The Environmental Impact of Google Searches 516
paleshadows writes "The Times Online reports that researchers claim that each query submitted to Google has a quantifiable impact. Specifically, two queries performed through a desktop computer generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a cup of tea. From the article: 'While millions of people tap into Google without considering the environment, a typical search generates about 7g of CO2 [whereas] boiling a kettle generates about 15g [...] Google is secretive about its energy consumption and carbon footprint. It also refuses to divulge the locations of its data centers. However, with more than 200m Internet searches estimated daily, the electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emissions caused by computers and the Internet is provoking concern. A recent report [argues that] the global IT industry generate[s] as much greenhouse gas as the world's airlines — about 2% of global CO2 emissions.'" Google makes an interesting focus for such claims, but similar extrapolations have been done before about, for instance, the energy costs of sending a short email.
Wrong Comparison (Score:5, Insightful)
Were there not a Google (or internet equivalent), I wouldn't sit back in my rocking chair, exclaim "Oh, well," and have a cup or two of tea. Instead, I'd get in my car and drive to the library to look whatever it was up in a reference book, or search the catalog for a book I could borrow on the topic.
In that way, Google (or equivalent) saves energy.
Now that said, I expect Google to do their best to minimize energy consumption. Given that their electricity costs directly hit their cost of doing business, I suspect they agree with this goal.
Re:Wrong Comparison (Score:4, Informative)
Given that their electricity costs directly hit their cost of doing business, I suspect they agree with this goal.
Google locates a lot of datacenter capacity in areas served by hydroelectric power.
Re:Wrong Comparison (Score:4, Interesting)
Not to mention they're VERY close to the power source, which means very little power is wasted in the transmission/transmission lines. The signal from the data center to your ISP is a photon so there's very little transmission loss until it gets to the last mile. Really it's up to the consumer to have a energy efficient computer more than anything else.
Re:Wrong Comparison (Score:5, Informative)
I do know that actually. But transmission and distribution losses in the USA are estimated at 7.2% [climatetechnology.gov]. If the longest feasable power line is 4000 miles long, and google is putting their data centers 4 miles from hydro electric plants, they're saving 7.2% more energy than other data centers on average (margin of error 0.001%).
Transmission losses are one of the biggest arguments in heating the home with gas vs. electric, since with gas you're getting 100% of the avalible heat from the fuel, as opposed to electric where at most 90% of the heat is converted into electricity at the plant, you lose another 7% in transmission and then another 1-2% in the heater itself = 18-19% energy loss from a coal or natural gas power plant vs. heating with gas in the home.
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Transmission losses are one of the biggest arguments in heating the home with gas vs. electric, since with gas you're getting 100% of the avalible heat from the fuel, as opposed to electric where at most 90% of the heat is converted into electricity at the plant, you lose another 7% in transmission and then another 1-2% in the heater itself = 18-19% energy loss from a coal or natural gas power plant vs. heating with gas in the home.
You've got the right idea but your numbers are way off.
A modern large CCGT plant might push 60% efficiency. With transmission losses energy loss is close to 50%.
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Re:Wrong Comparison (Score:5, Funny)
Russia only pulls that shit because everyone knows you don't start a land war with Russia during winter.
Re:Wrong Comparison (Score:4, Insightful)
the efficiency is well over 100%
So when does the rest of the world get to benefit from this perpertual motion device ?
Nothing can be over 100% efficient, ever, unless you want to start violating the conservation of energy and thermodynamics laws.
Do read before replying, it saves embarrassment. Heat pumps do allow you to get more heat energy out than the energy used to drive the pump. OK, the energy isn't magically created, it's moved from somewhere else - so what you're doing is refrigerating either the air outside or the ground outside (both of which are ultimately heated by the sun). So, no - ye cannae break the laws of physics, Jim. But a heat pump nevertheless yields more energy than you use to drive it.
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Hydro power may be cheaper than fossil fuel, but it's not free. Same goes for its carbon footprint.
If you're going to quote the Retief stories in your sig, how about something that conveys their droll sense of humor. My favorite: "Elevate your manipulative member above your sense organ cluster!" And of course, anything by those weird aliens who never use verbs.
Something they completely missed (Score:5, Funny)
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Yes, but it boils you too. Not terribly practical.
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Which are more valuable to our overall environment? A few less cubic feet of CO2, or a few more salmon, a couple of ducks, some crayfish and a sturgeon?
I would say the former. Increased levels of greenhouse gases will have a far more global consequences and cause global damage than building a few damms here and there. The power has to be generated somewhere. IMHO it's a sensible and logical choice to trade local landscape change for global climate change.
