zerakith

I'm sure its small - "AI" is an unnecessary waste of resources when we can ill afford it. That said we have actual quantifiable targets (that are so tough because we've left it so late) for energy and emissions so it might still be the case that this also needs to change.

Sadly, ine of the things I hear quite a lot from people is the assumption that digital means it has no impact at all and they act accordingly to that assumption but when you add it up it is having a sizeable impact.

This is a consistent misunderstanding problem I wish people understood.

Manufacturing things creates emissions. It costs energy and materials. Something could have absolutely no emissions in usage and still be problematic when done on growing scales because the manufacture costs energy emissions and resources. Hard drives wear out and die and need replacing. Researchers know how to account for this its a life cycle assessment calculation they aren't perfect but this is robust work.

IT is up to 4% of global emissions and the sector is growing. People consistently act as if there is no footprint to digital media and there is. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666389921001884

Yes the headline is a little silly but we actually do need think strategically about the sector and that starts by actually realising it has an impact and asking ourselves what are the priorities that we went to save whilst we decarbonise the industry that supports it.

There's no wiggle room left - no sector or set of behaviours that can afford to be given slack. We are in the biggest race of our life's and the stake are incomprehensibly huge.

The answer to your questions are: yes it's a different baseline to the one chosen by the Paris agreement, different baselines are chosen for relevant to different elements of the issue. Likely the baseline chosen in your link is down to what reliable data they have and so they choose a baseline from a region of data they have rather than going to other sources. This website provides the latest years official record in Paris Terms I would expect the next one (2024) to be much closer to 1.5°C. On (2) I agree that current measurements suggest an instantaneous/yearly temperature around 1.5°C against the relevant baseline. On (3) you are right that the trend is unlikely to change because it comes from radiative forcing (emissions) that have already occurred so even with sudden zero human emissions we would see an increase or best case a leveling (before maybe long term it can decline as CO2 is naturally removed from the atmosphere or faster if humans find a way of doing so at scale). A trend however is already an average of several time points and you can see in the link you said that year on year variation on that number can be as high as say ~0.3°C. This comes about from non-GHG forcing elements of the system (such as El Niño) that add natural variation. So already you could see 2019-> dropped by 0.2°C even though the trend is up. So you could expect us to potentially drop back down to say 1.2°C for a few years before it goes up again. The link above suggests the best data we have we would likely breach 1.5°C by 2031 so not long at all.

This sounds like a pedantic point but it's actually quite important for the climate and the confusion stems back to how the problem and climate science was chosen to be communicated. Temperature was chosen in part because it's a proxy variable of other parts of the system that are what control the system impacts and it was felt that Temperature would be "naturally understandable" by the general population (and politicians...). This had a bit of a backfire because 1.5°C is not a lot of different when considered in say a room and it highlights why this variable is different and why it matters that it's decadal average rather than a yearly. So if temperature is only a proxy then what are the variables that control the outputs? One key one is the total heat energy stored in different earth systems and there the size of the storage medium matters (so the reason 1.5°C on the world is a lot but on a room isn't is because the sheer volume of the earth you have to have a huge amount more energy). The other place where Surface Temperature adds confusion and complexity is because of the oceans: the oceans have been absorbing some of the heat and that hasn't always been visible to us (as we don't live in the ocean) so if we stopped emitting today the ocean may then deposit some of that heat energy back into the atmosphere so it's a complex interaction. What we really need to know is what the additional level of radiative forcing and how much additional heat energy swimming about in Earth's systems - that is what will control the experience we have of the climate. Greenhouse gases act to stop Earth cooling back down by radiating out to space which is why the effect is cumulative so the difference between a sustained year on year 1.5°C and something that averages less but has a few years of 1.5°C is quite high because they will be different amounts of total energy in the system as a result.

