'Significant business growth' fueled Microsoft's emissions rise Microsoft has published its annual sustainability report for 2021 [PDF], claiming to have reduced its own CO2 emissions by about 17 percent year-on-year, but with a bigger carbon footprint overall than it had last year, showing that "progress won't always be linear". In 2021, Microsoft generated 14.072 million metric tons of …
Kind of easy to do that when the A/C doesn't have to work as hard without all those bodies in the building, and the temperature settings can be changed for the duration to more efficient levels.
Perhaps not as applicable to companies with huge cloud footprints, but for many IT companies not having employees, employee PCs operating, etc. in offices will have a huge impact in this metric.
I'm skeptical about ANYTHING that is labeled "carbon" and "emission" IN THE SAME SENTENCE becauase ANYBODY with a BRAIN *REALIZES* that the entire "man made global climate change" thing is a FREAKING HOAX since Carbon Dioxide is NOT ONLY EXHALED by EVERYONE, it is at EQUILIBRIUM in the atmosphere between RAINING, PLANTS, and ABSORPTION by BODIES OF WATER (which this planet is FLOODED with).
a) carbon dioxide is a TERRIBLE "greenhouse gas". The absorption spectrum for infrared energy (something that WOULD make it a greenhouse gas) is VIRTUALLY TRANSPARENT for energies that correspond to temperatures ACTUALLY FOUND ON EARTH
b) CO2 is 0.04 percent of the atmosphere, whereas WATER can be as high as 1%, sometimes MORE. Not only that, but WATER has a VERY HIGH absorption spectrum for absorbing infrared energy for temperatures actually found on earth. This is why clouds make a HUGE difference in how warm or cool it is.
c) even though WATER has (by my estimation) 100 times the effect of CO2 on atmospheric absorption of infrared energies that correspond to black body radiation [something that DOES affect earth's temperature], NOBODY! IS! TRYING! TO! CONTROL! WATER!!!
d) The "solutions" proposed by ACTIVISTS over this claimed "man made global climate change" thing ALWAYS! SEEM! TO! AFFECT! OUR! FREEDOM!!!
Aside from these obvious truths, why is a 1 degree claimed potential change in world temperatures SUCH A CRISIS that WE MUST CHANGE (by becoming LESS FREE) over it???
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. And THIS is why the west appears so WEAK to TYRANTS like Vlad the Putinator, ENCOURAGING him to use OIL to CONTROL US because (due to "climate change") we choose NOT to drill for it OURSELVES, "feeeling" as if this makes us morally superior or some OTHER such IDIOCY, encouraging HIM to CONTROL US over this kind of IDIOTIC CRAP, and capriciously ATTACK HIS NEIGHBORS as if it's 1822, because WE in the WEST are OBSESSED with STUPIDITY AND NON-SCIENCE instead of telling HIM to @#$% THE HELL OFF and producing our OWN OIL and BEING PROSPEROUS *IN* *HIS* *FACE* and RENDERING TYRANTS like PUTIN into the MEANINGLESS NOBODIES that they REALLY ARE. But NooOOOoo... we have to behave like BRAINLESS SHEEPLE and go *Ba-a-a-a-a* when the so-called "SCIENTISTS" whine about an *UNPROVEN* *THEORY* that *RUINS* *OUR* *PROSPERITY* *AND* *FREEDOM* when we allegedly "fix" a NON-PROBLEM like "man made climate change". What *FOOLS* our leaders must be!!! How *WEAK* we must appear to our ENEMIES!!!
</rant>
Under the Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHG) protocol, Scope, 1 covers emissions resulting directly from an organization's operations, Scope 2 includes indirect emissions from operations that are not wholly under the organization’s control, such as from generated fuels, while Scope 3 includes emissions generated in the "value chain."
Scope 1 Is probably pretty low because hopefully they use waste datacentre heat to warm their staff in winter.
Scope 2 sounds like emissions from using electricity to run the evil empire's coding, data and cloud centres
Scope 3 covers emissions associated with business travel, procurement, waste and water.
Its obvious that they have the temerity to produce software which uses more processing power to run and larger storage to hold the bloatware, then they blame the customers for wasting energy. A prime example is just booting into windows. My Minty Asus cold boots to login in around 10seconds the first 4 of which is the BIOS. My friends similarly speced Windows takes just under 50 unless you boot from hibernate. My system partition is 18GB, but the last time I tried to install Windows it failed because the Netbook I was using only had a 32GB NVMe which wasn't big enough for the OS and certainly no user space.
Also once Linux is running, I have neverr seen the CPU % rise above 50% for more than 1 second and mostly sits around 5% or less for general computing tasks. Everything (except some websites) seems to happen virtually instantaneously, which is far from the time I spent twiddling my thumbs when I was a Windows user.
Oh, if you start adding wasted time (read: wasted manhours) to Microsoft TCO no rational CFO would touch it anymore for fear of being raked over the coals at the next shareholder meeting.
You can add what emits from those coals to the emissions, of course.
:)
You have kind of the same thoughts I had when reading this. It is rather ludicrous that producers of products are only "charged" for "their own" actions, disregarding the impact and consequences of the products they are producing. So...
A device producer can balance their green footprint by planting trees while their device is glued together, being glorified sleek e-waste if it starts to stutter.
The gun producer who claims that it protects humans, while conveniently marking people killed by their product should be accounted to those "nasty, irresponsible humans out there, not within our control or responsibility".
A service provider can calculate their CO2 production, where their books only go to where the use to their customers begins, disregarding the energy dependence, use, and waste that their product causes when used by their customers. Think about it, ranging from Netflix and Amazon, fridges and Hoovers with IoT, devices like TVs without even a physical OFF switch, to handy mobile apps that of course also need energy/ produce CO2 to function. I'm sure you can come up with your own examples. After all, metrics show that general energy use by the human race as a whole does not decrease, but continues to increase year upon year like there is no tomorrow (no pun intended).
So let's introduce a civilised, sophisticated balm for the human conscience, a way to employ even more bean counters, shift numbers and responsibilities. Let's all stare at producers, since they are the cause of everything, while we hook up our device to read these lines, and starting to hum being pleased with ourselves...
Starting a list of other emissions MS could really do with cutting:
- security problems
- unneccesary UI changes
- Clippy (ok, belated, but let's just keep it in there)
- marketing BS (presently one of the biggest polluters)
I'm sure I missed a few. Anyone?
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