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Google deletes net-zero pledge from sustainability website

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Re: Google deletes net-zero pledge from sustainability website

#91

Post by mullingitover »

Muromec wrote: post #70
wcunning wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has been a move to get the FTC to start labeling these net carbon numbers as misleading advertising because it always includes a bunch of purchased offsets unrelated to the company. Further, there have been some real and complicated situations where carbon credits were sold more than the actual amount of offset carbon -- meaning for example BigCorpA and BigCorpB buy the same "green energy infra" credits from pr…

>There has been a move to get the FTC to start labeling these net carbon numbers as misleading advertising because it always includes a bunch of purchased offsets unrelated to the company Which is good, because carbon offset are a scam.

Cap and trade is a perfectly sound strategy for reducing carbon emissions, and carbon offsets are valid part of the 'trade.' There's the potential for fraud, but fraud can happen anywhere and there's nothing special about carbon offsets that makes them entirely fraudulent. The market and regulators have already been accounting for this through third party verification.

Now, if you are a fossil fuel megacorp and want to burn the entire cap and trade system to the ground, creating a 'carbon offsets are a scam' meme and destroying the 'trade' side is a great way to manufacture consent to get rid of that pesky 'cap.'

Re: Google deletes net-zero pledge from sustainability website

#92

Post by strongpigeon »

tjwebbnorfolk wrote: post #83
downrightmike wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should just pave the mojave with solar panels. Nearly no one lives there and no one wants to live there and it is dead center to western states. If China can pave mountains, a little desert with caliche should be easy

As a rule, if you're tempted to begin any sentence with "they should just..." -- don't. Electrical signal attenuation increases with the square of the distance, so you'll lose ~95% of the power to heat loss in the wires if you try to power Seattle from solar in Nevada -- not very eco-friendly, you'd agree? Also the extreme heat destroys solar panels. Also, dust. Also the permitting of stuff across state lines is so t…

> As a rule, if you're tempted to begin any sentence with "they should just..." -- don't.

Strongly agreed.

> Electrical signal attenuation increases with the square of the distance, so you'll lose ~95% of the power to heat loss in the wires if you try to power Seattle from solar in Nevada

What? HVDC lines are usually estimated to have 3.5% power loss per 1000 km. Since power transmission is done using power lines, the inverse square law doesn't really apply here.

> There are a lot of very good reasons why we haven't covered the desert in solar panels.

That does remain true however. Cost concerns, grid access concerns, environmental concerns are all good reasons.

Re: Google deletes net-zero pledge from sustainability website

#93

Post by dmbche »

watwut wrote: post #29
_mlbt wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than any other company, Google needs to succeed in AI. AI chat has already replaced search engines for many people. Nearly all of Google’s revenue comes from advertising.

Funny enough, that was googles choice. And They made the search worst was consciously as a business strategy, because worst search meant more queries. And they forced ai on top of search because they wanted to.

Shit, I hadn't had that thought but it's self evident, the "worse search = more queries". Thanks for the insight.

Re: Google deletes net-zero pledge from sustainability website

#94

Post by nathan_compton »

ackfoobar wrote: post #88
nathan_compton wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess ask a Chinese person? Like I'm sure many Chinese people aren't happy about the way their state functions, but the vast majority of them live their lives pretty much like we do. I don't know if I would take that as a total invalidation of whatever it is they have over there. Would I prefer a western style system? Definitely, but I'm not sure its so easy to point at China and say "this is an abject failure." In…

The poverty reduction comes from the Chinese "Communist" Party adopting capitalism .

This is a pretty glib way of putting it. The chinese system isn't really capitalism, at least not of the "free market" type. Like I'm not saying that communism is responsible for the improvements in poverty, but I am saying that a significantly non-capitalist system has resulted in big changes. My point is that we often talk like anything that is not a pure capitalism is bound to grind to a halt and be catastrophically bad, but that isn't true.

Re: Google deletes net-zero pledge from sustainability website

#95

Post by agnokapathetic »

tjwebbnorfolk wrote: post #83
downrightmike wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should just pave the mojave with solar panels. Nearly no one lives there and no one wants to live there and it is dead center to western states. If China can pave mountains, a little desert with caliche should be easy

As a rule, if you're tempted to begin any sentence with "they should just..." -- don't. Electrical signal attenuation increases with the square of the distance, so you'll lose ~95% of the power to heat loss in the wires if you try to power Seattle from solar in Nevada -- not very eco-friendly, you'd agree? Also the extreme heat destroys solar panels. Also, dust. Also the permitting of stuff across state lines is so t…

> Electrical signal attenuation increases with the square of the distance

not true. in standard HV-AC lines, power losses are ~10% per megameter. HVDC gets to 3-5%. So Nevada to Seattle would be at most 20% loss, and in practice 15%, and with HVDC closer to 7%.

https://www.nationalgrid.com/sites/default/files/documents/1...

