Things I’m not massively fussed about: eco-mentalism, faddishness, and people dressing up their dodgy business ideas as eco-faddism.

So I wasn’t exactly over the moon to read nonsensical bleating about Google searching killing Gaia.

Two search requests on the internet website Google produce “as much carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle”, according to a Harvard University academic.

US physicist Alex Wissner-Gross claims that a typical Google search on a desktop computer produces about 7g CO2.

Well, doesn’t that just have a slight whiff of horseshit about it? Sounds like a whole lot of dodgy pseudo science working towards getting as many buzzwords in a press release as possible?

But fret not, there’s always el Reg to redress the balance. They first of all throw all the pseudo science out the window, and then come up with a workable way to actually cut down on harmful emissions.

It’s the way to do it.

But fret not – you can do something about it. If you light your farts and burn them like a good eco-citizen, CH4 turns into far less environmentally damaging CO2 and water vapour. At a stroke, the extra eco burden of the noxious ringpiece emissions – over and above the body’s unavoidable CO2 production – has been slashed almost to nothing.

Problem solved…