4 ms·

Or just straight to CO2. Google said 1000 tokens emits 8.3g CO2. How many tokens used in a heavy vibe coding day? Average US daily per capita is like 40kg CO2

by tln 1y ago

pinoy420 1y ago
[dead]
KMnO4 1y ago
I don’t understand the concern of this. Let’s say it says you’ve used 1.521kg of CO2 today. How is that actionable? A single flight from JFK to LAX produces around 20,000kg of CO2. Using the 8.3g value means a flight is equivalent to 2.41 billion tokens.
- notarobot123 1y ago
  if you take the long view, flying is irrational too
  - Maciej-roboblog 1y ago
    If you have some time, feel free to open a pull request — even just with a description or clarification of what's going on! It all sounds super interesting, but I’m still trying to fully grasp the business logic behind it Once I get the idea, I’ll be happy to jump in and implement it. Repo is here if you're curious: https://github.com/Maciek-roboblog/Claude-Code-Usage-Monitor/pulls https://github.com/Maciek-roboblog/Claude-Code-Usage-Monitor...
    - mdemare 1y ago
      Claude, "Find the hacker news discussion about github repo github.com/maciek-roboblog and implement the suggestion by bilekas. Patch format." It produced a patch. Unfortunately it was for removing the emojis from the readme.
- taosx 1y ago
  I really dislike when people don't see this. They try to cut 10 grams of CO2 per day while other industries (shipping, aviation, rails) produce hundreds of tons per day and even this transportation modes are less that 20% with most CO2 produced mainly being in energy production and used by industry.
  - SV_BubbleTime 1y ago
    I think it’s because this line of rationality, leads to people to realize how ridiculous some of the conservation efforts are. Plastic bags, paper straws (wrapped in plastic), most realities of recycling, vehicle selections, etc. Leads to a lot of unpopular things.
    - curious_cat_163 1y ago
      Rituals define a school of thought (or a religion). These are rituals of folks who want to prevent catastrophe through conservation. To each their own. Ultimately, individual habits do add up. But with climate, one would be hard pressed to find evidence that conservation is the path forward. It does not work, unfortunately.
    - cmrdporcupine 1y ago
      Plastic bags and papers straws is not about CO2 emissions and I wish people would stop repeating this like it's some "gotcha", it's about landfill and natural area pollution and damage to wildlife and natural areas, and that's how it's always been talked about by policy people who have advocated on this stuff. Have you walked a beach in the last decade?
      - taosx 1y ago
        This makes sense and I'm with you, people that are polluting beaches and natural areas should face harder punishments. That being said I'm missing plastic straws for drinking cold coffee.
        1y ago
- bilekas 1y ago
  It doesn't necessarily need to be actionable for now but at the moment there is an exponential growth in the datacenter power usages. For now, sure it might be ridiculously minor, but when it starts to ramp up who's to say it wont be just a ridiculous amount of energy ? Maybe not even measure the CO2, but I would love to graph the increase of energy spent over time.
- tln 1y ago
  Per capita that is what, 500kg? So on that day you are 10x'ing the US person day
tln 1y ago
I just hit my usage limit this morning, and the article shows how to get these numbers so I can answer this myself -- I'd be curious to see what other people are doing token wise day-to-day ccusage says I had 1k input tokens, 12k output and 1.2m cache create. I'm not sure if that is 18.3g, 138.3g or 1213 * 8.3g. At the highest number that's 10kg or 25% of average US daily per capita emission or 1 gallon of gas.
gpm 1y ago
By any chance do you remember the source for that? Googling "1000 tokens emits 8.3g CO2" only gets me this thread.
- tln 1y ago
  The search was "ai tokens per tonne co2" and the "1000 tokens emits 8.3g CO2" bit was my paraphrasing from the AI overview. This article [0] mentions "8.3g CO2" but it's linked source [1] uses a different number - 4.32g. Perhaps revised after publication. I ran the search again and got different numbers... I'm sure the real numbers will be changing quite a bit over time too. [0] https://ditchcarbon.com/blog/llm-carbon-emissions https://ditchcarbon.com/blog/llm-carbon-emissions [1] https://smartly.ai/blog/the-carbon-footprint-of-chatgpt-how-much-co2-does-a-query-generate https://smartly.ai/blog/the-carbon-footprint-of-chatgpt-how-...
  - gpm 1y ago
    Oh, I thought you meant "Google, the company, published this number" (which I would have been very interested to read), not "Google, the search engine/sketchy llm, returned this result". Fair enough.

