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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

#231

Post by shadowgovt »

throwaway8941 wrote: post #195
shadowgovt wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Lak…

I understand your argument, but honestly, as someone living in a heavily polluted area, I couldn't care less about the CO₂ problem. When you have the immediate concern of people dying 15 years earlier than they might have, when your throat burns 300 days in a year, and you often can't see much farther than 400 meters, I would be very happy if we could just switch everything coal powered to natural gas.

As someone who also lives in a heavily polluted area, I agree, but I can also move.

Nobody can move away from the consequences of CO2 saturation. There's no second planet to move to.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#232

Post by uncoder0 »

dalbasal wrote: post #110
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.

At least in europe, both have happened. A meaningful portion of the gains have been from deindustrialization of one kind or another. This isn't an indictment of all carbon reduction. Most meaningful policies will have reshuffling. There are no perfect moves. That said, it's important to try and get into the nuance, be skeptical. In this case, the guts are in the "what does carbon offset really mean?" Any carbon accou…

I've always been bewildered by the west's push to 'de-industrialize' it seems to be a terrible strategy to combat climate change and serves only to enrich corporations while weakening a country's geo-political position. Nations need to be able to produce things or they become dependent on other actors who have a track record of acting in bad faith, see China and Covid 19 PPE shortage as one example.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#234

Post by anoncareer0212 »

dheera wrote: post #221
i_miss_unix wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't they basically have a massive fleet of buses that cart in all the kids to work who cannot afford to live within 10 miles of the place? Are those buses natural gas?

Oh, sure, they exist, but why are there still parking lots almost full of cars? And also, 10 miles is a really long distance. Most people consider anything more than 1 mile un-walkable for a commute, so what about all the people between 1 to 10 miles? And what about visitors, contractors, interviewees, partner company employees, and everyone else who can't take the bus? Why aren't the buses a part of the local transi…

Last time I was in mountain view they were maybe 40-50% full, even by the 'main' campus - also they have a ton of free bikes to ride around, very rarely did I see Uber or Lyft (your point is well taken)

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#235

Post by systemvoltage »

lhorie wrote: post #207
bawolff wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm partially curious and partially skeptical. Is this "a step in the right direction" in the same way as recycling? (i.e. people thinking 100% of recyclables actually get recycled vs the reality being a lot of it end up in landfills or worse, and the parallel overproduction of plastics turned into a worldwide ecological disaster)

I don't understand how we are comparing Energy generation with specifics about how it is generated and Plastic Recycling...what's that have to do with Energy production?

Totally separate things.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#236

Post by ohthehugemanate »

komali2 wrote: post #190
soperj wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Assuming they actually reached zero, who cares? I mean I'd love google to work on carbon removal efforts for the world at whole, but, capitalism.

Well presumably customers care. Azure positions itself in some markets as the ethical choice - large parts open source, actually net zero carbon, AI ethics board and terms that rejects dicey cases, etc etc. Argue against the usefulness or real impact of these moves all you want, the point is that they show the image MS is trying to build.

But speaking a bit more broadly, you'd get a good idea from the Wikipedia page on corporate ethics. It's a whole field of study.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#237

Post by corty »

soperj wrote: post #179
bawolff wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You can sell the negative carbon as offsets to others. Lots of products are greened up by just buying offsets instead of really doing something, so there is lots of money in it.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#238

Post by danans »

dheera wrote: post #221
i_miss_unix wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't they basically have a massive fleet of buses that cart in all the kids to work who cannot afford to live within 10 miles of the place? Are those buses natural gas?

Oh, sure, they exist, but why are there still parking lots almost full of cars? And also, 10 miles is a really long distance. Most people consider anything more than 1 mile un-walkable for a commute, so what about all the people between 1 to 10 miles? And what about visitors, contractors, interviewees, partner company employees, and everyone else who can't take the bus? Why aren't the buses a part of the local transi…

> Why aren't there air-conditioned express Wi-Fi VTA buses, or better yet, ultra-fast electric trains, plying up and down 101 and 280 serving all the tech companies in one go, stopping at each HQ, considering they are almost all right next to either highway? That would be a low-carbon world.

You are describing something close to the original vision behind BART [1] that was proposed in 1956, but bear in mind that a significant number of people - predominately in the wealthy suburbs - opposed such a vision for a variety of reasons, and many of those same voices hold sway today.

> Why aren't there air-conditioned express Wi-Fi VTA buses, or better yet, ultra-fast electric trains, plying up and down 101 and 280

Rather than 280, they should serve 880, which goes to more affordable housing in the East Bay.

1. https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/article/This-is-what-BART-...

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#239

Post by lhorie »

bawolff wrote: post #206
dheera wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pa…

In which case the price of offsets spike, and actually reducing emissions become a more attractive option. It aint perfect, but still seems to be in the right direction towards getting to where we need to go.

If history is any indication, I feel that what will happen instead is that someone else will start to sell "carbon offsets" for cheaper that secretly aren't quite following the spirit of carbon offset in some obscure overlooked sense. Then when the cat is out of the bag many years down the road, the big corps get to shrug and say "hey I did my part buying them" in some corporate speak that makes them sound good, and the rest of the public gets to feel smugly superior by tweeting at each other that Chinese carbon offset sellers or whoever aren't being ethical. Meanwhile the world continues to burn down, rinse and repeat until food/resource wars start.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#240

Post by Qwertious »

Spivak wrote: post #224
chrisseaton wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that better than petrol or diesel cars?

The short answer is yes, the long answer is "it depends on your local electricity generation but probably still yes." There are some places in the world where gas wins out because they burn coal to produce electricity but it's rare.

'There are some places in the world where gas wins out because they burn coal to produce electricity but it's rare.'

This statement always throws me - did we just make a complete context-switch from talking about car emissions to talking about gas turbines? Or is "gas" being used to refer to petrol ("gasoline")? The subject of the previous post was clearly cars, but that sentence is talking about gas and coal, better re-read the entire statement several times to double-check the context!

I don't want to be rude and shit on peoples' language, but FFS I hate the shortening slang-version of "gasoline" so much. THAT WORD IS TAKEN, IT MEANS VAPOUR.

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