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World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year

cnbc.com

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Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year

#51

Post by boxed »

_Algernon_ wrote: post #38
atleastoptimal wrote: post #6

I'm a technological accelerationist simply because I'm certain, with the 30 years of warming baked in from this point + the impossibility of carbon emissions lowering on average anytime soon, the only way to save the world's species, our state and growth of civilization and such is through technological advances, AI, terraforming, etc. There's no hope simply through austerity, things are too screwed already.

This won't work simply due to induced demand. We spend something like 2000x less energy per unit of light now than we did burning whale fat in the 1800s and all the energy saved energy simply goes into producing more light. Hoping for technology to solve this mess is the same as hoping that adding an additional lane to a congested highway will solve traffic. It won't.

That's just wrong on so many levels. First of all, creating light is irrelevant to the problem at hand. Secondly, LEDs have made your statement outright false as there's no one who lives in a house that packs their home with light enough to spend that energy budget AND KEEPS THEM ON AT NIGHT. Because they would GO BLIND.

So that's just the light thing. 100% wrong.

Saying technology can't solve the problem is speculative, as technology is a moving target. You just can't know what problems it can solve until it's too late and the problems are already solved.

Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year

#52

Post by smeej »

Fornax96 wrote: post #41

We're doomed. News like this drains my motivation to do anything at all, because it might all be for nothing anyway.

I don't want this to sound dismissive, but aren't we all "doomed" in the end anyway? How long does anything we do have an impact anyway? A generation? Two? Five? How many individual people have had an impact on the world five or more generations after they've died, as a percentage of the total population?

Were all those other people's lives meaningless?

I think you're grappling with a fundamental aspect of being mortal, not just one related to the climate.

Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year

#53

Post by boxed »

gitfan86 wrote: post #31
atleastoptimal wrote: post #6

I'm a technological accelerationist simply because I'm certain, with the 30 years of warming baked in from this point + the impossibility of carbon emissions lowering on average anytime soon, the only way to save the world's species, our state and growth of civilization and such is through technological advances, AI, terraforming, etc. There's no hope simply through austerity, things are too screwed already.

Why can't humanity survive an increase in 10 degrees? I understand polar bears or other animals that need specific levels of Ice or vegetation in specific areas, but humans are an extremely adaptive species. Edit: I'm getting a lot of responses. It seems like there is a general misunderstanding of what happened during the previous ice age. Humans existed during the previous ice age and humanity survived a major incre…

The previous ice age was 4 degrees below preindustrial. Just for scale.

Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year

#54

Post by 52-6F-62 »

gasparto wrote: post #20
atleastoptimal wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AGI will make the economy far more efficient, increase the rate of scientific innovation, etc. For example, some ancestor of alphafold could spark a revolution in genetic engineering, creating crops which are far more efficient and resilient, etc.

Technology won't save us. Hoping that someday soon^tm someone will come up with something that makes all the current mess go away is a dangerous path. In germany they call it 'Technologieoffen' - and even some political parties have written it on their flags. 'No need to implement changes now - someday God will decent and absolve us from all of our sins - until then party hard! #yolo' I'm all for accelerating researc…

Well put.

Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year

#55

Post by thelastgallon »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #6

I'm a technological accelerationist simply because I'm certain, with the 30 years of warming baked in from this point + the impossibility of carbon emissions lowering on average anytime soon, the only way to save the world's species, our state and growth of civilization and such is through technological advances, AI, terraforming, etc. There's no hope simply through austerity, things are too screwed already.

AI is power hungry, AI will accelerate carbon emissions. Expected ICT projects by 2030, energy demand will be 20%. This paper was before AI. If this is revised with the AI demand growth projections, its quite possibly a lot more. If Sam Altman starts on his $7T chip plan, that alone will add 10 - 20%.

[1] Chasing Carbon: The Elusive Environmental Footprint of Computing: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.02839.pdf

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39310563

Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year

#56

Post by FreelanceX »

Fornax96 wrote: post #41

We're doomed. News like this drains my motivation to do anything at all, because it might all be for nothing anyway.

There is no such thing as "doomed". Humanity is not going to disappear. We can either do better or worse, and there really is no limit to the "worse" side.

Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year

#57

Post by jmyeet »

Sure but for a brief period we created an awful lot of shareholder value.

In all seriousness, I expect the next century to be devastating. We will start to see massive climate-related migration and the resulting genocide and death as a result. Famine, war, natural disasters, that sort of thing.

Here's how I think the ultra-wealthy will shape the world: massive depopulation with people essentially reduced to indentured serfdom with employment largely being maintenance of massive estates. Any kind of class mobility will essentially be gone. That is the future so many are (unwittingly or not) working towards.

Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year

#58

Post by yodsanklai »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #6

I'm a technological accelerationist simply because I'm certain, with the 30 years of warming baked in from this point + the impossibility of carbon emissions lowering on average anytime soon, the only way to save the world's species, our state and growth of civilization and such is through technological advances, AI, terraforming, etc. There's no hope simply through austerity, things are too screwed already.

There's no hope simply through technology either. No technology in sight can address this issue, and certainly not in this time frame. And climate change is only one symptom, and maybe not the most worrying on. The root cause is constant growth in a finite world. It can't work.

Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year

#59

Post by jodrellblank »

gmuslera wrote: post #32
atleastoptimal wrote: post #6

I'm a technological accelerationist simply because I'm certain, with the 30 years of warming baked in from this point + the impossibility of carbon emissions lowering on average anytime soon, the only way to save the world's species, our state and growth of civilization and such is through technological advances, AI, terraforming, etc. There's no hope simply through austerity, things are too screwed already.

Dealing with very complex and large systems is hard, probably harder than our knowledge will be capable of this century, even if we keep accelerating. That is the world system, climate, life, cycles, feedback loops, and many other things that we probably are not aware yet (just check the number of recent discoveries to have a hint) as a very complex and interrelated system. Trying to have an "engineering" there and n…

But do you have a better idea? If you want meaning for people’s lives that rules out mass death and dictator demanded planet-wide austerity and reduction in lifestyle down to subsistence - even if anyone could enforce that, which is something people would go to war to defend themselves against. If you individually choose to consume less and own less that’s not enough to make a difference. Has there ever been a time in history where the world has deliberately returned to an earlier state in a positive and successful way (not war or disease setbacks) to model such a thing on, and in a way more planned than your “messing with it to see what happens”?

If we don’t pursue the same as we have now but less damaging and trying to reverse the damage, what else could we do that’s possible and not awful?

Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year

#60

Post by _Algernon_ »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #11
padjo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How on earth is AI going to help?

AGI will make the economy far more efficient, increase the rate of scientific innovation, etc. For example, some ancestor of alphafold could spark a revolution in genetic engineering, creating crops which are far more efficient and resilient, etc.

The difficult and limiting part of scienctific work isn't coming up with ideas (which is, at best, all a glorified Montecarlo chain autocorrect can do) but actually designing and performing good experiments.

Add to that the amount of junk papers that will be generated and published - through which all future scientists will have to sift - and AI in it's current form is much more likely to be a concrete block dragging scientific progress down.

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