Why I Canceled My CO2stats Account

http://www.altgate.com/blog/2009/01/why-i-canceled-my-co2stats-account.html

by epi0Bauqu • 18 years ago

85 78 18 years ago

newt03113• 18 years ago

Cost-benifit analysis: If the green lobby knew the meaning of this phrase, they would realize how ludicrous 90+% of their proposals sound.

harpastum2• 18 years ago

cost-benefit analysis: If anti-slavery lawyers knew the meaning of this phrase, they would realize how ludicrous 90+% of their proposals sound.

I'm not saying that buying eco-credits is anywhere near as important as stemming slavery, I'm just saying cost-benefit analysis ignores all qualitative benefits--e.g. clearer skies, lower overall pollution, freedom, etc.

Cost benefit should be considered, but it shouldn't be used to write off major concerns.

run4yourlives8• 18 years ago

Your comparison to slavery is completely retarded, both because is a vast overstatement, but more so because it doesn't even make sense.

If you rtfa, you'd see that the cost benefit analysis is one of the stronger points: How many trips were avoided, how many packages not mailed and how many phone calls not made because of the internet?

Trying to measure one's carbon footprint, and then lessen that footprint is noble. Profiting through some obscure calculation that includes some things but not others is opportunism.

sh1mmer3• 18 years ago

I think you have a great point.

Essentially when making a cost-benefit analysis you need to have a shared understanding of what constitutes costs and benefits.

In the case of slavery the justification puts the costs and benefits on the side of the enslavers, little cost and huge benefit. If you look at the side of the slaves there is the opposite huges cost and no benefit.

This is the same with the environment only in this case I suspect that mostly the people on the other side of the equation are future generation who get a damaged planet but none of the instant pay-off from our wastage.

Retric• 18 years ago

Clearer skies should be part of a cost benefit analysis. The problem is an industry's pollution could be killing people, but when they have been getting away with it for a long time they see pollution controls as government interference and fight it.

EX: Pollution from coal fired power plants killed a lot of people in several ways. A dramatic example: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=873954

But, when it comes to less dramatic damage it's easy for them to fight it.

mseebach• 18 years ago

The cost/benefit analysis for slavery changed because the coefficients for several variables on the slave-side changed away from 0.

The green lobby often measures cost in "oh, we're so rich and privileged anyway and any amount of emissions that's less than before is worth it"... I.e. unrealistic coefficients. We're simply not at the point where a few grams of CO2 here and there is death or survival in 2050.

In reality, society is interested in solutions with the highest reduced emissions pr. cost-unit, but the green lobby don't seem to be too interested in giving those out.

gravitycop9• 18 years ago

cost-benefit analysis ignores all [externalities]

Not if the externalities are internalized (tautology).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externalities#Possible_Solution...

vaksel• 18 years ago

The whole green thing for websites just seems extremely stupid to me. Its like being penny wise, but pound foolish. A single Semi probably affects the environment more than most websites(except behemoths with hundreds of thousands of server farms)

emmett4• 18 years ago

If you run the math, you'll realize that's not even close to true.

mixmax• 18 years ago

have you run the math? It would be interesting to see some numbers.

shuleatt• 18 years ago

Great points by Altgate. I have been wondering why no one mentions the opportunity costs associated with the Internet vs. its alternatives. Information and products need to get delivered...the web seems pretty darn good to me as a green solution

SwellJoe3• 18 years ago

I have been wondering why no one mentions the opportunity costs associated with the Internet vs. its alternatives.

Isn't it irrelevant in this context? No one is saying, "Computers are bad for the environment...so go get in your car and drive everywhere for everything!" The point of this service is to reduce the carbon footprint of Internet services. We, as an industry, do use power (quite a bit of it), and we do produce waste, so if someone wants to alleviate that by buying carbon credits, for marketing or ethical reasons, it has no relation to opportunity costs of the Internet vs. alternatives.

I don't know the answers to these problems, but it doesn't make sense to blame CO2Stats for not solving problems that they haven't set out to solve.

emmett4• 18 years ago

While it would be interesting to compare online access to offline access, CO2stats is providing a service that could really change things moving forward. You can't buy carbon credits from Blockbuster for the total cost of shopping there; CO2stats makes it possible to move towards a completely carbon neutral world.

