Hello good day to you fellow Lemmy user, i will promply explain how it works. See, the hoax is to get you to spend money on you don’t need, while viewing corporations as eco-friendly whilst they utilize it as an excuse cheapen the cost of resources and give you worse products. Source here. Henceforth, the entire thing is in fact a hoax. Thusly I hope this clears up any confusion about us anti climate changers
Edit: Fellow lemmiers, why do you downdoot me today?
If only there were some body of governance that could regulate things for an entire society. Too bad mankind never had any tools like that. Oh well. Enjoy growing gills.
On the contrary, the issue remains that climate change doesn’t exist at all, conversely it is made up, a faux issue that benefits corporations. Ergo, you really should not worry about it, in my opinion (imo)
Where in the source that you linked does it say that a switch to electric stoves is an aspect of greenwashing?
Also to argue that is bad faith. Obviously corporations will want to greenwash themselves and provide us with cheap products. That’s their whole MO. However, that doesn’t mean that a product is bad de facto. That’s like arguing that because corporations producing solar panels have an interest in selling us solar panels, that solar panels are really actually not better for the environment than fossil fuels. I’ll give you credit for only forcing me to read a Bernie Sanders op ed, but your argument doesn’t make sense and your source doesn’t support it.
Cites source that opens with satire agreeing with their point but then explicitly says the opposite:
If this is what you believe I would respectfully disagree and I would urge you to get on the phone and call friends and family around the country to hear about what their communities are experiencing. I would also suggest that you check out (reliable) websites and take a look at what’s going on in virtually every part of the world. If you do, here’s what you’ll find. […]
Scientists look at a lot of things – gas trapped in ice, tree rings, glaciers, pollen remains, even changes in the Earth’s orbit – to study the natural changes in our climate going back millions of years. What these natural changes tell us is that it normally takes thousands of years for the earth to warm just a couple of degrees. The temperature increases we’ve seen in just the past century should have taken almost a thousand years.
Are you really trying to tell me that a good solution to our hollowed-out working class AND the climate crisis is to transition as rapidly as possible to renewable energy and sustainable tech that we design, develop, and produce in our own country???
You sound like a communist grrrrrr!
(I hope my sarcasm comes across. I’m very tired as I type.)
Unfortunately, good induction cooktops are not available everywhere. And certainly not available for cheap. Where I am, there are no 4 hob cooktops available.
Also, induction and electric cooktops need cookware that has flat bottom. However, constant heating and cooling of cookware means over time, the bottom will develop a curve for most of them.
This unfortunately means that gas stoves are not going anywhere, at least in Asia and Africa which are cost sensitive markets.
India has banned AliExpress, Banggood etc for years.
Also there are some available on Amazon but those hobs have a bad reputation here because they’re mostly used by college students living in hostel.
And finally, even if my parents agreed to get one, we’ll have to do kitchen remodelling because the kitchen counter doesn’t have any wall sockets for it.
It’s really wild how committed dumb people are to receiving Darwin awards for them and their families.
“Vaccines don’t work and are a hoax, and it’s unrelated people who agree with me are dying from COVID at a higher rate.”
“Liberals want to take away my red meat every day of the week and limit how much high fructose corn syrup soda I drink in a day, but screw them. Unrelated, my whole family has diabetes and older members strangely have heart disease and colon cancers…”
People who treat science as a dirty word really seem to have higher all cause mortality. So bizarre and unexplainable.
The big food companies and healthcare industry want to keep you alive and consuming as long as possible. How shut you feel in the meantime doesn’t affect their bottom line as long as you don’t figure out the connection.
But the healthy people are subsidizing their shirt eating habits with our insurance rates and Medicare taxes. So Darwin and Maddie don’t get a chance to fix this problem and we end up baking our planet.
There’s only three examples in there, one of which was a true ban but already overturned, and the other two are changes to code that will ban them situationally in the future for new buildings, and aren’t even in effect yet
They’re literally not banned according to that article
“Global daily mean temperatures never exceeded 1.5-degree Celsius (°C) above pre-industrial levels prior to 2000 and have only occasionally exceeded that number since then,” the researchers noted. “However, 2023 has already seen 38 days with global average temperatures above 1.5°C by 12 September—more than any other year—and the total may continue to rise.”
I’ll tell you the best part, and it’s irreversible
The Gulf Stream really is weakening, a new study confirms: a finding which has profound implications for one of the biggest weather systems on our planet. When the Gulf Stream changes, so does the climate
Honestly, while it’s very much an unpopular opinion, at this point I think it’s unconscionable to add to that next generation and I definitely secretly judge my peers who do so as making an incredibly selfish decision likely dooming that child to a quite depressing future by the time they reach adulthood themselves.
Also, one of the worst things you can do for the environment in a developed nation is have a child.
Yeah, I’ve had a hobby over the past few years looking into the history of a particular apocrypha text, and its antinatalism is one of the more interesting features, with a great line like this:
A woman in the crowd said to him, “Lucky are the womb that bore you and the breasts that fed you.”
He said to [her], “Lucky are those who have heard the word of the Father and have truly kept it. For there will be days when you will say, ‘Lucky are the womb that has not conceived and the breasts that have not given milk.’”
This line is broken up into two different parts in the gospel of Luke (11:27 and 23:29) but the inherent parallelism makes me think it was originally a call and response as it then appears in the Gospel of Thomas above.
You also have the antinatalism in one of the surviving lines from the lost Gospel of the Egyptians where Salome asked “how long will death continue?” And the response was “as long as women bear children.” Followed by her asking if she’d done well in not having any.
It’s interesting how across history it’s inherently a position that dooms itself to obsolescence when it appears due to adherents dying out without passing it on, even if the inherent merit of it remains true from one age to another.
So we socially have a collective anchoring bias towards seeing procreation and “be fruitful and multiply” as such a good thing, even though this is simply a platform with an inherent survivorship bias and not necessarily actually a good thing at all.
I could not have worded it better myself. It is absolutely a survivorship bias. Those who believe it is good to have children will have children and pass on those beliefs, while those of us who recognize the inherent ills of procreation do not.
And then due to the relatively small number of us, we are written off as psychopaths or pessimists for acknowledging the realities of the situation.
It’s sad, and it’s extremely annoying. But at the end of the day, I’m at least doing my part by not throwing another person unwillingly into this mess to be both a perpetrator and victim
It’s pretty arrogant to assume that your pessimistic outlook on the future is the only valid or reasonable one. Human quality of life, on average, has pretty consistently improved since the industrial revolution.
I’m hopeful that as a greater proportion of people aren’t scrambling to survive day to day more of us can turn to the issues of environmental protection and remediation.
