How Google searches lead to our destruction

Every day that we eke out our survival we know that there is some actuary or scientist working out whether it's worth us ever trying.

Professor Alex Wissner-Gross, a physicist from Harvard, punched in a few numbers, posited a couple of suppositions, and declared that two Google searches generate as much CO2 as boiling a kettle.

You would, I hope, not expect me to spout the numbers at you, but apparently the fact that Google transmits every search inquiry to more than one server doesn't help. And, worse, even though Google believes it is the most efficient of search organizations, our desperate and faintly pathetic need for speed means that by searching we are burning up the planet like Nicolas Cage in Gone In Sixty Seconds.

Naturally, even though I have not finished my morning muffin, Wissner-Gross' numbers are already being disputed.

Does a cast iron kettle generate more or less CO2? I think I'll Google it.

(Credit: CC IMorpheus)

While he believes that looking at simple Web page like this one throws up 0.2g of CO2 per second, the folks over at Carbonfootprint.com (a site I try to avoid only because I care for my world) put the deleterious generation at between 1g and 10g per second. Apparently, much depends on whether you have to turn your PC on first.

So we cannot merely depend on our ability to stomach hybrid cars that make golf carts look sexy. We have to limit our searches to only the things we really need to find. Not the latest speeches from Al Gore. Not the latest supposed topless shots of Elisha Cuthbert. Not those meaningful updates on the latest couplings amongst the cast of Twilight.

And let's not even think about Twittering about the vast meaninglessness of Twitter.

Oh, conservation. It just seems so dreadfully conservative. I think I'll make myself another cup of tea. No, wait.

[jackdaniels08]

Chris Matyszczyk, you know you can always take anything, and I mean ANYTHING, that is inherently good and progressive and no matter how well meaning it is to the world, no matter how we are positively reliant on it it seems we must always hold a critically biased microscope up to it and find some tiny negatives aspects, contort the negatives into a grotesque over-bloated abomination. The world would be in a much better place if we thought and acted more optimistically.

[ChrisMatyszczyk]

jackdaniels08,

You are right. you are right. i know you are. I was just having a difficult day- and now my Chargers are about to face those ugly Steelers in the playoffs and I wanted to hear some optimism. Instead, I read the Professor's dire warnings. They temporarily deflated my joie de vivre.

Thank you for your good realistic perspective.

Chris

[jpmays]

@ChrisMatyszczyk

GO STEELERS! GO STEELERS! GO STEELERS!

[ChrisMatyszczyk]

jpmays,

I am hurt. Even more hurt than LT. (Still, I believe the Steelers had extra heaters. Which generated more CO2.)

Chris

[t8]

Why not measure how much CO2 Professor Alex Wissner-Gross has created by his suppositions, including all the websites that report his findings and the number of readers, and add to that all the CO2 from my comment and others.

[ChrisMatyszczyk]

Do you know, t8, I thought about that myself, but I can only count to around 100.

Chris

[jumpjetta]

You get paid for writing crap like this? I suspect your "carbon output" for this article was roughly equivalent to that of an entire herd of South American beef cattle.

[lmasanti]

Why does he blame Google?
He is the one doing the search, so he is the one that is destroing our planet!

[CNetIsTired]

This is honestly the last article that I will read on CNet. What a ridiculous piece of crap!!!

[JuanGuapo]

It wouldn't be the first professor/teacher to use bad science to try and collect grant money.

Mmm cast irony, *cough gag*
but naturally Mr. Gross's "research" is offset, as he's doing it for the good of the planet, as for me, I don't really have an excuse. Though it has been a cold winter, maybe we should ease up on the earth saving between the months of November and April. Cause I mean, manufacturing winter clothing produces carbon as well...

[ChrisMatyszczyk]

Ah, yes.

What an interesting proposal. Save the earth when you're feeling happy, not when you're miserable because it's dark and freezing.

If the world could treat us a little more nicely between November and April, we might reciprocate.

You should be a professor..perhaps you already are.

Chris

[SlimGem]

I think that humans should be genetically altered to absorb CO2 and emit O2.
Eventually, the carbon dioxide level would no longer be a problem.

Hmmm, but then again, once the oxygen gets too high the planet could possibly explode.

Oh, never mind.

