What would you rather give up? Boiling a kettle for your tea or using Google search? You might want to give up both, as boiling a kettle and doing two Google searches will actually produce almost the same amount of CO2, which is of course harmful to our environment. This was the findings of a study conducted by Harvard University physicist Alex Wissner-Gross which revealed that a search in Google yields 7g of CO2. This is half the amount of CO2 generated when boiling a kettle which is around 15g.
The reason? Google’s huge data centres located all over the world which according to the study consumes huge amount of energy everytime a user conducts a search in Google. The research has already been submitted for publication the US Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the author has set up a website called CO2stats.com. If you want to learn more about this organization do a Google search, and then pray that the world doesn’t end because you’ve contributed the last amount of Co2 that would lead its destruction.
So, what now? Is this the end of the web search industry? Is Google only the search engine which contributes to the production of CO2? If Google produces 7g of CO2 everytime a search is conducted, can you imagine the amount of CO2 that has already been produced by all of us since the day Google become such a huge phenomenon on the web? And can you also imagine how many more CO2 we are going to produce if we continue using Google search?
Too many question, but don’t even bother to answer them. Anyway, I’m giving up my tea habit to reduce the amount of CO2 that I contribute to the destruction of the environment.
