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The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

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Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#101

Post by [deleted] »

mullingitover wrote: post #92
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…

> each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions. I have to disagree here. This idea of a consumer-level personal responsibility for the fossil energy industry's externalized costs is a lot like the plastic producers shifting blame for waste by saying that it's the consumers' fault for not recycling. It's transparent blame-shifting. The fossil energy industry pulls the…

[deleted]

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#102

Post by bayindirh »

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.

> 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.

For the last 20 years, power consumption of HPC is increased per cubic inch as systems are miniaturized and density increased. The computing capacity increased more than the power use, but this doesn't mean we didn't invent more inefficient ways to undo significant part of that improvement.

It's same for AI. Cards like Groq and inference oriented hardware doesn't consume as power as training oriented cards, but this doesn't mean total power use will reduce. On the contrary. It'll increase exponentially. Considering AI companies doesn't care about efficiency yet means we're wasting tons of energy, too.

I'll not enter into the water consumption debacle, because open-loop systems waste enormous amounts of water.

All in all, we're wasting a lot of water and energy which would sustain large cities and large number of people.

with regards from your friendly HPC admin.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#104

Post by SJC_Hacker »

mullingitover wrote: post #92
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…

> each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions. I have to disagree here. This idea of a consumer-level personal responsibility for the fossil energy industry's externalized costs is a lot like the plastic producers shifting blame for waste by saying that it's the consumers' fault for not recycling. It's transparent blame-shifting. The fossil energy industry pulls the…

Its a case of prisoner's dilemma. Individuals making the proposed lifestyle changes in order to make a genuine dent in AGW amount to jumping on the tracks in order to stop a freight train.

This is the one issue where I feel some sympathy with the right. I hate "Virtue signaling" about as much as they do. I'm sorry, but if you are going to snap at people over eating beef, while you fly/drive all over the country/world unnecessarily, you are absolute full of shyte.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#105

Post by andyjohnson0 »

chasil wrote: post #29

What is generally not understood is that our current icehouse phase is rare. 'A "greenhouse Earth" is a period during which no continental glaciers exist anywhere on the planet... Earth has been in a greenhouse state for about 85% of its history. 'Earth is now in an icehouse state, and ice sheets are present in both poles simultaneously... Earth's current icehouse state is known as the Quaternary Ice Age and began ap…

> Earth has been in a greenhouse state for about 85% of its history.

And during those periods there were no human beings. And no agriculture, or unstable globalised economiies, or dense urban societies vulnerable to disruption.

It is, of course, interesting that our planet has this long, varied existence that pre-dates us. But it is of little use in understanding how to get us out of the hole we're in. And it is arguably dangerous, because it misleads people into thinking that we have the capacity to adapt to such conditions, when we manifestly don't.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#106

Post by MSFT_Edging »

ctoth wrote: post #93
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…

The concern about climate is well placed. Ripple et al. lay out a serious case that we may be closer to tipping cascades than models predict, with the Greenland Ice Sheet potentially vulnerable to tipping below 2°C warming, well before 2050. But "invest an equal share of the resources currently being pumped into AI into climate" misidentifies the bottleneck. Marine cloud brightening could produce meaningful planetary…

> not capital

Capital, and by relation the system that centers the idea of Capital as a method for moving around resources is at the very center of this.

Since Capital follows near-term incentive, if the "pollute the world" path has a greater near-term incentive, that's where the market will follow. If a single member of the system goes for long-term incentive(not cooking the earth), other near-term incentive chasers will eat their lunch and remove a player.

The system itself is a tight feedback loop searching for local maxima, and the local max is often the most destructive. With chasing the local maxima, also comes profit and capital that influence the political system.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#107

Post by jandrewrogers »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #6
vaylian wrote: post #4

This is one of the key sentences: > Policymakers and the public, however, remain largely unaware of the risks posed by such a practically irreversible transition Most people still underestimate what it means for the earth system to change from the current stable state into another state, which might need many years to become stable again. And that new stable state might be a lot less favourable for us humans.

It's not that policymakers are unaware. It's that some of them are allergic to true things that they find inconvenient, and have made false premises a pillar of their platform. Calling that "unaware" is giving them too much credit and understanding.

> It's that some of them are allergic to true things that they find inconvenient, and have made false premises a pillar of their platform.

Sure, if by "some" you mean "virtually all".

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#108

Post by Dylan16807 »

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…

> You laugh but if everyone changed just some of their behavior, we would be in a much better place.

Please be more specific about "some" and "much" because I don't think that's true.

As far as climate goes, turning oil into single use plastic has very little effect. We could cut plastic use 90% and nothing would really change.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#109

Post by irishloop »

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™.

Surely nothing has ever done wrong with this limitless source of clean energy to give people pause? There's no uninhabitable areas of the Earth due to this?

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#110

Post by eitau_1 »

blueflow wrote: post #2

Its not a "risk". Water vapor (clouds) is a stonger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. We already got measurably higher temperatures, so we also have higher water evaporation, and from the last 5 years it looks like it happens every year. So the runaway is already happening, until something stops it near hothouse conditions or hopefully earlier than that.

True runaway (i.e. oceans boiling / Venus) cannot happen on Earth unless you significantly increase incoming radiation stream (or alternatively halve the planet's albedo).

The runaway effect is scary b/c at certain temperature (~400K) atmosphere consisting predominantly of water vapor looses its ability to radiate out more heat up until 1600K.

[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo1892 (see fig. 2b) (edit: the figure: https://imgur.com/a/ytoEXzd)

edit #2: I've measured some pixels and the starting runaway temp is closer to 315K / 42C, damn

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