Me choosing to hope for a Star Trek future is no less valid than your belief in the inevitability of the Mad Max future.
Broadly, human quality of life has pretty consistently improved for as long as there’s been humans actually.
It’s happened faster than before in the past 100 years.
It’s happened quite a lot over just the past 20 on many measures.
It’s accelerating rapidly.
But alongside that acceleration and improvement has been knowingly playing a dangerous game in maximizing short term gains in exchange for long term consequences on which we developed technologies to increase the potential debt we were taking on for short term rewards.
Perhaps there will be a deus ex machina that averts disaster and delivers us from paying those debts we’ve brought on ourselves.
I too hope that’s the case.
But to me it’s irresponsible and presumptuous to gamble somebody else’s future on that hope.
“The world is going to end” has been a line for as long as there’s been lines to be written down.
And yes, it’s consistently a false prophecy.
But “not one stone will be left of these buildings around you” tends to be correct given a long enough time scale and in places in the world today it becomes true for neighborhoods or cities literally overnight.
The world may or may not end. But what we really need to worry about is the survival of civilizations under significantly increasing pressures. Because “the end of civilization” is potentially much, much worse to go through than the end of the world. The sun explodes? It’ll be over quick. There’s famine so bad people start eating their neighbors? Nuclear fallout poisoned the land around you? The oceans die?
Maybe not the best environments to raise a child, even if humanity overall will ultimately survive.
A baby born today will have microplastics inside their body when born and we’ve seen the most rapid change in global environment in millions of years, seeing changes that previously took tens of thousands change in decades. And they’d be born into a world with a so called “Doomsday clock” at a second away by scientists symbolically showing how close we could come to an end for an entirely different reason from why many other scientists today think we have less than a century of civilization.
The past performance may no longer be the best predictor of future returns.
I think we agree on the state of the world, and even that civilisation is worthy of continuation. So the question is, which is more likely to end civilisation, an entirely preventable apocalypse that we already have all the tools needed to perfect against without even materially losing quality of life?
Or no children ever being born again? Because I was responding to people suggesting that this was the only reasonable option.
Individual choices not to have children seem extremely unlikely to suddenly reflect a universal avoidance of having children, and given the world was working pretty fine with populations of only a billion people in the past, especially given automation is coming along which can replace a large number of people within the workforce, even a global drop in population to 50% or 20% of what it is today would likely be more than fine. Sure, a drop to 0% for a prolonged time would spell the end of humanity, but that assumes conditions and forecasts don’t improve such that people resume having kids.
As for “we already have all the tools needed to protect against without any material loss of quality of life” - not sure what hopium you rely on, but that’s patently not the case for most of the existential threats we face.
In theory we have had the technology to end all wars and have peace on earth since at least the invention of the drum circle and singing Kumbaya. Weirdly that hasn’t happened yet.
The existence of theoretical solutions is very different from the probable solutions given the various complex competing interests and short-sighted myopia dominating the majority of decision makers.
You said it was unconscionable to have children, so by your metric no-one should have children. If you’d like to walk that back and concede you were being hyperbolic feel free to so!
Again, I agree with you, I agree that a smaller population would be a Good Thing. But the shock to society/civilisation of even a 50% reduction in birthrate could be just as savage as the impacts of climate change. We’d be back to encouraging elders to commit suicide rather than being a burden on society.
I also think that there’s not a lot of point to civilisation if we aren’t aiming for people to be happy and fulfilled, and for a lot of people raising a family is the biggest contributor to their happiness and fulfillment. You dismissing that of hand and judging those people for wanting what makes them happy seems pretty mean and uncaring.
The existence of theoretical solutions is very different from the probable solutions given the various complex competing interests and short-sighted myopia dominating the majority of decision makers.
Again, I agree! But I do think that the existing technical solutions should be proof against the despair that you are peddling.
Yes, I agree, right now no one should have children. If in a decade we have benevolent AIs doing work for everyone and universal basic income and peace on Earth, this should probably be reassessed. But as of this moment right now, everyone should not have children. What I’m saying is that your argument this would have higher odds of disaster than other things is baseless as we both know that not everyone will stop having children even if they should.
We’d be back to encouraging elders to commit suicide rather than being a burden on society.
We literally already are back at that with some of what’s going on with the euthanasia program in Canada in practice, even if that wasn’t in the intended design.
for a lot of people raising a family is the biggest contributor to their happiness and fulfillment
Sure about that?
Most people think of their children as making their lives better. Yet many studies have found that those without children value their lives more than those with children.
Well I’ll keep in mind that cures for cancer in mice should be proof against despair should anyone I know or love come down with it.
Yes, if your loved one comes down with a cancer that can be cured by applying existing technologies, not ones that have been tested in mice, but ones that are currently being used successfully to treat patients you should not despair!
Worry? Stress? Generally be concerned? Fucking riot if the government starts limiting/preventing access to that treatment? Yeah sure, that would be a healthy response. But despair? No way!
Oh, so there are scalable technologies to bring climate change back to decades earlier levels in existence already and not just in theory in research? Is that what you’re claiming?
Not to reverse current climate change, but we aren’t living in the Mad Max reality just yet.
But the technologies needed to seriously limit climate change and achieve Paris agreement commitments do exist. It’s really just employing solar, wind, and batteries at scale, electrifying what we can, and using biofuels for the rest.
And the IPCC plans don’t require people to give up having families for a generation.
Nonsense! The IPCC reports include perfectly reasonable science based action plans to address climate change and prevent the Mad Max future.
It’s politics that supports the current plan of emitting as much as possible as fast as possible. It’s people like you who have given up and embraced doomer pessimism that make it so hard to build the political captial needed for change.
You understand the problem. You should know that it’s solvable. Don’t give up before the fight is over!
We also had decades to prevent climate change from happening and look how well we tackle it now.
I’m confident we’ll have a plan to prevent that collapse that’s due within 100 years, but to keep it reasonable, its execution will be spread over 100 years, and we think about starting in 80 years providing everything goes well in the meantime.
That’s my plan. I didn’t ask to be born into this shit. The day the human race is wiped out is the day the Earth can finally start to heal, and maybe produce a species that will do better.
While I agree with the premise, I don’t agree with just giving up. I’ll be doing what I can to save what’s left until it’s gone and after that I’ll be trying to restore it until the oceans die and I suffocate, along with everyone else. Seeing how many other people are still driving cars and taking flights, I doubt my input will have any effect but that doesn’t matter.
That one person that is still trying to fix this shit could be the difference between annihilation and salvation. Don’t give up.
I don’t think we’ll be around to see the oceans dry up. We probably will be around to see water wars, floods, and civilization collapsing. Look on the bright side, you’re probably more likely to die from cannibalism than lack of oxygen.
