Comment by palata

Comment by palata 2 months ago

4 replies

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> and it’s completely clear to me that one side is getting it entirely wrong and spreading misleading ideas

What a great way to start an article. I get it as: "I am not open to listening to your arguments, and in fact if you disagree with me, I will assume that you are a moron".

It reminds me of people saying "planes are not the problem: actually if you compare it to driving a car, it uses less energy per person and per km". Except that as soon as you take a passenger in your car, the car is better (why did you assume that the plane was full and the car almost empty?). And that you don't remotely drive as far with your car as you fly with a plane. Obviously planes are worse than cars. If you need to imagine people commuting by car to the other side of the continent to prove your point, maybe it's not valid?

The fact is that the footprint of IT is increasing every year. And quite obviously, LLMs use more energy than "traditional" searches. Any new technology that makes us use more energy is bad for environment.

Unless you don't understand how bad the situation is: we have largely missed the goal of keeping global warming to 1.5C (thinking that we could reach it is absurd at this point). To keep 2C, we need to reduce global emissions by 5% every year. That's a Covid crisis every year. Let's be honest, it probably won't happen. So we'll go higher than 2C, fine. At the other end of the spectrum, 4C means that a big stripe (where billions of people live) around the equator will become unlivable for human beings (similar to being on Mars: you need equipment just to survive outside). I guess I don't need to argue how bad that would be, and we are currently going there. ChatGPT is part of that effort, as a new technology that makes us increase our emissions instead of doing the opposite.

ben_w 2 months ago

I take your general point, but:

> Except that it doesn't work if you don't drive your car alone (if you assume the plane is full of passengers, why not assuming that the car is, as well?)

These can be measured for averages. Lots of cars with one person in them, seldom cars fully packed; lots of planes fully packed, seldom (but it does happen) that the plane is almost empty.

> we have largely missed the goal of keeping global warming to 1.5C (thinking that we could reach it is absurd at this point).

Probably, yes; last year passed the threshold — it would be a pleasant *surprise* if that turned out to have been a fluke 14* years early.

* 14 because it would take 14 years for the exponential — seen for the last 30 years — for PV to replace all forms of power consumption; not just electricity, everything. But even then we'd also need to make rapid simultaneous progress with non-energy CO2 sources like cattle and concrete.

> around the equator will become unlivable for human beings (similar to being on Mars: you need equipment just to survive outside)

In so far as your bracket, sure; but there's a huge gap in what equipment you would need.

The comparison I often make is that Mars combines the moisture of the Sahara, the warmth of the Antarctic, the air pressure of the peak of Mount Everest, and the soil quality of a superfund cleanup site, before then revealing that it's actually worse on all counts.

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  • palata 2 months ago

    > These can be measured for averages. Lots of cars with one person in them

    Sure, but the point should be that we should strive to share cars, not that it's okay to take the plane! Especially given the second argument which is that you don't drive 1000km every time you take your car. The footprint per km is not enough: when you take the plane you typically go much further!

    > Probably, yes; last year passed the threshold

    That, plus the IPCC scenario that keeps us under 1.5C says that in a few decades, not only we won't be extracting any carbon anymore, but we will be pumping carbon underground faster than we are extracting it now! And that's with the IPCC models which tend to be optimistic (we measure that every year)!

    > 14 because it would take 14 years for the exponential — seen for the last 30 years — for PV to replace all forms of power consumption

    And you would have to take into account that PV today entirely relies on oil. We are going towards a world with less and less oil, and we don't know how it will impact our capacity of production for PVs. But probably it won't help.

    > In so far as your bracket, sure; but there's a huge gap in what equipment you would need.

    Sure. It was a quick way to say that the combination of humidity and temperature will be such that sweating won't help humans regulate their temperature. And when we can't regulate our temperature, we die. By any account, this means that billions of people will have to relocate, which means global wars (with entire countries moving with their entire armies).

    Now of course that would be infinitely better than trying to live on Mars, which is why it is preposterous to even consider Mars.

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    • ben_w 2 months ago

      > but we will be pumping carbon underground faster than we are extracting it now!

      While I know about "we need to sequester carbon", I thought the assumption was more for the last 10% (which makes sense, last 10% of anything is often expensive), not >100% of current?

      > And that's with the IPCC models which tend to be optimistic (we measure that every year)!

      Indeed, unfortunately.

      > entirely relies on oil

      I don't believe "relies on" is correct: while I would agree that e.g. plastics are made from oil, that oil currently powers some of the energy generation capacity used for the manufacturing plants that make the panels, that shipping and air transport are at present almost entirely oil-based, these are not "entirely relies on oil", they are "the economy in which they emerged happens to have been built on oil".

      This is importantly different, because as renewable energy ramps up, the CO2 emissions resulting from each of these steps also goes down — even for the plastic, as the carbon in the oil itself is much more valuable as plastic than as a fuel waste product.

      > By any account, this means that billions of people will have to relocate, which means global wars (with entire countries moving with their entire armies).

      Aye.

      Lots of room for massive disasters there, even if it were not for the fact that at least one affected area already has nukes.

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      • palata 2 months ago

        > not >100% of current?

        I am not completely sure about the exact numbers, but my understanding is something like this: currently we extract 7 billion tons of oil (or is it fossil fuels in general?) per year, and the IPCC scenario for 1.5C says that in a few decades we will have to not only be zero emissions, but also sequester 10 billion tons per year. So yeah, that's another way to say "impossible".

        > "the economy in which they emerged happens to have been built on oil"

        Sure, but... it's not clear at all if globalization the way it is now is even possible without oil. We currently use oil for transports because it is much denser. We can't move a supertanker with PV, for instance. Extrapolating the evolution of renewables from the last decade is definitely optimistic because we will have (that's just natural limits) and must use (if we don't want to reach 4C) less fossil fuel, so it will most definitely become harder and harder.

        I believe that we need as much renewables and nuclear as we can, because even that will not compensate for oil. So we will live in a world with less energy and a harder climate, that's a fact. The challenge now is to deal with it, and do as much as possible to keep as much energy as we can while preserving the climate as much as we can. This is the biggest challenge in the Human history, by far. And instead of focusing on that, we try to send a few people to Mars for no good reason...

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