Comments on: Ignore the media hype and keep Googling — The energy impact of web searches is very LOW

By: Evan Mills

Evan Mills — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 04:32:34 +0000

Evan Mills and Jon Koomey provide more analysis here:
http://eetd.lbl.gov/ emills/ commentaries/ tempest.html

By: Asteroid Miner

Asteroid Miner — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 02:28:02 +0000

The real problem with googling is that it gets wrong answers. How much energy is wasted in jawbone operation because of wrong answers?

Reference: “Google and the myth of universal knowledge” by Jean-Noel Jeanneney 2007 The original is in French.

When you do a Google search, you get “sponsored” links on the right side and “non-sponsored” links on the left. The “NON-SPONSORED” links on Google ARE LISTED IN THE ORDER OF THE HIGHEST BIDDER to lowest bidder. Companies pay dollars to Google to get web sites other than their own that lie in favor of the paying company to be at the top of the “non-sponsored” list. Google search results in your getting nothing but corporate propaganda. Since the coal industry has a $100 Billion per year income at stake, they can and must share a lot of money with Google.

Page 32: 62% of internet users questioned make no distinction whatever between advertising and other information, and only 18% proved capable of telling which data were paid for by companies for their promotion and which were not.”
“92% of users of search engines have full confidence in the results of their search, and 71% (users for less than five years) consider that information from this source [Google] is never biased in any way.”

Suggestion: Use only Google Advanced or Google Scholar. On Google Advanced, specify either the .gov domain or the .edu domain. Otherwise, use only web sites that http://www.RealClimate.org uses or the IPCC.

George W. Bush messed up as many government web sites as he could get away with, but your chances are still clearly better than going to the richest propagandist .com or .org.
Better yet: Get a degree in science so that you can figure it out for yourself.

There should be a law requiring Google to disclose the above and the donors and the dollars for each “non-sponsored” link. Environmentalists should work on Google legislation first.

By: Alex

Alex — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 22:34:46 +0000

Joe (1:16 PM), at least learn something about the carbon cycle, and how much NET CO2 human breath contributes, before you post foolish comments on blogs. Thanks.

By: Scatter

Scatter — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 20:56:38 +0000

Oops, didn’t spot the most recent post.

By: Scatter

Scatter — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 20:41:37 +0000

http://www.techcrunch.com/ 2009/ 01/ 12/ revealed-the-times-made-up-that-stuff-about-google-and-the-tea-kettles/

By: Joe

Joe — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:16:56 +0000

if we all would skip every fifth breath we take( for when we breathe we make co2 more concentrated in our atmosphere) we could remove 5 trillion tonnes(euro spelling) of co2 from the air. also on the plus side that may kill the weaker of us saving even more co2. we must remember to sequester the bodies lest during decomposition they release all the carbon they themselves have sequestered these many years of their lives. i do feel bad making this suggestion as each letter i type adds a small fart of co2 to our already boiling world. please, no complaints from you sissies living back east. It is quite clear that the temporary cold that you are experiencing now was caused by people googleing global warming. if we all just not work together( as work makes C02) then we could set the thermostat of the world at a balmy 68 degrees and all would be happy. now, stop reading this as you are causing climate change ( the artist formerly know as global warming) right now. i mean it, stop! Are you still there? i can feel the heat even now. go away! aaaaeeeeee ouch ouch ouch :_(

ps the use of capitols in this response has been eliminated. if we all just use lower case letter we could offset the carbon generated by one flight of algores jets across the country. this should be sufficient to guide your actions henceforth.

By: Barry

Barry — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 08:00:36 +0000

Thanks as always Joe. I can’t tell you how many people sent the google=7g to me. It will be great to send this back.

Reminds me of the “Prius is worse for climate than Hummer” viral scam awhile back.

By: Brendan

Brendan — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 07:46:54 +0000

Something is bizarre with their numbers.

” In fact, in the time it takes to do a Google search, your own personal computer will use more energy than Google uses to answer your query. ”

My laptop is probably around 80 W. We’ll say the “you” has a really power intensive computer at 300W.

“a typical search returns results in less than 0.2 seconds. ”

So, 300 W * 0.2 s = 60 J.

60 J is way less than the 1 kJ they estimate. Am I missing something?

1 kJ seems like an awfully high number, but I guess it makes sense. Based on a quick search google gets about 91 million searches an hour, or about 1000 per second. I could believe google uses a megawatt of power. I wonder why they put in that line about computer power.

By: ET

ET — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 03:52:30 +0000

Once upon a time, when we were all scared about Global Warming, this might have been an issue.
Now that the Global Warming theory is out and the Ice Age Cometh theory is in, it is surely good news that we can keep our homes warm by Googling our fingers off.
And guaranteed to send Google shares sizzling

see ya
ET – Just Thinking
http://tariksport.com/ET-just-thinking/

By: dwight

dwight — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 02:29:51 +0000

coincidentally the Green Lantern at Slate wrote about the carbon impact of blogging today and came to a similar conclusion. The article can be found here: http://www.slate.com/id/2207902/

I hope this is really a coincidence and not a response to some widespread conspiracy to undermine us from using the internet to save the planet.