Obviously they have a long way to go...sites like Animoto use much more CO2 per user than Craigslist, and that's very hard to account for in a general way. But to complain that they don't give you credit for how bad the offline version would be is unfair.

axod9• 18 years ago

"CO2stats makes it possible to move towards a completely carbon neutral world."

Given the fact that there's no consensus yet as to the benefits of a carbon neutral world, don't you think this is premature? Throwing money into a pit that might change something someday... assuming it needs changing in the first place.

run4yourlives8• 18 years ago

Generally, a carbon neutral world would be a benefit, regardless of the effects on climate change. We'd ensure the sustainable operation of the planet - regardless of how many of us there are - because we'd be maintaining the earth's resources in their current balance. Right now, we're converting a good chuck of them from one form to another, which eventually - even if this isn't true now - will have some sort of repercussions.

That being said, being completely carbon neutral is pretty much impossible given the way our world is currently set up.

emmett4• 18 years ago

There's certainly that argument to be had, as to whether reducing carbon emissions is a worthwhile goal at all. If it's not, CO2stats is clearly worthless.

However, many many people (including myself) believe that it's a real problem that we need to address. If that were true, you have to grant that CO2stats is a great step in the right direction.

rokhayakebe2• 18 years ago

It would have been best for CO2Stats to help Google to buy carbon offset and further work with them to reduce their energy consumption etc....

But I guess not every company cares what Google thinks off them and they just spit it like it is.

axod9• 18 years ago

Umm I think google is doing fine with renewable energy initiatives by itself actually...

Real ones - like installing solar panels all over the roof. Instead of imaginary "buy carbon offset" ones.

rokhayakebe2• 18 years ago

I do not know what Google does in regards to green energy. I am simply saying that if I were Co2Stats I would have try to work with them.

pg5• 18 years ago

CO2Stats doesn't buy carbon offsets. They buy renewable energy certificates.

redorb• 18 years ago

spitting it how it is would be here http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/powering-google-searc...

the conflict of interest is the irritating part.

tsbardella• 18 years ago

It is snake oil

rrival• 18 years ago

Somehow no one mentioned what I've run into a lot with green initiatives: they're treated like public goods (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good).

i.e. "It's nice to know that someone else can solve that problem so easily and I benefit directly regardless."

DaniFong2• 18 years ago

Last I checked CO2Stats was very careful about explaining what they counted. What I took away from their website is that if you have an account for them you're paying for your visitor's computer power, and the slice of network in between. That was most interesting, for me. I'm sorry the OP was under the wrong impression.

invisible• 18 years ago

The first two points are exactly what I said 4 hours earlier: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=430505

"The doctor's report accounts for a) your computer viewing the page for X minutes, b) the overall searches per power used by google's datacenters, and c) some other random guessing I'm assuming."

ivankirigin• 18 years ago

Even if you don't believe in climate change, I really like that CO2stats is a distributed opt-in approach. Instead of government mandates, you have individuals and companies taking action.

Other comments about cost-benefit analysis also miss the point to a certain degree. Raising awareness is valuable. Feeling good is valuable. That doesn't enter into an individual's cost benefit analysis, but it really matters.

The main critique of I have of CO2stats is that I'd like to see options besides buying energy. I'd like to donate to research into alternative energy, not directly buying current tech.

Donating to research also highlights that there are good options to choose regardless of whether climate change is real.

pg5• 18 years ago

This is egregious linkbait. The author acts as if Alex wrote the Times article. If he had, he would have disclosed that he was a founder of CO2Stats. But he didn't write the article; he was just quoted in it. Anyone who's been quoted in an article knows how little control you have in that situation. More often than not the reporter has some agenda and all he wants is quotes to suit it. So it is here: I happened to see Alex immediately after he talked to the Times reporter, and he was frustrated then that the reporter hadn't wanted to hear about anything except the carbon emissions caused by Google searches. Which, in typical reporter fashion, he then proceeded to present in the most simplistic and controversial way.