So, the short answer is that the Paris agreement targets are set on the basis on what a decadal rise of 1.5°C by 2100 (i.e the average 2090-2100) means in terms of the excess heat energy and radiative forcing in the system. The limit itself is somewhat arbitrary driven in part by the fact we were at ~1°C when it was agreed and 2°C seemed like a reasonable estimate of something we might be able to limit it to. The origin of 1.5°C rather than 2°C is actually quite interesting and highlights a lot about how climate change policy has been decided but this post is long enough.

This is a good point. The sheet apocalyptic magnitude of the problem means that every tiny amount of change matters. Billions will die. There probably isn’t a way to prevent that completely anymore. But if we can tick things down by a fraction and save a few hundred thousand people, preserve a species of food crops that would have gone extinct, IDK what the exact outcomes are but the point is tiny changes will have a massive impact and they’re important even if the situation is dire.

Agreed, I think this is the right way of thinking about it and the risk of having communicated it to the world as a binary target of 1.5C/2C we risk people completely switching off if/when we finally confirm we've breached it when the reality is it should embolden us further not demoralise us. This is my number one concern at the moment. I would also add that what we doing is "pushing" a system away from it's natural equilibrium and if we push hard enough we might find that we find changes in the system itself which are very hard or impossible to undo. So it's more than just more increase more damages it's also about risks of fundamentally and permanently changing the system.

As an analogy think of the ball in the well of this local minima and we push it back and forth. If we hit it hard enough rather than come back it goes and finds another minima which is just a whole different system than we are used to. These are sometimes called tipping points and the frustrating thing about the complexity of the systems is we don't and can't know for sure where those points are (although we do know they increase heavily as you move above 1.5C upwards). They by definition are hard to model because models are built up from prior experience (data) and these are in part unprecedented changes in the atmospheric records.

I haven't mentioned "negative emissions" technologies but it is worth saying in principle you could have a situation where we are able to do significant negative emissions and that might mean we could end up with 1.5C in 2100 whilst having a period of time above it but negative emissions technologies could be a whole other rant. Worth noting though that lots of the pathways that show we could just about keep to 1.5C do rely on negative emissions to different degrees (though also the pathways are limited in how much they think we might be able to push our economic systems).

I see this misconception a lot and it's really unfortunate. We aren't at what climate scientists call 1.5°C. Being at 1.5°C in the means the average anonomly being over 1.5 for a period of decades. It isn't just a case of scientists being cautious it a completely different impact in the climate. It implies different amounts of impacts and different levels of heat energy in the whole system.

Yes we have hit 1.5°C over the last 12months partly down to el nino which is expected to subside shortly. Though there is some discussion about whether this year was an expected randomly anonomly or whether it suggests some feedback loop that's been underestimated but we can't know until enough time has passed (maybe a year).

All that just means both that the impacts we are already saying are less worse than you'd expect at long term 1.5°C and therefore we should be extremely worried but also that we have factored that in in our estimates of what outcomes are possible (though the 1.5°C window is increasingly narrow because as you say we still have our foot on the gas). So there is still time to make an impact and every fraction of a degree and kg of CO2 matters.

I'm not really sure that's true. Labour has also downgraded its climate ambitions and ruled lots of necessary change out in favour of promising technosolutions. That means when change is needed the expectations have not been managed and we risk a megabacklash. The victory is dramatic and large but mainly due to FPTP. The victory is very shallow beneath the surface with lots of marginal seats and in lots of them Tory+Reform share is bigger than the labour share.

We can absolutely enjoy this moment but the big fight for climate I think has only just begun in the UK.

Just to be clear I wasn't being feacious genuinely curious as to the specifics as I'm not as familiar with haulage.

I suspect there is an argument that we've made cargo transport too cheap and its skewed the economics of local vs outsourced production.

My preference would be pantograph systems on the motorways and main routes which we could roll out quite quickly and remove the majority of emissions coupled with a systemic look at our material needs and production capacities locally with a view to lowering volumes

The Silvertown tunnel (and lower thames crossing) in London would be a good example where we are rebuilding our infrastructure along the lines of sustained and increased haulage along certain routes at great public expense so I guess this could be considered an indirect subsidy.

