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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

#81

Post by discreteevent »

stavros wrote: post #63
breakyerself wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No. This is disingenuous. Something that consumes electricity doesn't care where the electricity comes from. Fix the power source, and you automatically fix every single consumer in existence at once.

I think your comment is the disingenuous one. We have no time left and "Fix the power source" is happening way too slowly in the real non-theoretical world. But what can happen in zero time is to not build another data center for something that nobody really needs.

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

#82

Post by vixen99 »

jfengel wrote: post #46
api wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP did not say this is what we were doing. Said this is what we should do. What we are doing is attempting to hold back progress on generation while subsidizing demand, which is literally the absolute dumbest possible thing. Unless you are the fossil fuel industry. Then it’s great.

It's also great if boiling the planet is your actual goal. I wouldn't have thought that it would be so popular, but apparently it is, and people can't get t done fast enough. I'm kind of a misanthrope so philosophically I'm good with working on wiping ourselves out. The fact that we're doing it in the dumbest possible way should feel poetic. Instead it's just kind of embarrassing.

Hyperbole does not help. Many countries are retreating from renewable promises. Make an argument for them and for instance, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam who are all turning their backs on renewables and increasing fossil fuel use. The Philippines are already using 60% coal and are making easier to increase production.

Indonesian Energy Minister: "I decided, let coal continue for now. This is about survival mode and efficiency. We must not sacrifice our people with high electricity prices.”. Fair to say that, given some of the highest electricity prices in the world, a popular wish in the UK is for Miliband to do likewise.

Show a route to renewables plus survival and there will be progress.

https://climatecosmos.com/blog/10-countries-dropping-their-n...

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

#83

Post by dopesoap »

stavros wrote: post #8
MSFT_Edging wrote: post #5

We may lose stable seasons for growing crops, but at least the chat bot can embed an ad into your question while you wait for your burrito taxi. What is the point of this convenience when it really seems to just be making people miserable and isolated? We're driving off a cliff, and our elected government has a death drive.

Stop focusing on energy usage and start focusing on energy generation. It doesn't matter how much energy we consume if it comes from renewables.

[dead]

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

#84

Post by goda90 »

jfengel wrote: post #42
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?

Those are less of a problem. The heat was coming from the sun anyway. The water condenses out, so long as you haven't also increased the overall temperature in other ways. The CO2, by contrast, is the gift that keeps on giving. It absorbs extra heat every day and hangs onto it. It doesn't condense or break down. If that PV went to displacing sources of greenhouse gas, it would be a benefit. If all it's doing is runni…

Not all heat from the sun stays in the atmosphere though. How much does photovoltaic impact albedo and radiance through the atmosphere compared to natural landscapes? Of course that's infinitely better than GHG emissions and we have a lot of opportunity to put PV over asphalt and such, but it should give us pause in the pursuit of more and more consumption.

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

#85

Post by Sharlin »

hilariously wrote: post #22
Sharlin wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not delude ourselves. Crypto and AI electricity use is bad, but it's a drop in the ocean compared to the banal, everyday carbon sources that really matter. Even Trump cannot make things much worse in the big picture (he's actually been pretty good at providing reasons to decouple even faster…)

He can continue to propagandize the lie to reduce people's belief in changing is good(and has), change laws to benefit oil companies (and has), and cause wars over oil(and has). Seems like he has plenty he can do to make the current situation worse.

And all that amounts to a tiny footnote in the carbon bookkeeping as long as people drive ICE cars, travel by air, eat beef, and heat or cool their homes with gas or coal or oil. But also, the economy at large is transitioning and there’s little that Trump can do about it. There’s no future in fossil fuels and Trump can’t change that. At best he can divert some money to his fellow crooks in the short term.

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

#86

Post by dalyons »

qsera wrote: post #48
anon7000 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Imagine if all the vehicles that run of fossil fules is converted into EV. What are the incentives in place to properly recycle the batteries? Does a new battery technology go into production before the technology to recycle it is production grade/economically viable? What happens when we are getting like a million EV batteries, globally per day, to dispose off? What happens when these batteries use vastly different…

“Caution” does nothing except ensure we keep spewing more co2 for longer and cooking the planet. There is no practical alternative to EVs. So let’s go all in as fast as possible please

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

#87

Post by sph »

otikik wrote: post #32
MSFT_Edging wrote: post #5

We may lose stable seasons for growing crops, but at least the chat bot can embed an ad into your question while you wait for your burrito taxi. What is the point of this convenience when it really seems to just be making people miserable and isolated? We're driving off a cliff, and our elected government has a death drive.

> your burrito taxi Which you are financing through a BNPL platform.

I just introduced a negligible, but non-zero amount, of carbon in the atmosphere to expand your unnecessary acronym into "Buy Now, Pay Later."

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

#88

Post by ajuc »

api wrote: post #59
ajuc wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 oce…

It will become an issue in 150-200 years even if we just continue on our current trajectory.

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

#89

Post by frankest »

Imagine an alien with extreme tech capabilities is pointing a heater at the earth. Now react appropriately:

- model and build temperature resistant crops.

- harvest energy from the heat

- create resilience in social governance to enable safer movement of people with education to enable quick adaptation.

- build energy resilience everywhere - including in and especially in desert areas.

- more constructive ideas.

Don’t:

- guilt your children into not having children to “protect the planet” from themselves.

- use your megaphones to racketeer the people making your food into paying you “indulgences” for producing useful stuff for you and other humans (thus making stuff needed by humans more expensive)

- use the problem to gather around with rich friends on fuel-hogging private jets while making others eat less to reduce emissions.

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

#90

Post by surgical_fire »

hokumguru wrote: post #30
Epa095 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why does per capita matter when it’s the total emissions that we actually care about? Wonderful, the United States uses more per capita than anyone else. That doesn’t mean anything in terms of total warming. Even if we cut to zero we still continue.

Because per capita means that each individual consumes a lot more than the average in the US.

Also, a bit portion of China's excessive growth in emissions is a byproduct of manufacturing shit for US consumers.

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