One search produces about 7 grams of carbon dioxide
Doing two Google searches at a desktop computer makes about as much greenhouse gas as boiling a kettle for tea, reports the Times of London. According to Alex Wissner-Gross, an environmental fellow at Harvard University, one search produces about 7 grams of carbon dioxide—roughly half the 15 grams generated by a kettle. The impact comes, in part, from Google’s speedy system: search requests don’t just go to one server, but many servers that compete against each other to produce the fastest result. Google has already fired back on its official blog, disputing [[CUT: Wissner-Gross’s]] the research by claiming that one search makes just 0.2 grams of CO2. Still, the Harvard researcher has done some interesting work, showing that viewing a simple web page makes about 0.02 grams of carbon per second, the Times reports.