On his website, CO2stats.com, Dr Wissner-Gross wrote: "Websites are provided by servers and are viewed by visitors' computers that are connected via networks.
"These servers, clients and networks all require electricity in order to run, electricity that is largely generated by burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas.
"When fossil fuels are burned, carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, which contribute to climate change.
Dr Wissner-Gross believes that Google's unique structure - which sees it send searches to multiple servers around the world and give which ever response is returned quickest - causes its searches to produce more emissions than some other sites.
He told a newspaper: "Google operates huge data centres around the world that consume a great deal of power.
"A Google search has a definite environmental impact.
"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,"
You're telling me that computers use electricity and electricity implies carbon emissions? Noooooo. Thank Fucking Goodness that we have Harvard professors to tell us this shit. I have a few questions. First, is this a useful measure? The servers are running and the computers are running, but trying to determine the particular amount of energy used when doing a Google search seems to miss the point. The servers are running anyway. Perhaps if we all used Google less, then Google would eventually run less data centers, but the marginal cost-benefit decision of each person doing a Google search is so far removed from Google's decision about how many data centers they need that it is almost comical to link the two. Second, I would argue that of all the things humans do that add carbon to the atmosphere Google has one of the highest bangs for the buck. Instant access to almost the entirety of human knowledge is worth a couple of grams of carbon. In fact, a Google search will probably used numerous times by people who solve the CO2 problem anyway. Lastly, this article has the fundamental problem that so many other raising environmental impact awareness articles have -- what the fuck are we going to do about it? The Internet is extremely useful, but to find data on the Internet we need search engines. We aren't going to get rid of the Internet. I realize that people want to make the public aware that their daily activities release carbon, but everything we do releases carbon. Shit. Even breathing releases CO2.
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You may mock the utter stupidity of Dr. Wissner-Gross's complaints, but I choose to embrace his concern for the planet, which is so great that it transcends mere reason. You must really hate the environment.
In fact, I think before every Google search there should be a little pop-up window telling us how much CO2 is likely to be generated by server activity as a result of our careless searching. Then, we should be offered the choice of whether or not to proceed.
Of course, the pop-up window and estimates of CO2 emissions would also emit CO2, so the pop-up window should also tell us how much CO2 we've *already* released.
Incidentally, a gratuitous Google search for "Dr. Wissner-Gross" and "complete moron" turned up no results.
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