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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

#171

Post by syshum »

dkarl wrote: post #140
actuator wrote: post #116

Earlier 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…

>>supporting initiatives that promote density

This is not going to help you with "speaks to a large number of voters who don't respond to environmental appeals"

There is a MASSIVE over lab in people that do don't respond to (government regulation based) environmental appeals AND have no desire to live in densely populated cities.

Speaking as one of those people, the idea of living in an area of high population density is a non-starter for me, my current area is about 2,000 people per square mile that that is FAR FAR too dense for me. living in Seattle or LA with a Population density of 4x time is something nightmares are made of, and NYC at about 13x that is just a total night terror....

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#172

Post by jefftk »

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

I don't think the analogy works; what would a coronavirus offset be?

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#173

Post by hwillis »

teekert wrote: post #139

Meanwhile I'm also completely CO2 neutral with my ICE car: [0] why is this even a problem? for 1ct per liter we are CO2 neutral, Google and everybody is doing it. And yet... [0] https://nltimes.nl/2019/04/08/shell-charge-customers-extra-c...

You absolutely are not. Shell is doing the cheapest possible thing; planting trees. It is NOT permanent and not sustainable. As soon as someone decides to cut down those trees, that CO2 goes right back into the air. Shell is also estimating the offset at $5/ton, which is an order of magnitude lower than expected: https://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/pubs/pnw_gtr888.pdf

Planting trees simply will not work. Cumulative anthropogenic GHG emissions are >410 gigatonnes of carbon with 10 gigatonnes worth of GHG released each year. There's 550 ~gigatonnes of carbon in all living creatures, with about 450 Gt in plants, most of that terrestrial. Even if we went back to pre-human levels of forestation it would not cancel out all the CO2 we have already emitted.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#174

Post by AlexTWithBeard »

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…

> do you count secondary services your employees use

No, you don't. If you pull the food service thread, you can go through the food wholesalers to farmers, then to John Deere, then to steel plants, then to miners, then to hard hats and eventually you'll end up in China where the game will be declared lost.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#175

Post by throwaway894345 »

gdubs wrote: post #165
bouncycastle wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hawaii has one of (if the not the ) largest solar farms in the world — and they use sheep for weed removal. We definitely should be reforesting land, but land that is already pasture has a lot of potential for regenerative agricultural practices which greatly increase the prairie’s carbon-capture potential. Particularly if animals are incorporated intelligently. One study showed that the panels themselves can actuall…

Sheep produce methane which is far more harmful per unit mass than co2. I'm guessing sheep (especially plural) are less efficient than a fossil-fuel trimmer (maybe not after accounting for the carbon used to manufacture the trimmer?), but you could probably replace it with an electric trimmer and be even better off. Reasoning about carbon is hard.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#176

Post by opwieurposiu »

Loughla wrote: post #133
growlist wrote: post #70

Here'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?

I like that idea, and it is legitimately how I am trying to live my life, but - The problem with that is - it requires people to either migrate away from areas that are not great at producing food without massive resource investment (or bringing it in from somewhere else), or to splinter basic things like hygiene and nutrition based on region. For example - for the last 5 years my family has exclusively eaten locally…

Wow that is really cool. How many acres/person do you need to farm for this?

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#177

Post by epistasis »

syshum wrote: post #171
dkarl wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>>supporting initiatives that promote density This is not going to help you with "speaks to a large number of voters who don't respond to environmental appeals" There is a MASSIVE over lab in people that do don't respond to (government regulation based) environmental appeals AND have no desire to live in densely populated cities. Speaking as one of those people, the idea of living in an area of high population densit…

That's fine, you keep doing you. Just done stop other people from living the way they want to.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#178

Post by jefftk »

citizenpaul wrote: post #154

Ok this is hacker news supposedly educated logical people. Surely some of you have to be able to see this is all a huge joke that detracts from actual meaningful change? They can literally buy "carbon credits" and magically they no longer pollute? There is no way you can "offset" dumping pollution in the air. Either you do it or you don't.

> There is no way you can "offset" dumping pollution in the air. Either you do it or you don't.

At the extreme, how would you consider direct carbon capture (https://www.jefftk.com/keith2018.pdf etc) from the air?

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#179

Post by soperj »

bawolff wrote: post #163
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…

Even with all those caveats, its still an impressive milestone and a step in the right direction.

Sure, but once you reach "zero" what's the incentive to improve now?

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#180

Post by dheera »

bawolff wrote: post #163
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…

Even with all those caveats, its still an impressive milestone and a step in the right direction.

One of the problems with the offset approach is it's not that repeatable. Only a certain number of companies can buy carbon offsets before there aren't really any more offsets to buy, and we have to start actually reducing the carbon to begin with.

Separately, one of the things that gets to me with companies like Google claiming a zero carbon footprint is that if you look at its corporate headquarters, it's mostly parking lot, and some building. The first time I visited Google's HQ, my first impression was just all the parked cars and no way to get to the HQ without Uber/Lyft. Same with Facebook. That picture alone seems wrong to me from an environmental standpoint. Why isn't there a train station there with electric trains instead of a parking lot?

(Google's Boston (Cambridge) office, on the other hand, is right across from a subway station which totally feels right.)

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