Microsoft Pledges To Be Carbon Negative By 2030 and Re-capture All of Its Past Emissions (inputmag.com) 81
Microsoft has announced an aggressive plan to rectify its role in the climate crisis. From a report: In a blog post published on Thursday, the company pledged to "reduce and ultimately remove" its carbon footprint. To do that, Microsoft says its operations will be carbon negative by 2030 -- and, it will spend the subsequent two decades sequestering the equivalent of its entire history of carbon dioxide emissions, going back to 1975. Microsoft has already been carbon neutral for several years now, largely by investing in efficient energy practices. It isn't the only company to take these steps; Apple has boasted for some time now about being run on 100 percent renewable energy across the globe and Google says it's been carbon neutral for over a decade. But Microsoft's latest initiative takes all that a leap further. Moving forward, the company says it will be carbon negative, meaning that in addition to prioritizing energy efficiency in its own operations, it will actively work to reduce more atmospheric carbon than it emits. Microsoft is hoping to hit this mark by 2030.
Uh Huh. My Heroes (Score:1, Insightful)
Government rebates and incentives get funneled into green stocks, taxpayer pays for Microsoft's PR.
It's all such a wank.
Re:Uh Huh. My Heroes (Score:5, Funny)
I don't care who pays for it. Removing carbon from the environment is the goal we all should be striving for.
Re:Uh Huh. My Heroes (Score:5, Insightful)
Shuffling money around doesn't remove any carbon from anything.
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I don't think they care. The Pseudo Science has long past won the debate.
The simple fact that part of the solution is tax/carbon credits and money-centric solutions is proof that even the "believers" of AGW are not really big believers in AGW. If they genuinely believed in AGW they sure as hell would not agree to these solutions but because for these folks have their entire identities wrapped around AGW they believe that doing anything, regardless of it is the correct or an effective solution is better th
Re: Uh Huh. My Heroes (Score:2, Flamebait)
Not all who believe in global warming are stupid enough to think that carbon credits do anything.
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I agree, there are always exceptions, but they need to become the rule and stop being the exceptions. The problem is for them to figure out how to get the rest to see what is going on... because the moment you start to try to keep the ship upright, you are immediately accused to being a denier. The room is given for people to have varying levels of a position on a subject. You are only allowed believer or denier status. It's insane and has no scientific value because Science is all about learning all th
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Not all who believe in global warming are stupid enough to think that carbon credits do anything.
I certainly don't believe in global warming.
What I do believe in is climate change; a very different thing than global warming, IMNSHO.
I don't know how much good carbon credits really are, but I suspect they're better than nothing. And better than sticking our collective heads in the sand and denying that there's a problem.
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Carbon credits dont do anything to reduce carbon.
If Company A has 300 "Carbon credits" and only use 150, they can sell the other left over 150 to Microsoft, so they can "Reduce their emissions" while still pumping out the same amount of carbon as they were. they just purchased more credits.
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Perhaps by reducing their carbon footprint in some objectively measurable way?
Or you you trying to claim that someone dealt a deck of cards and some companies got carbon credits and some others didn't?
Inquiring minds want to know.
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That's the way the system is supposed to work. You reduce your emissions, which gives you leftover credits, so you can then sell them and get rewarded.
The problem is, it's a complex system ripe for corruption and abuse. A carbon tax is much simpler and also more ideal from an economics point of view. But someone called it a "tax" so it's bad mojo.
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Look at global temperatures in the last 10 years, Einstein. Hint: they went up...a lot.
Now there's a thought, the AGW being a cash cow....maybe for the Chinese who will be the leaders in green technology while the Republicans are still debating whether George Soros and the Clintons are making the temperature go up just to make them look bad.
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Thats not the point they are making.
If Microsoft buys enough carbon credits now they can be "Carbon Negative" they are still producing as much as they ever have. but they are buying other companies left over credit. it does NOTHING. its money changing hands thats it. it does nothing to reduce CO2 going out.
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In Internet slang, a troll is a person who starts quarrels or upsets people on the Internet to distract and sow discord by posting inflammatory and digressive, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community.
With this definition, the comment that says "shuffling money around does nothing" would be the troll, not this.
It is one thing you don't agree with an opinion, but that's not make that trolling.
Re:Uh Huh. My Heroes (Score:4, Funny)
I don't care who pays for it...
Remember you said that when the army of IRS sniffer drones is running around taxing human farts.
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Re: Uh Huh. My Heroes (Score:1)
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Re: Uh Huh. My Heroes (Score:1)
"the equivalent of its entire history" (Score:4, Funny)
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You don't have McAfee scanning 1000% of what's required to get to that 10 seconds. And no that doesn't mean 100 seconds because HDD is the bottleneck. Replace with SSD? That's carbon.