What subsidies do they get?

I acknowledged this in my last paragraph. We should care about value though and we need to fight for that value to be something positive and meaningful (human and non-human health and wellbeing is a good start imo) not just shareholders.

Ultimately, there is a lot flawed in carbon accounting systems but we do need measures that allow us to assess if individuals, organisations and nations are doing enough and importantly articulate what pathways to zero emissions look like and that does mean trying to work out which processes are producing something we want with low or no emissions or not.

Sorry for delay I wanted to take the time to respond to you properly because I've probably thought similar to you at some point in my life and I want to explain how understanding what is happening has shifted that.

Yes, you are right the analogy isn't perfect. Loss is part of change and change is a permenant. You are right that species and human history and culture has gone through both action and inaction from humans. My comment was about my own realisation that I (and probably wider society) was guilty of placing reverance and value too much on the human artifacts and not on the incredible natural history (the web of life that we all rely on) that we are losing. I looked at my feelings of potential loss about Van Gogh and questioned why I didn't feel that way about our natural history and living beings we are losing daily and could stop destroying if we wanted to. So, you are right that losing the links to our human past would be tragic and we should try and preserve it* but the same is as true if not more true of our natural history. We are not separate from the climate and ecological systems we've evolved and developed in and whilst we could survive without links to our human history being disconnected from our natural heritage causes a number or mental and physical harms (the science is only just really beginning to understand these connections) and ultimately we rely on (e.g. food and clean air).

What I would say is that I think what you articulate is climate denial here. I realise, unfortunately, its an emotive term and I mean this in the way denial is talked about with respect to grief (which is what climate change is about to be honest coping with loss). You say that things always come and go and will regardless of our level of action. Whilst that is a truism it misses an important understanding of what's happening. We are not just losing a few species or ecosystems here we are actually drastically changing the ratio of the rate of which things come and go. I.e. we are massively upping the rate at which things go whilst also limiting the rate at which they can come. Even this is an understatement unfortunately because what we are actually doing is pulling so hard on so many strands of the web of the life (Earth's natural living systems) that the web itself is at risk of coming apart. Earth's living system as a whole is as far as we know intrinsically unique to the whole universe and if we don't manage to stem this collapse all those intrinsically unique human artifacts will likely be lost or in the worst case there won't be much life to reflect on it. Its worth once again reiterating that the risk they took to the rocks was mindblowingly low espcially relative to other risks.

On their strategy I agree this is where there is room to start having a discussion about Just Stop Oils actions but we can't do that I don't think unless we start with the acknowledgement that their assessment of the stakes is valid and correct and that if effective their action (and tbh action that took real non trivial risk with Stonehenge) would be overwhelming worth it.

For what its worth I do think their theory of change is flawed and their self-care of their activists is lacking but if their aim is solely to keep climate change on the agenda with more people pushing for change they are succeeding (people hate them whilst they think about climate change and spend time on the internet and in person discussing climate change and what should and shouldn't be done). The flaw I think is that they believe in an idealised vision of democracy where change happens when enough ordinary people want it whereas the reality is that public pressure is only one component of change espciaily when an issue is as complex and "spinnable" as climate change.

This is already too long so I won't go into it but I also don't think this issue boils down to a game of political chicken with governments. One of the challenges is the climate change is so sprawling and complex it brings up challenges to across lots if different scales and disciplines. The solutions are fundamental to our human story not just small technocrat shifts. There is no area of human activity that isn't upturned by climate change and that ibudes archeology and anthropology.

Finally, if you are interested in learning about where I and others are coming from and the scale of our problems and challenges I recommend the following books:

• The Patterning Instinct by Jeremy Lent. This covers human history and we have created meaning and how it links with the environment and interconnects with the current issues we face
• Inflamed: deep medicine and he anatomy of injustice by Rupa Marya and Raj Patel. Whilst not directly about climate change it does talk about how interconnected our health is with natural systems and how failure of connection to them leads to amoung other thing inflammation and disease.
• The climate book by Greta Thunberg. I haven't actually read this but I know a number of the experts involved in areas that overlap with mine and I trust them. It might be guilty of focussing on the technical aspects of the issues rather than the human stories I think are more important which is why place it lower.

