Scientist slams newspaper for Google CO2 report

A report in The Times of London on Sunday generated a firestorm of controversy when a Harvard physicist was identified as saying a typical Google Web search on a desktop computer generates about 7 grams of carbon dioxide, making two searches comparable to bringing a tea kettle to boil.

"A Google search has a definite environmental impact," Alex Wissner-Gross was quoted as telling the newspaper.

Problem is, Wissner-Gross tells TechNewsWorld, his study never singles out or even mentions Google.

"For some reason, in their story on the study, The Times had an ax to grind with Google," Wissner-Gross said. "Our work has nothing to do with Google. Our focus was exclusively on the Web overall, and we found that it takes on average about 20 milligrams of CO2 per second to visit a Web site."

So where did The Times get the kettle stat?

"I have no idea where they got those statistics," said Wissner-Gross, who acknowledged and defended making the statements about Google. "Everything online has a definite environmental impact. I think everybody can agree on that, including Google."

Google, which the newspaper described as "secretive about its energy consumption and carbon footprint," was swift to respond to the reported statistics in a blog late Sunday:

We thought it would be helpful to explain why this number is *many* times too high. Google is fast--a typical search returns results in less than 0.2 seconds. Queries vary in degree of difficulty, but for the average query, the servers it touches each work on it for just a few thousandths of a second. Together with other work performed before your search even starts (such as building the search index) this amounts to 0.0003 kWh of energy per search, or 1 kJ. For comparison, the average adult needs about 8000 kJ a day of energy from food, so a Google search uses just about the same amount of energy that your body burns in ten seconds.

As my report noted Sunday, Google has become a de facto leader in the effort to reduce energy consumption not only in IT but in the general population.

Google is a board member of a new coalition called the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, which aims to reduce computing power-consumption by half by 2010. And the search giant's Google.org philanthropy has made policy recommendations on how the U.S. could wean itself from coal and oil for electricity generation and nearly halve its gasoline consumption by 2030.

However, while Wissner-Gross criticized The Times for finding a "really easy way to sell papers," the physicist is riding a tsunami of press inquiries to highlight CO2stats.com, a site he manages to help educate people about energy efficiencies on the Internet.

[Tui Pohutukawa]

This is so pathetic, the mind boggles.

People, please look up what CO2 is, what it does, where it comes from. It is a gas vital to life on Earth, not a pollutant. It makes up 0.04% of our atmosphere, the manmade contribution is below 0.001%. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, yet irrelevant to global temperatures when compared with natural water vapour, i.e clouds. Here is another fact: Earth has been cooling dramatically over the last year, hence record snowfalls and low temperatures in the US, Europe, Middle East and Australia. The sun controls our climate - always has done.

[gerrrg]

That's so pathetic. You're too quick to point to a 'gotcha' moment, without actually doing the research on what it means.

Water vapor IS a greenhouse gas, but insofar that it is a greenhouse gas, it is controlled by temperature, which is affected by CO2.

And increase of CO2 creates more problems than just a warmer Earth; it also creates a more acidic ocean, which inherently creates chaos within ecosystems that we rely on for food.

[ddesy]

Better double check your data.

[berncron]

As usual "Rome burns whilst Nero fiddles" - here we have a bunch of allegedly adult men and woman having a slanging match about 20 milligrams of CO2 that someone may or may not produce. The core problem is the ever expanding human population of the globe. CO2 emmissions and global warming is just one of many symptoms that include habitat loss, species deprivation, fresh water shortages, loss of arable land, heavy metal pollution, population wars, destruction of insects to name a few. Journalists and scientists should be educating and informing and not mis-informing by ommission and half-truths. We cannot rely on governments and politicians as by their vary nature, are incapable of delivering the bare harsh facts.

[rich97]

Agreed, CO2 is the last of our problems. But it earns more money and as long as we have such thing as freedom of speech people will exploit public histerior and suggestibility. One prime example of this is all of this crap about the recession. "Hey! Guess what guys, if you just ignored what the papers were saying instead of cutting back we would have higher consumer confidence and this problem about over borrowing would at the very least have far less impact." To be honest though I don't know who's more to blame for all this ignorance. Journalists, Politicians, Scientists or the heard mentality we seem to have as a species. We need to deal with the core of the problem and just cut back on EVERYTHING not just CO2 emissions.

