There was a Google response, Powering a Google search, where they say, ” … the energy used per Google search is minimal. 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.”
Referring to CO2 and carbon footprints and carbon impacts generally gives me a headache because they are usually discussed simplistically or in an overly complicated, polysyllabic way that makes the eyes cross.
In the articles mentioned, it basically boils down to: “Web use has an environmental impact. Google is responsible for a lot of Web use. Google has an environmental impact. We say it’s this.” To which Google responds, “Yes, there is an environmental impact to Web use, so Google has an impact but it is this and not that – not as bad as you claim and, by the way, we’re also doing this to reduce the impact.”
Forgive the simplicity.
Now I came upon all this because I read Nick Carr’s, The strip-mined net, where he says he’s “dubious” of some of the data, and states why. He tells us:
Let me start by saying that I find those numbers to be mind-boggling. In fact, I find them to be so mind-boggling that I’m dubious of them. In addition to being a researcher, Wissner-Gross [Harvard University physicist whose research prompted the Times article] is an entrepreneur who has a start-up that sells a service for tracking the electricity consumption of web sites. So he has a commercial as well as an academic interest here. So far as I can tell, he hasn’t made public his calculations. If he’s going to throw his conclusions around, he should show us how he arrived at them.
Carr also touches on the notion out in the world that computers, the Web and so on are more environmentally friendly than print media. It’s not as simple as that, as he suggests, because there is an energy impact to using the Web. Let me add that there are also all those old computers, cell phones, MP3 players and who knows what all building up in landfills around the world.
In other words, the binary, black/white approach never quite tells us the truth. The debate is really about degrees of impact and, as this issue shows, there is usually disagreement on this as the truth gets obfuscated by numbers and decimal points, and opposing positions and their spins.
I believe most people now believe we (humanity) are making a significant, negative impact on the environment, though we’re not really sure how much is us and how much is natural, or how bad our impact will be, or just what it will entail – but we have a fair idea and it don’t look good.
Our response, however, seems equivocal at best. There’s a “stealing from Peter to pay Paul” quality to most of our approaches to the problem. We don’t want to give up air travel or, God forbid, cars – so we dream up “carbon offsets.” Maybe carbon offsets work but I suspect their impact will be minimal since we really don’t want to give up the activities that actually created and continue to propagate the problem.
I’ve no idea what the practical answer would be (“practical” as in something that takes human behaviour into account). But I find issues like paper vs web or the environmental impact of Google searches and so on, to all be a lot of niggling. Our response is always the same: keep the problem but try and make it less of one. Reduce, but do not eliminate.
Can that work?
(What would I do, other than pontificate from the sidelines? As I just wrote, I don’t know what the answer would be. But one thing I’d do is ban all motorized vehicles from downtown areas, except for public transit. Stops and starts, idling, traffic congestion … eliminate that and I think you’ve got something.
As for electronics and the Web … Perhaps it’s time to change our focus from more and faster to more environmentally efficient.)
Follow Writelife on Twitter