Energy Savings with Blackle?

I came across a site called Blackle (via Slashdot).

Apparently, it suggests that Google should change its webpage’s background colour from white to black, in an effort to reduce energy consumption.

From the page:

Blackle saves energy because the screen is predominantly black. “Image displayed is primarily a function of the user’s color settings and desktop graphics, as well as the color and size of open application windows; a given monitor requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen.” Roberson et al, 2002

[…] the theory that a black version of the Google search engine would save a fair bit of energy due to the popularity of the search engine.

When I first read about the idea, I thought that it was a unique but unpractical idea. Immediately I thought about how difficult it would be to read text displayed, and how uncomfortable.

Still, I ventured on and decided to take Blackle for a spin. After about five minutes of miscellaneous searching, I found that my eyes were getting really uncomfortable.

Ironically, as my eyes continuously tried, and failed, to adjust, I ended up spending a lot more time trying to read the text of Blackle AND its search results (from white-on-black to black-on-white to white-on-black again (search page to the results page to the search page again), it was torture).

Whatever energy saved on not emitting white (or bright) lights were spent in helping me keep my cool as I got increasingly uncomfortable with the constantly changing colour schemes.

This idea will not work, much as I like the uniqueness and ingenuity of it.