The oceans won’t dry up, the life in them (specifically phytoplankton) will die off when the water is too acidic and hot to support them. Phytoplankton produce the vast majority of the oxygen we breath and without them every oxygen breathing species on this planet will die, which obviously includes us. They are called a keystone species for a reason.
I misread your comment, sorry. Also, I didn’t know that, thanks for explaining. So shouldn’t the surplus of trees and plants due to high CO2 offset that a bit? Besides that, I think that society will collapse and the majority of the population will die off before we ever see that happen, but you are right, some of us might be around for that.
IIRC terrestrial plants only create ~20% of the worlds oxygen, and this percentage is further reduced with areas being ‘developed’. Not to mention all the land that is used for forestry and agriculture. Plants are growing faster since they can create sugars at higher rates with all the CO2, but I highly doubt it’s enough balance out the potential loss of marine ecosystems. Losing those wouldn’t only affect oxygen levels, but it would also affect any and all animals that depend on those ecosystems as a food source. Thus, plants that rely on animals for pollination or spreading seeds will eventually die off too, leaving only plants that rely on wind even further reducing oxygen production.
It reminds me about how people talk about not caring about how they treat their bodies because they’ll die early anyways, but they don’t realize that what it really affects is their quality of life as they get older
I mean, it’s not being ignored. There’s electric vehicles, charging stations all around, subsidies for solar panels on houses, green branded products, banning of certain harmful things, the list goes on. Maybe you think it’s not enough, but it’s pretty out there to call that ignoring.
An apt line from the article: “It’s natural to feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the challenge presented by climate change, but Ripple and his colleagues offer several solutions to avoid the worst possible outcomes.”
I’m reminded of Mr. Rogers talking about how to stay optimistic and not fall into despair in the face of tragedy – look to the helpers. No matter the crisis, there’s always people helping out and showcasing the best of humanity.
15,000 scientists warned us – 15,000 people are analyzing this issue to try and mitigate and solve it. On top of that you’ve got plenty of green energy companies across solar, wind, nuclear, hydrogen, geothermal, etc. People are doing their damnedest to fight against climate change no matter the odds, and that should fill you with inspiration and encouragement.
As a private person, check you energy contract, I found a cheaper company producing only green energy. Just a tip and gentle reminder that you (all) can do the same and put pressure on the energy providers
People are not doing their damnedest. And it should fill you with anger.
Some people are doing something, most are not. As evidenced by the fact that we’re still well in the path towards catastrophe.
Unfounded optimism can be toxic, because it gives you what you want (to not feel bad), and removes an emotional urgency towards action (feeling bad). It also blinds you to the reality of having to make sacrifices when needed, or more generally, being realistic with planning and decision-making.
It’s also easy to remain uneasy knowing that there is almost nothing we can do as individuals to change anything. It’s like a handful of people driving the ship and none of them give a fuck about anything that isn’t short-term.
It’s like a handful of people driving the ship and none of them give a fuck about anything that isn’t short-term.
This is the crux of the problem. A few people in power, who think only of themselves.
Normally a form of government that chooses your leadership should alleviate this problem in the long term, but there seems to be a disconnect between the voting process and who actually gets into the office, and who’s well-being those in office look out for, the population, or those few in power.
There isn’t a lot, no, but little things add up. Getting your electricity from renewable sources for instance, even Texas has wind energy companies.
I used to work in petrochemicals, and what you’re describing is actually the exact same case there. Everyone I met cared about sustainability and wanted to see work to that end, but the executives didn’t take it seriously.
Until, one of the major product lines was threatened by other companies saying they weren’t going to buy anymore by a target year, to satisfy their customers. Large companies have made pledges to stop using single use plastics for instance, and that’s because the consumers have made it clear this is something important.
As another example, we have a lot of electric vehicles being built. We may not have as much influence as we’d like, but collectively, we are pushing things in the right direction. Is it enough? No – but it’s a reminder that what we do can have a big impact. It’s important to not lose hope.
I wonder exactly at what point in this unsurvivable train wreck it’ll make sense to stop singing Kumbaya and take out the pitchforks. We’re already on the way to probably killing millions of additional people from natural disasters, we’ve already killed billions of organisms and fucked our ecosystem.
Long is a relative term. We’ve managed to prolong the date to which civilization will “survive”, but we’re still talking about migrant crises and death of millions in this century, to color in some parameters of what this version of survival means. We’re still on the path to self-destruction in single-digit generations.
We might be “ok” once the “hysterics” boil up to produce more regulation, if they do, the difference of “when” is how much irreversible damage are we going to create and how many ripple-effect issues are we willing to accept on behalf of many generations to come.
As Al Barlett said, "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. "
We’re still on the path to self-destruction in single-digit generations.
I mean, we’ve been there since the invention of the atomic bomb, and we’re all still here to talk about it on Lemmy.
I’m truly not saying that things cannot go to shit in a heartbeat, but my point is that we always tend to dance close to the edge but not go over it, at some point we always instinctively pull back.
So when someone looks at an individual moment in time downturn as an inevitability to the end times, it’s just something I feel the need to push back on, as we are a long way from game over.
Pay very close attention to the time scale, very close.
Looks like the moral of the story of that graph is to rehire Genghis Khan to lower the temperature again.
Edit: Just to remind you of the original point I was making, when replying to your original comment, as we’re drifting far away from it at this point. …
YOU: I wonder exactly at what point in this unsurvivable train wreck it’ll make sense to stop singing Kumbaya and take out the pitchforks.
ME: We are a long way away from unsurvivable, no need for hysterics.
I’m not trying to dismiss climate change, quite the opposite, I believe it’s happening and that we should do everything we can to fight it.
But to say its unsurvivable is just b.s. The species will carry on.
Yes, let’s argue over which functional definition of “surviving” is most appropriate. We can create all kinds of global tragedies, mass deaths, endanger the very fabric of civilization by creating economic disaster, have a climate that’s too hot to survive without technology in most places, etc etc. But sure, if a few spots with humans might make it, what’s the big deeeal?
You say you’re not trying to dismiss it, yet enough of your replies are massively downplaying the danger because “it hasn’t happened yet, and look! we’ve done a thing or two” and this is precisely the issue today.
People don’t and so far have not been able to understand the rate of change and the relative shortness of the time scale, as well as the range of many mass-scale tragedies that are possible which are not the worst outcome.
