Googling leaves a carbon footprint
According to research by Harvard University physicist Alex Wissner-Gross, two Google search generates the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling water for a cup of tea.
Ironically, searching the phrase “how big is my carbon footprint?” produces 7g of CO2 whilst boiling a kettle generates around 15g. Wissner-Gross said: Google operates huge data centres around the world that consume a great deal of power”. With over 200 million internet searches per day its not a surprise that he suggested: “a Google search has a definite environmental impact.”
The IT industry has been notorious for polluting the planet. Greenpeace has been involved in repeated campaigns for the carbon footprint left by IT, even Gartner claimed that IT generated as much greenhouse gas as the airline industry, two per cent in fact.
The footprint happens when the search request is sent to a plethora of servers which compete to get you the answer quickest. This is a massive energy-consuming enterprise as the servers hold billions of web pages filled with content. Wissner-Gross has calculated the CO2 emmisions caused by a person to 0.02g of CO2 per second.
To see how you can reduce your emissions while surfing the web visit: www.CO2stats.com.
Article written by Elliott Finch on behalf of SJL Web Design
June 19th, 2009 at 9:55 pm
There is bound to be some carbon footprint whenever we use any technological product. I am sure there are many indirect impact from using a computer, etc etc. However this cannot be close to what it would have been from obtaining information via traditional sources such as Newspapers or magazines. Imagine the carbon footprint there.