I have a new addition to my "reads-like-satire-but-isn't" file:
Neo-Luddite and
Assisting him in demonizing the blogosphere in general and programs like Twitter in particular, Jonathan Leake and Richard Woods of the London Times Online wrote a bizarre article touting the importance of Wissner-Gross' "findings."
The study claims that "a typical search generates about 7g of CO2 Boiling a kettle generates about 15g. “Google operates huge data centres around the world that consume a great deal of power,” said Alex Wissner-Gross, a Harvard University physicist whose research on the environmental impact of computing is due out soon. “A Google search has a definite environmental impact.”"
The authors go on to mention how "secretive" Google is about their power consumption, and they offer some moonbat criticism of the fact that Google queries multiple servers to gather search results.
But at least Google is "at the forefront of green computing." The real criminals are people who use the web for fun and entertainment. Can these people really be serious? Yes, they can:
Wissner-Gross has also calculated the CO2 emissions caused by individual use of the internet. His research indicates that viewing a simple web page generates about 0.02g of CO2 per second. This rises tenfold to about 0.2g of CO2 a second when viewing a website with complex images, animations or videos.
A separate estimate from John Buckley, managing director of carbonfootprint.com, a British environmental consultancy, puts the CO2 emissions of a Google search at between 1g and 10g, depending on whether you have to start your PC or not. Simply running a PC generates between 40g and 80g per hour, he says. of CO2 Chris Goodall, author of Ten Technologies to Save the Planet, estimates the carbon emissions of a Google search at 7g to 10g (assuming 15 minutes’ computer use)
Newcombe cites Second Life and Twitter, a rapidly growing website whose 3m users post millions of messages a month. Last week Stephen Fry, the TV presenter, was posting “tweets” from New Zealand, imparting such vital information as “Arrived in Queenstown. Hurrah. Full of bungy jumping and ‘activewear’ shops”, and “Honestly. NZ weather makes UK look stable and clement”.
Jonathan Ross was Twittering even more, with posts such as “Am going to muck out the pigs. It will be cold, but I’m not the type to go on about it” and “Am now back indoors and have put on fleecy tracksuit and two pairs of socks”. Ross also made various “tweets” trying to ascertain whether Jeremy Clarkson was a Twitter user or not. Yesterday the Top Gear presenter cleared up the matter, saying: “I am not a twit. And Jonathan Ross is.”
Wow, we're really lucky someone's keeping an eye on all the unnecessary Twitter traffic. Instead of doing stupid waste-of-time stuff like figuring out how to more easily gain access to the Western Hemisphere's enormous oil reserves or some other meaningless activity, these guys have solved at least one question I ALWAYS wanted to know the answer to:
Nicholas Carr, author of The Big Switch, Rewiring the World, has calculated that maintaining a character (known as an avatar) in the Second Life virtual reality game, requires 1,752 kilowatt hours of electricity per year. That is almost as much used by the average Brazilian.
“It’s not an unreasonable comparison,” said Liam Newcombe, an expert on data centres at the British Computer Society. “It tells us how much energy westerners use on entertainment versus the energy poverty in some countries.”
I was wondering what the yardstick was for carbon footprints, and it seems like the Brazilians are the team to beat in the carbon footprint footrace (no internal combustion engines allowed!)
One would assume that Wissner-Gross' methodology could just as easily be used to paint anything that uses electricity with his warped, hysterical "analysis."
How long before these moonbats try to tax or regulate bloggers?
Full Article Here (minus the sanity breaks)
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