Plant a Tree and get a free search

If you're reading this, There's a good chance you've wasted enough energy to boil a kettle of water to get here. A recent study by Harvard shows Googling is putting tons of CO2 into the air.

Below a copy of an article in the Telegraph.co.uk which describes the Harvard findings:

Googling has 'a very definite environmental impact' according to research conducted by a physicist from Harvard University

A typical search through the online giant's website is thought to generate about 7g of carbon dioxide. Boiling a kettle produces about 15g. The emissions are caused both by the electricity required to power a user's computer and send their request to servers around the world.

The discovery comes amid increasing warnings about the little-known environmental impact of computer and internet use.

According to Gartner, an American research firm, IT now causes about two per cent of global CO2 emissions and its carbon footprint exceeded that of the world's aviation industry for the first time in 2007.

Dr Alex Wissner-Gross, a physicist from Harvard University who is leading research into the subject, has estimated that browsing a basic website generates about 0.02g of CO2 for every second it is viewed.

Websites with complex video can be responsible for up to 0.2 g per second, he believes. 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,"

A separate analysis by John Buckley, of carbonfootprint.com, a British environmental website, put the CO2 emissions of a Google search at between 1g and 10g. Chris Goodall, the author of Ten Technologies to Save the Planet, said that assuming the user spends 15 minutes on their computer, the carbon emission of a Google is between 7g and 10g.

Google claimed that the number was "many times too high" and one Google search is equivalent to about 0.2 grams of CO2.

A spokesman for Google said: "We are among the most efficient of all internet search
providers."

Does it matter how much grams it is, it is not helping the environment, but what are the alternatives? Cut down the rainforest to satisfy our information needs by distributing all the blogs on paper? I guess not. You might encourage a lot of writers to just stop blogging and the world would be better off.

I doubt we'll see that happening. Perhaps it's better to think how we can compensate. Have Google plant and other big spenders plant a forest to compensate, just like we've got to pay an additional tax for flying in the Netherlands. The only problem is.... Google and every other major player on the market is either American or China based, which means they don't really give a **** about the environment. Despite Al Gore and every greenie in the States, every environmental deal is blocked by the United States in favor of economic growth. Where did that bring us? It only brought global crisis. America has blocked deals like the Kyoto protocol so it could continue to produce supersized cars. It has only killed innovation and the United States are now putting billions of dollars into an outdated automotive industry. Cars are too big, engines to polluting for the present day world. No wonder nobody's buying anymore.

The Meta Crunch Continues: Reuters bails out too

After the global Credit Crunch, recession kicks in in the metaverse as well. We've seen this one coming a year ago though. After the media hype in 2006/2007 brought dozens of companies into the virtual world of Second Life, the brain drain started in august 2007 when wanna be hotshot marketeers failed to digg how Virtual Worlds worked and companies bailed out of their virtual ventures.

Last week we saw Google pull the plug on its shortlived Lively project and this week saw the bankrupcy of Sun, a Japanese Second Life development company and the Register reports that Reuters pulling out their embedded reporter Adam Pasick. The Reuters Second Life website has been silent since september 30th. This probably won't be a big surprise. The buzz in and around Second Life has died down over the past months. Even I find it hard to find Second Life related news to blog and am straying away to other worlds and I'm not the only one. Here's a selection of my former reading list:

• Ambling in Second Life has been quiet for four weeks now.
• Digado has been dead for two months as well.
• The Belgian Second Life Crew has made its last post in July.
• Second Life Blogo, once operated by Second Life Development Company Lost in the Magic Forest has even ceased to exist.
• Dutch SL Community site NL0031 (formerly known as Second Life NL) has been silent since July.

A number of CEO's from virtual worlds have said to me that Second Life may have done the Virtual World industry a bad service while trying to ride that wave of media and corporate attention which now results in not just a fading hype, but the start of a real Meta Crunch. They may have a point, but in my opinion this is a needed shake-out. The space is getting too overpopulated with hundreds of startups trying to get a piece of the pie without bringing innovation into the arena. We've passed the "Yet another Social Network" stadium and moved into the "yet Another Social World" phase. Somehow the picture of the "Dungeon Master" came to mind, a wise old game-guide. We might need one to show us the way in the Metaverse and help us out of trouble.

It's turning into a grim story now, with the Metaverse being sucked up into a black hole. The universe had a big bang, exploded, expanded and now contracts again and diminishes into yet another very very niche market. Chris Williams at The Register put it quite boldly:

Last one to leave, turn off the flying penis

I don't think it is that drastic. It's time for a good old shakedown. Get rid of the cowboys that dream of getting rich faster than you can make instant coffee. There's tons of schools, universities and other institutions out there in the Metaverse (including Second Life) who are still exploring, still paving the way for the masses in finding cool, real and usefull applications of Virtual World technology. We just have to be patient. Explore, accept failure, rejoice in small victories. Keep it going. We'll get there, but have a long road ahead in which we must innovate.