Googleing the planet to death

[GOD]

The web produces more CO2 than the air industry and two google searches uses the same energy as boiling a kettel of water .

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/11/ar ... at-a-time/

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol ... 489134.ece

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/ ... earch.html

 

[Forkbender]

:shock:

Wow. This is shocking.

I use blackle, it is the black-screen-version of google (www.blackle.com), which saves a bit of energy, but still it doesn't save processor time and things like that. It is definitely time for quantum-computing.

 

[Caduceus Mercurius]

physicist Alex Wissner-Gross (a star MIT graduate who is now at Harvard) posits that a single Google search generates 7g of CO2, versus around 15g for a tea kettle

Update: Google has responded to The Times article, stating that a single search is actually equivalent to a mere 0.2 grams of CO2. The blog post also details some of Google’s efforts to further green technology as well as the energy efficiency of its own data centers.

 

[GOD]

Maybe the first quote is wrong but the second one has a good chance of being "Green washing" . It would be interesting to find out more .

 

[Nomada]

Breathing on this way of life is fuking killing the planet.

The soap you used this morning is made of your little grandkids' bones.

 

[Ahuaeynjxs]

Everyone knows CO2 is good for the plantlife... if anything we are helping the planet on a natural process of warming up.

It's like some publicity here on the TV they're like : (with a super cool deep voice) This car does not produce CO2 in electrical mode ! And it's the whole goal of this publicity, their only argument...

I'm like ; are you stupid, have you even seen a toothbrush with an exhaust ?!

Allo ?! Wake up !

This only shows how scientists have no idea how this planet is made in the core.

 

[spice]

You don't have to fully comprehend the physics of an internal combustion engine to wreck a car.

There is a fairly coherent consensus on the reality that we are affecting our environment with our CO2 footprints. Sure it's good for plants, within limits. Using that logic, a pure oxygen atmosphere would be optimal for humanity, too. The reality is that oxygen in high purity is probably pretty bad for us, new studies seem to indicate.....

Sure it's a complex thing, this biosphere we live in, but comprehending the concept of 'equillibrium' isn't that difficult.....

Basic mathematics shows that an artificial source (us) is contributing to the imbalance of the equillibrium life on this planet is based on.....the math is simple, but the numbers are large;

How many cars on this planet?
How many factories that produce greenhouse gases?
Ruminant animals?

etc?

Lots.....the earth has some capacity to 'sink' CO2, storing it in the oceans and as rock formations.....but the oceans capacity to hold CO2 is subject to basic physical rules, too.....there is an equillibrium there being upset as well, and the capacity for storage is dwindling.

This whole 'do you 'believe in' global warming' thing is absurd, and it reminds me of the creationism vs evolution argument....whether or not the theories are 100% correct is NOT THE POINT. The point is, we have based our entire way of life on the application of scientific principle; be it agriculture, industry,
entertainment, or surfing the web....the SAME thinking that created the lightbulb, modern farming, the internet, cars, airplanes, organic chemistry, and nuclear physics, and medicine, is saying that we ARE having a detrimental effect on the environment.

Whether we are CREATING global warming or just exacerbating it, again, IS NOT THE POINT......


How can people be so selective in their thinking?

I tell you what, here's an exercise; the next time you go into a dark room, as you reach for the light switch, disbelieve with all your might about the REALITY that is scientifically produced electricity and lighting. Disbelieve in the incandescent lightbulb.

Then hit the switch, and realize that science is not subject to faith.

You can't choose which principles to believe and which to ignore, that just defines ignorance.

 

[Ahuaeynjxs]

Thats exactly my point...

some humans have lots of power, with lots of responsibility, but I don't... I'm young and my purpose is not to question these things, so I dig other things.

I see that since were here the oceans are much more acid too, and that this made big parts of the ocean into grass like fields with not much life, the biodiversity is dying because the planet is getting HUGE, FAST.

I won't argue since its hard to prove it's truely growing, but those new algae that "evolved" to adapt to the new ocean PH might just create new biodiversity of things that can evolve too.

How much CO2 the whole ocean produces at night ?! , the whole amazonian forest ?

I'd be pleased to see the actual numbers.

Perhaps we are even helping the earth through this transition, of course dumping mercury dosen't help, but I mean CO2-wise. There too huge of a controversy around it for it to be substance-less I feel.

