Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

Re:Google says its carbon footprint is now zero by Spivak on Monday September 14, 2020 @11:46AM (#24471520)

The short answer is yes, the long answer is "it depends on your local electricity generation but probably still yes." There are some places in the world where gas wins out because they burn coal to produce electricity but it's rare.

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Re:Google says its carbon footprint is now zero by Qwertious on Monday September 14, 2020 @12:02PM (#24471736)

'There are some places in the world where gas wins out because they burn coal to produce electricity but it's rare.'

This statement always throws me - did we just make a complete context-switch from talking about car emissions to talking about gas turbines? Or is "gas" being used to refer to petrol ("gasoline")? The subject of the previous post was clearly cars, but that sentence is talking about gas and coal, better re-read the entire statement several times to double-check the context!

I don't want to be rude and shit on peoples' language, but FFS I hate the shortening slang-version of "gasoline" so much. THAT WORD IS TAKEN, IT MEANS VAPOUR.

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Re:Google says its carbon footprint is now zero by Spivak on Monday September 14, 2020 @01:49PM (#24472995)

It might be a US-ism? I've never heard anyone in casual conversion call it gasoline or petrol. You would get weird looks if you called it gasoline.

"You fill up your gas tank at the gas station and get a gas can just in case you get low on gas before you can hit the next station to gas up."

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Re:Google says its carbon footprint is now zero by chrisseaton on Monday September 14, 2020 @02:01PM (#24473126)

Not hard to see how it's confusing - you call it gas but it's not a gas, it's a liquid.

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Re:Google says its carbon footprint is now zero by Spivak on Monday September 14, 2020 @02:23PM (#24473373)

But it’s just a case of a word with two meanings that depends on context. That’s like the least weird thing that happens in English.

“You call returned soldiers vets, but they don’t work with animals.”

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Re:Google says its carbon footprint is now zero by afiori on Monday September 14, 2020 @02:29PM (#24473426)

I always found the acronym LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas) funny for similar reasons.

The definition of the difference between gas and vapour is that a gas cannot be liquefied by pressure (so water vapour heated over ~374°C becomes a gas)

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