All data centers in aggregate (AI and all other uses) use about 1.5% of electricity production, which itself is about 20% of total energy use. So when people are focusing on AI above all other energy uses, it doesn't really paint an accurate picture of what's going on.
You can split up every single industries/topics/&c. into "yeah but it only use 1.5% of energy", "yeah but it only produces 1.5% of the co2" Guess what happens when you add them up...
This kind of logic only works if the percentages for each industry are all equally that small, so you can treat them as all equally bad, but they are absolutely not.
>We remove the estimated influence of three main natural variability factors: El Niño, volcanism, and solar variation. The resulting adjusted and thus less “noisy” data show that there has been acceleration with over 98% confidence, with faster warming over the last 10+ years than during any previous decade.
Most countries including the US are deploying record amounts of renewables. But the climate conversation is definitely reduced, and that's global. Its been a good while since I saw angsty euro teens throwing tomato soup on paintings or gluing themselves to motorways. That used to be a monthly occurance.
The US still produces more than half (58%) of its electricity from fossil fuels. In the EU, it’s less than a third (29%). https://ember-energy.org/countries-and-regions/united-states... https://ember-energy.org/countries-and-regions/european-unio... In the EU I hear of new climate initiatives all the time. From the US every bit of news I know about is how they’re making it worse.
What is the effect of the new climate initiatives? Undoubtedly $trillions have been spent on what might be termed 'fighting climate change' by all means possible. Looking at the Mauna Loa data on C02, can anyone see any effect at all?
https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/. I merely present this as an observation. In other words, your comment is spot on at least with respect to the EU.
I have a different take: Things will change once a big part of the electorate no longer feels like climate change policies will hurt their pocket. A lot of the opposition to the policies are from people who aren't in the richer percentiles and probably work in a field that's related to fossil fuels (like heating engineers, car mechanics, etc.). They fear job losses and that their commute and heating bills go up.
I have a different different take. It's not the electorate's pocketbook that matters, it's the political donors pocketbook that matters. "Drill baby drill" will be echoed so long as petroleum companies and petroleum rich nations dump billions into propaganda outlets, politician campaigns, and in the US, PAC groups to support "drill baby drill" friendly politicians. So long as that dynamic exists, it doesn't matter if…
Solar power is cheaper than oil, but it doesn't work 24/7. If you can find a way to work with that, switching to solar is already financially incentivised. Even if you can't, we're already seeing whole countries and regions saturating at 100% solar electricity during daylight hours, significantly reducing oil usage. It doesn't matter what the oil sellers want, because it's a buyer's market for energy when the sun is out, and they're not going to throw extra money at oil companies just because.
> Nothing will change until developed rich countries are starting to hurt. Ironic OECD countries actually REDUCED their emissions based on a peak in 2007 and continue to do so. Not reduced as a percentage of GDP or adjusted for population growth, but reduced in absolute levels. It's all China, but I guess it's cool to blame things on developed countries. There are literally 100k deaths in Europe that can be prevented…
China is some years behind our industrial development then undevelopment, and is building an entire USA of solar panels every year or whatever - can we expect them to quickly reduce emissions soon?
I thought the world and civilization would collapse because of carbon emissions. It's either serious or it's not. If it's serious then it doesn't really matter right?
It's like you're on a boat that sprung a leak and everyone grabs a bucket. But a few people choose to not help because it's not fair for whatever reason.
The paper doesn't seem to account for the reduction in sulfur emissions from ships, which was widely reported to be the cause for some of the recent warming?
Let's be real, this won't be solved by reducing consumption, only carbon capture technology (likely well into the future).
It's in no nation's interest, from a game theory perspective, to stunt their own growth to reduce emissions. If the US stops, Russia and China will destroy the west. If China stops, they'll never catch up technologically. Ditto for India. Smaller nations have even less incentive (they'll easily be conquered by neighbours), except for the ones surrounded entirely by friendly nations...
The main driver of this is human-produced CO2, and there are meaningful ways to reduce usage. -Switch to an electric vehicle -Migrate from gas appliances (range, furnace, water heater) to electric (induction, heat pumps) -If your power grid isn’t clean, add rooftop or balcony solar -Encourage friends and family to do the same
Reduce consumption of farmed animal products to zero.