Never noticed News.YC's CO2Stats before. How do they compute this stuff anyway?

http://www.co2stats.com/certpro.php?s=1138&ref=http://news.ycombinator.com/x?fnid=K2Tx2MnQ5f

by pius • 18 years ago

27 60 18 years ago

alexwg6• 18 years ago

Great question! We measure quite a variety of signals, including but not limited to client locations (e.g., is traffic coming from coal-burning areas?), visit lengths, server locations, transfer sizes, transfer times, and window sizes. These signals are fed into a "hand-built" database that allows us to compute aggregate carbon footprints.

pius• 18 years ago

Very interesting . . . best of luck with the venture!

alexwg6• 18 years ago

Thanks!

mwerty2• 18 years ago

I'm curious: Why do you keep sending posts to your server every few minutes?

alexwg6• 18 years ago

The CO2Stats calculation includes the contribution of client electricity use. In order to more accurately measure the time clients spend on a given CO2Stats-powered page, it's necessary to have the client infrequently check in.

axod3• 18 years ago

So if a geo-ip lookup on my location (Which is extremely inaccurate) says I live near a coal station, you assume that I use that power and not power from some other source?

eru3• 18 years ago

I guess they are just taking the average power mix of your country/state.

patrickg-zill2• 18 years ago

Smoke, mirrors, reading of dead chicken entrails...

You know, the usual PT Barnum stuff to impress the rubes.

Interesting paragraph from their site: "CO2Stats reserves the right to cap REC purchases in case of excessive use, as its own discretion."

That is, you could pay them $100 a month and they may or may not purchase offsets to cover your 5 million page views.

alexwg6• 18 years ago

Thanks for your comment! In fact, every time our customers' footprints have gone over their monthly cost, we've paid for the full corresponding number of RECs. That clause is there to protect against gross abuse. For example, if a site consistently receives 20M hits per month (a custom tier) and signs up for a 5M hit per month package, we reserve the right to manage only the first 5M.

lliiffee2• 18 years ago

Ah, so the clause is specifically meant to exclude the case that a website buys RECs for less than they actually use? That's perfectly reasonable, but I have to admit when I read the bit above, I didn't interpret it that way. You might want to think about tweaking the language to make it harder for skeptics to dismiss you.

pg• 18 years ago

No measurement of this type is ever going to be perfect. Do you think, because of that, that it's not even worth trying?

axod3• 18 years ago

I can see why CO2stats may be successful, phrases like "purchases renewable energy to neutralize it, so your visitors feel good about staying longer." are quite compelling for some people...

Ah this website uses a ton of power. CO2 is evil. CO2Stats "neutralizes" it so that it's all fine.

Wouldn't it be a better idea to help companies reduce their power usage, rather than "buying renewable energy" to offset it? Or encouraging them to install their own renewable energy sources.

If I murder 2 people, and offset it by having 2 children, is that fine? :/ (As long as I display a button on my T-Shirt saying I'm "Person neutral")?.

Given the wild inaccuracy of geo-ip lookups and the million other factors at play, I don't see any value in guessing at numbers here...

rrival2• 18 years ago

If anyone should try it's this guy - there are so many cowboys running amok in the space that someone with this sort of background is, for better or worse, going to pass the green "sniff test" and be above suspicion. At least to the extent that FUD allows.

DanielBMarkham3• 18 years ago

yes

patrickg-zill2• 18 years ago

The reality is, that all proposed "climate change" models are mathematically suspect and thus there is no actual evidence that reducing CO2 from man-made sources would in fact modify global temperature.

For instance, sunspot activity or the lack of it, has a far greater correlation to short term warming or cooling.

For longer term warming or cooling, any true scientist should readily admit that the tools currently available have very limited utility, since the mathematical models cannot possibly take into account enough of the real behavior.

For example, the Gulf Stream, which we know has a great deal of influence on East Coast weather, is one of the most studied, yet still is not understood very well; thus no mathematical model of its behavior can be said to be accurate.

CO2stats is more about selling "liberal guilt credits" than anything else.

fluidrazor5• 18 years ago

pg, let's ask a different question. Measurements aside, is what they are offering really reducing the carbon footprint of a website?

I would argue no, it does not. And here's why: They are buying credits which make clean energy cheaper. The trickle down effect (not a reference to Reagan) means that others will be buying cheap energy, which is good, but it does not mean you will be buying cheap energy. So I don't see this as directly translating into reducing your carbon footprint. Moreover, who actually gets the reduction in their personal carbon footprint here: the person actually using the green energy or you, who helped pay for this energy by proxy. I would argue that it is to a much greater degree the person who actually bought this energy who gets most of the benefit. You would be much better off using your time to plant trees in proportion to the amount your site uses or finding a green hosting service than use CO2Stats.

