tbleakne wrote:I am absolutely sure that I have quoted him accurately regarding the carbon footprint from one person on a flight from LAX to Las Vegas vs 1000 characters in Google search. I recall him saying that each character you type into Google triggers a new response. I know it sounds hard to believe but that is what I heard. I have no basis for questioning the calculations submitted in above posts.
Thank you for the follow up. I trust that you quoted Prof. Wierman accurately. I'm guessing that he hasn't made this claim in peer reviewed papers; otherwise, I'd expect it to have been debunked.
tbleakne wrote:Does the other claim in my post, that "The data centers in total generate more emissions than the entire Airline Industry" seem more credible? I heard the 2% number electricity number many years ago, so 7% now seems very reasonable. 7% of the electric consumption vs the airline industry also seems reasonable to me. Of course the Cloud does many more things than Google Search.
This seems quite plausible to me.