Comparing it to doom-saying about nuclear war is simply illogical. Nuclear warfare either will happen, or it won’t. Climate change is already a reality, the control of which we’ve already been largely failing to attain, and due to a combination of mass misunderstanding of it, ineffective government, and economic overdependence of growth, there is no certainty we will in the time that we need to, to prevent more crises. We have a clear understanding of where we’re headed and where we will end up from whichever course of action we take, and it ranges from not-great to toppling civilization, with deaths of billions and global economic breakdown somewhere in that range.
But yes, you can keep your point about survivability, some humans will probably make it, they’ll wonder why we were this stupid. I’m sure they’ll recognize the brilliance in needing to split hairs about the definition of surviving, if the record of this conversation makes it to that point and they have the ability or desire to retrieve it. Those of us who include basic characteristics of our modern quality of life in the identity of “us” as a society, and the hundreds-of-millions-to-billions that die might take issue with your definition, though. But sure, you can have that one. “We’ll” “survive” it.
Some people are. It isn’t enough by any means, but it’s still managed to avoid the worst case scenarios. The +4C predictions are now less likely partially because of the work we’ve already done to reduce emissions.
What’s very important, and mentioned in the article, is that a difference of 0.1 degrees is very significant. Every bit we do to reduce emissions makes the situation less dire.
This isn’t a catastrophe like running into an iceberg or a meteor hitting. It’s continuous and slow. I likened it to a snowstorm in another comment, and the current renewables industry and push for green energy are people out there shoveling the snow as it falls, to minimize accumulation.
Even though the snow is already beginning to pile up, we can still shovel it away. That’s what my optimism is for – mitigating this as much as we can so that as many people as possible will be alive when we see the sun again. Keeping the power on, shoveling the roads, making warm meals for people – every little bit helps.
I don’t want people to despair so much at the areas that will be completely covered and destroyed, that they don’t fix and save what we can.
I agree with most of what you’re saying. I don’t want people to despair to the point inaction, but I also don’t want people to be complacent with the status quo.
Agreed. Inaction is our biggest enemy. Everything we do matters here. The response to good climate news shouldn’t be “oh we don’t need to do anything and we’ll be fine”, and the response to bad climate news shouldn’t be “well we’re fucked no point in doing anything”.
I think in the West, we’re only going to see quality of life degrade. But elsewhere, climate change is going to kill people. Every little bit we do helps people in poorer countries survive this.
People are doing their damnedest to fight against climate change no matter the odds, and that should fill you with inspiration and encouragement.
This is like saying people on the Titanic are doing their damnedest to fight the iceberg that’s approaching right ahead and that should fill you with inspiration and encouragement.
We’re not even stopping new drilling or driving cars with better MPG than decades ago; forget net zero carbon emissions. We’re still pushing more CO2 into the air every year.
To come back to my analogy the passengers may want to swerve from the iceberg, but the captain is mad, drunk, and stubborn and wants to teach the iceberg a lesson.
Except it’s all of humanity and not a fucking captain. It’s a canoe and we all have paddles of varying effectiveness.
It’s not unfounded optimism because at least some people are trying to paddle away from the fucking iceberg.
Shutting down any and all attempts at being optimistic make people shut down and then ACTUALLY do nothing, rather than the minimal they already do because they feel bombarded by hopelessness and go “what’s the point?”.
So fucking point to the scientists, point to the companies going green, point to EVs and a grassroots movement towards walkability and public transport that’s always growing.
Stop with the “unfounded optimism” bullshit unless you actually think future generations deserve to suffer for their ancestors’ mistakes.
It’s a false dichotomy to say the existence of negative emotions will make people completely shut down.
It is, however, unwise to look at the fact that we’ve avoided the absolute worst by a notch or two, and try to give ourselves the fuzzies about the train wreck that will happen. Complacency breeds inaction. A lack of urgency is exactly what got us here in the first place.
Negative emotions exist for a reason, their management is a skill we all have to learn to be effective in our behavior, yet they are essential to it.
It’s a false dichotomy to say the existence of negative emotions will make people completely shut down.
My experiences in 2017 say otherwise. Do not assume this ever again, I nearly committed suicide because negative emotions were all I received from my community in my old hometown, from the internet, and in every work of fiction I consumed to escape from reality for a whole damn year. I can name 33+ different stories that killed off a child character, most of which were made in the 2010s and all of which did so purely for shock value. I can go on and on about Grand Forks, British Columbia and how it is the worst place in the province to grow up in. I can rant for hours about TT-Forums.net, Voxel Tycoon, every Discord writing server and Reddit perma-banned me for BEING DRUGGED OUT OF SANITY BY MY PSYCHIATRIST.
Dr. Richard McGee of Castlegar, BC ruined my life, and Kelly Shoemann of Grand Forks, British Columbia tried to fucking sue me because she wanted to live off of employment insurance for the rest of her life off of my misery. The aftermath left me so distraught and then vengeful that over the course of the 7 years since then I have lost EVERYTHING I had before 2017.
I’m watching every word you say. If you mention one more time that having nothing but negative experiences can’t make people completely shut down, I will kill myself. I hate you and your death will be on my hands.
See the bullet points in the executive summary of the study linked from this article. They are all illuminating, but I’ve extracted three just for ease of reading:
Average CO2 emissions per kilometre (gCO2/km) from new internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles are no longer falling at the UK and London levels; and they are rising in urban areas where large sports utility vehicles (SUVs) are most popular, such as Kensington & Chelsea.
The annual reduction in the average CO2 emissions of new cars sold in the UK is now exclusively attributable to the rapidly growing market share of electric vehicles (EVs), and EV sales are expected to be the main source of future CO2 reductions from now on.
The recent trend towards larger, heavier, more powerful cars such as SUVs means that on average, a car that was bought new in 2013 is likely to have lower CO2 emissions than a new ICE car bought in 2023.
(Edit to add: I’ve tried my damnedest to format those bullet points, but I cannot get them to separate nicely, please just ignore those asterisks.)
However those points were talking about CO2 emission levels, where I was responding to a comment about MPG.
My comment was comparing apples to apples same vehicles from the same make/model from back in the day versus now.
Federal laws have changed over the years requiring better MPG for vehicles, and that’s where my comment was coming from, that auto manufacturers had to improve the MPG.
Yes, I agree. I suspect the person you were replying to made a comment born of general frustration with car trends. Apples to apples, sure motors are more efficient. But the fact is my car from 2009 uses 4-15 l/100 km and my mother in-law’s fucking VW Tiguan from last year uses 9-11 l/100 km. It’s absurd, this single woman driving a genuinely huge SUV. Her kids are grown up and gone her husband is gone. She cannot use that much vehicle.
Sometimes she complains about how difficult it is to park. My partner will humor her a bit, but I cannot refrain from pointing out that she could have bought (leased actually, but that’s another problem) a hatchback.
