Google Searches Add to Global Warming

Allen Frederick

Yes I believe America has finally taken leave of it’s senses and is now drifting on the sea of foolishness. 1.5% of all the energy being used in the country can be mathematically calculated to be burned by searching the net. Okay so now we have to stop Googling to save the planet?

I think the best way to save the planet is to relieve it of all these FOOLS who find Carbon Dioxide to be a pollutant. Now where was I? Oh yes SEARCHING for intelligent life on planet earth. This report certainly has flown over the Cuckoo’s nest. Eagle out!

clipped from www.newscientist.com

Power hungry (Image: Jonathan Hordle/Rex Features)

The term search “engine” is apt. Searches are powered by millions of computers packed into warehouses, all wired together to function as a single system. Like any system, it obeys the laws of thermodynamics, and therefore wastes energy.

The first law says it takes energy to do work, even if that work is only to move electrons across silicon wafers. The second law says that no engine is perfect, meaning some of the input gets lost as heat. This is the entropy, or disorder, arising from your search.

The US Environmental Protection Agency estimates that data centres are responsible for 1.5 per cent of US energy use. How much more will that be when we, and our gadgets, are doing hundreds of searches per day? Or when the planet’s 6 billion inhabitants all want equal access? We’ve all heard the future of information architecture is cloud computing. It just might be a cloud of carbon dioxide.

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