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Is Jevons paradox really a problem when your carbon footprint is zero? > VentureBeat: One of the things that’s come up a lot lately, you know, in the question

Is Jevons paradox really a problem when your carbon footprint is zero? > VentureBeat: One of the things that’s come up a lot lately, you know, in the question of climate change — I was talking with Intel AI general manager Naveen Rao recently and he mentioned this idea [that] compute-per-watt should become a standard benchmark, for example, and some of the organizers here are talking about the notion of people being required to share the carbon footprint of the model that they trained for submissions here. > Dean: Yeah, we’d be thrilled with that because all the stuff we trained in our Google Data Center — the carbon footprint is zero.

account73466 7y ago
>> all the stuff we trained in our Google Data Center — the carbon footprint is zero That is a lie unless Jeff Dean lives under different physics laws.
- m0zg 7y ago
  Yeah, unless this is powered entirely by nuclear or renewables, or unless the emitted carbon is then extracted from the atmosphere, the carbon footprint of all this is most definitely not zero. It's like all those celebs buying carbon "offsets" after flying private to climate summits of all sorts. Dude, your carbon footprint is way, way, above zero, and you paying for "offsets" doesn't reduce it one iota.
  - wnkrshm 7y ago
    Even better that the offset projects aren't necessarily helping. Apparently it isn't even clear whether just planting trees anywhere has a net positive influence on combatting the greenhouse effect [0]. Trees may be required to be planted at suitable locations or else they actually contribute to warming. [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00122-z https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00122-z
- joatmon-snoo 7y ago
  It's a mix of (1) great work around sustainable processes and (2) nuances in defining carbon footprint. (disclaimer: work at G) https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-sustainability.appspot.com/pdf/Google_2018-Environmental-Report.pdf https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-sustainability.appspot.c... https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/renewable/ https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/renewable/
  - account73466 7y ago
    Buying renewable energy does not make your footprint zero. You can twist the definition until it suits your needs but if you properly count footprint of the chain, it cannot be zero.
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
      Google buys high quality carbon offsets, not just renewable energy. It's not clear whether that makes the footprint zero. It surely depends on how you count. But their approach is less naive than "just buy RECs."
buboard 7y ago
even if the carbon footprint is zero (which it isnt) , all this energy is basically a large scale heater.
dredmorbius 7y ago
The Jevons Paradox describes not just individual responses to lower prices, but the overall market response. Which at its largest expanse is total global demand. By way of analogy, the total industrialised world as of 1900 was mostly the US, UK, France, and Germany, with a few odd other millions from Canada, Australia, and bits of Europe. Not only did those 200 million or so souls see a tremendous personal increase in services (and resources) consumed, but: - The population of industrialised nations swelled by a factor of about 5, to 1 billion (the G7 + EU). - Another two billions grew and increased economic activity in China and India. - The Rest of the World grew to another 5 billions. The G7 per capita GDP is about $40k. Depending on what figures you look at, China lands somewhere between about $8k - $14k/person. The rest of the world (including India) is lucky to hit an average of $5k, or about 1/8th the G7, whilst being 5 times its population. Put another way, raising the RoTW to G7 standards would swallow 40x current global economic activity, and that's presuming the G7 + EU hold still, something few economic models allow for. Or: Jevons has a lot of mileage yet. Regards Google's "zero carbon" datacentres: if you don't account for the rest of the market's response, this simply lowers costs for other entrants to make claims which Google have effectively abandoned, absent some means of otherwise increasing prices. Fighting resource utilisation by increasing efficiency alone is like fighting for peace or fcking for virginity. It tends to self defeat. To decrease overall* utilisation, you've got to increase costs or decrease demand. Taxes, sink utlisation charges (e.g., carbon cap-and-trade), or some form of suasion against resource utilisation, might work. Efficiency itself simply lowers costs, which is to say, increases the supply function, and moves total quantity consumed up.

account73466 7y ago

>> all the stuff we trained in our Google Data Center — the carbon footprint is zero That is a lie unless Jeff Dean lives under different physics laws.

m0zg 7y ago
Yeah, unless this is powered entirely by nuclear or renewables, or unless the emitted carbon is then extracted from the atmosphere, the carbon footprint of all this is most definitely not zero. It's like all those celebs buying carbon "offsets" after flying private to climate summits of all sorts. Dude, your carbon footprint is way, way, above zero, and you paying for "offsets" doesn't reduce it one iota.
- wnkrshm 7y ago
  Even better that the offset projects aren't necessarily helping. Apparently it isn't even clear whether just planting trees anywhere has a net positive influence on combatting the greenhouse effect [0]. Trees may be required to be planted at suitable locations or else they actually contribute to warming. [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00122-z https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00122-z
joatmon-snoo 7y ago
It's a mix of (1) great work around sustainable processes and (2) nuances in defining carbon footprint. (disclaimer: work at G) https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-sustainability.appspot.com/pdf/Google_2018-Environmental-Report.pdf https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-sustainability.appspot.c... https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/renewable/ https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/renewable/
- account73466 7y ago
  Buying renewable energy does not make your footprint zero. You can twist the definition until it suits your needs but if you properly count footprint of the chain, it cannot be zero.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
    Google buys high quality carbon offsets, not just renewable energy. It's not clear whether that makes the footprint zero. It surely depends on how you count. But their approach is less naive than "just buy RECs."

buboard 7y ago

even if the carbon footprint is zero (which it isnt) , all this energy is basically a large scale heater.

dredmorbius 7y ago

The Jevons Paradox describes not just individual responses to lower prices, but the overall market response. Which at its largest expanse is total global demand. By way of analogy, the total industrialised world as of 1900 was mostly the US, UK, France, and Germany, with a few odd other millions from Canada, Australia, and bits of Europe. Not only did those 200 million or so souls see a tremendous personal increase in services (and resources) consumed, but: - The population of industrialised nations swelled by a factor of about 5, to 1 billion (the G7 + EU). - Another two billions grew and increased economic activity in China and India. - The Rest of the World grew to another 5 billions. The G7 per capita GDP is about $40k. Depending on what figures you look at, China lands somewhere between about $8k - $14k/person. The rest of the world (including India) is lucky to hit an average of $5k, or about 1/8th the G7, whilst being 5 times its population. Put another way, raising the RoTW to G7 standards would swallow 40x current global economic activity, and that's presuming the G7 + EU hold still, something few economic models allow for. Or: Jevons has a lot of mileage yet. Regards Google's "zero carbon" datacentres: if you don't account for the rest of the market's response, this simply lowers costs for other entrants to make claims which Google have effectively abandoned, absent some means of otherwise increasing prices. Fighting resource utilisation by increasing efficiency alone is like fighting for peace or fcking for virginity. It tends to self defeat. To decrease overall* utilisation, you've got to increase costs or decrease demand. Taxes, sink utlisation charges (e.g., carbon cap-and-trade), or some form of suasion against resource utilisation, might work. Efficiency itself simply lowers costs, which is to say, increases the supply function, and moves total quantity consumed up.