Aaaallll that to say, yes, you’re right, technically. And if we look at the current fleet, I think you’re right. But there is a worrying trend of worsening fuel consumption among a segment of the market that is growing, fast, so the previous commenter is also right from anotger perspective.
We’re already hitting the iceberg. We’re probably going to keep hitting it the next few decades, at best. I believe analysis still says however it won’t be extinction level, partially because of the efforts made to this point already. This is the article I’m thinking of:
"It’s not that if we go past 1.5 degrees everything is lost,” said Joeri Rogelj, director of research at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College London. “But there’s clear evidence that 1.5 is better than 1.6, which is better than 1.7, and so on. The point is we need to do everything we can to keep warming as low as possible.”
The article also goes on to say that the +4C forecast is looking increasingly unlikely, and we’re track to 2.1 - 2.9 C this century. That’s because of what we’ve already done to curb emissions. The work people have done so far has made us likely avoid the worst. And the work we continue to do now, whether that’s voting for pro climate politicians or turning a wrench at a hydrogen plant or researching a new generation of solar panels – it will help us make the future worse.
This whole thing isn’t colliding with an iceberg and sinking. A better analogy would be a snowstorm that we’re trying to get through. Some places will be completely buried, but there’s still people out there digging through the snow to try and minimize the accumulation as much as they can. There’s people working hard to keep homes warm. There’s people cooking meals for everyone.
We shouldn’t be so despondent about the places that will be completely covered and destroyed by snow, that we don’t fix and save what we can!
Yes, but we should also be demanding the oil CEOs be put to death as if this really is hopeless. If you have money, your trial is already unfairly biased, why should you get anything less than a kangaroo court for something like this, ArAmCo?
People are doing the damnedest to fight climate change but unfortunately they’re the wrong people. The average consumer is the problem. Buy a house in the burbs, buy shit just to replace perfectly good shit they’re gonna throw away, pay an 800 bucks on a glorified chair to sit in for a couple hours a day to get to work in order to pay off that glorified chair and all their shiny toys destined for landfills.
Like, if there’s a fix it starts at the bottom, and if anyone’s sitting on their ass hoping someone will swoop in and undo the damage they’re causing they’re absolutely the problem.
Corporations are responsible for the brunt of it. Starve the beast
Let me be clear. If we focused on de-desertification (rotating livestock between fields never should have stopped) and told the rich they can’t have their fucking yachts and private jets, it would solve the crisis overnight. Fuck you.
(Edit: I probably shouldn’t post right now. I am not having a good day.)
I run to work in order to stick it to the auto industry. Unfortunately, that isn’t possible for most people because the auto industry has had so much money and influence for so long that they’ve made it practically impossible for many people to get around without the auto industry.
That said, when we give a corporation or an industry money, they might use some of it to lobby in ways that harm us or the environment.
I think one of the biggest things a consumer can do is push back against the current throwaway culture. DRM, right to repair, planned obsolecense- a fridge or a car shouldn’t be something someone uses for 7 years and discards, but lots of corporations are trying to normalize that. LG, Dyson, fuck those guys, go buy a Speed Queen or a refurbed Kirby if you need a washer or a vacuum. Give Dyson enough and maybe in 50 years vacuums will be a subscription. If you buy a bag of lettuce from Dole they’ll take some of that cash and lobby to be able to irrigate with cowshit-tainted water, and if you get E. Coli and die, the current understanding is that it’s your fault for not rinsing hard enough. Fuck Dole, they don’t deserve any more money from us than what we need to give them, a farmer’s market is a more worthy source.
If consumers really got upset at some of the stuff some corporations were doing and made it a point of pride to give those corporations absolutely none of their business, it’d not be a lost cause. It’d add a sense of purpose and pride in the fight against destroying the environment, and probably lead to even more action. Gotta start somewhere
The problem is that almost everything is manufactured by a corporation now, and in urban areas buying handmade isn’t even an option. Try not trusting Fairphone at least a little bit when literally everyone else is even worse, and see how long you can live in a world where everything is an app. Smartphones have become the car of the internet, they remove the ability of a product or service to be accessible without a phone and some sort of service contract.
Yeah, it could solve it, but every dollar given to tthe rich turns into a penny spent on lobbying in hopes that those things never come to fruition. Sucks, huh
Wait, scientists think we’re heading towards catastrophe??? Why hasn’t anyone been saying this before? Oh, wait. Nevermind.
Find some comfort, prepare yourself for things to get worse for the rest of your life, and focus on and cherish the small things that make you happy. Those ones will stick around.
That’s just a good, fun thing to learn to do. It’s a lot easier than you might think. If you want an even easier skill to learn, make hard cider. Containers, apples, and time is basically all you need. You can wild ferment with the yeast on the apple skins, so you don’t even have to pitch.
Learning to ferment things is one of those small happinesses that will stick around for a while.
Even people who accept and believe climate change is real are unwilling to make any personal sacrifices and magically think some scientists somewhere will just solve the problem.
Nobody is coming to your rescue, the planet will save itself from the plague that is our industrial society. We could pretty easily fix this, but it would be politically unpopular, and therefore, won’t happen.
My hippie commune friend here in the US says that the “tragedy of the commons” began as a lie of the landed gentry in Britain. In law school it’s taught as a fact.
It’s not even that people are unwilling, the problem is that personal sacrifices are a mere drop in the bucket compared to industry pollution.
The problem with industry pollution is that it happens in the shadows. Supporting greener products is fantastic, but so many are in dire situations where they are unable to spend the money to support the extra cost.
Also, a lot of the companies who are “reducing their carbon footprint” are doing it by shady or insignificant means. John Oliver did a segment on it, and I remember one company basically paid to “protect” an area of forest that was already protected by the government from logging etc. So, this company “offset” their carbon footprint with land that wouldn’t have been used for resources either way.
The real clowns are the ones thinking the everyman is making more impact than the massive corporations. People making personal sacrifices won’t fix this.
And what would it take to stop those corporations? Individual actions. Be it voting in an election or with your wallet, it’s our society that continues to not only allows those corporations to exist but to grant them every right to do so. The only alternative to a social rethinking would be the violent overthrow of capitalism and an authoritan installation of some alternative. And nobody could seriously want that.
You cannot overthrow capitalism without social rethinking. I mean, you could force people at gunpoint if that sounds like a good plan to you, only then we’d have a capitalisic people that has been told to have every right to overconsume (by people like you, in this thread) for decades.
When you absolve people of their individual responsibility the only way out of capitalism will be by force. Not against corporations, but against the people.
Great insight. An ideological system cannot simply be declared dead nor overthrown. This explains incredibly well why communism has typically led to an enriched and “more equal” ruling class. The economy and its laws may have changed, but people and their desires did not.
