The environmental cost of a Google search

Monday, January 12, 2009 | 02:06 PM ET

By Paul Jay, CBCNews.ca.

A Harvard physicist and green-website founder's assertion that running two Google searches released the same amount of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as boiling a kettle of tea has caused a tempest in a you-know-what.

Type in "google search kettle" in Google and you'll get a host of links to the study mentioned in the Times of London over the weekend, the nut of which is this: the search you just tried released the equivalent of about 7 grams of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

However, not everyone (that is, almost no one in the tech world) appears to be buying the findings of Alex Wissner-Gross, an Environmental Fellow at Harvard University and the co-founder of CO2Stats, which lets websites track their carbon footprint.

Chief among the detractors is Google Senior vice president of operations Urs Hölzle, who wrote in the company's blog that a typical Google search requires far less energy, and therefore releases far less CO2 equivalent greenhouse gas than Wissner-Gross's figures.

Hölzle said each search amounts to 0.0003 kWh of energy per search, or 1 kJ, or "just about the same amount of energy that your body burns in ten seconds."

From the blog:

"In terms of greenhouse gases, one Google search is equivalent to about 0.2 grams of CO2. The current EU standard for tailpipe emissions calls for 140 grams of CO2 per kilometer driven, but most cars don't reach that level yet. Thus, the average car driven for one kilometer (0.6 miles for those of in the U.S.) produces as many greenhouse gases as a thousand Google searches."

Google is not the only one to question Wissner-Gross's findings, with the UK's The Register questioning his kettle calculations in typically acerbic fashion while TechCrunch compares the environmental costs of a search versus the cost of producing a single book - 2,500 grams, based on figures from publisher Penguin UK.

While it's hard to know what to make of Wissner-Gross's numbers - they have yet to be published - Google's figures are the first publication of their own estimates, giving us a chance to calculate the impact of all of those searches.

According to comScore, there were 7.784 billion Google searches conducted in November 2008 in the U.S. alone. At Google's calculation of 0.2 grams of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gas per search, that comes to 1.557 million kg of CO2 equivalent for the month, or about 18.7 million kg in a year.

Now, context: the U.S. in 2006 contributed 7,054.2 teragrams, or 7,054,200,000,000 kg, of CO2 Eq. greenhouse gases, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's latest figures.

I realize mixing 2006 and 2008 numbers leads to all sorts of fudging, but the point is this: Google searches would account for about two and half millionths of a per cent of emissions. That it something, but I suspect if you compare Google to the other top companies in the world, and think of all of those saved trips to libraries, it seems consumers probably shouldn't fret too much over the impact of all of those searches. But just in case, maybe consider adding a few more bookmarks to your browser.

Harper to sell the rest of Canada if re-elected

Stephen Harper is promising to allow more foreign investment in Canada if re-elected. More Bush style politics that has worked so well for the U.S. Read full article below....

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The Energy Non-Crisis

Lindsey Williams talks about his first hand knowledge of Alaskan oil reserves larger than any on earth. And he talks about how the oil companies and U.S. government won't send it through the pipeline for U.S. citizens to use.

Here is an attempt to "educate" the American People that there is as much oil in Alaska as there is in Saudi Arabia. Also mentions that Russia has drilled some deep oil wells and have found massive amounts. "Peak Oil" is a myth perpetuated by the oil companies to gouge everyone.

loosing my house now! just what they wanted. complete ruin.

Another example of the U.S. slipping into a police state. This man is losing his home because he reported to the media that there is mercury in their water.

The Biggest Global Warming Crime in History

By Cahal Milmo, Independent UK. Posted December 13, 2007.The Canadian wilderness is set to be invaded by BP in an oil exploration project dubbed 'the biggest global warming crime' in history.

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Global Warming Debate : The Denial Machine : the fifth estate : CBC News

An in-depth report on how Big Oil's denial machine was put into motion, and how Bush and Harper sold these lies to the World.

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Gvmnt agencies moving to gain access to personl telephone and internet info

In a move to bring Canada closer to a police state, Government agencies are moving to gain access to telephone and internet customers' personal information without first getting a court order, according to a document obtained by the CBC that is raising privacy issues. The information would include names, addresses, land and cellphone numbers, as well as IP addresses.

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Have Canadian Forces in Afghanistan been pawns?

by Joe Hueglin, Independent Editorialist

While Canadians are agonizing over our war dead, events are unfolding that suggest the purpose behind military action in Afghanistan differs greatly from the humanitarian reasons given, it is to secure a route for an oil pipeline: an idea once dismissed as a “conspiracy theory.”

