5 ms·

This is so god damned stupid that it hurts. >It’s true that Microsoft is taking numerous steps to address the sustainability of its own operations. But for yea

This is so god damned stupid that it hurts. >It’s true that Microsoft is taking numerous steps to address the sustainability of its own operations. But for years, the company has also furnished fossil fuel giants with cloud computing services and specialized software tools powered by machine learning and AI in order to streamline and automate their operations. Let's make the extraction of the life blood of all industry on the planet less efficient, less streamlined, less clean. And do let us all know how you plan to build the next Azure data center without using fossil fuels dug out of the ground and processed plastics.

gaze 2y ago
Why do you think that cloud computing would lend to the cleanliness or efficiency of their operations in a way that reduces the environmental burden? What stops them from using such services to extract oil more efficiently in the sense that they just produce more externalities faster?
- what-the-grump 2y ago
  >extract oil more efficiently in the sense that they just produce more externalities faster You need fossil fuels to get off of fossil fuels, you need regulation, the entire planet working on this, etc. Making the process LESS efficient is not going to help at any point. Let's start blowing up the equipment used to dig coal out of the ground so we can go back to doing it by hand like in the early 1900s, and let's start unscrewing the bolts in the machines at the factories, let's all quit at CAT and never build another digger...
  - doctorpangloss 2y ago
    When some oil was “$0”, what stopped me from buying it for free, and using grant money to “bury it” (safely store or really dispose of it) and simply never burning it? Every idea in environmental management needs to be explored, because the issue is that serious.
    - AlexandrB 2y ago
      Because oil is fungible, this has the exact same effect as limiting supply: price will increase. There are plenty of other ways to increase oil price (taxes being the simplest) that don't require creating new waste disposal sites. Burying the oil also has the nasty side effect of increasing demand, so there's a chance that, for example, OPEC will just extract more oil to meet the added demand. And extracting oil isn't "free" from an emissions perspective.
    - what-the-grump 2y ago
      If oil costs zero its utility is zero because no one wants it. You've solved the problem!
      - waveBidder 2y ago
        they're referring to that time spot prices went negative during the early pandemic when nobody was driving, demand was way down, and storage suddenly became a problem.
        Alupis 2y ago
        We need to rub at least two brain cells together to conceive of anything resembling a viable plan. "Buying" some small amount of barrels during a rare market anomaly, then burying them in the ground is supposed to accomplish what exactly? Great, you buried 50,000 barrels of crude - congratulations. Now what are you going to do about the 20,000,000 barrels[1] the US will consume tomorrow? Look, oh no, your buried oil leaked into the water table! [1] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/pipeline-us-and-global-oil-consumption/#:~:text=Library%20of%20Congress.,barrels%20of%20oil%20a%20day https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/pipelin....
        what-the-grump 2y ago
        And probably spent more energy transporting and burying that oil than you would have simply burning it or using it... Its insanity how people do not understand the basic principle that any work requires energy. Its why plastic recycling does so poorly, it often more efficient to make new plastic or burn it, than to reprocess it.
  - voisin 2y ago
    > you need regulation Bingo, except government and industry are so closely related now they resemble a circular human centipede, so we can’t rely on that.
- ng12 2y ago
  Safety, for one. Technology helps prevent spills.
  - torpfactory 2y ago
    I don't buy that Microsoft's involvement does much to prevent spills. Exxon, for example, cares about spills mostly as a function of 1) regulation, 2)reputation risk and 3) employees who do care about things being done cleanly. I guess Microsoft's software could maybe enable the employees a bit more, but fundamentally the reasons they are safe have to do with incentives, not technology.
therobots927 2y ago
Yep. It's genuinely shocking to me that people lack the critical thinking ability to recognize that oil extraction is a function of society as a whole. Oil companies are the ones who get their hands dirty, but society as a whole benefits and encourages the oil extraction. Take factory farming as another example - you can blame the factory farms, but good luck telling the average American they'll have to pay 3x as much for chicken and hamburgers because the animals were treated well.
- letmeinhere 2y ago
  These are people in said society operating on another part of the whole. They are not idly "blaming", they are attempting to directly increase the cost function to reduce the extraction. Obviously you disagree with them taking action ("the average American" has to spontaneously demand 3x prices for resistance to be legitimate), but that has nothing to do with a lack of critical thinking ability in your political foes.
- voisin 2y ago