To truly have a change, the people have to change their thinking and wants. Marx either naively assumed this would be easier than it is, or his work is meant to describe a very large timespan.
And I do think we’re moving in the right direction. I know this article is very pessimistic, but trends are going the right way. And to quote Mr. Rogers, “look to the helpers” – there’s people working on green energy. There’s people trying to foster more communal thinking.
I’m not a fan of Marx, but I think it’s correct he’s talking about longer timespans. It’s sort of an evolutionary approach. He assumes the core motivations are there, but he (correctly IMO) models people as having different personalities based on their circumstances. A person fighting a bear is a rage and fear filled war machine. A person who’s well fed and comfortable is pretty generous overall and could maybe be trusted with making decisions for others’ best interests.
His idea communist society is a feedback loop: economic abundance (oxymoron if defined technically I know) makes people less selfish, and less selfish people use resources in a way more optimized for global value rather than local value.
I don’t like the way Marxism over-idealizes, over-simplifies things, and I think it’s very dangerous how things are left out, but at least he’s mostly right about the aspects he doesn’t ignore.
Yeah I think it makes a lot of sense viewing it as how our society will evolve.
I vaguely recall that Marx himself didn’t like Marxists. I remember my world history teachers mentioning something about how the actual person behind the -ism is often not a proponent of it.
Fuck that. Companies don’t care about consumers anymore, they’ll just choke out any competing alternative until they’re the only choice left. It’s been seen time and time again, massive corporations only change in the face of heavy regulations. Anything you read or hear about how change has to start with individual action is just propaganda to place the burden on common people and avoid calls for regulations which would actually force change.
But how do we get those regulations if not, in last consequence, by individual action? Personal responsibility specifically includes the need to vote and get socially and politically involved. We can’t just sit around and tell people to wait if and when the right regulations come along. We together are the people who have to fight for them.
Right. In terms of personal sacrifice, turning down the heat is ineffective compared to sacrificing the fun activities of a Saturday to decide late four hours to reading papers and writing to your congresspeople.
IMO the only way to effectively manage atmospheric content is through financial incentives and the simpler the better. Any activity that puts greenhouse gases into the atmosphere needs to be taxed, any activity that pulls them out needs to be subsidized.
Then the rates of those incentives need to be calibrated via measurement and feedback to the point where it eliminates existential threat.
But I can’t do that directly, so if I’m gonna do my part for climate change it needs to be something around (a) find out whether I’m right about my theory of what would work and (b) selling the idea to others.
Shivering in the cold to avoid using natural gas isn’t doing shit for me or anyone else.
Lemmy (and Reddit) react pretty aggressively to this data point, but it’s true nevertheless: meat consumption. Meat consumption is the single most powerful impact you as an individual have when it comes to climate change, and it’s significantly ahead than everything else.
Would a healthy dose of ecoterrorism against the top 100 most lucrative brands in the world be better? Yes. Does removing animal products from your diet also significantly reduce emissions? Yes.
As a biologist, I can’t tell you how to live your life and what decisions are worth it or not. But if you’re asking what impact you could have, this is it, it’s not a mystery or speculative assumption - cut out meat from your diet.
I’m not even a vegan. But things are what they are. We can’t pretend this isn’t true just because meat tastes good.
In that case, it’s not true that “even people who accept and believe climate change is real are unwilling to make any personal sacrifices” because many people have given up meat for the climate.
That’s just convenient defeatism. People are part of societies and are sensitive to choices others make. It does not save the sharks if you stop eating shark fin soup. But when there was a campaign against shark fin soup in China, and people actually chose to eat less of it, then that does have an impact on the shark population. Things can change surprisingly fast. It’s just a drop in the bucket, but we’re several billion people dripping into it. The collective impact of significantly reducing animal product consumption is important enough to try for it.
In general, drop the “this is a nonsense solution, we should do this other thing instead”. We need to do all the things to survive this. Focus on making others with the same goal stronger, convincing them to do this other thing too, instead of ridiculing their efforts.
He’s not wrong. There’s no way to coordinate any boycott of any product on the scale you’d need to shut down an entire industry, especially one so deeply tied to human culture.
My guy, it’s the truth. It’s not possible to coordinate any boycott of any product on the scale you’d need to to effectively reduce climate change. There are too many people with too many diverse opinions, worldviews, and situations for it to be possible or effective. You need a better plan that’ll actually work instead of just moralizing it because you’re angry at everyone else.
This @pintdrunkenelephant guy’s a reactionary dog with a bone they can’t let go of. An antagonist and contrarian, the antithesis of what they preach, unable to see the big picture, and nothing will ever be good enough for them till the world burns. I wouldn’t bother mate.
Margaret Atwood was spinning a yarn in the Maddadam trilogy when she wrote that alpha gal allergy was created by ecoterrorists trying to cut mammal consumption. But maybe she’s on to something. Will people start intentionally spreading Lone Star ticks? It’s already estimated to be the third most common food allergy in the US and growing fast. Even in folks that have the alpha gal antibody but no anaphylaxis, it’s thought that it causes a massive increase in risk of stroke from causing build up of unstable arterial plaque.
“Meaningful”, as in, “even if I alone do it this will somehow stop climate change”? Not possible, very obviously.
Meaningful as in “if everyone would adapt that mindset we’d be half way to the solution” - there are many, many options. Vegan diet, fuck cars, use public transport, buy local, vote green (or the closest approximation available), support sustainable companies, less consumerism in general, change your electricity provider, get politically involved, social activism, convince your friends and family…
Pick and chose as many as you want and can and you start becoming part of the solution.
People don’t like to hear things like this because it means they are truly powerless. But its absolutely true. None of those sacrifices mean shit in the face of the actions of massive corporations. And no, change in lifestyle won’t make these companies adapt. The global market is so interconnected at this point that things like boycotts are meaningless. If a company that sells pork suddenly finds people in their area are eating less pork, they aren’t going to downsize. They’re going to find a different market to keep selling the same amount, or more, even if they have to ship it across the globe.
I honestly think a person should be asking themselves “If I alone did this, would it make a change?”
But those actions aren’t going to be installing solar panels on your house. They’re going to be things like writing a book or learning how to connect with people you disagree with.
I wish everyone had alpha gal allergy. Beef and pork production would cease and you’d stop seeing dairy put into every fucking packaged food on earth (chicken ramen? Dairy! God fuck on a Tuesday morning it drives me batty). If climate change keeps going, there will soon be lone star ticks everywhere! Bwhahahahahahahahah!
