Green Chat

Some people always chat in SMS mode (not to save the world). They use ‘hav’ for have, ‘tc ‘for take care, GB for God Bless etc and some use these abbreviations only when they are busy. So, what is the right way of chatting?

I did not see the documentary ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ but I read somewhere that this is mentioned there too. When we type a character, it takes one byte. When we sent one byte through the networks, it results in the release of 0.0000000000000000034 metric tons of CO2. This might look like a silly figure, but when we consider the actual data being sent, its not silly.

Lets look at a small fact, based on some US data:

“ It takes about 2.5 Watts to power a 1Gb/s link . 2.5 Joules/s / 1Gb/s = 2.5e-9 J/b * 8 b/byte = 2e-8 Joules/byte. The average emissions cost of electricity in the United States is 0.605 metric tons of CO2 per MWh. 1MWh is 3.6e9 Joules. So to produce 2e-8 Joules, we emit about 3.36e-18 metric tons of CO2”

(Courtesy: Google Inc, International Journal of Network Management and US Department of Energy)

So to the extent possible, it is a good practice to use standard abbreviations when we chat. But there is no need to save the world in a hurry by typing everything in short form resulting the person at the other end not understanding it and then he/she asking for explanation.

So, let us cut at least a couple of characters a day (NO, not by cutting the chats but keeping it alive) and make a little contribution from our side to support the GREEN move..