More Great News
All earnest, concerned warmalists, off the Internet now. If you’re serious about saving the planet, that is. Damn, it’s gonna be nice and quiet on the Internet without all the end-timer gloom-mongering. Times of London explains all:
Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research.
While millions of people tap into Google without considering the environment, a typical search generates about 7g of CO2 Boiling a kettle generates about 15g. “Google operates huge data centres around the world that consume a great deal of power,” said Alex Wissner-Gross, a Harvard University physicist whose research on the environmental impact of computing is due out soon. “A Google search has a definite environmental impact.”
The Internet uses energy, who knew? There’s an Al Gore exception, because he can’t save the world without checking his email while jetting from his sprawling mansion to his bio-solar überboat. But the rest of you, off now. For Gaia.
This part is good. Reminds me of the bit about certain search engines that have kowtowed to the commies in China:
Google is secretive about its energy consumption and carbon footprint. It also refuses to divulge the locations of its data centres. However, with more than 200m internet searches estimated globally daily, the electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emissions caused by computers and the internet is provoking concern. A recent report by Gartner, the industry analysts, said the global IT industry generated as much greenhouse gas as the world’s airlines – about 2% of global CO2 emissions. “Data centres are among the most energy-intensive facilities imaginable,” said Evan Mills, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. Banks of servers storing billions of web pages require power.
…
Wissner-Gross has submitted his research for publication by the US Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and has also set up a website www.CO2stats.com. “Google are very efficient but their primary concern is to make searches fast and that means they have a lot of extra capacity that burns energy,” he said.
Google said: “We are among the most efficient of all internet search providers.”
The ramifications of this are pretty profound for the rest of us, as well. No longer does anyone have to wear a fur hat or eat at McDonalds or drive a V8 to tick off the handwringing concernalists. Not that I’d advocate stopping any of those important activities. But now you can do it with a few taps of the keyboard.
Topics: warmalism
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:08 am Comments (6) on Sunday, January 11, 2009
6 Responses to “More Great News”
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January 11th, 2009 at 9:26 am
No longer does anyone have to wear a fur hat or eat at McDonalds or drive a V8 to tick off the handwringing concernalists.
Cool! Life has been made much simpler.
January 11th, 2009 at 9:40 am
I’m quite sure Al Gore would be happy to discuss a ‘Carbon Offset’ contract with Google.
January 11th, 2009 at 9:52 am
[...] Liberal Values, Jules Crittenden, Fausta’s Blog, JammieWearingFool, Patterico’s Pontifications and TigerHawk Technorati [...]
January 11th, 2009 at 10:09 am
[...] Jules Crittenden: There’s an Al Gore exception, because he can’t save the world without checking his email while jetting from his sprawling mansion to his uberboat. But the rest of you, off now. For Gaia. [...]
January 11th, 2009 at 10:29 am
Obviously we need a federal limit on the amount of time one can spend on the computer. There must be a maximum number of allowed searches per day and the government needs to take over Google and all other search engines to ensure that this privilege is not abused. Unfettered use of the Internet and search engines is bad for the environmentalists because it might allow people to see how full of crap the AGW people really are. Can’t have the truth spoiling a good power grab, can we?
January 11th, 2009 at 11:34 am
Lefty fascism strikes again.