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Earth is now heating up twice as fast as in previous decades

newscientist.com

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Re: Earth is now heating up twice as fast as in previous decades

#51

Post by breakyerself »

stavros wrote: post #20
mathgeek wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does matter because of the side effects (pollution, etc.). The environment and how it affects humanity is a complex system with many variables. Both generation and consumption are in there.

We're talking about global warming specifically here, though. Cars and planes should be a much bigger worry than AI power usage.

Not when AI is directly resulting in increased greenhouse gas pollution. It's all of the above. Any source of greenhouse gas pollution is bad. Cars, planes, ships, AI data centers running on fossil fuel energy. It's all bad.

Re: Earth is now heating up twice as fast as in previous decades

#52

Post by burkaman »

leonidasrup wrote: post #7
jmclnx wrote: post #3

>If warming continues at this rate, humanity could breach the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C in 2028, even sooner than other research has projected. I wonder if we are already there :( I remember a year or 2 ago we breached 1.5C for a short period of time. Crypto mining was bad enough, now with AI and Trump, I expect it will happen sooner then later. We did this to ourselves. We had ~40 years of wa…

Who do you mean "we"? Look at the evolution of CO2 emisions in the past 40 years by region. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co-emissions-by-re...

I think "we" refers to "we human beings". That chart looks pretty similar to population growth by world region (with the notable exception of Africa). https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population-regions-with-p...

Re: Earth is now heating up twice as fast as in previous decades

#53

Post by ajuc »

api wrote: post #47
agilob wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What good does PV generated energy make if all that energy is used to generate heat and evaporating water?

That’s what solar energy does when it hits the ground or the oceans. It turns into heat or evaporated water. The latter is why it rains. Harnessing it and piping it through extra steps only to end up as heat does nothing to the planet’s heat balance. All human energy use is tiny compared to total global solar flux. Like not even 1%. The data center water issue is a municipal management problem. The problem is that ev…

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008EO28...

Waste heat from human energy use is a real problem, it does influence Earth's temperature, minimally for now, but it will only grow. And it will be MUCH harder to solve than global warming.

Re: Earth is now heating up twice as fast as in previous decades

#54

Post by simgt »

anon7000 wrote: post #36
simgt wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does matter because for now renewables are manufactured mostly with coal and oil EDIT: I'm not a renewable skeptic, answers bellow

This doesn’t matter that much. Solar and batteries will last for decades with minimal maintenance and no input. Any kind of fossil fuel generation means constantly going out and digging up new oil sources, shipping them around the world, and then burning them. So you invest a lot of time & money into something that disappears immediately and also heats up the environment. Meanwhile, a solar panel just sits there for…

Everything you wrote is plain obvious to anyone who looked into the topic. But come on, we don't have to change anything about our consumption because we'll eventually reach some solar punk utopia? That's the comment I was replying to.

Nothing for now tells us we can power our current needs with renewables only, however we know we can drive around in much lighter vehicles, fly much less, eat more local, buy less clothes, use compute for less stupid things in data centers.

Re: Earth is now heating up twice as fast as in previous decades

#55

Post by gmuslera »

It is not just twice as fast, the pressure to keep rising the rate is still building up. CO2 emissions keeps piling up for centuries, more sea ice is permanently melting, permafrost is thawing at an increasing rate. Positive feedback loops are making that that heating twice as fast happen at shorter periods.

And over that, there are jumps to new higher baselines like with happened in the previous El Niño, and will happen in the incoming monster one.

Re: Earth is now heating up twice as fast as in previous decades

#56

Post by ajuc »

leonidasrup wrote: post #7
jmclnx wrote: post #3

>If warming continues at this rate, humanity could breach the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C in 2028, even sooner than other research has projected. I wonder if we are already there :( I remember a year or 2 ago we breached 1.5C for a short period of time. Crypto mining was bad enough, now with AI and Trump, I expect it will happen sooner then later. We did this to ourselves. We had ~40 years of wa…

Who do you mean "we"? Look at the evolution of CO2 emisions in the past 40 years by region. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co-emissions-by-re...

WE buy stuff that WE oursourced to Asia and then WE blame them for producing it. WE also set the standard of living that is unsustainable if everybody on Earth achieve it.

What's your problem with the "we" word, again?

Re: Earth is now heating up twice as fast as in previous decades

#57

Post by irishcoffee »

Epa095 wrote: post #17
leonidasrup wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who do you mean "we"? Look at the evolution of CO2 emisions in the past 40 years by region. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co-emissions-by-re...

I find that the per capita graph is more informative https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?t...

Per capita doesn't mean nearly as much as total. If the countries above the US were instead on par or below the US as it relates to totals, we wouldn't have the same issue we have now.

Re: Earth is now heating up twice as fast as in previous decades

#58

Post by irishcoffee »

simgt wrote: post #19
leonidasrup wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who do you mean "we"? Look at the evolution of CO2 emisions in the past 40 years by region. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co-emissions-by-re...

Asia is producing all of our shit. Also: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co-emissions

And most all of it is actual shit. Literal garbage stacking up in landfills.

Re: Earth is now heating up twice as fast as in previous decades

#59

Post by api »

ajuc wrote: post #53
api wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s what solar energy does when it hits the ground or the oceans. It turns into heat or evaporated water. The latter is why it rains. Harnessing it and piping it through extra steps only to end up as heat does nothing to the planet’s heat balance. All human energy use is tiny compared to total global solar flux. Like not even 1%. The data center water issue is a municipal management problem. The problem is that ev…

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008EO28... Waste heat from human energy use is a real problem, it does influence Earth's temperature, minimally for now, but it will only grow. And it will be MUCH harder to solve than global warming.

If we tame fusion at scale this could become an actual issue in the far future. As it stands we have nothing that can out-scale solar or wind. Fission maybe if we went all in on breeders and stuff but that would not be cost competitive with renewables plus batteries. Breeder cycle fission is complex and expensive.

Hopefully if we get really good at fusion we will go LARP The Expanse with it instead of boiling the ocean.

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