Hey guys, since we're so sure we're right, why don't we violently slaughter our enemies?

[GIGObuster]

@Doughbag

Well, that “one google seach = a kettle boiling” seems a bit crazy - kind of government (town council) calculating costs for things like renovating the public toilet (€355.000) in our town here… and yes, they are nuts.

I’m guessing here, but google uses a shitload of energy and of cos this has some effect on the envirment, since their datacentres are located next to rivers or lakes for cooling. How green that is, well I’ve got no idea, neither do I have a proper cite for that - but as I said, it’s a guess.

Almost anything that we as “modern” humans do, produces CO2 - even making a stupid Video about reducing CO2.

Well, you seem to be more up to date on this, so I shall not mention then how silly it was when you posted that I used more carbon just by searching on Google early. Oops, too late.
(Nope, I did not do a Google search, that Skeptical Science site was pointed out by the scientists at RealClimate.org so even all this point of yours was useless.)

The fact is that more research is needed to be certain of the amount ICT is emitting, but ignoring the efficiency that that technology brings to old inefficient technology is silly.

I should post more from the Australian study that found the accusation of Google to be baseless. (And one should notice that the cite you posted does not actually support your point).

There is substantial scope for further research in this area. For a start, this study is confined only
to Australia – much work could be done in developing equivalent studies for other countries, using
a similar methodology. It is also possible to extend the study to a global scale, though this would
take considerable resources.

More needs to be more done in computing the carbon footprint of the manufacture of ICT
equipment. There has been some work in this area, which suggest that as much energy is
consumed in the production of the typical piece of ICT equipment as it consumes in its entire
lifecycle.

The carbon emissions caused by the disposal of this equipment at the end of its lifecycle
are also significant, but little has been done to analyse these lifecycle issues properly.
There is much work being done, in many countries, to develop better metrics for ICT energy
consumption. The data centre is attracting considerable attention, because of the vast amounts of
power it can consume. But there is no international agreement as to what those metrics should be
– they all fall down on the vexing issue of measuring the efficiency of ICT processing, and how that
relates to energy usage. This will be an increasingly important area in the next few years.

But the biggest area of potential research is in properly measuring the effect ICT can have as an
enabling technology, as outlined in the previous chapter. The main game is ICT’s ability to improve
the efficiency of areas as diverse as electricity transmission, supply chain management, building
information systems, and business processes generally. ICT may be a small contributor to the
carbon emissions problem, but it is a major contributor to the solution.