Google’s Footprint: The Environmental Impact of Internet Searches Article by Keith Johnson @ www.wsj.com
Forget the economic meltdown, rising unemployment, and trillion-dollar deficits. The burning question of the day is: Are your Google searches killing the planet?
To recap: The Times of London reported on Sunday research purportedly showing that Internet searches, by flitting from desktops to servers around the world, have a significant environmental impact—7 grams of carbon-dioxide emissions, to be exact.
Or, to use the British standard for energy consumption, about half as much as comes from boiling a “kettle of tea.” Multiply that by Google’s five billion searches a day, and Google, the green-talking Internet darling started to look like an environmental villain.
Except that the numbers in the study were widely inflated, Google contends. It says a Google search produces about 0.2 grams of carbon dioxide. Tech outlets and the blogosphere have been buzzing with claims and counter-claims about Google’s true environmental footprint.
Amusing as sniping between engineers may be, it entirely misses the point, argues Wired, calling the spat the equivalent of “complaining about a wobbly leg on one of the deck chairs on the Titanic.”
The bigger issue is the environmental footprint of information technology in general, not the environmental impact of your furtive searches for the lowdown on “24.” The IT sector globally accounts for about 2% of greenhouse-gas emissions, not far behind commercial aviation, long the target of environmental campaigners.
And it’s not just power-hungry data centers, like those that drive Google searches. As environmental initiatives by companies like Dell illustrate, the bigger problem is right there on your desk, whether you’re googling or not—simple power consumption from computers makes up a bigger share of IT’s carbon footprint than huge, air-conditioned server farms.
So if you’re still wracked by green guilt in front of the search engine, try googling “energy efficiency.”
Google an energy villian? come on what politically connected environmentalist came up with this study. Did the group responsibile for this non-sensical study recevie some stimulus money?