Re:Mod Up (Score:4, Interesting)
Further, you missed the whole point of my statements. The immediate changes might be mostly local, but have far-reaching consequences. (Bought any salmon in the store lately? How about caviar? Lumber?) Further (as someone else mentioned), dams have a significant carbon footprint! What happened to all the land that was flooded when the dam was put in? In most cases it was forested or at least green. Not so once it's flooded.
Re:Mod Up (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't know this either. You've just been told by people who want to disagree with the media and organizations like the U.N.
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That changes environments, it does not destroy them. How is a school of salmon worth more than a school of trout, or a deer worth more than a bass? Are trees more valuable than algae too (well, yes lumber, but then a reservoir shelters from drought). How is hunting and hiking inherently better than boating and fishing? It is of course destructive for anyone who had property, or lived where there's now water, but beyond that it is merely change (excepting endangered species/migratory path situations). T
Re:Mod Up (Score:4, Insightful)
I posted a very long list of scientific articles and papers that refute the CO2 and other greenhouse warming models. Saying that "nobody who's seriously studied it disagrees" is simply a false statement. Look it up if you want to.
That sounded like an incredibly reasonable statement, so I went ahead and clicked on your link to take a look at the articles and papers you talked about.
Turns out you had a bunch of links from obviously biased websites like "heartland.org" who seem to be some bullshit about how the free market is the solution to all problems, forces.org which has some bullshit "scientific evidence" that smoking is not really that bad for you, a republican senator's speech as some type of authority on the subject (not to mention that Jim Inhofe has a history of citing the Bible as support for his stance on issues...how scientific of him), and a blog.
You didn't cite a single peer-reviewed article, and you excuse yourself for not doing that by first posting a bunch of links that aim to prove peer-review is flawed. I've been in academia, so I know it's not perfect, but peer review is sort of like democracy. It's the worst possible method to do things, except for all the others.
And by the way, I am also seriously tired of -- and pissed off about -- being constantly modded as "troll" or "flamebait" for simply mentioning things that are backed by science and which I can support with plenty of evidence
You don't post anything backed by science, though. If you want anybody to take you seriously, you must use peer-reviewed sources and only from reputable journals at that. Otherwise, your evidence amounts to shit kooks believe in.
Now, that said, I'm not unsympathetic to the ultimate goals places like forces.org and hell, even heartland.org have. However, they need to accomplish their goal by not trying to bs the public. The evidence clearly points that smoking is horrible for your health. However, if people want to smoke, it's their goddamn life, and it's their right to risk it if they want to, I don't need some article showing some fake evidence that you're actually better off not quitting because the health risks of quitting are worse.
Similarly, the evidence clearly points in support of greenhouse global warming. However, it makes absolutely no sense for us to leave less convenient lives and use less energy in an attempt to curb it. Even if all of us cut our energy usage by half, population growth and continued development of third-world countries will quickly cause total energy usage to grow significantly beyond current total usage. We need to control population growth by supporting birth control and improving economic conditions (developed nations actually have negative growth if you don't count immigration). We need to quit our fear of nuclear and build a bunch of breeder reactors, which are actually efficient with their nuclear fuel and have very low emissions.
Basically, have the courage to say, "yes, global warming is real, but who the fuck gives a shit if polar bears go extinct? They're not the first species on the planet to do, and they won't be the last. Don't be a moron trying to claim "scientific" evidence exists while simultaneously claiming the only thing that makes scientific claims valid (peer-review) doesn't work and dismissing all the peer-reviewed papers because of it. You're just showing your ignorance.
To "Anonymous Coward" (Score:3, Interesting)
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Further, it completely ignores the inverse correlation of warming with sunspot activity, which is a much stronger correlation than greenhouse gases could ever pretend to be...Don't believe my statement about sunspots? Then look it up. I did.
Okay, I did. I pulled the raw data from the Climatic Research Unit is the UK, the Solar Influences Data Analysis Center in Belgium, and CO2 data from Mauna Loa and ice core data. If you plot them you get this [wikipedia.org]. Once we smooth out the high frequency signal so we can actually look at the major trends we see you don't really have much of a point at all. Okay, maybe I'm looking at the wrong time scales. Let's pull 10000 years worth of reconstructed proxy data on sunspots and temperature directly from the NOAA. T
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Tell the guy who made that research :
"Google refuses to divulge the locations of its data centres"
So basically he doesn't know whether their datacentres are plugged into coal power plants or nuclear plants, he's just making wild assumptions?
