Global warming has accelerated significantly • Hacker News Board

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#921

Post by moffkalast » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 9:23 AM UTC

zahlman wrote: post #750

moffkalast wrote: post #651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst thing you can do when you're actively geoengineering is to abruptly stop doing it. So naturally we found a way we were already doing it and cut it immediately to make sure we fuck ourselves as much as possible :) I'm almost convinced it's intentional at this point, the rich are busy building their offbrand vault tec bunkers and starting random wars for no real reason. Longtermism nonsense over the today.

Airborne sulfur comes with its own negative environmental consequences, though.

Clearly worth the tradeoff of not making the worst catastrophe we've ever faced as a species exponentially worse?

I mean hell, piston engined airplanes use leaded fuel and crop dust it over everyone daily, but nobody cares as long as they get to fly them and that's a just minor money saving measure that causes a lot environmental consequences.

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#922

Post by hdgvhicv » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 9:24 AM UTC

breakpointalpha wrote: post #663

jtr1 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But the economy" is an out-of-date framing. The cost of renewables has been plummeting for well over a decade. New renewables are now cheaper than new fossil fuel plants in most of the world, and in many regions they're already competitive with or cheaper than simply running existing fossil fuel infrastructure. As modern wars in Ukraine and now Iran are increasingly demonstrating, they are not only cost effective bu…

In principle, you are right. Cheaper than coal renewables are winning. Don't forget though, that fighter jets can't operate on batteries.

Every mile you drive in an f150 steals fuel that should be going to American planes

Patriotic red blooded Americans use renewable energy

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#923

Post by moffkalast » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 9:29 AM UTC

lunias wrote: post #375

It's my understanding that if you look at a large enough historical time window, although warming has accelerated recently (and we are in part to blame); the Earth is still relatively cool compared to historical averages.

https://xkcd.com/1732/

Not during our civilization's existence.

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#924

Post by wolvesechoes » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 9:45 AM UTC

alex_young wrote: post #190

lambdaone wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. The obsession with demonizing AI/data centre loads seems to be a deliberate distraction from the much, much larger carbon loads of the economy at large relative to which IT power consumption is a tiny proportion.

Animal agriculture is around 15% of global emissions, and AI is probably .1% to .5%, but sure, stop using LLMs. That will solve the problem.

Yes, what a bright future where we feed our bodies with a soy slop, and our brain with AI slop.

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#925

Post by wolvesechoes » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 9:47 AM UTC

unglaublich wrote: post #110

pjmlp wrote: post #89

What a surprise with all the wars going on, and AI depleting Earth resources, what a change from about the pandemic era when everyone was into paper straws and cups and promising to be a better person, because that is what was going to change anything.

AI is nothing compared to automobiles and heating, construction and shipping. It uses a bunch of energy, but not so much compared to moving yourself around in a car of plane.

> AI is nothing compared to automobiles and heating, construction and shipping.

Let's stop building homes to live in and use motor vehicles for travel. Smartphone with LLM access will fulfill all our needs.

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#926

Post by youngtaff » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 9:54 AM UTC

tlogan wrote: post #378

youngtaff wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US is the largest historical emitter… responsible for something like 25% of all man made CO2 emissions

The entire west world contributes 28.8%. US is about 11%. [1] [1] https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2025/co2-em...

You’re quoting the figures for a one year

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#927

Post by unglaublich » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 10:03 AM UTC

moogly wrote: post #197

unglaublich wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI is nothing compared to automobiles and heating, construction and shipping. It uses a bunch of energy, but not so much compared to moving yourself around in a car of plane.

I would be fine if LLMs disappeared tomorrow, but if I couldn't heat my house, I'd freeze to death. But I guess some would argue that everyone needs to live in a city with district heating.

The heating of your house is worth the energy of many thousands of llm queries. So only turning down the thermostat by the smallest of steps would compensate your llm use.

So, no you don't have to freeze to death to easily compensate your llm use.

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#928

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 10:05 AM UTC

timr wrote: post #868

eykanal wrote: post #3

For those (like me) who don't know the authors, apparently they are well-published authors in the field of climate science whose work is very highly cited: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C39&q=gra... Not a perfect measure of whether this is a reputable article but at least readers should know this isn't from some randos in a basement somewhere.

Setting aside the names of the authors, this is a very bad paper. They take temperature data sets, "adjust" [1] them by attempting to remove the biggest recent factors (volcanism, solar and el nino cycles) affecting temperatures , then do a piece-wise regression analysis to look at trends in 10-year chunks. This is just bad methodology, akin to what a junior graduate student with a failing thesis might do to find sig…

They also don't seem to account for the reduction of sulfur emissions from ships, which is surprising given how widely this was reported even in mainstream media.

Is this an oversight (or "oversight") or something that is reasonable for some reason that would be so obvious to experts in the field that it's not worth mentioning?

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#929

Post by wolvesechoes » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 10:06 AM UTC

WarmWash wrote: post #174

ecshafer wrote: post #134

The issue with any significant steps to curbing the climate or environmental impacts with laws or treaties is always: But the economy. It creates an incentive where someone doesn't follow the laws, burn everything they can to accelerate their economy, and take industry from other countries. My proposal is thus: create a supranational treaty organization with a EPA like authority(or whatever the European equivalent is…

The real problem is that everyone has to sacrifice, but half the people think there is no problem and then other half thinks only corporations need to sacrifice (and are unwilling to sacrifice themselves).

1% of richest people produces as much as poorest 66%. Wealthiest 10% are responsible for 2/3 of warming effect since 1990.

It is not equal responsibility.

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#930

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 10:08 AM UTC

epistasis wrote: post #670

tarr11 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It says this in bold red at the top - "This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal." I am not a climate scientist - how should I think about this statement? Normally I am looking for some statement that shows a document has been vetted.

For non-specialists, I think the most important view on papers is to not view them as nuggets of truth, but communications of a group of people who are trying to establish truth. No single paper is definitive! Peer review is an important part of scientific publication, but it's also important for the general public to not view peer review as a full vetting. Peer reviewers look for things like reproducibility of the a…

Sometimes reviewers also look for whether the paper cites enough of their own papers, who is publishing it (regardless of whether the review is supposed to be anonymous or not), whether it clashes with a paper they're about to publish... science is just as full of politics and corruption (if not more) as any other field.