How Much CO2 Does This Posting Produce?

So, how much does reading an article online produce in terms of carbon dioxide?

It depends on the length of the article and time spent on it, but a bunch of scientists have tried to quantify carbon output of online endeavors.

Twenty milligrams; that's the average amount of carbon emissions generated from the time it took you to read the first two words of this article.
How green is your website? Calculating all the factors involved in a website can be tricky.

How green is your website? Calculating all the factors involved in a website can be tricky.

Now, depending on how quickly you read, around 80, perhaps even 100 milligrams of C02 have been released. And in the several minutes it will take you to get to the end of this story, the number of milligrams of greenhouse gas emitted could be several thousand, if not more.

This may not seem like a lot: "But in aggregate, if you consider all the people visiting a web site and then all the seconds that each of them spends on it, it turns out to be a large number," says Dr. Alexander Wissner-Gross, an Environmental Fellow at Harvard University who studies the environmental impact of computing.

Wissner-Gross estimates every second someone spends browsing a simple web site generates roughly 20 milligrams of C02. Whether downloading a song, sending an email or streaming a video, almost every single activity that takes place in the virtual environment has an impact on the real one.

As millions more go online each year some researchers say the need to create a green Internet ecosystem is not only imperative but also urgent.

"It is part of the whole sustainability picture," Chris Large, head of research and development at UK-based Climate Action Group, told CNN.

If anything, it magnifies the point I've been making repeatedly - it's far easier on the environment if former Vice President and global warming proponent Al Gore substituted teleconferencing for his jet setting ways.

This article also sets up a rather disturbing notion - that limiting Internet usage may be in the future as a way to "curb" carbon output. By setting up the idea that mass usage of online systems will adversely affect the environment, it's opening the door to government intrusions to limit online activities in the name of "saving the environment." Never mind that online endeavors can and have replaced tangible items, such as newspapers, which damage the environment through paper production and distribution, but makes the distribution of information ever more efficient (even if not everyone is worth reading; the information is at least at your fingertips).