
Never noticed News.YC's CO2Stats before.  How do they compute this stuff anyway? - pius
http://www.co2stats.com/certpro.php?s=1138&ref=http://news.ycombinator.com/x?fnid=K2Tx2MnQ5f
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patrickg-zill
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.

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

~~~
patrickg-zill
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.

~~~
corentin
> there is no actual evidence that reducing CO2 from man-made sources would in
> fact modify global temperature.

There is no evidence that such a modification in temperature would be a bad
thing, either.

Basically, it's just a stack of assumptions. I'm not saying it's necessarily
false or anything, but I find it strange to see supposedly intelligent,
rational-minded, etc. people (= "hackers") step into this one as easily. Let's
question all those assumptions first, would you?

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goldsmith
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)?

~~~
eru
Averages?

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

~~~
alexwg
Thanks!

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colvt
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!

~~~
fluidrazor
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.

~~~
Alex3917
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.

~~~
fluidrazor
I understand what they are trying to do. But the sheer inaccuracy of what they
provide clearly negates the supposed benefits.

Would you donate to a charity that mismanaged or wasted most of your money, if
only just because donating to charities is good? Or wouldn't that
mismanagement negate most of what is good about donating to that particular
charity.

I'm sure the people behind CO2Stats are not stupid. So they must be aware of
the shortcomings and limitations of their service. Yet they continue to run
the service anyways, calling it accurate. That is dishonest.

(and no, questioning CO2Stats does not make me a conspiracy theorist)

~~~
Alex3917
"But the sheer inaccuracy of what they provide clearly negates the supposed
benefits."

How? Do you understand what it is that they do?

~~~
fluidrazor
People pay them to offset the carbon footprint of their site. Except if they
are paying them an amount based on an inaccurately calculated footprint,
that's a problem.

If you wish to continue drinking the Kool-Aid, go ahead! It sure is tasty! But
don't blame me when your teeth fall out.

~~~
lliiffee
Problems like this need to be solved. That is, the real world demands that we
estimate things that cannot be estimated reliably. To take a less
controversial example than global warming, consider the risk of avian flu.
Clearly, we cannot get a reasonable quantitative estimate of the chance of a
flu epidemic, or how many people it would kill, etc. Nevertheless, we are
forced to decide what preparations (if any) to make anyway.

Just because the problem is hard, doesn't mean it isn't worth attempting. I
see no problem with what they are doing, as long as they are honest about the
uncertainty in the estimates they hand to you.

~~~
fluidrazor
Putting the global warming debate aside, I totally agree with you.

However, I don't see them being transparent. Furthermore, I think given the
complexity of determining what they claim, the simplicity of their model is
almost certainly not adequate.

I like your Avian Flu example. I think in that case, we would both agree that
there is a point at which preparations for such an event would be almost
useless when there is a certain lack of information, when what we do know and
what we don't know is so muddled that we are not even sure what direction to
take. Obviously doctors and scientists are not blind here and know generally
what direction to take in their preparations, just not to what scale.

What I am arguing in terms of CO2Stats here is that the likely inaccuracy of
their calculations just about voids what they are offering because you don't
know that what you are getting is in the proper proportion or even that it
actually helps to the degree that they say it does.

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nuclear_eclipse
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...

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cstejerean
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
For the same reason that Amazon has free shipping?

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axod
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.

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furiouslol
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?

