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The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

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Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#91

Post by mym1990 »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #59
smartmic wrote: post #18

It is important to keep reminding ourselves that climate change is a real problem for humanity and that each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions. It is a problem that requires solutions, but implementing these solutions involves so much inertia that it can sometimes be painful. And let's contrast that with the AI hype. It's more the opposite, a kind of solution t…

Unfortunately, more people seems to care about getting AI to play SimCity than the environment. Renewable energy technology is ready, right now today, to replace fossil fuels. All we have to do is start doing it, but the Oil lobby is just too strong apparently. There is no political will. I wish I was wrong, but I just don't see humanity pulling together to solve this one.

We are a planet of 8 billion people, interest will vary widely. Expecting everyone to swarm on the same issue at the same time is simply not how humanity has worked in the past. Innovation often happens because many people go different directions, testing what works and what doesn't. Getting AI to play SimCity may be a stepping stone to real life urban planning, or it may be nothing, who knows?

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#92

Post by mullingitover »

smartmic wrote: post #18

It is important to keep reminding ourselves that climate change is a real problem for humanity and that each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions. It is a problem that requires solutions, but implementing these solutions involves so much inertia that it can sometimes be painful. And let's contrast that with the AI hype. It's more the opposite, a kind of solution t…

> each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions.

I have to disagree here.

This idea of a consumer-level personal responsibility for the fossil energy industry's externalized costs is a lot like the plastic producers shifting blame for waste by saying that it's the consumers' fault for not recycling. It's transparent blame-shifting.

The fossil energy industry pulls the carbon out of the ground and distributes it globally. Then it buys and sells politicians and, through mass media, votes, to ensure they maintain the industry's hegemony.

You only have to look at the full-blown slide of the US into a despotic petrostate to understand the causes of the climate crisis.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#93

Post by ctoth »

smartmic wrote: post #18

It is important to keep reminding ourselves that climate change is a real problem for humanity and that each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions. It is a problem that requires solutions, but implementing these solutions involves so much inertia that it can sometimes be painful. And let's contrast that with the AI hype. It's more the opposite, a kind of solution t…

The concern about climate is well placed. Ripple et al. lay out a serious case that we may be closer to tipping cascades than models predict, with the Greenland Ice Sheet potentially vulnerable to tipping below 2°C warming, well before 2050.

But "invest an equal share of the resources currently being pumped into AI into climate" misidentifies the bottleneck. Marine cloud brightening could produce meaningful planetary cooling for roughly $5 billion per year at scale (NAS estimate). That's like what? 1% of what was spent on AI infrastructure last year?

The money exists. What doesn't exist is the political coordination to spend it.

The goddamn Alameda city council shut down a University of Washington MCB field test in 2024 because nobody told them it was happening on their property. Go look it up.

This's the actual bottleneck: governance, coordination, and political will, not capital.

When someone says "we should invest resources in X instead of Y," it's worth asking who "we" is and what mechanism they're proposing. AI investment is private capital chasing returns. You can't redirect it to climate by wishing. The implicit model, that Society has a budget and we're choosing wrong, assumes a resource allocation authority that doesn't exist. If you want to argue for creating one, that's a real position, but it should be stated openly rather than hidden inside "it would be sensible."

Also ... "AI won't solve it; it only makes it worse" is doing a ton of work! The energy consumption concern has real merit. But materials science, grid optimization, and climate modeling are direct climate contributions happening now. Google has saved energy in its datacenters ... using AI!

Blanket dismissal of an entire domain of capability isn't seriousness, it's pattern matching. (Ironically, there's a phrase for systems that produce plausible-sounding output by matching patterns without engaging with underlying structure. We're told to be worried about them.)

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#94

Post by lifis »

At least considering only temperature, it seems changes are never going to be irreversible since both stratospheric aerosol injection and intentional nuclear winter should always be able to cool down global temperatures

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#95

Post by maybelsyrup »

hackyhacky wrote: post #79
davidw wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Work on local things to make your own city better. Plenty of stuff that's not too difficult, even if it won't fix everything: * Multifamily housing is much more energy efficient. Is it legal to build throughout your city, or does zoning prevent it? * Is there good bicycle infrastructure so people don't have to drive for everything? * Does your city still have expensive parking mandates that lock in car dependency? Ge…

Individual habits will not be decisive in fighting climate change. Telling people to follow this advice will (a) inconvenience them in the short term (b) lull them to a false sense of security that they are fighting climate change (c) set them up for disappointment when climate change happens anyway, and (d) worst of all, these suggestions let the real perpetrators off the hook. If you want to see real progress on th…

> these suggestions let the real perpetrators off the hook.