"When you type in a Google search for, say, âoeenergy saving tipsâ, your request doesnâ(TM)t go to just one server. It goes to several competing against each other."
Wow, that was a pretty fucking lame way to make it sound energy-inefficient. As if it c
Re:Wrong Comparison (Score:5, Funny)
The Google servers should be made of wood, just as God intended.
Re:Wrong Comparison (Score:4, Insightful)
That's funny because mine generates 0g per hour. It's called nuclear power.
I doubt this. You have to mine uranium ore, refine it to sth breedable, build a reactor and transport lots of weight around. This will produce lots of CO2 initially and continuously unless your machinery doesn't run on fossil fuels. Which is very unlikely.
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Re:Wrong Comparison (Score:5, Funny)
Behold ladies and gentlemen, a false dichotomy in its natural habitat. Be careful not to apply logic in its vicinity.
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You're a moron for excluding nuclear energy.
And you are a moron if you think that nuclear waste [sea-us.org.au] isn't a huge ecological disaster.
Burying tons and tons (about 30 tons per nuclear power plant, per year) of Uranium 238 which has a half life in the thousands of years is not a good "green" solution just because people want to have nice cool houses in the middle of summer and positively toasty ones in the winter.
Still not convinced? Here is an article from Business Net about what we are (not) going to do with all this radioactive waste [bnet.com].
I agree w
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Is this very significant if it's still using electricity that would otherwise be in the grid for others to use? Google's use of electricity probably just contributes to more coal-fired power plants being powered up elsewhere.
Not that I think Google should immediately be considered the one at fault here unless it could be shown that their power use is somehow disproportinate compared with the benefit they provide when compare
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It would be better if you rode the bus to the library. But that would be inconvenient. It says a lot about the issue that everybody (except all the kneejerk "skeptics" that will soon post on this story) cares about curbing greenhouse gases, but nobody is willing to make the troublesome lifestyle changes necessary to make a real difference. Instead, we nibble around the edges of the problem, with marginal changes like "shrinking our carbon footprint" (hence this story and the strong market for hybrid cars) a
Re:Wrong Comparison (Score:5, Informative)
It would be better if you rode the bus to the library. But that would be inconvenient. It says a lot about the issue that everybody (except all the kneejerk "skeptics" that will soon post on this story) cares about curbing greenhouse gases, but nobody is willing to make the troublesome lifestyle changes necessary to make a real difference.
My city doesn't have bus service. So yes, waiting for a bus would be incredibly inconvenient.
nobody is willing to make the troublesome lifestyle changes necessary to make a real difference.
Does this include you? People aren't going to make huge changes because, for the most part, that doesn't make a big difference. Everyone making a small change has a much, much bigger impact than just a few people (those unselfish enough to care) making a big change. Raising the minimum legal mileage for new cars by one MPG would be a much, much bigger change than me riding a bike to work every day. (Not that I could given the distance, nor could both me and my wife given how far apart we work no matter where we move.) I can choose to not buy another car until one that gets high mileage from an alternative fuel source is available, which is what I've been doing for the last few years.
I personally boil my tea and coffee water in the microwave.
I drink tap water at whatever temperature it comes out of the cold faucet. That reduces my carbon footprint further. =p
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My city doesn't have bus service. So yes, waiting for a bus would be incredibly inconvenient.
Even if you did live in a city with bus service, very few U.S. cities have systems that don't take forever to get you to where you want to go. The only people that use them are folks who don't have access to a car for some reason or another.
So, most of us have really good excuses for not relying on public transit. But excuses are not solutions. I don't see anybody pounding on their local government demanding bigger mass transit systems. At least, not as many as complain about the condition of the road syste
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Raising the minimum legal mileage for new cars by one MPG would be a much, much bigger change than me riding a bike to work every day.
Especially if you take something fuel efficient to work, because riding a bicycle has about the same energy footprint as driving a small hybrid car or riding a small motorcycle [templetons.com]. That is, unless you were going to exercise anyway and don't do your other exercise because you used your bike to get somewhere. Or if you subsist entirely off low energy food, like you only eat soy beans you buy in 50-lb bags from a local farmer. But if you eat like regular people, and you have to replace the calories you expend p
Re:Wrong Comparison (Score:5, Funny)
Dick.
I think that you misspelled "You insensitive clod."
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
And if you're saying "well yeah, I wouldn't expect that"... that's what your whole post says.
I'm not even sure what you're saying I'm saying, so I can't confirm or deny that I'm actually saying it.
