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The Internet and the Environment

Is the Internet hurting our Environment? To what extent does the Internet's energy consumption and CO2 emissions affect our world, and do the benefits outweigh the costs? Expansion of the Internet The UN predicts there will be 2 billion world Internet users by the end of 2010. World Total Africa Asia Europe 2,357.3% 352% 621.8% Middle East North America Latin America/ Caribbean 444.8% Population Current Internet users 1,825.3% 146.3% 1,032.8% % indicated = Population online % indicated = Rate of growth 2000-2010 Hypothetically, if these growth rates remain the same, the entire world would be online around 2017. 2000 Global rise in Internet users 2000 - 2010 1500 E 1000 500 1995 1996 1997 1968 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 The Good In the US, data centers totalled 10.3 million (2005), and in 2006 energy usage for these data centers reached... 61,000,000,000 kWh (12 montns) (which is enough energy to power the United Kingdom for 2 months!) Having said all that.. Total Energy Consumption 200% 2000 2006 Total Internet Traffic t 32,000,000% Which is a pretty efficient increase - just imagine a car that could drive 3.2 million miles further than it could 6 years ago on only twice as much gas! In terms of GDP, the numbers paint an even better picture 1992 - 1996 1996 - 2000 2000 2009 3.2% 4.0% 2.2% growth of US GDP growth of US GDP growth of US GDP Energy Demand Growth 24% 1% 2.2% .and for energy intensity: During the pre-internet era between 1986 to 1995, energy intensity (primary energy consumed per dollar of GDP) dropped 7.5%. Between 1996 to 2005, it dropped nearly 20%, and a further 8% drop occurred between 2005 and 2009. CO, Benefits of Telecommuting Thanks to the advances in communication 50 technology an estimated 40% of the working population could work from home Rest of US working population mllon If 40% of the US workforce worked from home for 2 days a week... Carbon emmisions would be reduced by 53 million metric tons a year... The equivalent of taking 10 million cars off the road 2.5 milion When in actual fact only 2% of people actually do so Rest of US working population The productivity of part-time teleworkers increases between 25% and 40% despite there being little supervision. This increase equates to over 5.5 million man years of work in the US annually. The Bad Google How much CO2 does Google generate? A single Google search produces 0.2g of CO, 1 Google search emits the equivalent CO, as... Driving your car 3 inches 850 Google searches emit the equivalent CO, as... Producing 3 eggs (from battery chickens) 5,100 Google searches emit the equivalent CO, as... 1 load of clean dishes (by an EnergyStar dishwasher) 15,000 Google searches emit the equivalent CO, as... Making a cheeseburger The monthly searches processed by Google produce 260,000kg of CO, which is equal to powering a US freezer for 5,400 years! This consumes 3,900,000 kWh of energy, which is equal to washing 5.57 million loads of laundry! The Ugly Spam A single spam message produces the equivalent of 0.3 grams of CO2 Multiply that by 62 trillion pieces of spam circling the globe each year, and you have the emissions equivalent of driving around the Earth 1.6 million times. A 2009 Cisco Systems report lists the origin of spam by country as follows: Trillions of spam messages per year 7.7 6.6 3.6 3.1 2.6 2.5 2.4 2.4 2.3 1.5 Brazil USA South Turkey Vielnam China Poland Russia Argentna Korea Every time your email address is harvested from a website, you can expect to receive more than 850 spam messages. It takes the average spammer two and a half weeks from when they first harvest your email address to when they send you your first spam message, but that's twice as fast as they were five years ago. Numeber of users in millions

The Internet and the Environment

shared by admin on Mar 18
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Of all the things we claim to be hurting our planet, from cars, to landfills, to pesticides, do we ever include the Internet on this list? The Internet does consume a certain amount of energy and emit...

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Computers
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