And I use the same argument as you do in my enunciation, my point is we don't know whats good for earth anymore.

When I see things like that... I know it's nothing to do with science, OR faith.

These freakin crystals are 500000 years old !

 

[Ahuaeynjxs]

Tears of crystals ?

http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=K5_Rj2zKM ... re=related

This is only the tip of the iceberg...

 

[Lion]

bullshit

http://www.zdnet.be/news.cfm?id=97045

 

[GOD]

Whats bullshit ? Measuring google or the webs part of the CO2 problem ?

 

[braha_kahn]

Whats bullshit ? Measuring google or the webs part of the CO2 problem ?

That article Lion posted says the study didn't mention google it just mentioned surfing the web in it's whole but unfortunatly the article is in dutch. It does have a link to an english interveiw with the person who did the research

Harvard Physicist Sets Record Straight on Internet Carbon Study
One problem: the study's author, Harvard University physicist Alex Wissner-Gross, says he never mentions Google in the study. "For some reason, in their story on the study, the Times had an ax to grind with Google," Wissner-Gross told TechNewsWorld. "Our work has nothing to do with Google. Our focus was exclusively on the Web overall, and we found that it takes on average about 20 milligrams of CO2 per second to visit a Web site."
http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/65794.html

 

[Caduceus Mercurius]

Whether we are CREATING global warming or just exacerbating it, again, IS NOT THE POINT......

I very much agree with you there.

Then hit the switch, and realize that science is not subject to faith.

Science itself may not be subject to faith, but all humans are. When the Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis urged doctors and midwives to wash their hands prior to all procedures, their belief systems made them ignore, reject or ridicule his advice.

While employed as assistant to the professor of the maternity clinic at the Vienna General Hospital in Austria in 1847, Semmelweis introduced hand washing with chlorinated lime solutions for interns who had performed autopsies. This immediately reduced the incidence of fatal puerperal fever from about 10 percent (range 5–30 percent) to about 1–2 percent. At the time, diseases were attributed to many different and unrelated causes. Each case was considered unique, just like a human person is unique. Semmelweis' hypothesis, that there was only one cause, that all that mattered was cleanliness, was extreme at the time, and was largely ignored, rejected or ridiculed. He was dismissed from the hospital and harassed by the medical community in Vienna, which eventually forced him to move to Budapest.

Semmelweis was outraged by the indifference of the medical profession and began writing open and increasingly angry letters to prominent European obstetricians, at times denouncing them as irresponsible murderers. His contemporaries, including his wife, believed he was losing his mind and he was in 1865 committed to an asylum (mental institution). Semmelweis died there only 14 days later, possibly after being severely beaten by guards.

Semmelweis' practice only earned widespread acceptance years after his death, when Louis Pasteur developed the germ theory of disease which offered a theoretical explanation for Semmelweis' findings. Semmelweis is considered a pioneer of antiseptic procedures.

The lesson we should learn from this, and numerous other examples, is that science is an ever developing expanding body of knowledge, and that it isn't by far complete yet, even though we've mapped a lot of territories in the past few century and solved some problems. The discussion over CO2 doesn't seem to be between scientists and 'believers' (e.g. Christians etc.), but between different more or less scientific views, some of them fringe science, others perhaps pseudo science, but all of them approaching the issue using the tools of modern day science: chemistry, physics, mathematics, geometry, astronomy, biology etc.

But again, I do think there is a consensus on many things: the rainforest and oceans must be protected. We must clean up the air, water, earth and our own bodies in whatever ways we can. I very much like the idea of electrical cars. Even if we can't produce clean electricity yet, if in ten or twenty years all the cars have engines running on electricity, it's merely a matter of finding that clean energy source, which I'm sure is possible (ignoring the energy conspiracy for the moment). Whatever the energy source is going to be, it's probably much easier to channel it through the electrical wiring we already have in place, than to generate it in each and every vehicle itself (the current situation).

 

[GOD]

"That article Lion posted says the study didn't mention google it just mentioned surfing the web in it's whole but unfortunatly the article is in dutch. It does have a link to an english interveiw with the person who did the research "

I didnt post one article . I posted articles from both sides in the argument and the article that lion posted is a dutch copy of an article i posted in my first post .

 

[braha_kahn]

okay my bad, sorry