Trust me, you aren't the only one who cares, it just makes you feel better to think you do.
Where did I say I was the only one that cares? Obviously people care. They wouldn't be taking all these measure,s as half-assed as they are, if they didn't care. My point is simply that the measures that people do take seem to mostly about convincing themselves that they are indeed doing something.
This is sort of like people who know they need to make lifestyle changes in order to stay alive, and just can
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I don't think individual queries actually consume this much extra energy.
They are estimating the total power consumption of google's infrastructure and dividing it by the number of search queries.
Google has ample spare capacity doing very little.
So the more searches that are performed, the less the energy consumption per search.
The methodology is flawwed... attributing consumption of infrastructure automatically to its users
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Ahh, I didn't RTFA. I assumed they were talking differential power from causing hard drive accesses, all the routers on the way having to process extra packets, etc.
Still, my original claim is accurate. Were Google not to exist, their infrastructure and base power consumption wouldn't either, and there would be an increase in road traffic.
Re:Wrong Comparison (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Were there not a Google (or internet equivalent), I wouldn't sit back in my rocking chair, exclaim "Oh, well," and have a cup or two of tea. Instead, I'd get in my car and drive to the library to look whatever it was up in a reference book, or search the catalog for a book I could borrow on the topic.
In that way, Google (or equivalent) saves energy.
Now that said, I expect Google to do their best to minimize energy consumption. Given that their electricity costs directly hit their cost of doing business, I suspect they agree with this goal.
I'm inclined to agree. It's impossible to determine whether using Google results in a net savings or loss of energy/carbon/etc. when compared to the actions that would replace using Google. The article does go on to state that a relative comparison is more important than absolute values, but does so after a lot of rather accusatory language that sets the tone. Unfortunate.
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I'm going to take a different approach and state that as long as your search turned up something useful to you, hopefully resulting in you learning something or getting somewhere, then it'd be worth a little more junk in the air.
And yes that applies to porn searches too. That's a social service [sorta].
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Good point. Or maybe just as much to the point, even if you were doing things online, if not for Google, someone else would be doing the same thing. If no one were doing it, then it would just mean it would take you much longer to find the things you were looking for, which would arguably lead to you using more of other resources.
The point of the article seems to be that Google is optimizing for performance instead of energy consumption. Seems like a valid complaint, except that if their engine performe
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Carbon Footprint calculations are rather complicated. For any of you have worked on manufacturing systems it is much like a highly detailed BOM (Bill of Materials) that has calculations down to the finest details. And because the there are so many variables using your intuition or estimates undoubtedly makes your values way off.
For example if you buy lumber from local sources may have a higher carbon footprint then lumber that you buy overseas. Yes there is a carbon cost of shipping the lumber across the
Re:Wrong Comparison (Score:4, Interesting)
That is extremely doubtful. 99% of the time, you would not do that. It isn't like we used to run to the library every time we wondered, say, who "sarah palin" was. (Top search for 2008.) In most cases, we just remained ignorant.
That explains it (Score:5, Funny)
That explains the infinite improbability factor that gives links to pron sites from nearly every innocent search.
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That explains the infinite improbability factor that gives links to pron sites from nearly every innocent search.
Google must employ somebody to keep the cup of tea warm otherwise their search tool will stop delivering results.
Actual Impact? (Score:2, Insightful)
I find it somewhat hard to believe that this study will change anything; the number of searches are not going to decrease, and people are probably not going to stop drinking tea. So even if each search released fifteen times more CO2, would that change anything?
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
This may be excessively cynical, but I regularly get these studies quoted at me and have come to believe that, whilst there is clearly sanity in reducing energy usage as far as possible without impairing needed performance, there is also a couple of other motivations driving much of this stuff. One is the fact that, like it or not, this sort of thing attracts funding, and another is the overwhelming urge to demonstrate that you're a nice PC green believer in saving the planet.
The problem is, as you say, th
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As much as airlines? (Score:4, Insightful)
A recent report [argues that] the global IT industry generate[s] as much greenhouse gas as the world's airlines â" about 2% of global CO2 emissions.
Oh, that's not bad. Considering how huge a positive impact the IT industry has, that honestly seems like a relatively acceptable amount. And I'd rather have two googles than a cup of tea any day.
Good Lord... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good Lord... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good Lord... (Score:4, Insightful)
Tomorrow as you head to work, take a look around at the people you pass. I'd venture to say, the process of hunting and gathering would cull about 99.7% of those you see. Hunting and gathering is a lot of work.