This can't be said enough. It simply cannot be said enough. It cuts right to the heart of how we view the world in the west: as autonomous, separate individuals, with no communal counterweight and certainly no model of power (some entities in the world have vastly more power than others) We assume that because our constitutions grant us equal rights or whatever, we all have equal responsibility and equal power.

But polluters, the biggest sources of emissions, have way more power and way, way less responsibility. And yet we continue to tell ourselves to focus on our own individual behaviors to combat global heating. The effects are real, but tiny, and our elites continue getting away with our annihilation.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#96

Post by [deleted] »

smartmic wrote: post #18

It is important to keep reminding ourselves that climate change is a real problem for humanity and that each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions. It is a problem that requires solutions, but implementing these solutions involves so much inertia that it can sometimes be painful. And let's contrast that with the AI hype. It's more the opposite, a kind of solution t…

[deleted]

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#97

Post by jhrmnn »

hackyhacky wrote: post #79
davidw wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Work on local things to make your own city better. Plenty of stuff that's not too difficult, even if it won't fix everything: * Multifamily housing is much more energy efficient. Is it legal to build throughout your city, or does zoning prevent it? * Is there good bicycle infrastructure so people don't have to drive for everything? * Does your city still have expensive parking mandates that lock in car dependency? Ge…

Individual habits will not be decisive in fighting climate change. Telling people to follow this advice will (a) inconvenience them in the short term (b) lull them to a false sense of security that they are fighting climate change (c) set them up for disappointment when climate change happens anyway, and (d) worst of all, these suggestions let the real perpetrators off the hook. If you want to see real progress on th…

But individual behavior is not about preventing climate change, it’s about doing what’s right. It’s wrong to pollute the environment, one way or another. A single person not stealing won’t reduce the crime rate in a country yet it is the right thing to do.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#99

Post by fc417fc802 »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #76
Carrok wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've started composting. I'm sure that'll outweigh the average Vegas visitor's emissions. /s I'm being a bit facetious obviously, but it does feel a bit like tilting against windmills. We need policy and systemic changes, if we're relying on individuals to all collectively start doing the "right thing", we're sunk.

I make lots of compost for my own use. Composting is at best delaying carbon release. As soon as you stop recycling materials the carbon will be released to the atmosphere. In permaculture circles the goal is to close open loops of waste/resources. If you want to permanently lock carbon in your soil, and improve fertility, make biochar. Throwing charcoal in your compost is the easiest way to make it into biochar. It…

None of the loops are open in the sense that it's all within the earth system as a whole. The issue is extracting carbon from geological deposits. Stuff about farming and methane is temporary and short term.

I don't mean to suggest we shouldn't compost or recycle things. Just that such measures are only indirectly related to carbon emissions.

We either stop extracting hydrocarbons from deep within the crust or else the problem will persist. (I guess technically we could industrially sequester the equivalent but that would almost certainly defeat the cost-benefit of extraction.)

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#100

Post by Earw0rm »

reactordev wrote: post #47
Carrok wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've started composting. I'm sure that'll outweigh the average Vegas visitor's emissions. /s I'm being a bit facetious obviously, but it does feel a bit like tilting against windmills. We need policy and systemic changes, if we're relying on individuals to all collectively start doing the "right thing", we're sunk.

You laugh but if everyone changed just some of their behavior, we would be in a much better place. We used to reuse glass jars, now it’s plastic. We used to can goods, now it’s plastic. We used to use refillable bottles, now it’s plastic. We used to have car doors that went “thunk” when you slammed them shut, now it’s plastic. If we each are mindful of the amount of trash/litter/waste we produce and take an active st…

We used to live lifestyles that didn't require driving every day and flying eight times a year...
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