The author of the present article has done the same thing in the opposite direction, replying to linkbait with linkbait. If he'd really wanted to see what Alex had to say about these issues, he could have looked on CO2Stats' site.

illumen• 18 years ago

Full disclosure: pg(through ycombinator) is an investor in CO2Stats.

pg5• 18 years ago

I assumed anyone who read News.YC would know that, e.g.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=276229

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=281157

but there have been so many new users lately that I suppose there might be some who didn't realize it.

I'm not sure what the convention should be about identifying YC alumni in link titles. Putting (YC S08) after company names is awkward and only intermittently done. I've considered displaying them in a slightly different color instead. If anyone has other suggestions, let me know.

fnazeeri2• 18 years ago

PG:

(1) Linkbait? Egregious? Come on. I'm a fan (of YC) and have no need for, interest in or motive to linkbait. Read my blog, dude.

(2) Naivete? You've given thousands of interviews. I've given hundreds. Seriously, when did you not know the angle the reporter was pursuing? I can say zero (but then I've not been the target of 60 Minutes). At best Alex was naive and at worst he was abetting a greenmailer.

(3) CO2stats has the right goal. I have no beef with, in fact I emphatically support, the objective. My job is to support green issues. That said, we have to be conscious of our means and greenmail can't be one of them.

'nuf said.

pg5• 18 years ago

I don't know about you, but I find it's impossible to control the conversation with a reporter. A professional like a PR person or a press secretary may be able to have a whole conversation without saying anything that can be misconstrued, but no ordinary person can-- especially not when they're excited about an idea. You say one or two hundred sentences, and they pick the one that, quoted in isolation, will seem the most controversial.

I was even hosed this way once by Steven Levy, who is one of my favorite reporters. He came to several dinners during one YC cycle. I must have talked to him for hours. I explained all the nuances of how YC works. Out of all that he ends up quoting me as saying that someone who turned us down would be failing an IQ test.

[And before anyone starts jumping up and down about that one again, I meant it in the narrow sense of someone who didn't understand that all we have to do is improve a startup's prospects by 6.4% (http://paulgraham.com/equity.html) for the founders to end up net ahead.]

But you can't just blow off the press. The best you can hope for is that if you do a lot of interviews, collectively the resulting articles will form a sort of Giacometti drawing of the truth.

gravitycop9• 18 years ago

Alex [...] was frustrated then that the reporter hadn't wanted to hear about anything except the carbon emissions caused by Google searches. Which, in typical reporter fashion, he then proceeded to present in the most simplistic and controversial way.

There are people who know how to talk to reporters. It is an established art that is taught to political activists. http://www.google.com/search?q=%22how+to+talk+to+reporters%2...

It is not necessarily the fault of reporters that their published articles are predictably sensationalist. They are controlled, and edited, by editors. Editors are, in turn, controlled by distributions of media-consumers. Consumers control editors control reporters.

patrickg-zill• 18 years ago

Interesting to note that they buy credits at $5/ton then sell them at $200/ton.

That means that your $10/month account is really only 50 cents worth of offsets, plus $9.50 worth of guilt.

The medieval popes are envious...

ntoshev• 18 years ago

Where do you get these numbers from?

fnazeeri2• 18 years ago

You can find prices for carbon credits (US) on CCX here http://www.chicagoclimatex.com/market/data/summary.jsf (currently trades around $2 per metric ton). CO2 stats is buying wind energy credits which are different than CFI traded on CCX so they could be paying a different price, but it's unlikely to be materially different (because CFI is basically a listed version of wind credits, bio fuels, land fill gas to energy, etc.). So if they have enough volume, this is the price CO2stats should be able to buy offsets.

In terms of the price at which they sell, it varies on a per ton basis because of their fixed monthly fee structure. http://www.co2stats.com/signup.php $10 per month gets you 100K page views. Based on the stats from my blog, CO2stats equates 100K page views to approximately 500 kilos of CO2. So the cheapest they sell at is $20 per ton but the reality is that it is much higher because most clients wouldn't have 100K page views. For example, if your site gets 10K page views, then you'd be looking at $200 per ton.

Why I Canceled My CO2stats Account

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