back to article Google blames cheeseburgers for destroying the planet

Google has declared newspapers, orange juice and cheeseburgers that much more harmful to the planet than running a vast network of datacentres. Urs Hölzle, senior vice president operations at Happyland Central, took to the Google blog today to put its claims that the average Google search "uses about 1 kJ of energy and emits …

COMMENTS

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  1. James
    Happy

    CO2 emissions...

    ... seem to be at their lowest for 500 million years (that's 500,000,000 years).

    Perhaps higher CO2 would be better ? Ward off the next ice age.

    More power to heat and CO2 generating data centres, I say !

  2. Peyton
    Flame

    I wonder

    How many cheeseburgers it takes for them to fly a lobbyist to DC...

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Great maths and next question...

    ... how many searchs do you run a day in total google? Oh , would that be A HELL OF A LOT.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ob:

    I can has energy ?

  5. Ray
    Coat

    may i be the first to say...

    i'm gonna has cheezeburger ANYWAY.

    i'm getting my coat and leaving immediately.

  6. D@v3
    Boffin

    New standard Reg units for CO2?

    1 Google search = 850 newspapers

    1 OJ = 1.235 newspapers

    1 Cheeseburger = 17.647 newspapers.

  7. Ian Ferguson
    Paris Hilton

    Ah yes

    His figures and logic may be entirely true and accurate, but they're not going to get a half page in the Daily Mail, are they. Or a carbon copy article in all other newspapers and the BBC.

  8. Phil Standen

    Cheeseburger to be added to the Register Standard Units List

    Please add the Cheeseburger, Newspaper, Google Search (for Norks) and Google Search (No Norks) to the list of units.

  9. Jon Double Nice

    Reg SI Units

    I trust then that the cheeseburger shall now become the standard unit of CO2 measurement.

  10. Dino
    Joke

    ho ho ho new unit ahoy ...

    can we have an addendum in el regs units table - cheeseburgers to mpg etc etc ...

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Alternative suggestion

    If my computer is using more power than Google does to answer my query, the obvious energy-saving solution is to switch off my computer.

  12. Jodo Kast

    More spin

    More spin from Google's marketing department!

  13. edward wright
    Thumb Up

    New el Reg units

    I second the call to add this to the standard el Reg weights and measures system.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    @Ian Ferguson

    Carbon copy? I would have thought that was the last thing we needed these days...

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    @ James

    CO2 at it's lowest????

    Gimme a tug on that pipe, man...I wanna see the strange colours and alternative reality too...

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    another vote ...

    for adopting the Cheeseburger as the Reg unit of carbon emissions.

  17. Piers
    Thumb Up

    Calorific value...

    Please can someone do the conversion of Google searches to those units slimmers get on the side of [fat|sugar] free things so I can see how much weight I'll put on when I do a Google search?

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So if you use Yahoo

    you can lose weight?

  19. Michael
    Coat

    Don't forget methane!!

    Remember , CO2 isn't the only greenhouse gas , and burgers don't come from a "Burger Factory"

    Mine's a Deep fried Big Mac with chips.

  20. Nexox Enigma

    To hell with carbon units...

    Carbon is just a fad, plus the carbon mass is just computed from the energy consumption, which would change based on how our energy was produced.

    Google handily gave us 1kJ per search, which means 1 kWh is 3600 searches, which is something like 3.5 glasses of orange juice (around 1 quart I imagine.)

    So remind me again how many cheeseburgers the battery on the Tesla Roadster stores again?

  21. Doug Southworth
    Joke

    I keep laughing when I read the title...

    I mean, we let OJ off the hook for murdering his wife, so now we have to blame him for global warming?

  22. Christopher Ahrens

    What about...

    the CO2 required to build custom servers, construct massive data centers in third-world countries and stretch fiber between them all, how much CO2 does that take? And what about all the CO2 the Streetview cars use just to take pictures of random roads and streets?

    How many searches does that come to?

    (ignoring the circular occurances of setting up the servers to perform the searches in the first place...)

  23. Herby

    With spin like this...

    ...the sun could rise in the west any day now. What has the world come to when EVERYTHING has to be "green" (or any other color for that matter). Look, life on this planet ISN'T green anyway. Only a lifeless planet (Mars is a good example) can actually be "green", but in fact it is reddish-brown.

    Get Real!

  24. DutchOven
    Unhappy

    Cheeseburgers

    If only I could get these cheeseburgers to stop using google every time my back was turned they wouldn't be slowly cooking themselves via global warming.

  25. Mike Flugennock
    Coat

    a glass of OJ = 1050 Google searches?

    Jeez, another exotic, obscure system of measurement.

    How much CO2 would that come to in, say, Bulgarian Airbags?

  26. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Boffin

    Hm!

    >> CO2 emissions seem to be at their lowest for 500 million years (that's 500,000,000 years).

    You forgot top say "into an atmosphere with free O2". Formerly, there used to be an atmosphere composed mainly of CO2, I would think

  27. Will
    Thumb Up

    i third it

    Please update the el Reg weights and measures conversion tool immediately.

  28. Brandon
    Flame

    @ I wonder

    Almost as many cheeseburgers as it takes to fly Algore or Nancy Pelosi around on their jets...

    Flame, because my gas sipping, corolla isn't doing nearly enough to fend off the impending, sun-inactivity-caused ice age... it does save me a buck or two at the pump, though.

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oh great

    So now Google think they're so big that a 'Google search' can be used as some arbitrary unit of currency?

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Jobs Horns

    Blame

    I blame the pope

  31. Pete

    I think the point

    of Alex Wissner-Gross original study included all the energy used between google and your PC, so all those routers etc + your PC and monitor

    I also think, although I don't know, that the amount I read on-line rather than getting a paper version of the relevant news by far outweighs the cost of running a PC, after all, I am a programmers and have my computer on 12-18 hours a day regardless of if I am working or taking a news/entertainment break.

  32. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    @Ian Ferguson

    Well-played on the 'carbon copy' bit, sir. I applaud you.

  33. Tom

    Forget the SUVs...

    It's all the LOL Cats fault!

  34. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    Hmm.. Damn Lies and Statistics...

    But didn't Harvard prof Alex Wissner-Gross take into account not only Godgles energy usage but also the energy for the PC of the searcher, and not only the time it took to perform the search but the time it took the human to read the displayed results and filter out the ads etc.. ie the energy used from the point you type/click google.com to the point you click on a result (the right result? did you try three others??) and didn't it also include an amount of energy used by the Telco & ISP & backbone routers during the search request (and delivery of the first few incorrect sites??)

    it all adds up....

  35. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    The real question is...

    Who gives a shit? I mean really.

    Who cares about the CO2 a google search emits.

  36. edwardecl
    Thumb Up

    what about?

    A search on stuffonmycat or icanhascheezburger can we add those the units of measurement as well :).

  37. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Oh noes

    Leave teh Kitties their cheezburgers.

  38. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Bollocks

    This CO2 religion has as much credibility as Intelligent Design and for the same reasons.

  39. Stevie

    Bah!

    How many gs (new S.I. unit: gs = Google search) does it take to fab the chips, support components, printed circuit boards, metal framing, case etc for a single Google-approved server? Now fill a room with the buggers and do the sums again.

    It'd be funny if the answer could only be expressed in googols.

  40. Cullen Newsom
    Coat

    pffft

    Do you have to use "I'm feeling Lucky"? Or is it good for any Goooooooooogle search?

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