
One Cheeseburger Equals 15,000 Google Searches in CO2 Emissions - erdemozkan
http://siteboat.com/one-cheeseburger-equals-15000-google-searches-in-co2-emissions/
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swombat
I'm going to come out and say that I consider most of those "X results in Y
grams of CO2 emissions" posts/calculations/activities to be utter bullshit and
a complete waste of time.

These calculations are necessarily based on very hand-waving maths. They try
to focus on only one specific facet of what is absolutely and completely a
systems problem. The only level at which it makes sense to talk about
emissions is on a large scale like a country or even the whole world.
Otherwise, you risk turning the "effort" into one of externalising carbon
costs to other people's counters.

But, that's too complicated, so people will go and calculate the emissions
produced in the fabrication of a cheeseburger, as if that was a useful thing
to know. And then they'll write countless blog posts about it.

I submit to you that there is absolutely no value whatsoever in that
calculation, or in the result of it.

Even if the calculation could be relied on, what does it mean? Is there any
actionable element to this calculation? Should we do something about it?
Should we care?

Counting the grams in a cheeseburger, or in a Google search, is a gimmick used
to get people excited about CO2 for no particularly good reason, and with no
specific result in mind. It achieves nothing other than to waste our time and
provide yet another vague, shapeless concept with which people with an agenda
can manipulate others into doing whatever they want.

~~~
Retric
IMO, the only reasoanble way to deal with the carbon issue is a small "sin"
tax at the point where fuel is mined / imported. There are still a few corner
cases, but they represent such a minute fraction of output that they are
ignorable. The advantage is automacticaly account for output on everyproduct
and stage of production without atempting to calculate what it's carbon
history is. [You mined/imported 10 million tuns of carbon x, which you can
collect from the person you sold it to and on down the chain. They can ignore
the tax as it's just an increase in fuel costs to be passed to the customer.]

I also suspect the impact would on coal would be much larger than that on gas.
Which is a great thing because coal is far more replaceable than gas at this
point in time. You can then subsidize non carbon energy production / carbon
storage equaly and let the market deside what's most effecent. You can also
ignore hybrids as the government focusing on a specific solution is less
effecent over time.

~~~
patrickg-zill
I commend you for your honesty.

It will be a TAX on every energy consumer in the world (since energy is used
to produce all items including those that are exported).

It won't actually DO anything to fix the environment, just fill government
coffers; the money will be use to fly VIPs around to environmental confabs on
private jets.

~~~
aneesh
> "It will be a TAX on every energy consumer in the world ... It won't
> actually DO anything to fix the environment"

Actually, it will. The use of taxes to influence consumption is well-
documented. It's basic economics: price increases, demand decreases (because
demand is not completely inelastic). As less products are made, less resources
will be used, which helps the environment.

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jcl
Utterly silly. Note that the initial estimate of 7g/search is based largely on
the power used by the client and includes the time to read the search results
and possibly perform additional searches if the first one doesn't have what
you want, while Google's retort of 0.2g/search is based entirely on the power
used by their server to return one set of search results.

If the goal is to compare the environmental cost of non-essential browsing
versus non-essential eating, you clearly want to use the first number. And, in
which case, there's no need to single out Google, since they are probably one
of the most efficient sites you could be browsing; your total server-side
energy consumption will be dominated by the site to which your search results
link.

(No attempt is made in either number to amortize the cost of running the
internet infrastructure for an additional client, nor the cost of Google's
constant spidering, which consumes resources on less efficient remote sites.)

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chaosmachine
"An average daily newspaper equals the amount of 850 Google searches."

To put it another way, one cheeseburger equals 18 newspapers.

~~~
silentbicycle
Thanks! That one completely stumped Wolfram Alpha.
([http://www49.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=how+many+cheeseburger...](http://www49.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=how+many+cheeseburgers+are+equal+to+a+newspaper))

" _Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input._ "

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stcredzero
Why don't we standardize this? Make a goog the base unit. We could measure
newspapers in kilogoogs. (The Enquirer is 0.867 kilogoogs.) A cheeseburger
would be 15 kilogoogs.

In other words, this stuff is nonsense, only good for amusement.

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ShabbyDoo
I bet that Google's existence actually reduces the total CO2 emissions into
the atmosphere. If someone searches for a business's address and uses Google
maps to find an efficient route that saves 1/2 mile of driving, the supposed
allocated environmental cost is easily made up for. What if I search for a way
to fix my DVD player and avoid buying a new one? How much carbon did that
save?

I agree with everybody that these stats are absurd. But, even if they were
somehow meaningful, the point that information access allows people to consume
less must be taken into account.

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francoisdevlin
Yeah, but "I can has 15,000 Google Searches" just doesn't sound the same.

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ilitirit
Besides the fact that that this could all be completely untrue, it's a useless
stat unless you know the number of burgers consumed/second vs google
searches/second.

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Mintz
Does that statistic take into account all the greenhouse gasses the cows emit
through flatulence? If not, the number might be a little higher...

~~~
TJensen
Cow farts are carbon neutral. Grass sucks the carbon out of the atmosphere,
cows turn carbon into dinner and flatulence, carbon re-enters the atmosphere.
Get rid of cows, and you'll have grass fires returning that carbon to the
atmosphere.

~~~
wglb
Methane is a much more dangerous greenhouse gas than co2 alone.

Eating less meat will make a bigger impact than driving less.

~~~
bmj
Yes, and properly pastured cattle sequester carbon dioxide as well.This
doesn't mean the methane issue goes away, but if we could eat less meat, make
CAFOs go away, and raise cattle in a more sustainable manner, I think we'd
come out ahead.

~~~
wglb
I am a little puzzled here--how do properly pastured cattle sequester co2? If
you do grass farming, the cattle's manure will fertilize the grass, but I
wonder if there is a net sequestration in the process.

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ciupicri
I'm getting sick of these eco-green fanatics. I wonder what are they doing.
Are they living in a cave isolated from the rest of the world?

