this post was submitted on 10 Aug 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.

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Excess memes and ‘reply all’ emails are bad for climate, researcher warns (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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"... research has now found that the vast majority of data stored in the cloud is “dark data”, meaning it is used once then never visited again. That means that all the memes and jokes and films that we love to share with friends and family – from “All your base are belong to us”, through Ryan Gosling saying “Hey Girl”, to Tim Walz with a piglet – are out there somewhere, sitting in a datacentre, using up energy..."

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 2 months ago (3 children)

I would love to see that number on a graph next to the energy consumption of training the next bullshit AI chatbot.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 months ago (1 children)

IMO, it's just more / another form of blame shifting.

"Look at how energy-wasteful sharing memes is, but don't look at the massive waste of power for all these useless chatbots" is just a rehashed "Shame on you for using a plastic straw".

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Let's call a spade a spade: "blame shifting" isn't precise enough. It's victim shaming in the form of consumer blame packaged in a virtue signaling wrapper. Just like the entire recycling concept, DARE, etc al. Fuck all of this bullshit that tries to point fingers at us plebs. The only "Heroes Work Here" signs should be on top of guillotines.

[–] bestagon 1 points 2 months ago

Engaging in a shared culture is killing the planet please just wake up, go to work, and go to sleep

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

And the ad industry, considering half of all consumer internet traffic is ads.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

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.