Re:Good Lord... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
That's why we're trying to warm the place up...I say, Google away, so we won't have to worry about cold winters anymore.
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Yeah, and it would probably only take six months of that before the HUGE number of people still left are survival experts extrodinaire.
You see, homo sapiens became the dominant species on the planet because of raw intelligence and the ability to communicate. Oh, sure, the random lion can outpower a human. However, anywhere humans settle you're not going to find wild lions running around. If lions are spotted there would be lots of yelling and shouting and then the lions would be carefully surrounded by 4
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About the only thing I can think of that might lead to a hunter-gathering situation would be a full scale nuclear war.
Even that's a tough one. Why would a full scale nuclear war destroy our knowledge of agriculture? It's been around for 10,000 years or so. It wouldn't scale as well without modern technology but it would still support a larger population base than a hunter/gatherer lifestyle.
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In fact, there are environmentalists who do claim they think the world would be better off without people. There is a point where environmentalism changes from prudent concern to misanthropy.
Re:Good Lord... (Score:5, Funny)
Nope. Then we'd be eating the animals, and that is not okay.
No, it wouldn't (Score:4, Interesting)
The Eco nuts don't really care about saving the environment. They are basically just whiners. You'll notice that what they love to do is point out problems. Well that's easy because there is a problem with everything. EVERYTHING has a cost. Doesn't matter what it is, there is a cost, a tradeoff, to everything. So it is pretty easy to just pick out the cost of everything and scream about it. Much harder is to actually be constructive and come up with solutions. That means evaluating different options, figuring out the relative costs, including indirect costs, and then choosing the best combination. That's not what these people are interested in. They just want to hate on everything. So no matter what you do, they'll not be happy about it.
Just 200 million searches? (Score:3, Insightful)
How long should I hold my breath? (Score:3, Funny)
According to my google search history [google.com] I am responsible for about 112 kg of carbon. I wonder how long I have to hold my breath to off set that.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Start holding now, we'll tell you when to stop.... =) j/k
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Assuming 0.04 g of C02 per exhalation (about average), 12 breaths per minute (reasonable resting rate), about 162 days.
The first few minutes are the hardest. After that it's easy.
mandatory carbon credit purchases coming (Score:5, Insightful)
Knee-jerk reactions (Score:2, Offtopic)
This kind of news leads to a CO2 (and unfortunately methane) emitting knee-jerk reaction - That study must have been payed by M$.
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I'm not sure if I hope you're joking or not...
Regardless, I find the content of the article very badly, and unscientifically based. For instance, it's not considering the opportunity cost, that is, what would happen if one wasn't doing those two Google searches... driving to the library? Walking to the library? Yes, even walking uses up extra CO2.
Also the cost of the electricity most likely wouldn't increase anywhere near as much as they say. 2 searches = a boiled kettle. What utter nonsense! The power is a
I don't buy it... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd like to see the in-depth math on this, I don't buy these numbers, its smells of environmental-shock-value reasoning... Example - if they are dividing the total power used by google by the number of searches, that would only be applicable if google were working at 100% capacity and if *all* they did was searches...
This is kinda like the Greenpeace founder who hated nuclear power till they read a freaking book. Boo.
Re:I don't buy it... (Score:4, Informative)
Google claims to use less energy than the user during the search:
http://www.google.com/intl/en/corporate/datacenters/
"The graph below shows that our Google-designed data centers use considerably less energy - both for the servers and the facility itself - than a typical data center. As a result, the energy used per Google search is minimal. In fact, in the time it takes to do a Google search, your own personal computer will use more energy than we will use to answer your query."
The researcher claims that surfing produces 0.02g of CO2 per second.
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Completely agreed. Unfortunately I used up all my mod points in the IT Jobs article :-(
I find it quite amusing that many "green"s would prefer hydro (environment destroying), coal (CO2 + dirty) etc. over nuclear (very little space taken, no "greenhouse" gasses, radiation no way near as destructive as people make believe).
And yeah, I completely miss the point of this guy's research. What's he trying to do? Tell Google that they should be saving on electricity COSTS? Like they aren't already putting effort in
Re:I don't buy it... (Score:5, Interesting)
You're right. Here's some math:
250g water in a cup of tea.
Specific heat of water = 4186 J/kg/(degree C). (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_heat_capacity [wikipedia.org]).
80 Celsius degree change from room temperature to boiling.
To boil a teacup's worth of water, therefore it takes ~80 kJ.
For this to be twice the energy consumed with one search, that's ~40 kJ per search.
