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Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

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Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#121

Post by zurfer »

perfunctory wrote: post #59
namdnay wrote: post #14

I'm always suspicious about carbon offsets. From what I've seen buying flights for example, the price seems surprisingly low. Either being carbon neutral is not as economy-killing as some say, or the true price is much higher. Does anyone have more expertise on this?

Yeah, it's like Shell was offering customers to pay one cent extra per liter of fuel to drive in a "CO2 neutral" way. If it really was that cheap to offset carbon emissions, we wouldn't have any climate problem by now, would we. https://nltimes.nl/2019/04/08/shell-charge-customers-extra-c...

It seem's super cheap for planting trees. But it is not completely crazy. If I use the Lufthansa calculator to offset flights I roughly pay 20 Euro per 1000kg CO2 [1]. A litre of petrol produces roughly 2.3kg CO2. So roughly 450 litres produce 1000 kg CO2, meaning Shell can compensate CO2 for a quarter of the price of Lufthansa. It is suspicious, but with economies of scale it might be possible.

[1]https://www.lufthansa.com/am/en/offset-flight [2] https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/sites/www.nrcan.gc.ca/files/oee/pdf/...

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#122

Post by ip26 »

namdnay wrote: post #14

I'm always suspicious about carbon offsets. From what I've seen buying flights for example, the price seems surprisingly low. Either being carbon neutral is not as economy-killing as some say, or the true price is much higher. Does anyone have more expertise on this?

being carbon neutral is not as economy-killing as some say

I think this is a big part of it. Just look at carbon tax proposals. A commonly suggested initial tax is $40/ton. My family racks up about 4-6 tons of CO2 each year driving. That's $160-240/yr. By comparison, registration is ~$300 and insurance is ~$700.

A large portion of the voting public opposes virtually all regulation & taxes simply on principal. For this cohort, it simply doesn't matter what the math says.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#123

Post by dathinab »

danmg wrote: post #96
rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #41

This is like rich countries moving factories to third-world countries where industry emits more CO2. They pretend to be responsible for less and less greenhouse gases even though they consume more physical goods, with larger carbon footprint. Worst, they feel fine flying and buying SUV because their not that dirty compared to people in undeveloped countries whose carbon footprint keeps increasing.

Reminder: Tesla is only profitable because it sell carbon tax credits to makes of ICE vehicles so they in turn can produce the less efficient cars which are basically just status symbols.

I have heard about similar things about hybrid car sails in the EU.

But I wasn't able to find any articles wrt. that anymore, so it might be wrong or outdated.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#124

Post by boogies »

actuator wrote: post #116
ohthehugemanate wrote: post #109

There's a really good explanation of different loopholes in calculating carbon emissions in the Microsoft carbon target announcement from last year[1]. Eg do you count secondary services your employees use, like food services or emissions from their commute? Do you count partner services, like shipping providers for physical product? These, along with your direct emissions, are categorized into three "scopes" of emis…

> emissions from their commute Isn't stuff like this kind of out of their hand unless the state itself tries to fix this.

No, they choose their location, and some tech companies provide transportation. Facebook is even building their own employee housing.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#125

Post by Loughla »

matthewheath wrote: post #94

Offsets are helpful, but are not the solution. At best, they're a stepping stone. The only sustainable solution is reduction in usage. I'm not sure how feasible that is, or how to achieve it necessarily, but that's the only sustainable basis to proceed on.

>I'm not sure how feasible that is

This is actually why I 100% believe we will not be able to change any amount of global warming, and if anything will make it worse as more and more countries become industrialized.

The only way to reduce usage is to change our lifestyles. Less consumption, less travel, less of the 'modern conveniences' people in wealthy counties have become accustomed to.

Maybe I'm too cynical, but I genuinely believe humans are incapable, en masse, of that type of sacrifice - the tragedy of the commons and whatnot.

The only time something will change is when everything crashes down around us because of major disruption, famine, migration, and other life-altering events. Only then will we change, but not by choice - only because we will have exhausted all other options to keep our soft lives the same.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#126

Post by actuator »

rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #102
Aunche wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't displacing factories to third world countries. They're displacing dirty power with cleaner power. Obviously this won't be sustainable forever, but it's a good start.

Displacing dirty power with clean power cannot bring your carbon footprint to zero. Your cleanest power cannot not emit. Google may become cleaner but that isn't the point.

Isn't rest offsets? Like they helping cut emission from non Google things and using that to offset what they can't eliminate from their own emissions.

It still reduces emissions on the whole.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#127

Post by shadowgovt »

actuator wrote: post #116
ohthehugemanate wrote: post #109

There's a really good explanation of different loopholes in calculating carbon emissions in the Microsoft carbon target announcement from last year[1]. Eg do you count secondary services your employees use, like food services or emissions from their commute? Do you count partner services, like shipping providers for physical product? These, along with your direct emissions, are categorized into three "scopes" of emis…

> emissions from their commute Isn't stuff like this kind of out of their hand unless the state itself tries to fix this.

Not really, for a couple reasons:

1) They have enough money to start initiatives, even geographically dispersed initiatives, independent from the state

2) They have a history of working hand-in-glove with the city of Seattle and the state of Washington; it can be hard to distinguish "What Microsoft is trying to do" from "What Washington state is trying to do" sometimes.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#128

Post by jansan »

Google could reduce carbon emissions quite a bit by making Chrome's stupid "Software Reporter Tool" consume less CPU power on millions of computers. This almost undocumented program could easily be the most energy consuming software worldwide.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#129

Post by shadowgovt »

djsumdog wrote: post #120
Aunche wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't displacing factories to third world countries. They're displacing dirty power with cleaner power. Obviously this won't be sustainable forever, but it's a good start.

But a ton of the "clean" power isn't clean. Solar needs to have standby fossil plants that keep at idle or else you get brownouts. Those high end molten salt solar plans take natural gas to startup. Most "wood chip" plants burn the same fast growing trees used by paper mills. CO2 is a stupid thing to focus on. There are so many other forms of pollution that are so much worse. Factory cities in China that have lakes o…

> Solar needs to have standby fossil plants that keep at idle or else you get brownouts

That's strictly cleaner than running the region on fossil plants only

> Natural gas to startup

That's strictly cleaner than running the region on natural gas only

>CO2 is a stupid thing to focus on. There are so many other forms of pollution that are so much worse. Factory cities in China that have lakes of toxic sludge waste.

Lakes of toxic sludge are bad, but they're a localized problem. Atomspheric CO2 balance threatens to crash the global ecology for everything larger than bacteria. Of the things you've listed, the risk factor for killing everyone is CO2 --> ocean plastic --> e-waste --> toxic sludge lakes.

> We need to consume less things

That'd be cool, but unfortunately, have you met humans? We've been trying the "Consume less things" approach my entire life; it doesn't take. We need the consumption to be more efficient and less environmentally impactful.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#130

Post by throwaway894345 »

rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #62
what_ever wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get the analogy - could you explain more? Disc: Googler.

I rephrased my comment (hopes it help). Another mediocre analogy on the subject that you may find both relevant and funny: "I spread germs all over town today but I bought coronavirus offsets so we’re all good". via https://twitter.com/WeiZhangAtmos/status/1245890907511181312

As far as I can tell the only problem with offsets is that it's difficult to account for. If you buy offsets for 1 ton of carbon, it's difficult to ensure that the offsets represent carbon that would actually be added to the atmosphere if not for that funding. Is your comment just extreme pessimism about the efficacy of the auditors or are you remarking that one can't offset their carbon (i.e., co2 isn't fungible)?
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