Earlier quoted context omitted.
> cheap things humanity can do to offset carbon emissions Contraception.
Sent to the third world countries you mean?
In general. Fewer people == Less Carbon
Google says its carbon footprint is now zero
141–150 of 335 posts
Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
> emissions from their commute Isn't stuff like this kind of out of their hand unless the state itself tries to fix this.
Companies can help a lot by locating their offices in places that enable less carbon intensive commuting, lobbying local government, supporting initiatives that promote density, and supporting local transit initiatives (example: [0]). When businesses speak up and say, local business needs workers to be able to commute without a car, our competitiveness will suffer without it and we will fall behind, that speaks to a…
Or allowing work from home.
Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
I could bet that this is wrong. Network taking almost equal energy as CPU does not seem correct. Any sources?
Network traffic makes sense if you consider that network traffic is active usage - and the routers, switches, infra all need power. Whereas a typical user's CPU sits idle most of the time.
Idle CPU still uses a ton of energy.
Even a laptop in sleep mode uses ~2W, and a desktop - 6-10W. Average wifi router uses constant 6W if I'm not mistaken.
Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't get the analogy - could you explain more? Disc: Googler.
Here's why offsets are bullshit. Imagine that I go and plant trees every weekend, because I like them and because I don't want to see my world burn. I'm planting trees, everyone is happy. One day, someone contact me and say "I like your work! Would you like to receive 50 cents for every next tree you plant? I want to support you. Just print a paper certifying that I'm supporting your work". I can't refuse that offer,…
To be clear, this isn't an indictment against carbon offsets, it's an indictment against fraud, because your hypothetical carbon certifier is committing fraud. Carbon offsets are supposed to represent a decrease in emissions or sequestration that would not otherwise happen without that funding. A proper example would be funding someone to go around $somePoorCountry (where wood fuel is common, highly polluting, and bad for respiratory health) and replacing their wood-burning stoves with electric stoves, and then revisiting that country every few years to make sure those new electric stoves are still in use.
Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
> emissions from their commute Isn't stuff like this kind of out of their hand unless the state itself tries to fix this.
Google could provide electric vehicles from zero-carbon-emission sources, if they wanted to.
No such vehicle exists. All vehicles require carbon-intensive processes in their manufacturing.
Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero
#146Earlier 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…
I actually help run a solar farm part time. Most of my work is to use a petrol powered snipper to cut all the weeds that are growing around it, and I wonder if cutting down trees to make way for solar lots is really the future? It's quite a big block of land that could be a forest or a park.
Also, the thing is that panels expire after 20 years, so new ones will need to be manufactured and the process to make them and mine the materials to make them is not exactly clean I guess..
Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your analogy misses a critical component: Your 50 cent stipend is typically attached to doing more than you were doing before. And while the point of your analogy is clear, your neighbor could only travel the world without remorse if they fund a huge number of new trees. Offsets are not as illogical as you make them sound.
>typically attached to doing more than you were doing before. I'd love to read the details. Here [0], Easyjet pretend to be offsetting 100% carbon emitted during their flights: https://www.easyjet.com/fr/developpement-durable Where are the huge Easyjet forests? Planted just so the rich can fly? I'm sure they have some kind of contract, somewhere, but I can't verify that. And of course any "new" tree can be attached t…
Are you being willfully obtuse or do you seriously believe the only way (or even the most effective way) to lower carbon emissions is by planting trees?
Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero
#148Here's a wild, crazy, dangerous idea for discussion: how about we start curtailing globalism, and encourage people to live less carbon intensive lives by building economies based around what's available nearby?
Lots of reasons?
A) We’ve globally lowered poverty to its lowest levels in history through trade. Pretty much every government And populace on earth would be against this policy except the absolute richest blocs (eg. The EU, elements of the USA).
B) Globalism has already been pretty curtailed by populism the past 20 years. But this includes the good parts of globalism, like coordinated carbon reductions.
C) Carbon reduction is necessarily a global coordinated solution - going local does not necessarily reduce carbon emissions, ie. oil rich nations can just locally use and trade their energy and the world isn’t any better off unless there are global treaties for trade and carbon.
D) arguably curtailing globalism would condemn a whole lot of the world into poverty or mass migration due to lack of local resource, which is almost as bad a remedy as the mass migrations that will be required later this century due to carbon emissions.
Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero
#149I wish we would subside biochar in agriculture the same way we did ethanol. Or include it in carbon trading. Or both. And fertilise the open ocean deserts with iron while we're at it.
I kinda feel like it's try anything time.
Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero
#150Earlier 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.
Ofcourse it can, you can pull carbon directly out of the atmosphere and have negative emissions. Energy consumption of sequestation coupled with carbon footprint of solar/wind/nuclear works out to be nagative.
The IPCC stipulates negative emissions in the second half of the century.
Lastly, our carbon budget is not zero, if everyone kept to carbon budget of 3 tons of CO2 per person we'd never have climate change to begin with.