If a search takes Google about 100 ms, that means Google would be using 400 kW while responding to your search. That feels like it's about 3 orders of magnitude too high. It's possible that the original researchers got Calories and kCal confused.
Re:I don't buy it... (Score:5, Insightful)
It would take spectacular dishonesty to fudge the energy to make a cup of tea an order of magnitude lower.
The skepticism shown in this thread is fully justified.
Efforts to operate more efficiently are not helped by fallacious arguments and mindless cheerleading.
Re:I don't buy it... (Score:4, Informative)
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).
So they might be measuring the energy needed to turn on a computer and mess around on the Internet for 15 minutes. Or they might just be making stuff up.
Drink less tea then... (Score:5, Funny)
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Don't drop tea in the ocean...
The temperature of the ocean will raise and you will melt all the polar ice!
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Better yet, let's do what we're the best at doing and let's create an antagonism! Tea drinkers have been ruining our atmosphere for too long. Should we let them keep on participating to the destruction of our planet for the sake of preserving their sick habit? Or should we force them to stop drinking tea by all means and kill those who don't (and bury them in airtight bags, to avoid, you know, the gas emissions).
You're either with Earth or against Earth! Letting people drink tea would be like letting the te
Highly recommended article on energy & informa (Score:2)
Of course, clicking on the following might lead to seven more grams of carbon dioxide being generated . . ..
Ultimate Physical Limits to Computation
http://physics.princeton.edu/~mcdonald/examples/QM/lloyd_nature_406_1047_00.pdf [princeton.edu] (pdf warning, obviously)
An old email relating to carbon footprint of data (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm on this advisory group of 6 people and we wanted to participate in a 2 day conference by flying a representative there or through video conferencing. For some reason the carbon footprint argument was used IN SUPPORT of flying because of that recent news about data-centres being polluters. There was news that IT are going to be the 2nd largest cause of pollution in a few years, and therefore flying was somehow comparably damaging to IT.
I thought that this was against common sense, but it was surprisingly difficult to understand the difference. If an ISP wanted to 'go green' what kind of carbon offset would they need to invest in, per Gig? I found a Harvard study[***] on banner ads that seems to be applicable to internet traffic in general.
It's difficult to quantify and compare the two scenarios[*] but flying to London and back releases about 4,000 kilos of CO2[**] whereas sending 10G of data (video conferencing of youtube-quality video for 16 hours to 7 people) releases about about 100 kilos of CO2[***] + 30 kilos to run 7 computers for two days. While the plane's CO2 cost is only in terms of fuel (and not airports or surrounding infrastructure) the data CO2 from the Harvard study[***] is inclusive of wider infrastructure. Also planes releasing CO2 into the upper atmosphere do more damage than CO2 being released on the ground due to Radiative forcing.
One interesting thing from the Harvard study relates to Moores Law, "we calculate that energy intensity of the internet declined by approximately an order of magnitude from 2000 to 2006. While energy use approximately doubled in that time period, data traffic grew by more than a factor of 20". Now I know that Moores Law is purely about transistor chip density so please don't misunderstand me -- I just mean that as computers and networks get faster the energy needed for 1 gig of traffic will decrease.
So it's about 4000 kilos for flying ONE PERSON vs 130 kilos of video conferencing FOR ALL PEOPLE.
[*] because of course it depends on how wide you consider the effects. Flight pollution should of course include airport pollution but how far do we go? Does it include power company polution for the power needed in the airport? It seems that a lot of IT studies are wider in scope than that of flight.
[**] http://www.cheap-parking.net/flight-carbon-emissions.php [cheap-parking.net] for flying half way around the world and back.
[***] Harvard Study on CO2 for data: http://www.imc2.com/Documents/CarbonEmissions.pdf [imc2.com]
ps. In New Zealand? Sign up to http://CreativeFreedom.org.nz [creativefreedom.org.nz]
Re:An old email relating to carbon footprint of da (Score:4, Interesting)
He did point out this is an apples-to-oragnes comparison. The flight calculations considered only fuel. The IT calculations were wider in scope (power, manufacture, various infrastructure).
Airlines actually do not fly jets in the most fuel-efficient manner possible. There is a cost index calculation they perform that takes into account just about the entire airline infrastructure that dictates how they fly their planes. Flying slower saves fuel, but it costs more to pay the flight crew, increases time on the aircraft (maintenance and lifetime is based on hours of flight), and ties up the plane longer (which might in the aggregate require more planes to cover the routes). The result is they actually fly planes fairly close to their maximum speeds (the big exception would be on very long routes - where the added range could make the difference in needing one more leg). On a per-passenger basis an airliner is about as fuel-efficient as an SUV - so it shouldn't be surprising that fuel is only one of many costs that need to be considered.