You're naive and simplistic and wrong.
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Yeah, we don't believe you. Windows is slow to boot even with delayed start on many services you need to run ups, so you see the desktop but can do nothing. Windows is lucky to 10 seconds from sleep, let alone boot.
So if M$ wants to save energy, how about getting rid of the bloat, thin that operating system down and make it more efficient. How about cut down on internet traffic by not running privacy invasive so called telemetry.
More powerful, computers sucking down more energy but doing less because of cr
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businesspeople quit turning their machines off at night
That's a very "mightier than thou" attitude considering a recent Slashdot poll showed a large number of people here leaving their machines running overnight for either a) absolutely no reason, or b) completely stupid reasons.
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You jest but that's actually a very good point. They should consider all the emissions due to their poor software too and try to make up for those. Also all the emissions due to Windows 95 sucking even on 64MB of RAM and forcing people to throw away otherwise perfectly good computers over the years.
This is great! (Score:1)
Other than the fact that 2030 is 3 years too late, and we need to reduce global emissions by 7% each year from 2020 to 2027, it's great.
If you like to live in a flaming ball of Pooh.
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If you like to live in a flaming ball of Pooh.
You're suggesting setting Xi Jinping on fire?
Well I guess we could try it...
Including xbox and surface manufacturing? (Score:1)
Re: Including xbox and surface manufacturing? (Score:1)
Cryptocurrency mining (Score:5, Insightful)
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here's your
Re: Bullshit. Deception. Misdirection. Lies. (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft operates some of the largest data centres on the planet, and data centres are among the most energy intensive assets mankind has ever created.
Your ignorance is matched only by your confidence, which makes for an impressive spectacle of embarrassment.
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Read their annual report: https://www.microsoft.com/inve... [microsoft.com]
Of course they build and own datacenters. But well done, doubling down on your stupidity.
Re: Bullshit. Deception. Misdirection. Lies. (Score:1)
This guy's username... it's hilarious.
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For someone "Way Smarter Than You" you are in fact incredibly dense.
Re: Bullshit. Deception. Misdirection. Lies. (Score:2)
lol. MS operates their O365, ExOL, Azure and other product suites from... Where? AWS? Their investor report is freely available if you decide to take a peek.
Waaaay smarter than not me I assure you.
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With Azure they do have a lot of electricity using data centers.
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MS if claiming all of the DC energy usage in the CO2 footprint. Also as to physical gear, they make a lot of laptops (Surface) and Xbox's.
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They seem to produce a lot of crap software...
I, for one, welcome this... and so does my wife! (Score:3)
Because she's STILL complaining about that burrito I at in their cafeteria and the emissions that eked out afterwards.
Man, if that worked, she'd TOTALLY be off my back!
So, please! The sooner the better!
And when there's proof of that, she'll let me out of this room, where all I have for a life is posting on slashdot, et. al.
Windows updates (Score:4)
Hopefully this means they will reduce electricity consumption by reducing the massive size of Windows 10 / Server 2016+ updates that must travel across the wider internet to millions upon millions of individual computers around the world.
Will Microsoft stop being abusive? Better managed? (Score:2)
Will Microsoft stop being abusive? Will Microsoft be better managed in the future?
A Google search for Windows 10 update problems [google.com] gave 1,400,000,000 results.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Re: That’s going to be tough! (Score:2)
Impossible! (Score:5, Funny)
Yay (Score:4, Insightful)
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And the Church of the Deniers will immolate themselves before they cause the Earth to it for them. See Australia, that's what you are bequeathing to your sprogs.
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Do you have a better suggestion?
Wow I never would have thought it (Score:2)
Re-capture All of Its Past Emissions
I guess this means they are pulling Windows 10!
Re-capture past emmisions. (Score:2)
That's going to be difficult. Do you have any idea just how much bull-shit there was coming out of Microsoft in the 90's? That's a lot of stench.
Energy only? (Score:2)
So ignoring the breathig slaves, err workers that assemble the hardware in China?
Whar about all the resources? Like the rubber of the tire of the truck that carried the cement to build the walls for the factory?
Are we gonne conveniently ignore everything that's in any way indirect, yet still caused by whoever claims to be neutral?
And what about other resources and waste in this huge manufacturing tree, that ruined the Earth?
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Well if every company and every person did the same Microsoft trying to do, 100% of the emissions would be accounted for.
On the other hand, if everybody did what you are suggesting, we would remove much more carbon than we generate. We would not be neutral, but negative.
Desk plants are the answer. (Score:3)
All employees at MS will be required to have at least one kudzu plant growing in their cubicle and to refrain from flatulence on company premises. This is sure to make up for all the carbon spewed out by MS's massive data centers.
MS said they would cure cancer first, in 2016 (Score:2)
It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound... (Score:1)
... and fury, signifying nothing.