Even if CO2Stats is measuring this even remotely accurately (which they couldn't possibly be), their model of buying these renewable energy credits still translates into a very low reduction in your actual carbon footprint.

Having said that... is their service worth whatever it costs? Most likely no, since for it to work you would have to pay a disproportionate amount to get an amount that would indeed offset your footprint. Is CO2Stats capitalizing off people's supererogatory desire to do good by nature, regardless of whether there are no benefits? You bet.

biohacker42• 18 years ago

It is worth trying if you're trying your smartest.

If you're simply abdicating the responsibility of doing the hard thinking to someone else, then you're not trying, just flaunting a green badge.

This type of measurement ought to be perfect.

1. Computers can report how much power they are using. Laptops directly, for servers you might have to do something fancy like keep track of uptime and check your power supply's wattage.

I think the latest Laptop CPUs can reduce power consumption when not fully loaded, not sure. But I don't think server chips are that complicated... yet.

2. Call your power company and ask them how much of the power they provide is hydro, coal, wind, solar, nuclear, etc.

3. Do some math.

That should give you exactly how much CO2 you're using.

The next question is, does funding green energy sources make sense?

It might not. It might be worse then doing nothing. Here's how:

High tech has a much lower CO2/output ratio then almost any other industry. So it would be much easier for high tech to pay a green penalty, especially if it comes with bragging rights.

However, the other 90% of CO2 producers, will only switch if it is profitable.

And here's the crux, by funding unprofitable green sources, you could be hurting the development of ones which are truly economical.

OPEC is cutting production with oil over $100 a barrel, for sweet zombie jesus' sake! Alternative energy ought to be competitive without help.

If you're still worried about your CO2 emissions, pay someone to plant a tree, that won't compete with green tech. Or buy more stuff from an organic farmer, because organically worked soil is a huge CO2 sponge. Or spend some money on lobbying politicians.

Or at least don't give money to someone who: " reserves the right to cap REC purchases in case of excessive use, as its own discretion."

goldsmith2• 18 years ago

I guess mirroring the OP, I like this concept behind C02Stats, but I am very curious as to how this is precisely calculated (or even roughly estimated.) Do CO2Stats know the power grid the servers are on? How do they account for the disparity in power usage behind different systems (a mainframe != laptop)? Without having detailed knowledge of a building, how could they possibly know about air conditioning costs or other secondary electricity use (lights, etc)?

eru3• 18 years ago

Averages?

colvt• 18 years ago

Hey CO2Stats - A couple questions for you:

How do you account for different monitor sizes, types and brands and poor wasteful electricity in older buildings?

Thanks!

fluidrazor5• 18 years ago

There is no way they could account for the types and brands of the monitor, the efficiency of the individual computers, etc.

They also cannot make an accurate assumption about where the power is coming from because there is such a thing as an electric grid, which draws power from a variety of sources.

Furthermore, the calculations to determine what goes in to processing a page have to be almost comical. For example, if it was Google, one search request can take thousands of machines, not to mention all the crawling required to produce those pages. Good luck getting that information.

There are so many holes that need to be filled here that their calculations cannot even be remotely accurate.

CO2Stats is bogus. I hope they don't charge anybody, because that would be fraud.

Perhaps they should publish their algorithm, to provide a little transparency and openness.

Alex39172• 18 years ago

You ever notice that whenever you walk into a 7/11 at 2am there's always at least one carton of orange juice there waiting for you, even if you've never been there before? I think you're missing the forest for the trees, so to speak.

nuclear_eclipse• 18 years ago

Inspect the data that their "complex heuristics"-based widget sends back about the client. I'm positive that you'll be pleasantly surprised at the breadth of information.... or, it sends nearly nothing. And nothing of relevance to actual consumption. But c'mon, CO2Stats is totally legit, guys... really...

cstejerean• 18 years ago

Interesting concept. What I don't understand is why as someone running a website I should offset the CO2 from my data center, my client's homes and the networks between them.

mhb• 18 years ago

For the same reason that Amazon has free shipping?

axod3• 18 years ago

Math.random()

I don't think the numbers matter. It's just a badge to say "We're green" isn't it? Seems like it's leveraging off the current "CO2 is evil" fad.

furiouslol• 18 years ago

Instead of a seal that nobody cares for (hack-proof, privacy seals are OK, but green-certified seal?), why don't they enter the carbon credits market?

This seems like a misuse of technology. Use this technology to help companies trade carbon credits. A few bulge bracket banks are already in this game. They buy carbon credits from African cooperatives cheaply and sell them at a healthy profit to factories who need these credits.

And they are making millions from it. What are you waiting for guys?

Never noticed News.YC's CO2Stats before. How do they compute this stuff anyway?

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