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Google 'Airbrushes' Out Emissions From Flying (bbc.com) 78

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
The way Google calculates the climate impact of your flights has changed, the BBC has discovered. From the report: Flights now appear to have much less impact on the environment than before. That's because the world's biggest search engine has taken a key driver of global warming out of its online carbon flight calculator. "Google has airbrushed a huge chunk of the aviation industry's climate impacts from its pages" says Dr Doug Parr, chief scientist of Greenpeace. With Google hosting nine out of every 10 online searches, this could have wide repercussions for people's travel decisions. The company said it made the change following consultations with its "industry partners." It affects the carbon calculator embedded in the company's "Google Flights" search tool.

If you have ever tried to find a flight on Google, you will have come across Google Flights. It appears towards the top of search results and allows you to scour the web for flights and fares. It also offers to calculate the emissions generated by your journey. Google says this feature is designed "to help you make more sustainable travel choices." Yet in July, Google decided to exclude all the global warming impacts of flying except CO2. Some experts say Google's calculations now represent just over half of the real impact on the climate of flights.
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Google 'Airbrushes' Out Emissions From Flying More

Google 'Airbrushes' Out Emissions From Flying

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  • Come on people, it's Google: After the geniuses who thought of this get bored in a month or so, they'll cancel it and move onto the next thing they want you to invest your time and money into.
  • They'll likely haul them in for deceptive practices...

  • It's not just google (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The Dutch government is currently on a crusade against "nitrogen", which mainly blames farmers (ie, the government is set to "buy out" all the farmers: exit agricultural industry left, conveniently leaving lots of land to build more houses to soothe the housing crisis, in part caused by unbriddled influx of "asylum seekers", mainly from the less combative parts of Africa, but let's get back on topic).

    One of the ways, if not the major way, it assigns pollution blame is using a "mathematical model" convenien

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 )

      Tell us you have no clue what's going on without saying you have no clue what's going on. Here's a hint for you to help your woefully insufficient understanding:

      It's 100% based on concentration in proximity to sensitive areas.

      There, now you understand why farms next to nature reserves are flagged as a problem and an airplane high in the sky is not.

      Also if you think the modelling doesn't take into account plants absorbing nitrogen I don't know what to tell you. No I really don't because on here I can only us

    • Re:It's not just google (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MobyDisk ( 75490 ) on Thursday August 25, 2022 @01:46PM (#62823033) Homepage

      The Dutch government is currently on a crusade against "nitrogen", which mainly blames farmers (ie, the government is set to "buy out" all the farmers:

      Let me use all that baloney to make sandwiches for everyone. There's no crusade, and the Dutch government is not buying out all the farmers.

      Nitrogen run-off into streams and rivers is not a problem limited to the Netherlands. The EU sets limits on nitrogen, and the Netherlands is out-of-compliance. This happens because it is difficult for small farms to mitigate their run-off. The same problem exists in the EU and the US. In the US, environmental organizations like the Chesapeake Bay Foundation are working with farmers and state governments to deal with Nitrogen pollution. [cbf.org] Farmers aren't the only ones to blame, but it is much easier to put pollution controls onto big central coal plants than it is to police the larger number of individual farmers who may not have the capital to make renovations.

      The buy-out thing seems to be a response to farmers who are refusing to mitigate the problem, or cannot afford it. In the US we have a similar issue with funding for nitrogen mitigation. Farmers have a variety of mitigations they can do: move crops and animals away from areas subject to run-off, re-landscape to control it, use less fertilizer, build aquifers to protect groundwater from run-off. All these things require education, enforcement, or construction -- all of which cost money. The US Army Corps of Engineers sometimes will come-in and do some of this work for free.

      I'm not sure why you are making this a "crusade" and putting the word "nitrogen" in quotes, but this is an old problem that we have been dealing with for decades. It has nothing to do with Google's modeling of airplane exhaust. And the Dutch government is not part of an evil scheme to buy-out farms and build developments. This is one form of environmental mitigation that pretty-much everybody is in favor of. The only issue is how to pay for it.

