Having slogged through Google's 2025 Environmental Report, here's my summary...

(all figures are changes from 2023-2024)

Scope 2 location-based GHG emissions up from 9,252,900 - 11,283,200 tCO2e

Scope 3 GHG emissions up from 10,794,000 - 12,053,000 tCO2e

Total Energy Consumption up from 25,910,500 - 32,727,800 MWh

Total waste generated up from 52,000 - 58,500 metric tons

Water consumption up from 6,352 - 8135 million gallons.

So given that they're significantly worse on every major indicator, you might be wondering how Google spins this as 'driving sustainable innovation' (p4) and a 12% reduction in datacentre emissions (p4)...

The answer is that they're buying more electricity under Power Purchase Agreements - meaning that increasing amounts of renewable energy isn't used for decarbonisation, instead they're used to power the growth in AI and datacentre capacity.

This, alongside the focus on efficiency metrics that obfuscate the growing energy and resource demands of Big Tech needs to be recognised as corporate greenwash that is driving climate change, not fixing it

#Google #AI #DataCenters #sustainability #Tech #ClimateChange

sustainability.google/google-2…

In a meteorological sense, tropical cyclones have a job. The Earth is heated unevenly. This is apparent to almost everyone; the poles (Antarctica and the Arctic) are colder than the tropics. What people don't always realize is that nature always tries to erase gradients. This is loosely related to the second law of thermodynamics, if you will humor me. So Earth is always trying to spread extra tropical heat to the poles, where there are heat deficits.

The way this is done is mainly through ocean currents. Large gyre systems slowly transport heat poleward through steady strong currents, allowing both latent (evaporation and condensation) and sensible (temperature radiation) heat exchange with the much smaller, in terms of energy, atmosphere. During the height of high temperature gradients, for a few months after the solstice, these ocean currents aren't enough. Heat is building up, and the gradient is getting stronger.

That's where hurricanes come in. They are violent transfers of heat from the tropics to the poles. They represent hyper exchange of energy from the oceans to the atmosphere, and eventual poleward movement. The evaporation and mixing while the hurricane is formed takes up ocean energy at the tropics. The intense rain events at higher latitudes (like in North Carolina this year after Hurricane Helene) release that tropical heat to the higher latitudes. That is their job.

The more excess heat we store in tropical oceans, and the less currents can transport heat poleward, the more tropical cyclones we should expect. Nature hates gradients.

en.osm.town/@seav/113486289077…

#hurricanes
#TropicalWX
#ClimateChange
#AMOC
#HeatTransport

Eugene Alvin Villar 🇵🇭

2024-11-15 09:35:46

“The Japan Meteorological Agency reported that it was the first time since records began in 1951 that so many storms co-existed in the Pacific basin in November.”

earthobservatory.nasa.gov/imag…

While I wasn’t affected too much by recent storms / #typhoons (at worst it was just rainy weather), the incoming #ManYi / #PepitoPH is likely the closest to approach #Manila, #Philippines 🇵🇭 .

#weather #meteorology #ExtremeWeather #TropicalCyclones

Typhoons Line Up in the Western Pacific

Four storms swirled in the basin, many of which set their sights on the storm-ravaged Philippines.

^{earthobservatory.nasa.gov}