this post was submitted on 15 May 2024
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Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.

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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world.  About 1C of total warming.  Second chart:  about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability.  Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases.  About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Bill Gates has invested a lot in Terra Power for new types of nuclear reactors. I presume they’re related to the needs of ai

[–] [email protected] 45 points 5 months ago (2 children)

WHO is asking for AI chatbots/assistants to be in everything they use? WHO?

This feels like 3D TV all over again - where the industry tried relentlessly to convince us all we wanted it for a few years, to a collective "meh."

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

A lot of people are asking for AI. Mostly I run in programmer circles and the amount of people there going crazy for AI to enter everything so it can do everything for them is insane. This leeches across to tech savvy people who don't understand the mechanics of it, but they see the programmers going bananas and so they want in on it too.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago

I am one of the "tech savvy people" and I appreciate the future that machine learning and generative AI can help us usher in, regardless of whether my understanding at the detail level is imperfect. I don't want it forecefully integrated into anything I use really, and I certainly don't want it forcefully integrated into everything, especially (glances at headline) to the detriment of other aspects of human life and happiness. I want it available to me as a discrete tool when needed.

While I respect the reality that others may have different desires than I do, I remain skeptical that a large number of consumers literally want it to be on every damn thing like angry birds, to the point where its usage needs to be heavily factored into the environmental impact of corporations.

If that's somehow a stepping stone period of development that we must pass through to get to the good stuff, then I hope they (in the field generally, not specifically MS) are turning all that horsepower to coming up with innovative climate-positive measures that we are capable of implementing as a near-term goal.