Re: Google deletes net-zero pledge from sustainability website

#96

Post by abdullahkhalids »

mullingitover wrote: post #91
Muromec wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There has been a move to get the FTC to start labeling these net carbon numbers as misleading advertising because it always includes a bunch of purchased offsets unrelated to the company Which is good, because carbon offset are a scam.

Cap and trade is a perfectly sound strategy for reducing carbon emissions, and carbon offsets are valid part of the 'trade.' There's the potential for fraud, but fraud can happen anywhere and there's nothing special about carbon offsets that makes them entirely fraudulent. The market and regulators have already been accounting for this through third party verification. Now, if you are a fossil fuel megacorp and want…

> there's nothing special about carbon offsets that makes them entirely fraudulent

The problem is that what gets exchanged in the marked is a certificate but the purpose of the market is to create a positive externality. This means the buyers and sellers don't have an inventive to be honest.

The buyer of the carbon credits doesn't actually need the carbon to be captured. They just want a certificate for X credits, so they can emit elsewhere or get some other benefit.

The seller doesn't actually need to capture the carbon. As long as they can make a convincing enough case to the buyer that they did capture the carbon, the buyer is happy to buy.

This is unlike a typical market where the seller does have an incentive to fool the buyers into a buying a subpar product, but the buyer has a lot of economic incentive to actually not be fooled.

Re: Google deletes net-zero pledge from sustainability website

#97

Post by downrightmike »

dwedge wrote: post #87
downrightmike wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should just pave the mojave with solar panels. Nearly no one lives there and no one wants to live there and it is dead center to western states. If China can pave mountains, a little desert with caliche should be easy

Paving deserts with black heat absorbers that are only 10-20% efficient in converting that energy to electricity could well end up affecting climate more than burning coal would

They're blue, and nothing about coal would be less impact.

Coal starts with pulling down entire mountains to get to the coal. The whole process starts with environmental destruction and that's how it ends.

The thermal mass of the panels is no where near significant. Especially compared to a run away greenhouse effect we know coal to cause.

Re: Google deletes net-zero pledge from sustainability website

#98

Post by [deleted] »

tjwebbnorfolk wrote: post #83
downrightmike wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should just pave the mojave with solar panels. Nearly no one lives there and no one wants to live there and it is dead center to western states. If China can pave mountains, a little desert with caliche should be easy

As a rule, if you're tempted to begin any sentence with "they should just..." -- don't. Electrical signal attenuation increases with the square of the distance, so you'll lose ~95% of the power to heat loss in the wires if you try to power Seattle from solar in Nevada -- not very eco-friendly, you'd agree? Also the extreme heat destroys solar panels. Also, dust. Also the permitting of stuff across state lines is so t…

[deleted]

Re: Google deletes net-zero pledge from sustainability website

#99

Post by Muromec »

mullingitover wrote: post #91
Muromec wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There has been a move to get the FTC to start labeling these net carbon numbers as misleading advertising because it always includes a bunch of purchased offsets unrelated to the company Which is good, because carbon offset are a scam.

Cap and trade is a perfectly sound strategy for reducing carbon emissions, and carbon offsets are valid part of the 'trade.' There's the potential for fraud, but fraud can happen anywhere and there's nothing special about carbon offsets that makes them entirely fraudulent. The market and regulators have already been accounting for this through third party verification. Now, if you are a fossil fuel megacorp and want…

Its a scam as long as emitting CO2 and then buying credits doesnt result in capturing the emitted amount from the athmosphere, yet allows one to claim net neitrality in a market where customers are somewhat critical

Re: Google deletes net-zero pledge from sustainability website

#100

Post by downrightmike »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #85
tjwebbnorfolk wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a rule, if you're tempted to begin any sentence with "they should just..." -- don't. Electrical signal attenuation increases with the square of the distance, so you'll lose ~95% of the power to heat loss in the wires if you try to power Seattle from solar in Nevada -- not very eco-friendly, you'd agree? Also the extreme heat destroys solar panels. Also, dust. Also the permitting of stuff across state lines is so t…

Seattle is fine on power, you can pave the parts of the Mojave in California to power California instead (although tbh I think what we need most in CA is storage for when the sun goes down). I think you can also reduce heat loss by cranking the voltage up, right? I imagine that's how current interstate/cross-country power deals work

Bigger interstate wires hold more power and have a much higher thermal mass, which is fine until someone's tree shorts everything out because lines sag greatly with more heat/power
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