Switched has a new home! Huffpost Tech.

Click here to visit the new home of Switched!

Hot on HuffPost Tech:

See More Stories
AOL Tech

Googling Causes Greenhouse Gases, Physicist Says

by Evan Shamoon on January 13, 2009 at 05:01 PM



While it may seem that things done in cyberspace exist in a bubble, they're not; computer-related stuff leaves its mark as well. Along those lines, here's a troubling fact: performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate roughly the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle of water.

Harvard physicist Alex Wissner-Gross is completing a study on the environmental impact of computing due out soon. "Google operates huge data centers around the world that consume a great deal of power," he told the Times Online. According to his estimates, a typical search generates about seven grams of CO2, while boiling a kettle generates about 15 grams. Apparently Google's search engine generates high levels of CO2 because of the way it works; queries are sent to several servers competing against one another to get the best results.

According to a recent report by industry analysts Gartner, the global IT industry generates as much greenhouse gas as the world's airlines, or about 2-percent of global CO2 emissions. "Data centers are among the most energy-intensive facilities imaginable," said Evan Mills, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.

When it comes to energy conservation, nothing is sacred. [From: Times Online]

Update: After Google responded to the above by saying that the case was being vastly overstated, Wissner-Gross now claims he never said anything about two searches' being equivalent to boiling a kettle of water. His findings, apparently, have nothing to do with Google, but rather more general stats, like a computer's rate of CO2 production when it opens a Web page. Oh well. Put away the pitchforks and lanterns, folks.

Tags: carbon footprint, CarbonFootprint, energy conservation, EnergyConservation, google, green

Comments

3

HuffPost AOL Social News Most Popular