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The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

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Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#81

Post by estimator7292 »

candiddevmike wrote: post #44
smartmic wrote: post #18

It is important to keep reminding ourselves that climate change is a real problem for humanity and that each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions. It is a problem that requires solutions, but implementing these solutions involves so much inertia that it can sometimes be painful. And let's contrast that with the AI hype. It's more the opposite, a kind of solution t…

If you're looking to experience a "climate change" simulator, kind of, the game Oxygen Not Included is an interesting chemistry sandbox where you need to balance things like O2, heat, food, etc in a "terrarium" of sorts. The parallels to climate change are similar to real life--most of the game ending problems you encounter are from short sighted thinking earlier on/kicking the can down the road.

Gotta love the cycle 200 heat death

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#82

Post by panarchy »

aleda145 wrote: post #9

Very alarming. I feel like especially the West is regressing on climate change with the rise of the far right ( https://www.politico.eu/article/robert-lambrou-alternative-f... ) I don't know what to do.

I think there's someone that wrote about what is to be done, but I can't remember who. /s

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#83

Post by bcrosby95 »

beanshadow wrote: post #60
smartmic wrote: post #18

It is important to keep reminding ourselves that climate change is a real problem for humanity and that each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions. It is a problem that requires solutions, but implementing these solutions involves so much inertia that it can sometimes be painful. And let's contrast that with the AI hype. It's more the opposite, a kind of solution t…

> And, no, AI won't solve it; unfortunately, it only makes it worse. A conclusive argument for this still seems out of reach. AI does solve some problems, and it's not exactly clear which problems AI "only makes worse". It's not clear how much energy all of our AI systems will use, and while it's tempting to outright believe they'll simply use more and more, even that's not yet clear based on arguments presented.

Outside AI independently uncovering some energy breakthrough there is nothing it can do to help, only hurt. We already have a source of clean, cheap, unlimited energy, we aren't rolling it out the way we could and should because some rich people would rather have us on a subscription plan where we literally light our source of energy on fire so we have to keep coming back for more.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#84

Post by maybelsyrup »

timmg wrote: post #65
aleda145 wrote: post #9

Very alarming. I feel like especially the West is regressing on climate change with the rise of the far right ( https://www.politico.eu/article/robert-lambrou-alternative-f... ) I don't know what to do.

> I feel like especially the West is regressing on climate change with the rise of the far right Is it the "far right"? Or is it that technology and fertility have actually lowered the risks substantially? Solar plus batteries, right now, seems to be the cheapest form of new energy. Given that, you would expect most of new energy to be "green". (And if you look at the stats, that seems to be coming true.) Electrifica…

> Is it the "far right"?

Yes, it is. They're committed to "Every molecule of hydrocarbon will come out". [0]. They keep saying this to us, and we don't seem to believe them. I like your optimism, and I'm not denying a lot of what you're saying -- renewables fast becoming the cheapest energy. But that's not deterring people: the far right here in the US are about to dismantle the government's legal rationale for regulating emissions. They're laughing at us right now, doing victory laps. They're telling polluters to take the gloves off.

These people are terrorists, extremists, and they're in charge of the world's single most powerful economy and military. They're obsessed with domination, with doing violence to the weak and the poor and to nature. It's pure Freudian thanatos.

It's just hard to take your position.

[0] https://theecologist.org/2023/dec/05/every-molecule-hydrocar...

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#85

Post by AnthonyMouse »

bayindirh wrote: post #22
anon84873628 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a classic multi-agent coordination problem. Should I stop taking jet liners and eating meat, when everyone else is anyway? (Edit: purely illustrative rhetorical question, but I appreciate the responses)

For me, it's a hard problem. For business trips, the choice is between two hours and two days, and unfortunately my body goes haywire if I don't eat some meat at least a couple of days per week (talking about 200g/300g total though. Not kilos of it). On the other hand, I'd happily take trains as more high speed lines open in my country, and reduce meat consumption to bare minimum my body can tolerate. For personal tr…

> my body goes haywire if I don't eat some meat at least a couple of days per week

Isn't this just a nutrient deficiency in whatever you were eating instead of meat? Meat is "convenient" because it's high in a wide variety of minerals, vitamins, essential amino acids, etc. that your body can't make. (The animals mostly can't make them either but guess what livestock eats.) There are plants that contain each of them, but few if any that contain all of them, and then if you're missing one you're going to have a bad time. So the problem there is almost certainly that you need to eat some different plants than that the thing you were missing is only found in animals.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#87

Post by cosmic_cheese »

xyzal wrote: post #35
aleda145 wrote: post #9

Very alarming. I feel like especially the West is regressing on climate change with the rise of the far right ( https://www.politico.eu/article/robert-lambrou-alternative-f... ) I don't know what to do.

You work in software, right? Then you can donate some money to enviro orgs.

Not an expert in any of that, but I think overall impact may be greater if people with sufficient means take a more hands-on approach that grants visibility of where money is going. I lean environmentalist be the truth is that there’s a good deal of well-marketed snake oil in the environmental space.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#88

Post by pyrale »

j0ba wrote: post #52

If only there was a clean, nearly limitless source of energy, where the waste for hundreds of years of energy could be stored in less than a square kilometer. If such a thing existed, we could be sure that environmentalists and leftists would have openly embraced it, rather than nip it at the bud 50 years ago. Because they are Good People™. And we should definitely listen to them now because they Follow The Science™.

> If such a thing existed, we could be sure that environmentalists and leftists would have openly embraced it, rather than nip it at the bud 50 years ago. Because they are Good People™. And we should definitely listen to them now because they Follow The Science™.

The issue with current politics wrt environment is environmentalists and leftists? This feels like a smoker blaming their smoking habit on anti-drug associations not being good enough rather than big tobacco.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#89

Post by FarmerPotato »

Teever wrote: post #53

What's fascinating and dismaying to me is that it's obvious that there exists sufficient capital and capability in the west to fix this. I always wondered if we just lacked the ability to mobilize to solve big problems anymore but now I look at this 7% US GDP being allocated to AI datacentres and I realize that it isn't a lack of ability, it's a lack of desire. Imagine if we had ram shortages because all the silicon…

Not the same silicon. Wafer fabs make pure crystals. Photovoltaics use polysilicon.

Obviously you mean purified silicon, but, remember silicon is what the Earth has in abundance (yeah I know it’s energy intensive, and there exist such profession as sand prospector.)

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#90

Post by pasquinelli »

reactordev wrote: post #47
Carrok wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've started composting. I'm sure that'll outweigh the average Vegas visitor's emissions. /s I'm being a bit facetious obviously, but it does feel a bit like tilting against windmills. We need policy and systemic changes, if we're relying on individuals to all collectively start doing the "right thing", we're sunk.

You laugh but if everyone changed just some of their behavior, we would be in a much better place. We used to reuse glass jars, now it’s plastic. We used to can goods, now it’s plastic. We used to use refillable bottles, now it’s plastic. We used to have car doors that went “thunk” when you slammed them shut, now it’s plastic. If we each are mindful of the amount of trash/litter/waste we produce and take an active st…

the great thing about these sorts of personal choices is that you can make them for yourself without having to be afraid of any of the consequences that would come from actually confronting power.
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