American physicist Alex Wissner Gross has recently done research in the filed of web searching. He has estimated that each google search lets out 7 gram of CO2. A kettle of boiling water required for a cup of tea leaves 15 gram. That means two google searches are equal to a cup of tea. Now that doesn’t sound to bad, but thinking about the amount of google searches done every single day brings the total to a different level.
Now the funniest part of the research is that google lets out more CO2 than other search engines. At first I thought that had to be complete nonsense, but since google is a very fast search engine and uses several servers to provide us with top notch results, it may be some truth to it.
Google itself claims that they let out a lot less than Gross stated, saying each search only result in only 0,2 gram.
Wonder what the footprint of this post will be…
Often, I’ve wondered about the carbon footprint made by maintaining an online magazine versus a print magazine. A print magazine can always be recycled (inks, papers, etc.). But an online magazine requires energy to keep an online magazine available 24-hours a day.
Is there any research to answer this question?
Coffeehouse Junkie 