I suspect that all those other costs also have substantial carbon footprints associated with them. I wouldn't be surprised if the fuel only represents maybe half of the carbon cost of a flight. It is just very dramatic to think about 50,000kgs of diesel going up in smoke.
Airlines (Score:2)
I think the interesting piece to pull from this is how little impact individual industries have compared to the perceived impact.
The airlines are a good example of this effect. There are quite a few high profile environmentalists who decry airlines and the damage they are doing,.. the probably do NOT think about the enviromental impact of the computers they use or the networks they attach to.
This is probalby because people have an easier time thinking in terms of singular things with big im
Yes, but how much is that vs. alternative actions? (Score:2)
And without the internet, we'd be spending a LOT more than that.
Imagine the gas wasted on trips to the bookstore, vs. aggregation of purchases through Amazon, the reduced waste thanks to Print-On-Demand... you get the idea.
Google is, for all intents and purposes, the cost of business. I'm all for reducing Google's energy consumption, but it's a lot better than the non-internet alternatives.
as opposed to the alternative? (Score:2)
how about all those yellow pages, encyclopedias, dictionaries, training/research manuals, Porn magazines & catalogs that have to be printed and delivered/picked up?
some people just like to bitch...
Times also (Score:2)
doesn't that apply to the Times online also?
seems they don't have room to talk
We need the moderate middle gound!!! (Score:3, Interesting)
While I agree with the sentiment I cannot go so far as to be guilted into not using Google. This craziness stretches into other areas. Large plasma TVs are facing face being banned in the EU. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/giant-plasma-tvs-face-ban-in-battle-to-green-britain-1299665.html [independent.co.uk]
There is talk about heavily taxing the airline industry to bring down the number of miles flown.
There seems to be no middle ground. Either its denial of global warming or banning major economic and social activity in the name of the environment.
Of course we can solve the problem. We need to use non carbon emitting sources such as nuclear power, solar and wind power. Instead the greenies on Europe want to guilt anyone who uses energy. In the end all that does is to depress the economy, raise unemployment and lower standards of living.
Its also ironic that the greenies always try to inhibit the green power they always go on about. The have stopped wind power on top of mountains in Vermont ( http://www.windaction.org/news/3653 [windaction.org] )and filed lawsuits against solar power in the Nevada desert. http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2008/09/25/are-some-solar-projects-no-longer-%E2%80%98green%E2%80%99/ [csmonitor.com] They even oppose wind power out at sea - Nantucket sound. http://www.nesea.org/publications/NESun/cape_controversy.html [nesea.org] Why? Because it's development and they hate ALL development. They always have some objection.
The irony is that we cannot address global warming BECAUSE of the opposition to environmentalists. Indeed if we are to use electric cars we are going to need many more (non carbon emitting) power stations which the experimentalists fight against tooth and nail.
And then I am always amazed by how so many people seem to forge that China is the number one emitter now and that India will soon be number two. If you cannot get these countries on board you are wasting your time. So while the EU impoverishes itself trying to reduce its carbon emissions by 1% China happily adds 10 times that every year anyway.
Re:We need the moderate middle gound!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
> We need to use non carbon emitting sources such as nuclear power, solar and wind power.
None of these are 0 carbon if you look at the full life cycle: building, transporting the materials (and fuel and waste), storing the waste and then decommissioning. What you try to do is *reduce* the carbon output. And not consuming energy is the best for that. And the quickest.
> Its also ironic that the greenies always try to inhibit the green power they always go on about.
There is nothing ironic about it: "greenies" are not some kind of homogeneous blob: they are different people with different priorities and ideals, same as all groups of people.
Hypocracy (Score:2)
You might start by spelling 'hypocrisy' right. /nt (Score:2)
compared to the alternative ... (Score:2)
I would take these numbers (Score:2)
Google will kill us all! (Score:5, Funny)
A new study shows that using Google will destroy the planet [today.com]. A typical Google search on a completely random topic such as "charlot chirch sex tape" produces enough carbon for 98 pencils or seventeen boiled kettles and brutally murders an average of two point four cute fluffy things.
"A Google search has a definite environmental impact," said Alex Wissner-Gross of Harvard University. "Instead, you should use Windows Live Search — to be renamed Windows Love Search — which produces butterflies and baby seals. That's instead of whatever you were looking for, but hey — it's for the planet."
