this post was submitted on 06 May 2024
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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world.  About 1C of total warming.  Second chart:  about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability.  Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases.  About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

fuck them glorified predictive text bullshit generators

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

I just... this? This is what we're supposed to care about? Not the bunker fuel burning shipping industry? Not the US hitting all-time oil production records last year? No, it's "Big Tech" and their diesel burning servers! Turns out "Mac" meant Mac trucks this whole time?

Come the fuck on with this shit.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

Collectively we should be able to care about multiple things at once and also prioritze between them.

Even if data centers use mostly renewables, its not like those are actually so abundant that they would go unused. Its important to not just switch power generation but to actually also reduce power consumption, especially when its such low hanging fruits as AI.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Zero fossil fuels means zero in every industry.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah, which is a solid goal! I don't know if you know this though, but most data centers run on renewables. They're way cheaper. Thats why there's so many data centers in regions with hydroelectric power stations.

This reads as pretty blatant oil industry propaganda trying to shift focus away from them and onto the current thing trump has made it trendy to hate. Down with big tech, those polluters with their... entirely electric infrastructure? If you want to get pissed about this, go after crypto miners. AI actually does something, and sometimes its even something overall positive for humanity! Crypto are just leeches.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago

The energy mix used by datacenters varies a LOT.

There are a bunch running on hydropower in the US pacific northwest, but also a ton which were co-located with coal-burning power plants in Virginia and Ohio.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Beyond how it will contribute to the climate crisis in this way if it isn't run on green energy, if it isn't trained on heavy eco-friendly material things are going to get very extremely bad. It likely won't be. It's already dominated by tech bros, who are sociopaths.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 months ago

/sigh goodbye humanity