Did anyone else get that impression reading the Microsoft press release? I tried reading this looking for how they actually planned to sequester their carbon emissions and about halfway through I started to just skim through looking for some kind of technology, structures, or something real on how they intended to act. All I saw was more and more BS on how important this is, talk of raising awareness, reaching out to the public, and lots of fancy words.
All I saw is that th
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A quick calculation shows that we need to cover the entire state of California with PV and wind just to get sufficient power within the US, during the day at 100% efficiency.
Germany has proven even with massive investment in PV and wind (50% of their total potential CAPACITY (if productive at 100%) is now wind and solar which means they now have power plants with a potential production values of 200% their actual usage) they've only increased the total energy USAGE from those sources a little over 3% (from
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The US used 2.5155Ã--10^13 kWh of power (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States#Primary_energy_consumption)
Admittedly this will be high because if you use coal for electricity all the coal power is counted even if most of it ends up as heat in the chimneys.
https://www.turbinegenerator.o... [turbinegenerator.org] 3200 hours of sun per year for California.
This works out to be 7,860,937,500 Kw of solar
At 1675mm x 992mm for 280 watts of power this brings the total area required to 52,000km^2
Californa is 423,9
The Four Yorkshiremen (Score:1)
Doesn't this have a Monty Python quality to it?
We at Microsoft are not only aiming to be carbon neutral, we intent to offset all of our historical emissions.
Ah quite. But when I was young, our family didn't have a carbon footprint, let alone a house. We camped out at the base of a windmill and ate the rabid, dead bats that fell on our heads.
Can't be carbon negative (Score:5, Insightful)
To truly reduce carbon emissions, you have to build new carbon-neutral energy sources. This can be anything from putting solar panels on your roof, to helping fund a new nuclear power plant. They either allow society to increase energy consumption without an increase in CO2 production (add the new plants to existing capacity), or allow us to maintain the same energy consumption while producing less CO2 (the new plants allow you to retire fossil fuel plants).
In that respect, you can't be carbon negative. Not unless you've helped build plants which capture CO2 from the air and sequester it underground.
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To truly reduce carbon emissions, you have to build new carbon-neutral energy sources. This can be anything from putting solar panels on your roof, to helping fund a new nuclear power plant.
Let's get some perspective on the scale of this problem. In the world there are about 400 GW of nuclear powered electrical generation capacity, from about 400 nuclear power reactors. Some are bigger than one gigawatt, some smaller, but one gigawatt is average. Nearly all of them were built in a very narrow time frame from about 1970 to 1980. Some built earlier, a few later, but with the Three Mile Island meltdown, lower prices of oil and coal, economic problems in the Soviet Union, and more, the buildin
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So we need to build a new factory. Either nuclear, wind turbines or solar pv?
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Uhh, you make no sense. Maybe you should sell some brain credits. You are saying "someone else would have claimed the credit"? So? Just by being in the bidding that increases the price of the credits, which in turn helps pay for more carbon negative energy production investment. Simple law of supply/demand. The more demand there is for something the higher it will cost. The higher something costs, the profitable it is. The more profitable something is, the more incentive there is for competitors to invest i
So WHAT are they actually doing? (Score:3)
Google, Microsoft etc can't be carbon-negative without investing in carbon scrubbers (which aren't carbon-negative unless you have some nuclear plant powering them) for ever gram of CO2 they introduce or have introduced in the economy through their services.
The effect of Microsoft and Google on the economy is massive (in the positive sense), are they going to be scrubbing the CO2 of every transportation company they enable to function? Companies like Amazon would've probably never existed without Microsoft and Walmart would not be the company it is today without the software it wrote over the decades.
Just in their home state, they generate something like $10B in economic value per year, which according to many green advocacy groups, means they'll have to remove like 2M tons of CO2 every year just to cover the value of their own employees. According to another group CO2 removal could cost $400/T and given the cash on hand, they can burn through all their cash just to clean up their US-wide economic impact, let alone world.
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It works for Beyond Meats.
I'm 'Windows Negative' (Score:3)
Human elimination required to get to zero carbon (Score:2)
Don't you have to stop employing those pesky breathing humans to eliminate carbon emissions? Last I checked, humans eat carbohydrates, inhale molecular oxygen, oxidize the carbohydrates, and then exhale carbon dioxide plus water vapor. It goes something like this:
C6H12O6 (s) + 6 O2 (g) 6 CO2 (g) + 6 H2O (l) + heat
To summarize, Microsoft must be planning on completely eliminating their workforce.
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Aren't they formed by plants taking CO2 from the air?
6CO2(g) + 6H2O + light -> C6H12O6
I.e The CO2 has already been scrubbed from the air and is carbon neutral.
The tractor used to harvest the plant is a different story though.