Last week a Pakistan Daily Times article, "Govt awards TAP pipeline contract to US company" reported: "The Pakistan government has awarded the contract of laying the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan (TAP) gas pipeline project to the United States International Oil Company (IOC) with an estimated cost of $10 billion." According to sources in the International Oil Company, “the matters of security and insurance in Afghanistan during the laying of the pipeline have been finalised between the oil company and authorities, and a signing ceremony confirming the mega-project Agreement would be held shortly."

Last week as well articles in the Asia Times reported "Taliban, US in new round of peace talks" and "Talks with the Taliban gain ground." According to these sources: "Specifically, the deals aim to stop violence in selected areas and give the Taliban limited control of government pending the conclusion of a broader peace deal for the country and the Taliban's inclusion in some form of national administration." Included in the "selected areas" is the Panjwai District in Kandahar Province, where Canadian lives have been lost.

It is suggested the conclusion of negotiations will come with the arrival in Pakistan of Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte on September 10th and that "The outcome of the talks will to a large extent decide the agenda of Negroponte's visit and the course of the US-led ‘war on terror’ in the region."

If Syed Saleem Shahzad's reporting is accurate, negotiations to end armed conflict in limited areas of Afghanistan are taking place and Canadian Forces may be playing the role of pawns in the international competition for control over petroleum resources.

Should such be the case Canadians will have been sorely misled by our leaders ignorance or complicity.

About the author:

Joe Hueglin is a former Progressive Conservative Member of Parliament who is the communications co-ordinator for an independent progressive tory communications initiative.
The The Canadian

American Policy Center President warns Canadians in Ottawa that Bush administration's SPP is modelled from World War

Public/Private Partnerships agenda in SPP are a leaf out of Benito Mussolini Fascist Italy, and Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany

Edited by Peter Tremblay
Tom DeWeese

Tom DeWeese, President of the American Policy Center (APC), a grassroots activist organization located in suburban Washington, DC spoke on Monday, August 20 at a news conference in Ottawa, Canada. He focused on concerns about the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP).

The news conference was sponsored by the Coalition to Block The North American Union, of which APC is a founding member. Other leaders of the Coalition include Howard Phillips (Conservative Caucus, that is against the neo-conservatives of the U.S. President George W. Bush administration), Phyllis Schlafly (Eagle Forum), Jerome Corsi (Author), and more than 50 organizations.

The Coalition is concerned that efforts to create the SPP will lead to the establishment of a North American Union along the lines of the European Union (EU). In spite of the propaganda, the EU is a substantively anti-democratic political economic entity, that has stripped away substantive control by members of European nations. The EU undermines democratic control among citizenry over the public policy directions of their own societies, in favour of a clique of Big Business interests.

While the Bush Administration continues to deny that SPP activity is anything more than a "dialogue" with Mexico and Canada over trade issues, Congressman Virgil Goode of Virginia has introduced H. Con. Res. 40 opposing the establishment of a North American Union. In July, the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation introduced by Duncan Hunter (R-CA) to cut off funding for SPP talks on transportation issues. The house vote was a bipartisan 362-63. The vote was generated from fears that the talks would lead to open border policies allowing illegal immigrants to continue to flood the United States.

U.S. President Bush was in Canada on August 20-21, meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Harper and Mexican President Calderon for more talks on the SPP. The meetings were held in Montebello, Canada behind a 25-mile security buffer enforced by Canadian security forces and the U.S. Army. No anti-SPP meetings, demonstrations or "dialogues" are to be allowed inside the security buffer. Canadian groups participated in anti-SPP protests.

Below are Tom DeWeese’s illuminating remarks at the news conference, held at the Ottawa Marriot, 10:00 AM Monday morning, 20 August 2007:

It’s not just the three governments and their agencies putting together the Security and Prosperity Partnership. Private corporations are also a strong force driving the policy.

They are working together with the governments in what are commonly referred to as Public/Private Partnerships.

Libertarians and so-called Free Traders promote these partnerships as a means to incorporate free market solutions to government. In this manner, they claim that such "private enterprise" limits the size and power of government and reduces its cost.

In fact, a project as massive as the SPP would be nearly impossible to implement purely through government edict.

So Public/Private Partnerships are becoming the fastest growing process to impose such policy. In the US, state legislatures are passing laws which call for the implementation of PPPs. The Canadian Parliament is doing the same.

NAFTA, GATT, CAFTA and the SPP institutionalize PPPs as the accepted way to implement policy.

BEWARE. These bonds between government and private international corporations are a double-edged sword. They come armed with government’s power to tax, the government’s power to enforce policy and the government’s power to enforce eminent domain.

At the same time, the private corporations use their wealth and extensive advertising budgets to entrench the policy into our national conscience.

