this post was submitted on 10 Mar 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.

Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:

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The Obscene Energy Demands of A.I. | How can the world reach net zero if it keeps inventing new ways to consume energy? (www.newyorker.com)
submitted 8 months ago by silence7@slrpnk.net to c/climate@slrpnk.net
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[–] stabby_cicada@slrpnk.net 10 points 8 months ago (1 children)

So I did a little math.

This site says a single ChatGPT query consumes 0.00396 KWh.

Assume an average LED light bulb is 10 watts, or 0.01 kwh/hr. So if I did the math right, no guarantees there, a single ChatGPT query is roughly equivalent to leaving a light bulb on for 20 minutes.

So if you assume the average light bulb in your house is on a little more than 3 hours a day, if you make 10 ChatGPT queries per day it's the equivalent of adding a new light bulb to your house.

Which is definitely not nothing. But isn't the end of the world either.

[–] Zink@programming.dev 2 points 8 months ago

I have a feeling it’s not going to be the ordinary individual user that’s going to drive the usage to problematic levels.

If a company can make money off of it, consuming a ridiculous amount of energy to do it is just another cost on the P & L.

(Assuming of course that the company using it either pays the electric bill, or pays a marked-up fee to some AI/cloud provider)