      P.S. from my own experience: I learned to hang-glide on a farm nearby who was delighted when the US government helped. The land was two big hills with a small stream in between. It was small enough you could just step over it. Cows grazed on the hills and the low-areas in between them. When it rains, the "cow pies" as we call them, would run-down the hill and form a smelly stream. I presume it would eventually get into the groundwater. The corps came and built an aquifer and a bridge. The good part is the land is more usable and the run-off is managed. The bad part is we can't fly there any longer.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by guruevi ( 827432 )

        The Netherlands is out of compliance because the Netherlands produces like 30% of the world's exported food. They are one of the world's most HIGHLY EFFICIENT farmers. Sure, you can say: hey you in Africa, go back to your plow if you want food, but they are a bit less careful with the stuff they produce, because they don't have the capacity to invest in highly efficient food production, so DDT and burning forest is how they respectively control bugs and fertilize.

        The EU is ran by a bunch of bureaucrats who

  • Let's be real, if you really use this tool, you probably don't use planes anyway.

  • I AM OUTRAGED Goodle airbrushes this so people can't see it!

    Oh hell, look at that guy's post over there. Better mod him down so people can't see it!

    Read my post title. Then my .sig.

    Hacks.

  • Has anyone on Slashdot ever had the emissions section of Google Flights influence your ticket purchasing decision?

  • Money talks, climate activism walks...

  • Well maybe Greta does, but she wouldn't be on a plane in the first place. Carbon emissions factor in precisely no where in people's holiday plans beyond some feel good dollars they spend on Carbon offsets with their tickets.

  • "follow the money" and "follow the science" is the same thing.

  • The be honest, I never looked at the "emissions" column in Google Flight search, I had to check to see that it is indeed there. But maybe it has an influence on some people.

    Since Google loves A/B tests they probably know the real impact. Where the emission number is here, do lower numbers sell better? Does it have a global effect on sales? Do we have any information about that? Does the "airbrushing" does anything? Frankly, I don't even know what these numbers mean in absolute terms besides "a lot", and hal

  • If "to help you make more sustainable travel choices" means helping me find the best flight with the most convenient route, then great. Otherwise, I, like many am sick of overthinking everything in my life and really don't care.
  • Who the heck believes that Google is now an expert on carbon emissions?

    Anyway, anyone using it will only do so to confirm their decision to fly, like it would emit less than driving there in a 4x4, as if they would ever drive to Bangkok for a weekend sex trip. If it does not confirm their choice then they will declare that it is mistaken.
  • Since the tool is designed to help people (who care) choose between different modes of transportation, it seems that the best approach is to use the same type of standard for all modes.

    Calculating the "total" climate impact of transit is always hard because its never clear where to draw the line. Do you amortize the construction cost of the transportation system over all the trips? Count just the local carbon emissions, or the entire emissions of the fuel supply chain?

    I don't know if this change mad

  • US style capitalism hates it when customers are able to acquire knowledge that allows the customer to make an informed choice that reduces the company's profit.

    Companies don't want to compete on the actual merits of their products and/or services. They simply want you to drink their Kool-aid and empty your pockets.

    Examples:
    Radium
    Leaded Gasoline
    Tobacco cigarettes
    Asbestos
    Lead paint

  • So Google has changed their CO2 calculator to only calculate CO2 instead of also H2O?
    Yes, the water vapor produced by burning virtually anything containing hydrogen contributes to climate change, the same way clouds do.

    Where is the story? It was a little misleading before, now it is more accurate?
    It's a "Carbon Calculator", why should it be showing anything but carbon emissions?

  • FUD (Score:1)

    by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )

    This is nothing more than coercive woke FUD.

    This is no different than what literally every automaker and energy producer does, particularly the "green" ones which get to fudge numbers related to their EVs and "renewable" energy.

  • Definitions are always the hard part, when it comes to these kinds of calculations.

    Do the numbers reported by Google, accurately report the CO2 emitted by flights?

    Is the goal here to require reporting the highest number possible? Or is it about comparing the relative impact of one flight vs. another? If the latter, and the calculations are consistent, then the goal is still achieved.

  • When I plan a trip it is usually because I need to go somewhere. Checking Google's emissions table for my chosen mode of travel is not high on my list of priorities. Does anyone else do this?

    • I have taken a survey of 11 million travelers and every single one that consulted google to find out the emissions of their travel itinerary had both green hair and nose rings.

  • How are them EU dictators going fly all around Europe if they are subject to their own CO2 emission rules?

  • Such an easy change to their original motto...

  • Since this looks like it's just another BBC CCP piece, I would have to say that Google only gives the CO2 estimates because the omitted factors/emissions were highly speculative, like most climate change propaganda, and the CO2 number is the only one that they really had a handle on.

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