Google says its carbon footprint is now zero • Hacker News Board

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#241

Post by ohthehugemanate » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 4:03 PM UTC

irrational wrote: post #225

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…

> to remove all the carbon Microsoft has ever produced Does this include all carbon produced by all devices that have run MS OSes? All servers, computers, mobile devices, gaming platforms, etc.?

I Am Not A Climate Scientist, but here's the EPA's page explaining the three scopes model of emissions.

https://www.epa.gov/greeningepa/greenhouse-gases-epa

(IMO the MS post does a better explanation but this is obviously a more reliable source)

I doubt anyone counts indirect use of a general purpose tool, but hey read the link and you tell us.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#242

Post by ohthehugemanate » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 4:05 PM UTC

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.

Well, the model is not designed as a target for companies. It's designed as a way to categorize indirect emissions. It's 100% Microsoft's decision to take the broadest possible definition of their carbon footprint to target.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#243

Post by nend » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 4:07 PM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #220

nend wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would an employees commute be out of the hands of the employer? Companies already provide incentives to help employees with commutes: public transit benefits, wfh days, shuttle services. It seems especially obvious at the moment that companies could simply eliminate tens (or even hundreds) of thousands of commutes instantly by letting the vast majority of their employees wfh permanently (or much more frequently a…

Because I can just not use those services and take my car to work? Like large employers can dangle some pretty substantive carrots but I don't think courts would let them get away with any sticks.

>Like large employers can dangle some pretty substantive carrots but I don't think courts would let them get away with any sticks.

The courts already let them get away with it. There's nothing illegal about discriminating against people based on their commutes. The employer can do anything they want, up to and including termination (or refusal to hire someone in the first place).

Commute discrimination already happens, here's one article detailing research on the topic: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-30/inner-cit...

Here's another article about it: https://www.boston.com/news/jobs/2018/03/26/no-offer-because...

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#244

Post by res0nat0r » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 4:08 PM UTC

systemvoltage wrote: post #235

lhorie wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think it is that Google says its carbon footprint is "zero", just like folks who maybe recycle 100% of everything they buy from the store, but in reality much of that isn't actually recyclable even if it has the logo on it. Thus this statement should likely be taken with a grain of salt.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#245

Post by ohthehugemanate » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 4:08 PM UTC

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #174

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.

I Am Not A Climate Scientist. If you take issue with the 3 scopes model of greenhouse gas emissions, go argue with the EPA. Here's their explainer on it:

https://www.epa.gov/greeningepa/greenhouse-gases-epa

There are many more academic sources just a duckduckgo search away. (Or Bing, I guess) personally I find the MS blog explanation really clear, but obviously the EPA or a peer reviewed climate science journal are more reliable sources.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#246

Post by haxnewsben » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 4:09 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #186

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?

The issue is that this price doesn't scale. Let's say that the current price of an offset is $5/ton-of-co2. Let's say that presently all offsets are being put toward replacing inefficient wood-burning stoves in third-world countries with much more efficient electric stoves, because it's the cheapest way to reduce carbon emissions. Right now, only a very small amount of offsets are being purchased (relatively little c…

The idea is though, once the low hanging fruit of cheap offsetting dries up, causing offsets to become more expensive, the more appealing the price of carbon neutral energy becomes.

Say now the reason people still burn coal is because it's cheap and you can offset it cheaply, once offestting becomes more expensive, you may as well spend the same total amount, but buy green energy instead of coal+an offest.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#247

Post by TedDoesntTalk » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 4:12 PM UTC

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…

Reminds me of “I, Pencil”. Here’s Milton Friedman’s 2 minute video about it:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=67tHtpac5ws

The sheer number of vendors google has makes it nearly impossible to be 100% carbon neutral.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#248

Post by throwaway894345 » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 4:13 PM UTC

namdnay wrote: post #222

throwaway894345 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that this price doesn't scale. Let's say that the current price of an offset is $5/ton-of-co2. Let's say that presently all offsets are being put toward replacing inefficient wood-burning stoves in third-world countries with much more efficient electric stoves, because it's the cheapest way to reduce carbon emissions. Right now, only a very small amount of offsets are being purchased (relatively little c…

Ahhhh I thought the offsets were "standalone positives" , like planting trees. Indeed if an offset can be helping others reduce, it's definitely a lower cost (and less scalability, as you point out)

Yeah, I had the same experience when I learned about this stuff. It's really interesting; the trick is quality assurance--making sure that the carbon offset you buy actually represents 1 ton of carbon being removed from the atmosphere, or more commonly 1 ton that would have been added to the atmosphere but won't be on account of your offset. As far as I can tell, the difficulty of QA is the only valid criticism of offsets.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#249

Post by air7 » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 4:13 PM UTC

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

I find this question to be a classic ridiculous slippery slope. For example: Do you count the foot print of the plane that takes employees on vacation bought using the company's salary? Or the foot print of the extra child they decided to bear thanks to the finical stability the company offers?

I feel these type of claims should not be taken literally but rather as "We made a substantial dent in our footprint".

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#250

Post by lhorie » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 4:14 PM UTC

systemvoltage wrote: post #235

lhorie wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

GP already provided some "devil-in-the-details" line items to poke holes at carbon offsets (e.g. are all types of emissions being considered correctly)

The parallel that I'm drawing is that recycling was largely touted in the 90s as the solution to the world's pollution problems, but what ended up happening is that people's impression of recycling and their actual implementations turned out to be woefully out of sync. One can argue that the long term damage of this discrepancy is that people will mindlessly buy plastic bottles of coke, ultimately contributing to the microplastics problem because they've been largely trained to think that recycling plastics works (instead of a hypothetical alternative reality where people might instead bring reusable containers to stores to buy things).