  > Oil companies are the ones who get their hands dirty, but society as a whole benefits and encourages the oil extraction. Take factory farming as another example - you can blame the factory farms, but good luck telling the average American they'll have to pay 3x as much for chicken and hamburgers because the animals were treated well. The argument “we’re just doing the dirty work to give you what you want” is horse shit. They actively hid information about climate change for decades, they work to ensure continued subsidies to avoid actual competition, they work to add regulations to competing technologies and run disinformation campaigns. They work to entrench themselves so that “giving you what you want” is really “you’ll take what we give since we’ve undermined the alternatives”. Same with factory farming. The only reason people think chicken and burgers should be 1/3 the true cost is because the four big ag companies have worked the government into subsidizing things and reducing labour laws, etc etc etc. Honestly, when your argument starts with being an apologist for big corporations with a profit rather than social motive, I think you should check what first principles you are working with. Our society is a hunger games hellscape and it is because of whatever first principles you are using.
kayodelycaon 2y ago
It's a clear case of all-or-nothing thinking. Calling a CEO's statement "gaslighting" because it implied something does not do anything help their credibility.
UtopiaPunk 2y ago
When the costs of something go up, people and businesses are more eager to explore alternatives. Driving down the costs of fossil fuels hinders the adoption of alternatives.
francisofascii 2y ago
That is not a good faith argument. People who support sustainability want less extraction, not no extraction. Sustainability means extracting less so it is doable over a long period of time.
oceanplexian 2y ago
So then, the oil companies around the world will be able to trivially use Chinese services like Alibaba, further strengthening the Chinese economy at the expense of our own? China will make the process as efficient as it wants. Remember, we live in a global economy with other players who don’t play by our rules, sanctions or not. And I assure you developing countries are onboard with the idea of oil extraction.
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  I wonder sometimes to what extent progressives (aka the left, "liberals", leftists, woke, etc.) and their agenda are just paid Chinese operatives and operations or the results of such. A lot of progressive agendas have ultimately been to China's benefit at the cost of everyone else and especially Pax Americana.
  - irrational 2y ago
    I think most liberals are more anti-conservative values (misogamy, racism, xenophobia, anti-science, anti-education, homophobia, etc.) than pro-progressive policies.
    - Dalewyn 2y ago
      Literally none of what you mentioned has anything to do with conservatism. Hell, speaking as a Japanese-American (aka a racial minority), conservative people by far have treated me the fairest because they truly don't care about someone's race. I mean actual conservatism, of course. Not "conservatism" often thrown around in these conversations to label out groups.
    - oceanplexian 2y ago
      So we’re having an economic argument, what does racism or xenophobia have to do with that?
  - Spivak 2y ago
    Those dirty liberals, not having blind nationalism and not wanting our government to fuck over another country with 1 billion living human beings just because we don't like their government. Like good Lord, we're not at war with China. they're one of our biggest trading partners. The idea that we should be doing everything in our power to economically fuck them over isn't the argument you think it is. "Oh no, we have to supply services to oil companies because if not, a business in China might make a sale?"
gosub100 2y ago
Microsoft should respond by closing their parking lots to all but EVs. I'm SURE that none of the green activist would ever drive an ICE vehicle while protesting big oil...riiight?
- wizzwizz4 2y ago
  https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/ https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/
Spivak 2y ago
This has big, "you want to criticize capitalism while you buy things with money" energy. Consumers are by in large product takers who have to choose between the products that are on offer. There's no market segment for "same product but without fossil fuels." I try to avoid buying plastic. Does that mean I don't buy anything made with plastic? No, of course not. That's ridiculous I couldn't buy 90% of products from the grocery store. But when given the opportunity will I pay for an option that doesn't use plastic, yes. It's not the 1800s you don't have to be pure of heart to want to affect positive change.
torpfactory 2y ago
I mean, I think there is a reasonable argument here: Microsoft has corporate environmental goals and then as a matter of profit takes money from interests working in direct opposition to those goals. It does smack of hypocrisy, no? I'd like to debate a few of your other points: "Let's make the extraction of the life blood of all industry on the planet less efficient, less streamlined, less clean." - People often make this argument and I agree: oil is the _current_ life blood of all industry. The oil companies would like to keep it that way and have for years fought a very effective campaign to avoid responsibility for the externalities of oil production and consumption. They have slowed or blocked progress towards a _future_ where oil is not the lifeblood of industry. That is what we really need to get to as a species, don't you agree? There are no physics-based reason why some other technology couldn't power our lives. There are cost-based reasons why oil is currently the winning solution. This only works because we don't price the externalities, the _future_, yet to be paid cost of oil consumption. Fossil fuel companies have stood in the way of progress on renewables and exterality pricing for decades now.