Further, participating corporations can control the types of products offered on the market.

For example, when the proponents of a political or economic agenda such as sustainable development seek to enforce their will on the market, they simply create PPPs with government and business to control things like development, food consumption or energy use.

Banks and mortgage companies in the partnership can enforce policy by forcing borrowers to comply as a stipulation for the loan.

Government grants can enrich private corporations as the companies produce mandated products –- free of development risks.

Private developers which have entered into a Public/Private Partnership with local government, for example, can now obtain the power of eminent domain to build on land not open to competitors.

The fact is, current use of eminent domain by local communities in partnership with private developers simply considers all property to be the common land of the State, to be used as it sees fit for some undefined community good.

The government gains the higher taxes created by the new development. The developer gets the revenue from the work.

The immediate losers, of course, are the property owners. But other citizens are losers too. Communities give up control of their infrastructure. Voters lose control of their government.

Private companies are now systematically buying up water treatment plants in communities, in effect, gaining control of the water supply. And they are buying control of the U.S. highway systems through PPPs with state departments of transportation.

Because of a public/private partnership, one million Texans are about to lose their land for the Trans-Texas Corridor, a highway that couldn’t be built without the power of eminent domain.

Foreign companies are being met with open arms by local, and federal officials who see a way to use private corporations and their massive bank accounts to fund projects.

As the Associated Press reported July 15, 2006, "On a single day in June (2006) an Australian-Spanish partnership paid $3.6 billion to lease the Indiana Toll Road. An Australian company bought a 99 year lease on Virginia’s Pocahontas Parkway, and Texas officials decided to let a Spanish-American partnership build and run a toll road for 50 years."

In fact, that Spanish-American partnership in Texas and its lease with the Texas Department of Transportation to build and run the Trans Texas Corridor contains a "no-compete" clause which prohibits anyone, including the Texas government from building new highways or expanding exiting ones which might run in competition with the TCC.

That is not free enterprise.

With inside information from its own Public/Private Partnership, Kansas City Southern Railroad (KCSR) has been able to grow overnight from a two-bit belt around Kansas City to controlling a 2,600-mile artery from Lazaro Cardenas to Kansas City, straight up the Trans Texas Corridor. KCSR has obtained the rail rights up the corridor. It is now a government-sanctioned monopoly.

Protected from competition, the railroad will set the costs and the shipping rules. And it will get very rich, no matter the quality of service. All because of whom its owner knows. That is not free enterprise.

At an April, 2007 meeting in Calgary, Canada, as part of the Security and Prosperity Partnership, government officials, business leaders and academics met to discuss redistributing Canada’s water to Mexico and the U.S. Southwest.

Canada has water, lots of it, and the public/private partnerships of the SPP are swarming on it like locusts as they seek to drain it out of Canada’s rivers and lakes and ship it to potential profit centres south of the Canadian border.

NAFTA describes water as a "good" and stipulates that "No party may adopt or maintain any prohibition or restriction on the exportation or sale of exports or any good destined for the territory of any other party."

In a leaked document of the minutes from the 2004 meeting of the Task Force on the Future of North American (a pre-cursor of the SPP), it said, "No item, not Canadian water, not Mexican oil, not American anti-dumping laws is off the table."

For that reason, it is understood that once Canada starts exporting fresh water to the US, it would be impossible to turn off the tap.

Now the case for selling Canadian water is being presented more forcefully in the media by SPP proponents, journalists, businesses strategists and investors seeking profits from this lucrative market.

The Trans-Texas Corridor will provide water pipelines for the shipping and PPPs will buy up the rights and dispose of the water as they see fit.

Canadians are suddenly feeling the raw power of the lethal combination of government and private industry working in concert to dictate policy. The people of Canada will soon understand that they will have little say in the matter.

Private companies operating in the free market lack one thing government has – the power of coercion.

The free market operates with you making the decisions based on personal choice. Under Public/Private Partnerships the choices are decided for you in meetings behind closed doors.

Meanwhile, private companies that are not part of a PPP are unable to compete with those who are. They are shut out of competition from the establishment of economic development zones which provide the chosen elite with reduced real estate taxes and financial aid.

Companies which find themselves outside of the elite status of the PPP suddenly run into regulatory difficulties to get their own projects completed. It’s not just a coincidence?

PPPs are one of the reasons many people find they can no longer fight city hall. The private companies gain the power of government to do as they please – and the governments earn the independence of the companies, no longer needing to answer to voters. It’s the perfect partnership. But it’s not freedom.

Such a process allows the private companies to be little more than government-sanctioned monopolies, answerable to no one. Their power is awesome and near absolute. Some call such policy corporatism. Another term would be corporate fascism.