Google is "secretive" about its energy consumption and carbon footprint. "Or at least, they told us to fuck off when we asked how many endangered species they'd killed off today. This proves their inherent malice. If you search using Google you may as well be strangling kittens. You should go to a trustworthy company of demonstrated moral fibre, like Microsoft."
A recent Gartner report said the global IT industry generates as much greenhouse gas as the airlines industry. "Primary in this is the large quantities of hot air produced by completely independent analysts to support the views of the highest bidder."
The Home Office welcomed the findings. "This proves that Internet users might as well be terrorists," said Jacqui Smith, "and so we'll treat them like they are. All Internet access in the UK will be run through Cleanfeed filters and your electronic ration book ticked off per web page used. Reading Wikipedia or the Guido Fawkes blog will, of course, be declared capital offences."
Microsoft has demonstrated its environmental credentials by recycling Vista, its huge and lumbering Hummer of an operating system, as Windows 7. "All new and yet ... old," said marketing marketer Steve Ballmer. "Save the planet with Windows 7! Requires 4 core processor 2 gigabytes memory 500 gigabyte hard disk and basement nuclear power plant. Power plant sold separately."
Estimating cost is only half the job done (Score:2)
Before we shut down Google, we might also want to consider the benefits (both environmental and other) of the Google service.
How much carbon does it save by sparing us trips to the local or university library? Or in having books shipped to us?
How much CO2 is saved by having Google Maps give good directions, so that we don't drive around looking for our destination?
Or how about the green-energy research and procurement that's enabled by people's use of Google?
Also, consider that Google's porn search elimina
Cup of tea? (Score:3, Funny)
I drink iced tea, you insensitive clod!
revealed? (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Exposing corporations for the evil bastards they are has much less impact when you make up all the numbers.
2. In the Dalles here in Oregon, their project 02 datacenter pulls all of it's power straight from the hydro dam next door. In fact, the whole reason they built there was because of all the dark fiber underneath, and the hydroelectric dam adjacent. Google didn't get rich by making shitty decisions when it comes to power consumption.
The numbers don't add up. (Score:3, Insightful)
Now lets be really pessimistic on the Google front. Suppose my search takes Google 1 second, and the search is distributed over ten 500W servers. That's 5 kJ expended. Lets double that to allow for the costs of spidering and indexing, and double again since the article mentions two searches per cup. Thats 20 kJ. Assume I spend a minute on my 30W laptop viewing the search results; thats another 2 kJ.
So We have 84 kJ verses 22 kJ.
Re:The numbers don't add up. (Score:5, Funny)
The article thinks a google search takes 15 minutes.
They aren't incompetent estimators, they are incompetent searchers.
Your PC uses more energy waiting for a response (Score:5, Informative)
From http://www.google.com/corporate/datacenters/ [google.com]
Oh brother (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
What are the odds the US Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers is federally funded?
The IEEE is an international non-profit, professional organization for the advancement of technology (including standardizing Ethernet and WiFi, publishing leading electrical engineering research publications, etc.). It has the most members of any technical professional organization in the world, with more than 365,000 members in around 150 countries.
You can read about their sources of income [ieee.org] here. Most money co
Numbers don't seem to add up (Score:5, Informative)
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 [ornl.gov])
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... ... 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?
Kettle boiling: costs ~.5c, and ~ 100g,
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 (about the power output of a small US state). On the authors figures, total power consumption would be ~ 650 megawatts, which is still pretty huge, and would still be spending ~ $1billion a year.
Google use cheap, mass produced low power units in gigantic numbers - estimates are hard to come by, I will estimate 200,000 based on inflating some public estimates (e.g. http://arnab.org/blog/how-many-computers-does-google-have [arnab.org]).
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 let's 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..
Did the Author read this? (Score:5, Informative)
Did the author read Google's on pages on energy usage?
http://www.google.com/corporate/green/energy/reducing.html [google.com]
http://www.google.com/corporate/datacenters/index.html [google.com]
I find that hard to believe. (Score:3, Insightful)
Think about this logically: someone, somewhere, has to pay for the electricity for all that. It trickles down to the consumer or the company fails. So: where is the massive cost from the rough equivalent to 400-odd cups of tea I boil every day?
please click on my website .. :) (Score:3, Insightful)
Blackle exploits ignorance. (Score:2)
Blackle thus exploits ignorance to get traffic and Google ad hits (ie. revenue).
Quite likely Blackle is also selling their supposed carbon saving as carbon offsets. Their "We've saved xxxx Watt hours" can be exchanged for money.