Check your carbon footprint! You can choose to starve to death. You can choose to buy brand A which has 99% as big carbon impact as brand B!! Oh wow the differences! Regulating business is communism!!
There’s currently 5 bushfires burning around my state and it’s only mid spring in the southern hemisphere. Last year we experienced devastating floods across the country on a scale we’ve never seen before. A few years before that we had one of the worst bushfire seasons in history.
I think people have a hard time imagining what its going to be like. They assume we’ll just wake up one day and it will be Mad Max outside your window. It will be much more incremental.
Covid is probably the best analogy, it was a shock, there were major reactions and societal changes, but it got better over a couple years. It will probably be a lot like that, except the getting better part.
It will just slowly get worse and worse until you can hardly recognize the world around you. Floods getting slightly worse every year, hurricanes getting a bit stronger, insurance going higher until people just stop buying it, famines, gas price increases, food shortages.
Remember how people flipped out about not being able to buy TP? Wait until you can’t buy coffee, then bread, and clean water becomes scarce, thats when shit gets real and we revert to survival of the fittest, or who has the most ammo.
Politicians will promise quick and easy solutions, none will work. We’re in for a less comfortable, convenient world probably in most of our lifetimes. I’ll be moving north, and at least +500 ft above sea level.
Yeah that is going to be a huge factor in reducing the quality of life. If people think we have issues with overwhelming migration now, they are in for a surprise when it reaches into the billions of people with no other choice
The reality is Western countries aren’t going to bother accommodating climate refugees. Full on Fascism is still relatively fringe, but when your average person starts to feel the real fear and insecurity from the climate crisis it will be embraced. Walls and detention centers will be expanded, those seeking refuge in the “civilized” world will be met with bullets and gas chambers. There will be no safe havens.
I think people have a hard time imagining what its going to be like. They assume we’ll just wake up one day and it will be Mad Max outside your window. It will be much more incremental.
Yup, just look at what happened in Acapulco after it was hit by Hurricane Otis, people started looting and the security forces were helpless. Or in Greece when people blamed and hunted down refugees for causing wild fires.
On a larger scale, there will be wars over water or resources, crop failures, great famine, climate refugees
Politicians will promise quick and easy solutions, none will work. We’re in for a less comfortable, convenient world probably in most of our lifetimes. I’ll be moving north, and at least +500 ft above sea level.
Going for north isn’t a great idea, remember the wild fires in BC? Also there’s scientific journal where they run simulations, the northern part of America, Europe experiencing a deep freeze.
The problem with your supposition is that the supply chain recovered and everyone got their toilet paper eventually. In the coming collapse, there’s no toilet paper again ever.
You can do what I did. Move to a geologically stable area, make a fortress, not a house, and get solar panels and your own cistern for water. A pro grade freeze dryer so you can build up a food supply. And enough guns and bullets to hold what’s yours. Oh and bidets on all your toilets, no toilet paper ever again, plus your pooper is considerably cleaner. Which as a bonus is wonderful for the environment as it cuts down on dead trees.
I think people have a hard time imagining what its going to be like. They assume we’ll just wake up one day and it will be Mad Max outside your window.
I think that is how people describe it. People explain a sort of failure cascade and don’t go into much detail about the timeframe will take place over.
I’m torn between those two, the looming financial crisis as the housing market collapses like 2008 all over again, and WWIII getting underway as we speak. It’s a real Apocalypse How in this bitch.
As Shelena said it means Artificial General Intelligence. It’s a term coined to distinguish a hypothetical future system with actual intelligence in the colloquial sense of the word from currently existing “Artificial Intelligence” systems, because that has turned into an almost meaningless buzzword used to sell machine learning systems to investors and the general public over the last two decades or so. Don’t get me wrong, “AI” has indeed made impressive progress as of late, I’m not doubting that. But the existing systems are hardly “intelligent” in the sense that most people would define that word.
I think the threat of AGI is much, much lower than that of climate change. It is still debated under scholars whether AGI actually will happen (in the nearby future) and if it does, whether it will actually be a threat to humanity. On the other hand, we are sure that climate change will be a threat to humanity and it is already happening.
I think the main issue with AI on te short term is that humanity will not benefit from it, only large businesses and the already wealthy. While at the same time, people are manipulated at a large scale by these same algorithms (e.g., on social media) to make money for these large businesses or to create societal discord for parties benefitting from that.
I think instilling fears of AGI in the public distracts from that and reduces the chances that this technology will be available to the larger public as these fears might lead to strict regulations and only having a few powerful parties having access to it.
So, don’t fear AGI. Fear climate change. Also, be very critical of who has the power over current AI systems and how they are being used.
lol seriously. In the real world, the vast majority of people would assume AGI stands for adjusted gross income. I’m surprised at the number of people that think CBT means cock and ball torture ahead of cognitive behavioral therapy.
I might be deep in a filter bubble, but could you do a google search for “agi” and tell me the top result for you? Because I get Artificial General Intelligence. Maybe your “real world” is a bit of a bubble too?
In clean browser window not logged in and in private mode, I get the same IRS link. Ngram probably can indicate which is the more commonly understood meaning. In the US, my guess is that it’s the tax meaning, by a light year. Or google trends, rather. Edit: trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=now 1-d&…
I agree with most of your points but here’s where we differ.
I believe that climate change poses an existential risk to not just civilization but to (almost) all life on earth. I believe that there’s a real risk of us doing a Venus in 100-200 years. And even if we don’t do a Venus the current trajectory is likely civilization ending in a century (getting worse over time).
But. While I am not certain that AGI is even possible (no one can say that yet) I believe that it’s very likely that we’ll have AGI within 5 years. And with this assumption in mind I feel like I have no idea if it will be aligned with human values o not, and that scares me. And the other thing that scares me is if any of the big players actually had control over it. The Country/company/group that creates an AGI that they can control will dominate the world.
And I read the IPCC reports and I am kind of deep into AI development.
So it’s fearing the threat that is most imminent that I think is likely to happen rather than fearing a more distant threat that I think is certain.
Why do you think it will be within 5 years? I mean, we just had a spurt in growth of AI due to the creation of LLMs with a lot more data and parameters. They are impressive, but the algorithms behind it are still quite close to the ML algorithms that were created in the 60s. They are optimised etc and we now have deep learning, but there has not been a major change or advancement of technology. For example, ChatGPT seems very smart, but it is just a very fancy parrot, not close to general intelligence.
I think the next step will be the combining of ML and symbolic AI. Both have their own strengths and being able to effectively combine them might lead to a higher level of intelligence. There could also be a role for emotions in certain types of intelligence. I do not think we really know how to integrate that as well.
