YC super-alums Alexis, Robby, and Wayne invest in CO2 Stats angel round | Hacker News Reader

YC super-alums Alexis, Robby, and Wayne invest in CO2 Stats angel round

venturebeat.com

11 pointsrms11 comments

The company seems to be at extreme risk: if warming is not happening, or the planet is actually cooling as many solar scientists predict, the value of the company will quickly approach 0. I'd be interested to hear how they would use their tech in the case of co2 having no impact on warming/cooling, as the product looks pretty clever.

Have you ever heard of the March of Dimes? It is a charitable organization, but the principle is the same. The March of Dimes was founded to eliminate polio.

Polio is, indeed, effectively eliminated.

Did the March of Dimes close up shop? Nope, they just rebranded: "Our mission is to improve the health of babies by preventing birth defects, premature birth, and infant mortality."

I'm quite sure that the global warming brigade would quickly find alternate employment if it turned out to not be the devil. Peak Oil looks promising, or maybe they could go for the full-on population-growth-leads-to-extinction Malthus again.

>The company seems to be at extreme risk

Extreme risk? Seems a little extreme. Do you think there is more than a 1% chance that CO2 has no impact on global climate?

From all the science I've read so far, especially the solar scientists, and the cooling temperatures over the last few years, I'd estimate that man-made Co2 has about a 90% chance of having no impact on global climate. The sun seems to be the driving factor now and in the many countless past global climate events.

While you may be right, it's going to take the American public (and world for that matter) a long time to figure it out one way or the other.

It's riding a media campaign. Just depends when that media wave ends. Hopefully soon.

I'm all for saving energy, being efficient etc, but this seems a really bad way to go about that. I'd say also the barrier to entry for competition is 0. As long as they can design a "We are green" badge.

There are of course other things where the barrier for entry is 0 - twitter for example - but with that it's all about the network - who is on it.

I don't see how co2stats can protect themselves like this. What's to stop others creating badges and selling them to websites?

Also this claim from the website is just ridiculous:

"Increase the time your visitors and customers spend on your website. Proudly display that your site is providing their computers with green energy while they are on your site. They'll stay around longer, and that leads to greater sales and attention."

Some evidence/studies to show that would be good...

I think Co2stats has good intentions, I just wish they were more transparent about what they did and how their calculations were made. A lot of the stuff on their website is just marketing instead of information.

They could pretty easily convert themselves in to an energy usage company where companies/consumers/etc could monitor how much energy they're using while on the internet.

You'd pay for the monitoring & alerts instead of the offsetting. Patio's suggestions are also good ones.

Congrats to CO2Stats. Take that money and do good for the environment (and make yourselves rich also, of course).

By super-alums I mean accredited investor.

co2stats is just a greenwashing tool, and its utility will die as fast as greenwashing dies. by greenwashing, i mean the suggestion that users choose products based on their adoption of "green"-appearing means of production

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