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Looks like green computing is going to pick up even more after this. A recent research by Alex Wissner-Gross, a Harvard University physicist studying the environmental impact of computing found that a typical search generated about 7g of C02. Consider this – a boiling kettle generated about 15g, or in another words – a couple of searches, and you could have a pot boiling.
According to Google however, each search generated just about 0.2g. As they say in their blog:

Google is fast — a typical search returns results in less than 0.2 seconds. Queries vary in degree of difficulty, but for the average query, the servers it touches each work on it for just a few thousandths of a second. Together with other work performed before your search even starts (such as building the search index) this amounts to 0.0003 kWh of energy per search, or 1 kJ. For comparison, the average adult needs about 8000 kJ a day of energy from food, so a Google search uses just about the same amount of energy that your body burns in ten seconds.
In terms of greenhouse gases, one Google search is equivalent to about 0.2 grams of CO2.

Leaving the discussions of search queries aside, CO2 generated by IT is part of a bigger picture – according to a recent report by Gartner, the global IT industry generated as much greenhouse gas as the world’s airlines, or in other words,  about 2% of global CO2 emissions.
For instance, Wissner-Gross has also calculated that viewing a simple web page generates about 0.02g of CO2 per second, which rises tenfold to about 0.2g of CO2 a second when viewing a website with complex images, animations or videos.
As TechCrunch notes however, the carbon footprint of a 500 book is estimated at 2,500g CO2 or 350 times that of a search query. This figure includes the entire production, from chopping trees and pulping them, transporting the paper, printing the book and transporting the finished book from warehouses to shops.
So before we get paranoid about computing, it might just be the the lesser of the evils when it comes to carbon footprints – 7g of CO2 (even if it is 7g) can save us a trip the library, leading to lesser energy consumption at our end, and hence lesser carbon footprint.

Update [Jan 13, 09] – Looks like the Times articles was sensationalist, and not completely true. The need for Green Computing on the other hand still is.

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