[Stufiano]

You know, humans in general are stupid. Why? It takes incredible crises to occur before they fix a problem. They'll ignore or deny it. But eventually they must deal with. Before you "try" to flame me on this one here's some facts:

New Jersey's Hudson and Passaic Rivers caught on FIRE in the early 20th century. Multiple times.
Road oil [oil sprayed on roads in the west to reduce dust] was contaminated with nuclear waste until children started getting sick in the 1950s
Smog around cities actually killing people

Really, people don't start to do anything until people start dying from it. I think that's idiotic. Especially when you KNOW what's going on [New jersey rivers] and it happens MULTIPLE occasions [fire on water].

[darrenforster99]

Even if Google didn't use this CO2 there would be another search engine out there that would. I wonder how much CO2 eBay use with their auction site, or Facebook and MySpace use allowing us to socialise with each other. Maybe we should move silicon valley to somewhere on the equator, then we could create all this power to power the servers using solar energy, then we would only be using CO2 to power our home computers.

[3rdalbum]

People who get *that* obsessive about CO2 emissions should do everyone a favour and just stop exhaling.

[seorocks]

I totally agree - this is getting so silly - every step = carbon imprint.

[rapier1]

Exhaled CO2 doesn't represent new CO2 input into the system - its a neutral act. Burning fossil fuel does put new carbon into the system though because it had been previously sequestered or unavailable (being buried deep underground). It had been effectively removed from the carbon cycle. Digging it up and burning it brings it back into the system and it will have an impact. The question is only what that impact will be.

[gerrrg]

Google is an easy target for lazy thinkers. We've got the WSJ attacking it, Business Week critical of it, and now The Times. But in all cases, it seems to me that the criticism is more a reflection of lazy thinkers.

[rathishg]

Well said. At lest few of the Google products as explained in this site are really saving energy. I wonder why they target Google

http://www.hackedinfo.com/2009/01/12/google-the-energy-saver-energy-efficiency-of-google-products/

[knowles2]

Google is a easy target, as it is so big in people lives. And well it made a few enemies in first ten years of it life and they are trying to destroy them as a good business and well they are using every trick in the book to do it. The carbon story is just latest in a long line of them. Unfortuantly for google the media rarely gives up until their victim is dead, even if it take decades.

[stumiller]

Maybe they should compare the CO2 produced from a search with how much CO2 is generated if I have to hunt for the information manually? I'm guessing it would take me FAR more than 10 minutes of visiting websites before I find what I'm after. Those 10 minutes generate 12g of CO2, according to this study. So that makes search engines 42% more ecologically friendly than the alternative. Take about not looking at the whole picture.

[29er]

It would have been fair for them to mention that Google is doing something about their impact :

http://www.google.com/corporate/green/

[themainbreeze]

The Bush years are over - Stop the witch hunt and smear mentality!!!

[sparrowhyperion]

Lets break this down to it's most basic level.

1. Humans have pooched the ecology of the planet so badly, it will take decades to recover, if it does at all.
2. Humans continue to pollute, even though they know fact 1.
3. Humans will continue to pollute the environment as long as (a) there is money to be made), and /or (b) they are not forced by law to stop polluting.
4. The people who write the laws either directly or indirectly are connected in some way with the groups to pollute.
5. Greed may not be thee root of all evil (Maybe it is.) But it is certainly responsible for most of the evils in the world, including pollution.

So, according to these conditions, Humans have pooched the environment so the companies the law makers get fat donations etc. from can Make more money which they use to make more factories cars etc. Which leads to even more pollution...

You can site these figures and statistics until you are blue in the face. Remember that most statistics are statistically incorrect. This is usually found out later after another statistician checks the work of the first ones. If you want to see the real effects of climate change, just walk outside on a nice winter day and remember the time when you were a kid and there was 2 feet of snow on the ground. Then look at tha paltry 1-2 inches you are getting nowadays.

The simple fact is that people don't like to face facts. There is only so much area available on the surface of the Earth. It can only handle so many people. That's it, no dispute possible. The Human race continues to reproduce at an alarming rate, especially in some third world countries were birth control is not a common practice. Eventually the ecosystem will fail. Possibly in the life time of children born this year. The ONLY alternatives are, 1. Stop making babies for a decade or so (which will never happen.) 2. Kick the world's various space agencies in the butt and start working towards the goal of setting up artificial environments on other bodies in our solar system. 3. Do nothing and watch as the planet dies; followed closely by the Human Race.....

Argue about it all you want, but you can't deny that fact.

[gggg sssss]

OK. Typing that spew, and me reading it, added 1 kg CO2 You can stop breating now, thank you

[jypeterson]

So, what comes first: the chicken or the egg?

