"Last month the tech giant shifted its algorithm to exclude a crucial component of the overall greenhouse gas impact of air travel."
"When Google launched a carbon emissions tool for its flight tracker last fall, allowing consumers to see the individual emissions created by each flight they were browsing, it received widespread attention and praise from industry leaders and climate scientists alike. But last month the tech giant quietly shifted the algorithm to exclude a crucial component of the overall greenhouse gas impact of air travel—meaning that emissions data on the flights it lists now are much lower than they were before.
“Google has airbrushed a huge chunk of the aviation industry’s climate impacts from its pages,” Dr Doug Parr, the chief scientist and policy director of Greenpeace UK, told the BBC.
The change, Google said in a public Github post from last month, was made after consultations with the tech giant’s “academic and industry partners.” In the Github post, Google said it has decided to only calculate carbon dioxide emissions from flights, rather than the cumulative effect of all greenhouse gasses—known as CO2E, or “carbon dioxide equivalents,” in climate-speak. In particular, Google has decided to temporarily do away with calculations related to contrails, the clouds that form behind planes, that can have a big impact on flight emissions."
Advertisement 