[ChrisMatyszczyk]

Keep thinking SlimGem,

I like the direction in which you're going.

Chris

[Sporlo]

SlimGem: that would be called photosynthesis :D

But I know something easier than genetically altering ourselves into plants: plant more plants.

[dbloyd]

So I should use MSN search?

[pegacat]

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...
Kettle boiling: costs ~.5c, and ~ 100g, ... 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?

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 (the power output of a small US state). On the authors figures, total power consumption would be ~ 650 megawatts, which is still huge.

Google use cheap, mass produced low power units in gigantic numbers - estimates are hard to come by, I will estimate 200,000 (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 we'll 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..

[ChrisMatyszczyk]

Thank you, pegacat,

Extremely interesting discovery about the Professor's green (back) business.

Chris

[rapier1]

Regardless of how this may make us feel the truth of the matter is that maintaining huge server farms (including the air handling), high speed networking connections, and the associate infrastructure does have a cost outside of the the dollars spent. I'm not saying that we should roll up the networks and shut down the servers - I'd be kicking myself out of a job if I did that. Only that it makes some sense to be aware of the costs associated.

[Markus2008]

I'm sick of hearing this crap... Just for this article and that guy's research, I decided to turn up the screen brightness and leave my laptop plugged in and turned on all night.

[ChrisMatyszczyk]

Markus2008,

I am with you, not against you.

Chris

[Chapmaniac]

I wonder how much energy that scientist wasted researching this. I'd like to kick him in the butt with my carbon footprint.

[Dalkorian]

LOL - first comment on this to make me chuckle. Maybe this researcher should have calculated how much CO2 he would produce by simply breathing for the rest of his life.

Want to save the planet from CO2? Plant a few trees then stop breathing.

Personally I'm not worried about the planet. It was here before us and will out live us all. If we do anything horrible to the planet, it will kill us all off and continue without us. The planet will be fine - we're screwed. Forget saving the planet, save yourselves!

[blarg3234]

If everyone is so worried about CO2 emissions, then why don't people breath less? i mean seriously. Just breathing probably puts more CO2 into the air as a google search. I mean, if everyone stopped breathing we could probably cut CO2 emissions back even further... seriously, 76.54% of all statistics are made up on the spot. and Google is an amazing company... me personally have made roughly 75 searches today. now excuse me while i go throw more logs on the fire, turn up the heat, and turn on another computer.

[Dalkorian]

Don't forget to fire up that race car and tour the neighborhood in your SUV. Just don't think you're the master of disaster here, most factories still puke more junk into the atmosphere than you will!

[JasonGooljar]

I logged in to Facebook Connect to make this comment how much destruction did I just cause?

[Dalkorian]

Plenty. 3 more trees now need to be planted to keep the Earth from dissolving completely into oblivion. You could offset it though if you just stopped breathing now.

Feel better?

;-) LOL

[JCPayne]

How much CO2 does a NASA rocket put up in the atmosphere?

[Dalkorian]

Did you want the figure in pounds, a percentage or the number of Google searches?

[ipashchuk]

While typing this comment I exhaled about 6 times... It appears that no matter what I do I cause CO2 pollution. Oh, wait, CO2 is required for photsynthesis. So, really, I'm helping the planet...

The whole CO2 pollution would be hilarious if we were a little more educated to know that mankind is yet to displace the sun (which is the distant #1 CO2 pollutant). An inconvenient truth about The Inconvenient Truth is that the sun is responsible for 99.99% in temperature rise and the corresponding rise in CO2. It's not CO2 that causes the temperature to rise. Sorry, Mr. Gore, you've got the relationship backwards...

[ecotopian--2008]

They can have my internet when they pry it from my cold, dead hands.

[Dalkorian]

LOL - nice!

[Consumer007]

It would be interesting to measure the energy output (waste) of an angry poster tearing someone down instead of a constructive one. Somewhat along the lines of it takes a lot more energy and muscles to frown than to smile.

I bet after the number crunching is done, the cost of a negative post on the poster, let alone the postees and audience, is exponential and cataclysmic to their health. Food for thought.

[billmosby]

Google, schmoogle. What do you do after the search? Go to one or more websites. Perhaps download a whole lot more stuff. What're the numbers on the rest of the story? Probably somewhat higher than the search. Just a guess, though.