market computer systems.
We should all stop using Intel and Microsoft products, they are bloated and they pollute. Let’s all change to ARM architecture and Linux, this way our Internet access terminals will consume 100 times less power and when we need to do computer intensive tasks, we should do them using the most efficient cloud computing grids.
没错，也许用Google会毁灭地球，但如果不用Google人类等于自杀。
first
Aw, c’mon! Where are we going with this? Let’s have all humans stop breathing — imagine how much that will help in reducing the carbon footprint. Seriously, we need rational thought, not senseless tree-hugging.
Monica Roy
http://www.countspin.com
“Let’s have all humans stop breathing”
Nah, for now they just want you to hand over your freedom and money. They don’t want your life…yet.
Google Warming. That has an interesting ring to it.
One more reason to use Yahoo!
If Obama establishes a “Fart Tax” we could bail out every public and private company in the northern hemisphere and still have money left to pay all morgages with a balance of $650,000 or more, while at the same time giving away an iphone to every illegal alien in California, so they can use it and pay the FCC tax, so we can keep bailing out every freaking bad CEO in the US.
This whole brouhaha comes from the demonization of carbon dioxide, as if every gram is evil. If you take enough Vitamin A it will kill you, the idea is to manage the dosage - the same goes for the composition of the atmosphere. But instead we have these articles that play on people’s lack of knowledge on the subject to make headlines.
http://www.co2stats.com/signup.php
Give google.com and try … seems funny
Let’s not shoot ourselves in the foot. There is no more effecient means of finding information than the internet in terms of energy usage. The alternatives are 20lbs phone books (who still uses those anyways?) every year or wasting fuel and rubber driving your car/truck/motorcycle around.
Imagine the paper, time, and overall energy savings of all the online banking, travel, and document transfer infrastructure that Google remains an integral part of.
Interesting nonetheless, I’ll give him that.
Yes. We are killing the planet. If a book produces 2500 grams of Carbon Dioxide, and there’s nothing we can do to prevent that, then we are killing the planet.
You motherfucking librarians.
Love,
Philip Brightmore, Champion Dog Breeder
tasteyourmaker.blogspot.com
Believe me humanity is wasting way more pover using Windows Vista (which is just a polished shrinkwrapped pile of turd, forcefully sold people by a convicted monopolist and its minions)