MasterCard Transactions To Be Mined For CO2 Data 124
seamus1abshere writes "In the latest twist from Big Data, MasterCard and Brighter Planet today announced that cardholder transaction data will be mined for clues about CO2 emissions. Initial coverage will be of flights, car rentals, hotels and other purchases for which the credit card company stores extra metadata. Interestingly, the science behind the offering is all open source."
So... (Score:2, Interesting)
So the crazy loons are pulling the same stunt spammers do.
Thank you, assholes. Oh, wait. Thank you, crazy assholes.
Re:Matching products (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, a popular school bus line [wikipedia.org] weighs up to 36,200 pounds (without fuel I believe) and transports up to 90 passengers. In my experience, school buses cram about as many people as possible into the available space and have the lowest level of amenities so I would expect them to have about the lightest weight "per passenger capacity" of any bus. Anyway, this works out to an empty bus weighing about 400 pounds per passenger -- then add the passengers. I would be surprised if adding another 50% (assuming each passenger is 200 pounds - probably high when discussing urban transport where there's no real luggage) weight would result in a "huge" difference in CO2 output between an empty and a full bus.
I would expect that municipal buses and train cars would have even less discrepancy between their weights when fully occupied vs. empty.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Because according to the cult of global warming, you have no privacy. They're doing this for *your* best interest.
I find the psychology interesting here. Companies have tracked spending on corporate credit cards since forever; after all, it's their money you're spending, not yours, and they don't want you to spend it on booze and hookers. I don't remember ever hearing anyone complain about the principle of this. But as soon as Mastercard start to offer carbon emissions analysis to their corporate customers -- because 80% of those customers wanted it -- we have a dozen outraged comments about "invasion of privacy" and "the cult of global warming".
Just try this: storm into the accounts dept. and tell them you're not going to submit receipts for travel reimbursement, because it's none of their damned business whether you rented a hummer or took the train, and if they say otherwise they're members of the cult of global warming. Maybe you could get the ACLU to take on your case.