Ultimately, corporatism does not trust the marketplace to do what the elites want.

Thus the alignment of corporations and government is done at the expense of ordinary people – the exact opposite of free markets controlled by consumers.

This then is the future offered by the Security and Prosperity Partnership – corporate fascism and all-powerful government. It’s not prosperity. It’s not security. And it’s not freedom.
The The Canadian

New Progressive Nationalist Party leader calls Stéphane Dion and Gilles Duceppe disloyal Quebecers on SPP's cultural

New Progressive Nationalist Party leader calls Stéphane Dion and Gilles Duceppe disloyal Quebecers on SPP's cultural assimilation agenda

by Peter Tremblay


New Progressive Nationalist Party say Stéphane Dion [left] and Gilles Duceppe [right] are disloyal Quebecers.

"Never in the history of Quebec, has such leaders betrayed us", says Guy Pelletier, the leader of the newly established Progressive National Party of Canada, LINK, about Stéphane Dion and Gilles Duceppe. Both leaders in quiet, support the so-called Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), which Prime Minister Stephen Harper formally, confirmed, with his support, on August 20 and 21 at an American-owned hotel resort, which is located between Ottawa and Montreal in Quebec, Canada. The SPP sells out Quebec, and the rest of Canada, inclusive of language rights, social programmes, the civil code, and human rights in general, toward formal control under the corporate assimilationist-centred New American Union (NAU) agenda.

Political leaders in Quebec, whether federalist like former Prime Minister Trudeau or separatist like René Levesque, had a common a loyalty to Quebec. Mr. Trudeau, chose Federalism as the best means to protect the cultural identity of Quebec, with a united and officially bilingual Canada. Mr. Levesque, pursued a vision to separate Quebec, from the rest of Canada, to defend Quebec's cultural identity. Mr. Dion, a dual citizen of the Anglo-Saxon dominated European Union and Mr. Duceppe has chosen to sell Quebec to the United States.

It is apparent that Mr. Dion's and Mr. Duceppe's substantive allegiance, is not to Quebec, but with the almighty dollar held by the U.S.-based Big Business interests, in conjunction with the traitorous Quebec and Canadian "partners" which these leaders have apparent chosen to serve, instead of the people of Quebec and the rest of Canada. Indeed, a new generation of elites in Quebec that owns large mass-media outlets and financial institutions, together with the intellectuals, are driven by greed, and not the cultural idealism of previous generations of elites.

These new "Chateau Clique" elites will profess a loyalty to Quebec and the rest of Canada in front of the TV cameras, and then in closed door meetings represented by the SPP, will sell the soul of Quebec and the rest of Canada, which is not for them to sell.

Now, the U.S. military is reportedly beginning to occupy our Quebec, Canadian nation, without the consent of the people of Quebec; and Mr. Dion and Mr. Duceppe, turn the other way on the assault of our national self-determination as a free and independent society.

SPP elites seek to begin to culturally assimilate Quebec, like Louisiana, into a New American Union by 2010.
The The Canadian

NAFTA is outed as wealth distribution scheme for Big Business interests and not free trade

The Security and Prosperity Partnership architects of NAFTA seek to create a New World Order

by Tom DeWeese [Excerpted]

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was one of the first of the "free trade" policies to use the concept of so-called public-private partnerships as a major tool to drive policy.

The program was sold simply as a means to expand markets for industry and agriculture beyond national borders, thereby offering American (and Canadian) businesses and workers "better jobs, better wages and more exports."

However, NAFTA is not unencumbered trade. It represents truckloads of regulations. And there is no question that NAFTA regulations and guidelines are creating great change in the economic order of our nation.

NAFTA comes with its own tribunal overseers; its own courts; and its own set of rules - all of which can, in fact, override laws passed by local, state and federal governments. Such a policy is not "free trade," rather it is a new government structure - reinvented, indeed.

Here is how Henry Kissinger described NAFTA in July, 1993:

"It will represent the most creative step toward a new world order taken by any group of countries since the end of the Cold War, and the first step toward an even larger vision of a free-trade zone for the entire Western Hemisphere. [NAFTA] is not a conventional trade agreement, but the architecture of a new international system."
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NAFTA, under close examination appears to be little more than a redistribution of the wealth scheme. Commercially profiting from it are a few select corporations, which get wealthy in their elite partnerships with government, while jobs are 'outsourced'.

NAFTA continues to be highly touted by "free traders" as a success. Thirteen years after its inception there are now more calls for similar programs to cover South America, Central America, Africa and Asia. The Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) is designed to further enhance and strengthen the NAFTA concept over North America.



The Canadian National Newspaper