gaze 2y ago

Why do you think that cloud computing would lend to the cleanliness or efficiency of their operations in a way that reduces the environmental burden? What stops them from using such services to extract oil more efficiently in the sense that they just produce more externalities faster?

what-the-grump 2y ago
>extract oil more efficiently in the sense that they just produce more externalities faster You need fossil fuels to get off of fossil fuels, you need regulation, the entire planet working on this, etc. Making the process LESS efficient is not going to help at any point. Let's start blowing up the equipment used to dig coal out of the ground so we can go back to doing it by hand like in the early 1900s, and let's start unscrewing the bolts in the machines at the factories, let's all quit at CAT and never build another digger...
- doctorpangloss 2y ago
  When some oil was “$0”, what stopped me from buying it for free, and using grant money to “bury it” (safely store or really dispose of it) and simply never burning it? Every idea in environmental management needs to be explored, because the issue is that serious.
  - AlexandrB 2y ago
    Because oil is fungible, this has the exact same effect as limiting supply: price will increase. There are plenty of other ways to increase oil price (taxes being the simplest) that don't require creating new waste disposal sites. Burying the oil also has the nasty side effect of increasing demand, so there's a chance that, for example, OPEC will just extract more oil to meet the added demand. And extracting oil isn't "free" from an emissions perspective.
  - what-the-grump 2y ago
    If oil costs zero its utility is zero because no one wants it. You've solved the problem!
    - waveBidder 2y ago
      they're referring to that time spot prices went negative during the early pandemic when nobody was driving, demand was way down, and storage suddenly became a problem.
      - Alupis 2y ago
        We need to rub at least two brain cells together to conceive of anything resembling a viable plan. "Buying" some small amount of barrels during a rare market anomaly, then burying them in the ground is supposed to accomplish what exactly? Great, you buried 50,000 barrels of crude - congratulations. Now what are you going to do about the 20,000,000 barrels[1] the US will consume tomorrow? Look, oh no, your buried oil leaked into the water table! [1] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/pipeline-us-and-global-oil-consumption/#:~:text=Library%20of%20Congress.,barrels%20of%20oil%20a%20day https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/pipelin....
        what-the-grump 2y ago
        And probably spent more energy transporting and burying that oil than you would have simply burning it or using it... Its insanity how people do not understand the basic principle that any work requires energy. Its why plastic recycling does so poorly, it often more efficient to make new plastic or burn it, than to reprocess it.
- voisin 2y ago
  > you need regulation Bingo, except government and industry are so closely related now they resemble a circular human centipede, so we can’t rely on that.
ng12 2y ago
Safety, for one. Technology helps prevent spills.
- torpfactory 2y ago
  I don't buy that Microsoft's involvement does much to prevent spills. Exxon, for example, cares about spills mostly as a function of 1) regulation, 2)reputation risk and 3) employees who do care about things being done cleanly. I guess Microsoft's software could maybe enable the employees a bit more, but fundamentally the reasons they are safe have to do with incentives, not technology.

therobots927 2y ago

Yep. It's genuinely shocking to me that people lack the critical thinking ability to recognize that oil extraction is a function of society as a whole. Oil companies are the ones who get their hands dirty, but society as a whole benefits and encourages the oil extraction. Take factory farming as another example - you can blame the factory farms, but good luck telling the average American they'll have to pay 3x as much for chicken and hamburgers because the animals were treated well.

letmeinhere 2y ago
These are people in said society operating on another part of the whole. They are not idly "blaming", they are attempting to directly increase the cost function to reduce the extraction. Obviously you disagree with them taking action ("the average American" has to spontaneously demand 3x prices for resistance to be legitimate), but that has nothing to do with a lack of critical thinking ability in your political foes.
voisin 2y ago
> Oil companies are the ones who get their hands dirty, but society as a whole benefits and encourages the oil extraction. Take factory farming as another example - you can blame the factory farms, but good luck telling the average American they'll have to pay 3x as much for chicken and hamburgers because the animals were treated well. The argument “we’re just doing the dirty work to give you what you want” is horse shit. They actively hid information about climate change for decades, they work to ensure continued subsidies to avoid actual competition, they work to add regulations to competing technologies and run disinformation campaigns. They work to entrench themselves so that “giving you what you want” is really “you’ll take what we give since we’ve undermined the alternatives”. Same with factory farming. The only reason people think chicken and burgers should be 1/3 the true cost is because the four big ag companies have worked the government into subsidizing things and reducing labour laws, etc etc etc. Honestly, when your argument starts with being an apologist for big corporations with a profit rather than social motive, I think you should check what first principles you are working with. Our society is a hunger games hellscape and it is because of whatever first principles you are using.

