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How to Abandon Your Climate Commitments and Get Away with It

nytimes.com

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Re: How to Abandon Your Climate Commitments and Get Away with It

#31

Post by flgb »

Teever wrote: post #28
8note wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

youre in edmonton, you can complain pretty directly to the government but also, like, alberta makes a killing selling oil for others to burn. its still our carbon footprint and its a lot worse than that data center and cant be converted to non-emitting

Can you elaborate on your comment? I can see the link between it and the subject that I raised but I don't understand the point that you're trying to make in the context of the conversation.

Data Centres don't necessarily need to have negative environmental impacts .. they can be made to use water and energy sustainability. This is just a matter of regulation.

Extracting, exporting, and burning fossil fuels not so much.

Re: How to Abandon Your Climate Commitments and Get Away with It

#32

Post by ColdStream »

Teever wrote: post #28
8note wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

youre in edmonton, you can complain pretty directly to the government but also, like, alberta makes a killing selling oil for others to burn. its still our carbon footprint and its a lot worse than that data center and cant be converted to non-emitting

Can you elaborate on your comment? I can see the link between it and the subject that I raised but I don't understand the point that you're trying to make in the context of the conversation.

Not OP but it looks like compassionate 'whataboutism'. The idea that, yes the data centers are bad but there is a much broader issue with the economic system involving the extraction, processing and burning of tarsands.

But it shouldn't be a case of lets do A or B, but A and B.

They aren't wrong but I can see how it can be seen as trying to undermine an argument.

Re: How to Abandon Your Climate Commitments and Get Away with It

#33

Post by JuniperMesos »

Teever wrote: post #8

A $13 billion dollar Meta datacentre was recently announced for a location near me: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/meta-data-centre-alb... There's a kaleidoscope of issues with this that result in strong feelings of dismay and it took me a couple days of thinking about this recent announcement before I realized what's so completely disappointing about it. So they're installing a $13 billion dollar data centr…

It's not obvious to me that building a greenhouse industry in Alberta based on waste heat from data centers is a good idea. If it was, why should it be the Alberta government's job to set this up, rather than private industry making a deal with data center operators? If no private enterprise has formed to do this, maybe it's a sign that there's not enough demand for the outputs of that greenhouse industry for it to be profitable.

But anyway why is this datacenter using a bunch of electricity a particularly less good use of electricity than anything else?

Re: How to Abandon Your Climate Commitments and Get Away with It

#34

Post by ColdStream »

rho138 wrote: post #6

Nah guys, it’s cool, by 2050 the earths atmosphere acidifies for humans and our bodies can’t hold enough phosphorus or calcium for basic metabolic tasks: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11869-026-01918-5

Fascinating! I don't know enough about the field to really weigh in on it but it does seem intuitive that some of this could cause cumulative issues.

Typically you balance out CO2 excess with phosphorus/calcium, so again, seems intuitive.

But a lot of things that are intuitive can be completely wrong because of something one can be ignorant of. Time shall tell.

Re: How to Abandon Your Climate Commitments and Get Away with It

#35

Post by skybrian »

mmooss wrote: post #4
madhacker wrote: post #2

Needs a Hail Mary event for humanity to work together

The event we need is for you and others to start working, instead of standing on the sidelines telling other people it's impossible. Humanity has overcome many things by working together. Much of humanity is already working together to overcome climate change. In fact, if the Republican Party in the US would get to work on it, that may be a sufficient fraction of humanity. And if the US led on it, more would particip…

Vague asks like this are empty. Do you have anything specific that you want to advocate for? Favorite charities?

Re: How to Abandon Your Climate Commitments and Get Away with It

#36

Post by harshreality »

ColdStream wrote: post #30
xyzsparetimexyz wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay. Who's gonna pay me to work on it? I'm looking for a new job. Can start tomorrow

This is a key part of the game theory behind this predicament. Can we pay our way out of it? If we could it would be to direct our actions towards things like nature restoration rather than anything that could directly increase consumption. In fact it would actively decrease production and reduce consumption by sucking direct resources out of the market economy. Yes, you are being paid to fix some problems but also p…

Can't happen. Western (and most other developed/developing) economies are addicted to number-never-go-down.

Re: How to Abandon Your Climate Commitments and Get Away with It

#37

Post by frollogaston » 

  Under President Biden, there was extraordinary pressure for big business to address climate change. The Trump administration is now pushing companies to abandon climate goals and encouraging the use of more oil, gas and coal, claiming that environmental initiatives are “woke” distractions that hamper economic growth.
This was the part I wanted to understand, what exactly were the pressures under both administrations? Were these companies going to be punished under Biden if they didn't make some vague, nonbinding promises about pollution?

Re: How to Abandon Your Climate Commitments and Get Away with It

#38

Post by esseph »

GuB-42 wrote: post #9
mmooss wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The event we need is for you and others to start working, instead of standing on the sidelines telling other people it's impossible. Humanity has overcome many things by working together. Much of humanity is already working together to overcome climate change. In fact, if the Republican Party in the US would get to work on it, that may be a sufficient fraction of humanity. And if the US led on it, more would particip…

It is easy to start working on it when you are rich, but people in the world aren't, and they aren't because we are and we exploit them. And these people don't care about how terrible the next centuries are going to be because they need to survive right now, so climate change is not a priority. It is kind of depressing, really. We can't even agree on not killing each other. I mean, no one wants to get killed right, a…

"Modern Life May Be Pushing Human Minds Beyond Their Limits, Reflecting an Evolutionary Mismatch"

https://www.sciencealert.com/modern-life-may-be-pushing-huma...

Re: How to Abandon Your Climate Commitments and Get Away with It

#39

Post by ColdStream »

harshreality wrote: post #36
ColdStream wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a key part of the game theory behind this predicament. Can we pay our way out of it? If we could it would be to direct our actions towards things like nature restoration rather than anything that could directly increase consumption. In fact it would actively decrease production and reduce consumption by sucking direct resources out of the market economy. Yes, you are being paid to fix some problems but also p…

Can't happen. Western (and most other developed/developing) economies are addicted to number-never-go-down.

Pretty much. I have been involved with the much more true to heart environmentalist for decades now and they are basically of the opinion that the most viable path is to preemptively prepare for when various systems start to break.

This is why things like the Dark Mountain project came about - https://dark-mountain.net/about/

This idea is to be like serotinous plants. Seeds and cones that can only open up when the fires come through to melt the resin that holds them shut. In a way this is what the Solar punk movement is all about. Depict, advocate and produce futures that will out last the 'line goes up' society.

Re: How to Abandon Your Climate Commitments and Get Away with It

#40

Post by ColdStream »

frollogaston wrote: post #37

Under President Biden, there was extraordinary pressure for big business to address climate change. The Trump administration is now pushing companies to abandon climate goals and encouraging the use of more oil, gas and coal, claiming that environmental initiatives are “woke” distractions that hamper economic growth. This was the part I wanted to understand, what exactly were the pressures under both administrations?…

This was one of my main issues with the Biden administration. They approved approved over 13,000 oil and gas drilling permits in a single term, about 4,000 more than Trump did during his first term.

Liked to say one thing and do another. Get the feeling they would have loved to point that out during the election period but that would have alienated half their potential voters.

I get that a lot of politicians will try to put a positive image forward, but that was a bit rich.

Would still prefer that kind of stability over whatever we have now.

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