[Launchpad_72]

Ugh.
I'm getting so sick of this "carbon footprint" crap. Yeah, it's important to be aware of your impact on the environment, but when I start reading articles about how popping the cork on a champaine bottle or looking at a webpage is bad for the environment, I can't help but groan, and don't tell me you don't either.
WHO CARES?!? Are you really expecting us to go back to caveman status, because *everything* we do is unfriendly for the environment?
Cool it people. Driving an pickup less for conservation is one thing. Not looking at a webpage is sheer bull. Don't you think we've taken this "green" thing way, WAY too far?

[rapier1]

Personally I think its interesting. It's good to know what sort of impact this sort of thing has because, for the most part, people just don't think about it at all. Also, Google's spin is fascinating. For example, they say a search only produces around .2g of CO2. Let's assume this is true. Now, how many searches does Google perform each day. Best answer I can find is 200 to 300 million. Lets use the lower answer of 200 million. This means that Google is producing roughly 40,000 KG of CO2 each day handing search requests. According to Google an average car produces around 300 grams of CO2 for each mile driven. So one day of Google search requests is about the same as driving 133,333 miles. Each day. I'm not saying that Google should be shut down or anything idiotic like that. Its just nice to be aware of the way that even small things can add up very very quickly.

[Endbringer]

Too bad man-made global warming is a farse. To think that humans can change the climate of the entire planet, yet not be able to predict when a rain cloud will form is just ludicrous. The fact is the "crisis" is based on computer models with incomplete data. Hell, I could take actual observed evidence that since the solstice of June 21, 2009 to December 21, daylight had been decreasing. Put this into a computer model and bammo! There will be no more daylight by sometime in the near future! It's a crisis that to fix we must give all our hard earned money to government bureaucrats who'll save the planet from the eminent collapse of daylight! We must mobilize all of humanity to try and stop this catastrophic event from happening. If there's no daylight, then there's no more plants. The entire ecosystem of the Earth will crash and every living organism will perish. WE MUST ACT TO SAVE OURSELVES AND THE PLANET!

It's egotistical and just plain moronic to think that humans can change the climate of a planet. The Earth has been hotter and cooler in the past without supposed man-made interference, so how can we change that? There was a LOT more CO2 in the atmosphere in the past, so where did it come from and where did it go?

[PlanckConstant]

It was -8F this morning on my drive to work this morning? I hate cold. I can't wait for the new Google data center being built about 40 miles from my house to come online in hopes it will warm up a bit. I also plan on doing a few mindless Google searches to help things along. My guess is it will be all for naught as I believe the climate change industry is based on greed backed by hyperbole and voodoo science with a sliver of truth buried in there somewhere, but one can hope.

[gggg sssss]

still horse wash

20 milligrams of CO2 per second what if you look at the page for 10 seconds - certainly does not take any more server power. Does not really take any more client power either - say compared to playing solitaire.

Please dont tell me this guy is getting government funding for this bull. Let him study how much CO2 woudl be save did he did like Bender in teh suicide machine.

[Tui Pohutukawa]

People, wake up. "Manmade global warming" is a hoax, served up to make you pay more taxes and accept genuinely toxic nuclear energy.

Here is what physics professor William Happer, former director of the Office of Energy Research in the U.S. Department of Energy, has to say about it:

?Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. Every time you exhale, you exhale air that has 4 percent carbon dioxide. To say that that?s a pollutant just boggles my mind. What used to be science has turned into a cult.?
?[Climate change theory has] been extremely bad for science. It?s going to give science a really bad name in the future.?
?I think science is one of the great triumphs of humankind, and I hate to see it dragged through the mud in an episode like this.?

http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2009/01/12/22506/

[Endbringer]

I agree about the man-made global warming, but nuclear energy is clean and efficient. Look at France. They get something like 70%-80% of their energy from nuclear power. (I can't believe I just used France as an example!)

[Tui Pohutukawa]

Nuclear energy is "clean", until you have to deal with the radioactive waste, not to mention the dreadful mess following accidents. I was in Europe during the Chernobyl disaster, and I wasn't allowed to drink fresh milk, eat spinach or mushrooms. Thanks, but no thanks, to "clean" nuclear power.

[venuesdotorg]

Global warming (and ice ages) is like tides. Tides come and go at different levels each day because the moon does not follow a straight path around the earth. Temperatures on every planet come and go each age (hundreds of years) because the planets don't follow a straight path around the sun.

Until we work out a way of "correcting" our orbit around the sun, we will continue to experience "global warming" or an ice age every second age.

The real issue is the squandering of resources, leaving nothing behind for our children. Carbon Dioxide is a convenient marketing term, so let's just push that wagon in the name of a greener planet.