Google's CO2 Emissions: Some Puff, Lies & Good Old Fashion Hype
January 14, 2009 by Mary Anne Simpson
Google kettle. Image (c) PhysOrg.com
(PhysOrg.com) -- A January 11, 2009 article in the London Times (on-line version) entitled, Revealed: The Environmental Impact of Google Searches quoted Harvard Physicist, Alex Wissner-Gross that "two Google searches generate the same carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea." As one might expect, the Google Team went into overdrive to correct the perception that Googlers are energy hogs.
As it turns out, the study of the environmental impact of web searches authored by Wissner-Gross soon to be published is not about Google, except in a very general way. It would appear, the London Times was trying to sell newspapers and Google always generates interest on the Web. According to Wissner-Gross in an exclusive interview with Technology News, the tea kettle analogy, "They (London Times) did that, I have no idea where they got those statistics".
Harvard Physicist Alex Wissner-Gross manages a web site CO2stats.com whose aim it is to educate Web site owners about reducing energy consumption and offers a seal of approval logo for compliant sites. Wissner-Gross did say, "a Google search has a definite environmental impact" and "Google operates huge data centers around the world that consume a great deal of power." Additionally, Wissner-Gross stated, "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."
As one might expect, there was an immediate rebuttal from Google posted by Urs Holzle, Senior Vice President, Operations. First, Google disputes that a typical Google search produces 7g of CO2, instead Google asserts that a typical search produces 0.2g green house gases. Secondly, Holzle points out that Google has made great strides to reduce the energy used in its data centers and plans to do more. In 2008, the philanthropic arm of Google invested $45 million in breakthrough clean energy technologies. Google co-founded the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, a group with the goal of reducing energy consumption by computers 50-percent by 2010 thereby reducing global CO2 emissions by 54 million tons per year. There's more from Google's perspective, if you are interested see: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/powering-google-search.html .
In other rippling effect news from the blogosphere about the London Times Google CO2 story other cracks may have occurred. Apparently, the Times reporters did interview a Google engineer whose job it is to review and analyze Google's data centers, but it failed to include any of the information supplied to them in the published article, according to Google spokesperson, Jamie Yood. Comments about the story, include "What about the Google private wide-body jet and questions the lack of transparency of Google's server infrastructure." Other comments include, the 'greenwashing' of Google's energy consumption by its public display of cute electric cars and more.
In conclusion, the Times story opened up a discussion on the high energy demands of all Web data centers. Going Green is not a logo, TV commercial or press release. A little transparency would go a long way to dispel rumors and perhaps allow cooler heads to prevail in reporting the news.
© 2009 PhysOrg.com
May 27, 2009 |
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Lying and fabrication are never justifiable in scientific research.
As an addition, how much is saved over driving to the nearest university and walking from library to library when doing research?
Wind duty cycle is ~30%
Those who refuse to do arithmetic are doomed to nonsense.
looks like people are waking up
reference video
http://www.youtub..._XxiKLcY
Another example: what about the energy that is recycled? For example: in my office, now that it is winter we always open the CPD (the computers room door) in order to route the computers heat to our desks, which saves a significative amount of energy both in terms of air conditioned and office heaters (and of course, some money).
This kind of things are never taken into account on isolated studies, typically written by journalists an not scientists. There are thousands of similar examples. I agree that the world need more "green" science, but "green" journalists only create confusion.
http://www.giveme...gle.com/
Secondly, I really don't like where this is headed. Sounds almost like the old fascist propaganda "We aren't making these books available anymore as it takes too many resources to print them. Instead we'll make the information available through our government radio station." Which gave consent to propaganda machines.
Now I'm certainly not saying that the two are the same. It's just eerily uncomfortable. That and I doubt anyone will be able to shut down the internet, it's just too good at what it does.
Actually, I think it's a little foolish to be sweating the small stuff while we do nothing about the big emmitters. So using the internet takes energy, big deal. how much pollution comes from cars every day? How many trees die each year to publish books about this stuff?
It's not like it damages anything, man made climate change is all bull crap and any one who believes that its real needs to get a reality check, climate change is real, man made climate change is just another way to get money out of your pocket.
I don't get the whole money conspiracy? How much has anybody here paid the climatologists for the global warming theory? Who's benefiting at the expense of everybody else? In what way do we not benefit from using renewable energy sources and improving efficiency to reduce emmissions? Why are you people so angry at simple logic?
Read your pay stub.
See the spot where it says Federal Income Tax? Yep, you paid for it. And if it's disinformation being used to guilt people into changing their lifestyle unnecessarily and at an economic cost, well, that's effectively what terrorists aim to do.