Professor Alex Wissner-Gross, a physicist from Harvard, punched in a few numbers, posited a couple of suppositions and declared that two Google searches generate as much CO2 as boiling a kettle.

You would, I hope, not expect me to spout the numbers at you, but apparently the fact that Google transmits every search inquiry to more than one server doesn’t help. And, worse, even though Google believes it is the most efficient of search organizations, our desperate and faintly pathetic need for speed means that by searching we are burning up the planet like Nicolas Cage in Gone In Sixty Seconds.

While he believes that looking at simple web page like this one throws up 0.2g of CO2 per second, the folks over at carbonfootprint.com (a site I try to avoid only because I care for my world) puts the deleterious generation at between 1g and 10g per second. Apparently, much depends on whether you have to turn your PC on first.

So we cannot merely depend on our ability to stomach hybrid cars that make golf carts look sexy. We have to limit our searches to only the things we really need to find. Not the latest speeches from Al Gore. Not the latest supposed topless shots of Elisha Cuthbert. Nor those meaningful updates on the latest couplings amongst the cast of Twilight.

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