Is Google belching out noxious greenhouse gases?

In a twisted reporting job, the Sunday Times of London just released an article that claims each Google search query generates the same amount of carbon emissions as a boiling kettle of water. While that may not seem significant for just you or I, combine it with the billions of other search queries happening every day and the amount of greenhouse gases that ratio would push into the atmosphere grows immense.

But Google claims the comparison is bogus, primarily calling out that its search queries on average take .02 seconds to complete. The amount of energy consumed by each query as it whips through the company’s massive server farms is apparently the same amount consumed by the average human body in ten seconds.

At least, that’s what Google claims on its blog. Talk about bringing energy consumption close to home, with comparisons like this we may eventually begin classifying humans in varying carbon footprints. It could become a sort of tax, the more carbon your body generates or releases into the atmosphere, the higher your bill.

Google takes this sort of claim very seriously because its efforts to move toward sustainability have been numerous: a $45 million investment in clean energy tech, co-founder of the Clime Savers Computing Initiative, and experimentation with electric and hybrid vehicles on its campuses are a few examples.

It’s easy to see this sort of analysis getting out of hand, and while it’s important to reduce our impact on the environment some quality of life is necessary too. Does all of this mean you should reduce the number of Google search queries you enter every day?

Not so much. Think of the information you’re gaining, and the potential efficiencies it can bring. The possibilities range from saving a few minutes on a computer batch process to learning a new way to recycle. In this case, the benefit outweighs the cost.