• There's a lot of discussion to be had about Stonehenge particularly and how its been prioritised to be "preserved" at the cost and neglect of the surrounding archaeology. It also sad that none of the discussion and worry about potential risk to it covered the fact that the government is pushing ahead with sacrificing the wider site to car culture ( big underground new road, believing in the myth that more lanes stop traffic rather than the opposite). If we truly cared about that era of British and global history we would doing a lot more than "preserving" a few rocks which the Victorian moved about and romanticised anyway.

The idea is GDP is a measure of activity. So using per GDP allows you to see the efficiency which you are producing "value". That's not a terrible idea in general but it accepts a very narrow definition of value.

GDP is a really flawed measure of how well a society is performing. I wonder what it would look like if we used Gross National Happiness or Total Quality Life Years. Could also think about ecosystem health or biodiversity as a valuable output of a country but that's highly linked to CO2 emissions so wouldnt be meaningful.

Also worth saying whilst per capita is absolutely important as a measure for us to understand the performance of human economic systems the earth systems only respond to gross total emissions.

Lots of people seem to hate this and I do on some level get it. I'd be happy to talk about whether its a winning strategy or what alternatives there are (I'm not sure personally its the optimum form of activism)

What I would say is the evidence suggests:

• General public do seem to hate this stuff.
• There is a relatively little spill over from the organisation to the wider issue (as in people think these guys are idiots but don't link to climate change or environmentalism more generally).
• It is evidenced to increase the saliance and perceived importance of climate change I.e. people hate them but spend more time thinking climate change is serious than before.

Lastly, what I would say is from my own visceral reaction to the Van Gogh painting: I felt a huge and sudden feeling of cultural loss. That something of our heritage was at risk and we may lose it and initially I was angry and sad but I realised that we are routinely doing this everyday with lost species. Heritage we haven't even been able to document yet. All that is to say it maybe we have a discussion about what the best activism is and who we need to influence and how (I think we need to do better than just think we need everyone on side) but what we shouldn't do is entertain for a moment that the scale of this action isn't proportional and valid to what we face. We are hurtling towards a cliff edge and some people still have their foot on the accelerator. This is the equivalent of worrying about a vase in the boot. I want to save it too but at the moment we are endangering it more through business as usual than through some cornflour.

I won't rehash the arguments around "AI" that others are best placed to make.

My main issue is AI as a term is basically a marketing one to convince people that these tools do something they don't and its causing real harm. Its redirecting resources and attention onto a very narrow subset of tools replacing other less intensive tools. There are significant impacts to these tools (during an existential crisis around our use and consumption of energy). There are some really good targeted uses of machine learning techniques but they are being drowned out by a hype train that is determined to make the general public think that we have or are near Data from Star Trek.

Addtionally, as others have said the current state of "AI" has a very anti FOSS ethos. With big firms using and misusing their monopolies to steal, borrow and coopt data that isn't theirs to build something that contains that's data but is their copyright. Some of this data is intensely personal and sensitive and the original intent behind the sharing is not for training a model which may in certain circumstances spit out that data verbatim.

Lastly, since you use the term Luddite. Its worth actually engaging with what that movement was about. Whilst its pitched now as generic anti-technology backlash in fact it was a movement of people who saw what the priorities and choices in the new technology meant for them: the people that didn't own the technology and would get worse living and work conditions as a result. As it turned out they were almost exactly correct in thier predictions. They are indeed worth thinking about as allegory for the moment we find ourselves in. How do ordinary people want this technology to change our lives? Who do we want to control it? Given its implications for our climate needs can we afford to use it now, if so for what purposes?

Personally, I can't wait for the hype train to pop (or maybe depart?) so we can get back to rational discussions about the best uses of machine learning (and computing in general) for the betterment of all rather than the enrichment of a few.