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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 i
by Aunche 6y ago
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.
- barney54 6y agoNot necessarily. They are buying renewable power, however, the actually generation that power their data enters come from the grid and includes coal and natural gas. When the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining, they are powered by coal, nukes, hydro, and natural gas.
- MattGaiser 6y agoGoogle would need to build its own grid to have it only use its own wind and solar. That is not reasonable.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 6y agoPretending to have an "all-time carbon footprint" to be "zero" isn't reasonable either.
- codetrotter 6y ago> they are powered by [...] nukes [...] Dear diary, Today HN taught me that nuclear power comes from atomic bombs. What a time to be alive. codetrotter
- oauea 6y agoPowered by nukes? That is not how nuclear reactors work.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 6y agoDisplacing dirty power with clean power cannot bring your carbon footprint to zero. Your cleanest power cannot not emit. Google may become cleaner but that isn't the point.
- actuator 6y agoIsn't rest offsets? Like they helping cut emission from non Google things and using that to offset what they can't eliminate from their own emissions. It still reduces emissions on the whole.
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoOfcourse it can, you can pull carbon directly out of the atmosphere and have negative emissions. Energy consumption of sequestation coupled with carbon footprint of solar/wind/nuclear works out to be nagative. The IPCC stipulates negative emissions in the second half of the century. Lastly, our carbon budget is not zero, if everyone kept to carbon budget of 3 tons of CO2 per person we'd never have climate change to begin with.
- dalbasal 6y agoAt 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 accounting system (tradable credits, carbon taxes, etc.) is abstract. You can achieve "carbon neutral" by buying credits or by actually reducing carbon. FWIW, I think there definitely is a value to DIY as opposed to carbon accounting stuff. IE, powering your own data centre with clean energy is superior to using gas electric and offsetting that with purchased credits.
- uncoder0 6y agoI'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.
- dalbasal 6y agoAt least in the context I was speaking to, I don't think it was a "push." Deindustrialization (esp heavy industry) had been happening for a while. Environmental issues were one of the pressures, though that precedes the climate change agenda. It just happens to be the case that when you look back at carbon reductions, deindustrialization is one of the key contributors. Clean energy too. A lot of europe already had a lot of clean energy though.
- djsumdog 6y agoBut a ton of the "clean" power isn't clean. Solar needs to have standby fossil plants that keep at idle or else you get brownouts. Those high end molten salt solar plans take natural gas to startup. Most "wood chip" plants burn the same fast growing trees used by paper mills. 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. The massive amount of plastic particles in the ocean. Colossal e-waste from electronics only designed to last two years. Real, meaningful changes that will stop environmental devastation require reduction of consumption. Unless Google finds a way to reduce their data center footprints, the CO2 numbers are most likely just cooked books; displacing CO2 with other environmental disaster. We need to consume less things.
- shadowgovt 6y ago> 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. Lakes of toxic sludge are bad, but they're a localized problem. Atomspheric CO2 balance threatens to crash the global ecology for everything larger than bacteria. Of the things you've listed, the risk factor for killing everyone is CO2 --> ocean plastic --> e-waste --> toxic sludge lakes. > We need to consume less things That'd be cool, but unfortunately, have you met humans? We've been trying the "Consume less things" approach my entire life; it doesn't take. We need the consumption to be more efficient and less environmentally impactful.
- andi999 6y agoLooking in the mirror is enough. How much did you (and me, its nit about you specifically) spent as a student? 1k/month? How much you earn after tax? 5k? So if after 10years of work less than half a million on your account you spent on uneccessary things. (Ok... its all spent for the kids...) Why the downvote. Seriously, if we believe we need to consume less, it might be a good idea to put it into perspective what that will actually mean for each individual. I am including myself into this as well.