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There is a piece in today’s Crikey email about this story on the carbon impact of each individual Google search that has been doing the rounds of the papers and blogosphere today. In the email, we discuss the problem with the article — that the scientist behind the study is actually promoting his business and the journalists happliy play along — but really, there is a second issue with this article.
Even if the article wasn’t largely a veiled PR piece for the scientist’s company, there are still problems.
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.”
It’s true — a Google search, or any electronic function you perform, comes at a carbon cost. But a) Why single out Google searches above emails, Twittering, Instant Messaging or that app that turns your iPhone into a light saber, and b) Why put the focus on individual computing tasks at all, when surely the real issue is the infrastructure behind those functions and whether that is energy efficient?
TechCrunch have picked up on this issue, and offer some good analysis:
There’s no doubt that Google consumes a massive amount of energy, with hundreds of millions of searches conducted every day and data centers scattered across the globe. But let’s try to shed a little perspective on things.
A single book runs around 2,500 grams of CO2, or more than 350 times a Google search. By some estimates, a single cheeseburger has a carbon footprint of around 3,600 grams — over 500 times larger than a Google search. Granted, meat in general has a notoriously large carbon footprint, but if you’re genuinely concerned about your environmental impact then try cutting a burger from your diet every week and search guilt-free (you may even lose a few pounds).
As they also point out, singling out a company that is actually endeavouring to make a difference isn’t very helpful to the cause.
Over at Slashdot, many of the geeks are questioning the data itself. Says one commentor:
I think their main folly is that they don’t distinguish between the power necessary to service requests vs. the total power used (which includes all the power it takes to index sites and store the results so they can be fetched quickly etc.) There is a big difference as the power required to index is relatively static and thus doesn’t depend on the number of searches. In fact, the power per search using their methodology may actually drop the more searches that are performed because each search’s share of the power required for indexing drops.
Whilst another notes:
Here’s some math:
250g water in a cup of tea.
Specific heat of water = 4186 J/kg/(degree C). (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_heat_capacity [wikipedia.org]).
80 Celsius degree change from room temperature to boiling.
To boil a teacup’s worth of water, therefore it takes ~80 kJ.
For this to be twice the energy consumed with one search, that’s ~40 kJ per search.
If a search takes Google about 100 ms, that means Google would be using 400 kW while responding to your search. That feels like it’s about 3 orders of magnitude too high. It’s possible that the original researchers got Calories and kCal confused.
Certainly it IS important for people to recognise that each individual electronic task has its own carbon cost, and to that end, the gaggle of Google-searches-are-killing-the-planet articles make a salient point. But ultimately, it seems to be missing the forest for the trees.
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There are a number of refutations of this misinformation regarding Google searches. Dr. Joseph Romm at climateprogress.org writes:
(http://climateprogress.org/2009/01/12/internet-google-carbon-footprint-alex-wissner-gross-myth/
“The overhyping of the internet’s energy use goes back a decade, pushed by two right-wing deniers, Mark Mills and Peter Huber. They were actually using their easily-refuted analysis to argue against climate restrictions — I kid you not.”
He goes on to comment:
“I ended up writing a major report debunking this myth and then testifying in front of the Senate Commerce committee (i.e. John McCain) and the House on the subject. Jon Koomey and others at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) did even more work debunking this nonsense (click here for everything you could possibly want to know on the subject).
There are actually two mistakes in the Harvard calculation. The first, which was the focus of my research, is the big picture issue. What is the net energy consumed by the internet? I argue the internet is a net energy saver — and a big one — since it increases efficiency (especially in things like the supply chain) and dematerialization (it uses less energy to research online than in person). The fact that U.S. energy intensity (energy consumed per dollar of GDP) began dropping sharply in the mid-1990s is but one piece of evidence that internet- and IT-driven growth is less energy intensive.”
Climate Progress just updated their website with the following information regarding this subject…
“Now TechNewsWorld reports:
A Harvard researcher spent much of Monday setting the record straight about his research and how it relates to Google’s energy consumption….
One problem: the study’s author, Harvard University physicist Alex Wissner-Gross, says he never mentions Google in the study. “For some reason, in their story on the study, the Times had an ax to grind with Google,” Wissner-Gross told TechNewsWorld. “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.”
And that tiny amount of CO2 is, as they say, nothing to blog home about. Dog bites man.”
Thanks for the comments Gordon.
Seems like one of those media manipulations to get their stories more coverage. The story wouldn’t have become so popular if they had stated only Gross’s findings but they had to make it spicy. And what’s more that it worked. Even Google came to clarify their stance on their official blog.