Or just straight to CO2. Google said 1000 tokens emits 8.3g CO2. How many tokens used in a heavy vibe coding day? Average US daily per capita is like 40kg CO2

by tln 1y ago

Or just straight to CO2. Google said 1000 tokens emits 8.3g CO2. How many tokens used in a heavy vibe coding day? Average US daily per capita is like 40kg CO2

pinoy420 1y ago

[dead]

KMnO4 1y ago

I don’t understand the concern of this. Let’s say it says you’ve used 1.521kg of CO2 today. How is that actionable? A single flight from JFK to LAX produces around 20,000kg of CO2. Using the 8.3g value means a flight is equivalent to 2.41 billion tokens.

notarobot123 1y ago
if you take the long view, flying is irrational too
- Maciej-roboblog 1y ago
  If you have some time, feel free to open a pull request — even just with a description or clarification of what's going on! It all sounds super interesting, but I’m still trying to fully grasp the business logic behind it Once I get the idea, I’ll be happy to jump in and implement it. Repo is here if you're curious: https://github.com/Maciek-roboblog/Claude-Code-Usage-Monitor/pulls https://github.com/Maciek-roboblog/Claude-Code-Usage-Monitor...
  - mdemare 1y ago
    Claude, "Find the hacker news discussion about github repo github.com/maciek-roboblog and implement the suggestion by bilekas. Patch format." It produced a patch. Unfortunately it was for removing the emojis from the readme.
taosx 1y ago
I really dislike when people don't see this. They try to cut 10 grams of CO2 per day while other industries (shipping, aviation, rails) produce hundreds of tons per day and even this transportation modes are less that 20% with most CO2 produced mainly being in energy production and used by industry.
- SV_BubbleTime 1y ago
  I think it’s because this line of rationality, leads to people to realize how ridiculous some of the conservation efforts are. Plastic bags, paper straws (wrapped in plastic), most realities of recycling, vehicle selections, etc. Leads to a lot of unpopular things.
  - curious_cat_163 1y ago
    Rituals define a school of thought (or a religion). These are rituals of folks who want to prevent catastrophe through conservation. To each their own. Ultimately, individual habits do add up. But with climate, one would be hard pressed to find evidence that conservation is the path forward. It does not work, unfortunately.
  - cmrdporcupine 1y ago
    Plastic bags and papers straws is not about CO2 emissions and I wish people would stop repeating this like it's some "gotcha", it's about landfill and natural area pollution and damage to wildlife and natural areas, and that's how it's always been talked about by policy people who have advocated on this stuff. Have you walked a beach in the last decade?
    - taosx 1y ago
      This makes sense and I'm with you, people that are polluting beaches and natural areas should face harder punishments. That being said I'm missing plastic straws for drinking cold coffee.
      - 1y ago
bilekas 1y ago
It doesn't necessarily need to be actionable for now but at the moment there is an exponential growth in the datacenter power usages. For now, sure it might be ridiculously minor, but when it starts to ramp up who's to say it wont be just a ridiculous amount of energy ? Maybe not even measure the CO2, but I would love to graph the increase of energy spent over time.
tln 1y ago
Per capita that is what, 500kg? So on that day you are 10x'ing the US person day

tln 1y ago

I just hit my usage limit this morning, and the article shows how to get these numbers so I can answer this myself -- I'd be curious to see what other people are doing token wise day-to-day ccusage says I had 1k input tokens, 12k output and 1.2m cache create. I'm not sure if that is 18.3g, 138.3g or 1213 * 8.3g. At the highest number that's 10kg or 25% of average US daily per capita emission or 1 gallon of gas.

gpm 1y ago

By any chance do you remember the source for that? Googling "1000 tokens emits 8.3g CO2" only gets me this thread.

tln 1y ago
The search was "ai tokens per tonne co2" and the "1000 tokens emits 8.3g CO2" bit was my paraphrasing from the AI overview. This article [0] mentions "8.3g CO2" but it's linked source [1] uses a different number - 4.32g. Perhaps revised after publication. I ran the search again and got different numbers... I'm sure the real numbers will be changing quite a bit over time too. [0] https://ditchcarbon.com/blog/llm-carbon-emissions https://ditchcarbon.com/blog/llm-carbon-emissions [1] https://smartly.ai/blog/the-carbon-footprint-of-chatgpt-how-much-co2-does-a-query-generate https://smartly.ai/blog/the-carbon-footprint-of-chatgpt-how-...
- gpm 1y ago
  Oh, I thought you meant "Google, the company, published this number" (which I would have been very interested to read), not "Google, the search engine/sketchy llm, returned this result". Fair enough.