kayodelycaon 2y ago

It's a clear case of all-or-nothing thinking. Calling a CEO's statement "gaslighting" because it implied something does not do anything help their credibility.

UtopiaPunk 2y ago

When the costs of something go up, people and businesses are more eager to explore alternatives. Driving down the costs of fossil fuels hinders the adoption of alternatives.

francisofascii 2y ago

That is not a good faith argument. People who support sustainability want less extraction, not no extraction. Sustainability means extracting less so it is doable over a long period of time.

oceanplexian 2y ago

So then, the oil companies around the world will be able to trivially use Chinese services like Alibaba, further strengthening the Chinese economy at the expense of our own? China will make the process as efficient as it wants. Remember, we live in a global economy with other players who don’t play by our rules, sanctions or not. And I assure you developing countries are onboard with the idea of oil extraction.

Dalewyn 2y ago
I wonder sometimes to what extent progressives (aka the left, "liberals", leftists, woke, etc.) and their agenda are just paid Chinese operatives and operations or the results of such. A lot of progressive agendas have ultimately been to China's benefit at the cost of everyone else and especially Pax Americana.
- irrational 2y ago
  I think most liberals are more anti-conservative values (misogamy, racism, xenophobia, anti-science, anti-education, homophobia, etc.) than pro-progressive policies.
  - Dalewyn 2y ago
    Literally none of what you mentioned has anything to do with conservatism. Hell, speaking as a Japanese-American (aka a racial minority), conservative people by far have treated me the fairest because they truly don't care about someone's race. I mean actual conservatism, of course. Not "conservatism" often thrown around in these conversations to label out groups.
  - oceanplexian 2y ago
    So we’re having an economic argument, what does racism or xenophobia have to do with that?
- Spivak 2y ago
  Those dirty liberals, not having blind nationalism and not wanting our government to fuck over another country with 1 billion living human beings just because we don't like their government. Like good Lord, we're not at war with China. they're one of our biggest trading partners. The idea that we should be doing everything in our power to economically fuck them over isn't the argument you think it is. "Oh no, we have to supply services to oil companies because if not, a business in China might make a sale?"

gosub100 2y ago

Microsoft should respond by closing their parking lots to all but EVs. I'm SURE that none of the green activist would ever drive an ICE vehicle while protesting big oil...riiight?

wizzwizz4 2y ago
https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/ https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/

Spivak 2y ago

This has big, "you want to criticize capitalism while you buy things with money" energy. Consumers are by in large product takers who have to choose between the products that are on offer. There's no market segment for "same product but without fossil fuels." I try to avoid buying plastic. Does that mean I don't buy anything made with plastic? No, of course not. That's ridiculous I couldn't buy 90% of products from the grocery store. But when given the opportunity will I pay for an option that doesn't use plastic, yes. It's not the 1800s you don't have to be pure of heart to want to affect positive change.

torpfactory 2y ago

I mean, I think there is a reasonable argument here: Microsoft has corporate environmental goals and then as a matter of profit takes money from interests working in direct opposition to those goals. It does smack of hypocrisy, no? I'd like to debate a few of your other points: "Let's make the extraction of the life blood of all industry on the planet less efficient, less streamlined, less clean." - People often make this argument and I agree: oil is the _current_ life blood of all industry. The oil companies would like to keep it that way and have for years fought a very effective campaign to avoid responsibility for the externalities of oil production and consumption. They have slowed or blocked progress towards a _future_ where oil is not the lifeblood of industry. That is what we really need to get to as a species, don't you agree? There are no physics-based reason why some other technology couldn't power our lives. There are cost-based reasons why oil is currently the winning solution. This only works because we don't price the externalities, the _future_, yet to be paid cost of oil consumption. Fossil fuel companies have stood in the way of progress on renewables and exterality pricing for decades now.