Comment by palata
15 hours ago
> 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.
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.
> 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.