Comment by MSFT_Edging
4 hours ago
We may lose stable seasons for growing crops, but at least the chat bot can embed an ad into your question while you wait for your burrito taxi.
What is the point of this convenience when it really seems to just be making people miserable and isolated?
We're driving off a cliff, and our elected government has a death drive.
Worse, they have a "i want to flee responsibility" drive. You can see it in there eyes, when they hold press conferences, while having on the paper the verbose "you are absolutely right". They want the perks, not the responsibility that comes with power.
"This is AI's fault"
- People in automobiles.
> your burrito taxi
Which you are financing through a BNPL platform.
I just introduced a negligible, but non-zero amount, of carbon in the atmosphere to expand your unnecessary acronym into "Buy Now, Pay Later."
But later you'll save mental tokens when reading "BNPL" instead of "Buy now, pay later".
The financing for the Alameda-Weehawken burrito tunnel got stolen to build a bridge.
Which burrito? The one which couldn't be mad because there is not food?
That's why it has to come by taxi.
Also our unelected culture.
2 more weeks til "stable seasons" collapse. Good thing greenhouses have existed for millenia.
Who’s paying to build them?
if you are using that chatbot, you are also a part of the problem, just saying
their product wouldnt run if they had 0 users
Unfortunately in this real life iterated prisoner's dilemma, half of everyone is vocally defecting, so you not using the chatbot is hurting you whilst others get ahead.
jesus will save us
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Stop focusing on energy usage and start focusing on energy generation. It doesn't matter how much energy we consume if it comes from renewables.
Which is why we have just paid billions of dollars to cancel a renewable power project. And are imposing extra fees on cars that can be driven on renewable energy.
So, now I'm focused. I'm very focused.
> we
Maybe America, not many countries on earth, especially in Asia which are full steam ahead on renewables, pun intended.
OP did not say this is what we were doing. Said this is what we should do.
What we are doing is attempting to hold back progress on generation while subsidizing demand, which is literally the absolute dumbest possible thing.
Unless you are the fossil fuel industry. Then it’s great.
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It does matter because of the side effects (pollution, etc.). The environment and how it affects humanity is a complex system with many variables. Both generation and consumption are in there.
We're talking about global warming specifically here, though. Cars and planes should be a much bigger worry than AI power usage.
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Renewables are not without impact. We shouldn't consume mindlessly just because we might eliminate fossil fuels some day.
What good does PV generated energy make if all that energy is used to generate heat and evaporating water?
Those are less of a problem. The heat was coming from the sun anyway. The water condenses out, so long as you haven't also increased the overall temperature in other ways.
The CO2, by contrast, is the gift that keeps on giving. It absorbs extra heat every day and hangs onto it. It doesn't condense or break down.
If that PV went to displacing sources of greenhouse gas, it would be a benefit. If all it's doing is running the plagiarism machine while we burn more and more "clean" coal, then we are in deep, deep trouble.
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That’s what solar energy does when it hits the ground or the oceans. It turns into heat or evaporated water. The latter is why it rains.
Harnessing it and piping it through extra steps only to end up as heat does nothing to the planet’s heat balance. All human energy use is tiny compared to total global solar flux. Like not even 1%.
The data center water issue is a municipal management problem. The problem is that evaporative cooling is cheaper. If data centers are using too much water to the point that it’s causing problems for homes or agriculture, it means they are not being charged enough for that water. Charge them more and they will suddenly shift toward more closed loop cooling.
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It does matter because for now renewables are manufactured mostly with coal and oil
EDIT: I'm not a renewable skeptic, answers bellow
All of the cradle-to-grave studies I've seen about greenhouse gas emissions for renewables versus coal/oil still indicate massive improvements.
This government meta study of 3,000 such studies puts PV solar at roughly 20x less emissions than coal.
https://docs.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/80580.pdf
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This doesn’t matter that much. Solar and batteries will last for decades with minimal maintenance and no input.
Any kind of fossil fuel generation means constantly going out and digging up new oil sources, shipping them around the world, and then burning them. So you invest a lot of time & money into something that disappears immediately and also heats up the environment.
Meanwhile, a solar panel just sits there for decades passively making energy with very few externalities.
Not to mention, recycling solar panels & batteries is getting cheaper & more effective by the day. The metal (and even oil!) you dug out of the ground to build them didn’t get burned up; a lot of it is still usable.
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They're manufactured once and then generate way more energy than was used to make them.
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Which is a tiny CO2 spend compared to the benefit, unless you dishonestly factor in manufacturing energy costs as coming from oil.