During my research on Next Generation networks(NGNs), I found some interesting thing and then I thought to post on my blog. The interesting thing I found was quantity of carbon production by using Internet. Have you gave any thought while searching anything using Google or others search engine. I hope "no" !! me too. I was just surprised after knowing one Google search producing approx 0.2g CO2. The data may vary from lab to lab. Here is some words taken from a article "A Harvard University physicist says a typical search on a desktop computer generates about 7 grams of carbon dioxide. Thus performing two second searches is comparable to bringing a kettle to boil, according to report Sunday in The Times of London. While that may not sound like a lot, the report notes that Google handles about 200 million searches daily." Lots of research is going around energy consumption by Information and Communication Technology(ICT) and their effects on environment. You be surprise that the CO2 produced by ICT is 2-3% of global CO2 production and it is equivalent to CO2 produced by Airlines[Source Gartner Inc.]. How you feel after knowing that every second spent on web-browsing generates 20 milligrams of CO2[Wissner-Gross estimates]. It estimates that the Internet will produce 20% of the world's green house gas(GHGs) in 10 years[source]. According to anti-virus software firm McAfee, the electricity needed just to transmit the trillions of spam emails sent annually equals the amount required to power over two million homes in the United States while producing the same level of greenhouse gas emissions as more than three million cars. Is this really worth? The main source of CO2 production by ICT is large data centers. The things I have mentioned is just an snapshot of how really big this problem is? You will get more interesting and research problem in this as you go more deep into this.