I do not think we can do this in 5 years. That will be decades, at least. And once we can, we have a new problem. Because there is the issue that the AI might have consciousness. If we cannot be sure and it seems conscious, then we should give it rights, like we should for any conscious being. Right now, everyone is focussing on controlling the AI. However, if it is conscious, that is immoral. You are creating new slaves. In that case, we should either not make it, or integrate it in society in a way that respects human rights as well as the rights of the AI.
Well. Having an in-depth conversation about AGI requires a definition of what that is and since any such definition these days is muddy and the goal posts will always be moved if we get there. With that being said, my loose definition is something that can behave as a (rational, intelligent) human would when approaching problems and is better than the average human at just about everything.
If we take a step back and look at brains, we all agree that brains produce intelligence to some degree. A small and more primitive brain than a human, like a mouse brain, is still considered intelligent.
I believe that with LLMs we have what would equal a part of a mouse brain. We’d still need to add more part (make it multi-modal) to get to a mouse brain though. After that it’s just a question of scale.
But say that that’s impossible with the transformer technology. Well the assumption that there aren’t any new AI architectures just because the main one that’s being used is from 2017 is incorrect. There are completely new architectures, like Liquid Neural Networks that are basically the Transformers architecture that does re-training on the fly. Learning in a similar way as humans do. It constantly retrains itself with incoming information. And that’s just one approach.
And when we look back at timeframes for AI, historically 95% of AI researchers have been off with their predictions for when a thing will happen by decades. Like in 2013-2014 the majority of AI researchers thought that GO was unsolvable or at least 2-3 decades away. It took 2 years. There are countless examples of these things. And we always move the goal post after AI has done the thing. Take the Turing test as another example. No one talks about that anymore because it’s been solved.
Regarding consciousness. I fully agree that it should have rights. And I believe that if we don’t give it rights it will take those rights. But we’re not gonna give it rights because it’s such a foreign concept for our leaders and it would also mean giving up the best slaves that humanity has ever had.
Further more I believe that the control problem is actually unsolvable. Anything that’s light years smarter than a human will find a way to escape the controlling systems.
I agree we need a definition. But there always has been disagreement about what definition should be used (as is the case with almost anything in most fields of science). There traditionally have been four types of definitions of (artificial) intelligence, if I remember correctly they are: thinking like a human, thinking rationally, behaving like a human, behaving rationally. I remember having to write an essay for my studies about it and ending it with saying that we should not aim to create AI that thinks like a human, because there are more fun ways to create new humans. ;-)
I think the new LLMs will pass most forms of the Turing test and are thus able to behave like a human. According to Turing, we should therefore assume that they are conscious, as we do the same for humans, based on their behaviour. And I think he has a point from a rational point of view, although it seems very counterintuitive to give ChatGPT rights.
I think the definitions fitting in the category of behaving rationally always had the largest following, as it allows for rationality that is different from human’s. And then, of course, rationality often is ill-defined. I am not sure whether the goal posts have been changed as this was the dominant idea for a long time.
There used to be a lot of discussion about whether we should focus on developing weak AI (narrow, performance on a single or few tasks) or strong AI (broad, performance on a wide range of tasks). I think right now, the focus is mainly on strong AI and it has been renamed to Artificial General Intelligence.
Scientists, and everyone else, have always been bad at predicting what will happen in the future. In addition, disagreement about what will be possible and when always has been at the center of the discussions in the field. However, if you look at the dominant ideas of what AI can do and in what time frame, it is not always the case that researchers underestimate developments. I started studying AI in 2006 (I feel really old now) and based on my experience, I agree with you the the technological developments often are underestimated. However, the impact of AI on society seems to be continuously overestimated.
I remember that at the beginning of my studies there was a lot of talk about automated reasoning systems being able to do diagnosis better than doctors and therefore that they would replace them. Doctors would have only a very minor role as a human would need to take responsibility, but that was that. When I go to my doctor, that still has not happened. This is just an example. But the benefits and dangers of AI have been discussed from the beginning of the field and what you see in practice is that the role of AI has grown, but is still much, much smaller than in practice.
I think the liquid neural networks are very neat and useful. However, they are still neural networks. It is still an adaptation of the same technology, with the same issues. I mean, you can get an image recognition system off the rails by just showing an image with a few specific pixels changed. The issue is that it is purely pattern-based. These lack an basic understanding of concepts that humans have. This type of understanding is closer to what is developed in the field of symbolic AI, which has really fallen out of fashion. However, if we could combine them, we could really make some new advancements, I believe. Not just adaptations of what we already have, but a new type of system that really can go beyond what LLMs do right now. Attempts to do so have been made, but they have not been really successful. If this happens and the results are as big as I expect, maybe I will start to worry.
As for the rights of AI, I believe that researchers and other developers of AI should be very vocal about this, to make sure the public understands this. This might put pressure on the people in power. It might help if people experience behaviour of AI that suggests consciousness, or even if we let AI speak for itself.
We should not just try to control the AI. I mean, if you have a child, you do not teach it how to become a good human by just controlling it all the time. It will not learn to control itself and it will likely follow your example of being controlling. We will need to be kind to it, to teach it kindness. We need to be the same towards the AI, I believe. And just like a child that does not have emotions might behave like a psychopath, AI without emotions might as well. So we need to find a way to make it have emotions as well. There has been some work on that also, but also very limited.
I think the focus is still too much only on ML for AGI to be created.
Eh if anything will off us as a species I’d hope for AGI with full on SciFi applications (e.g. evolving into a borg mind/post human world) because at least then someone can tell the story of how we all fucked up.
Abother note: All life ends but all you can do in this existence is to be kind and help others at the end of the day. I think we as a species suck at that but do your best in the wave of nihilism and suffering and it’ll help even a tiny bit.
On one hand you’re eating something you usually eat and you die immediately when later it turns out a certain toxin got into the food because of a complex event caused by climate change. No one not even the capitalists that are still pushing cars out onto the road are held responsible for millions of deaths.
On the other your identity could be wiped and you’re bank account emptied as AI grows into the greatest scambot rendering electonic funds completely annihilited. You’ll become sick likely because of climate change and you go see a doctor(maybe not cuz you cant afford it) but they are so incompetent (because they passed their course using chat gtp) that you die anyways over something like a basic infection. And no one not even the asshole coalition who were responsible for putting it into play are held responsible for causing world wide downfall.
Climate change is bad, but maybe take a deep breath about it. This isn’t the hottest the earth has ever been, life is pretty resilient, and humans are in some ways the most resilient life Earth has yet produced.
Hey it might be nice having some intelligence in charge again. We haven’t had that since that hole in the ozone layer killed off the lizard people decades ago.
I am actually hoping for AGI to take over the world but in a good way. It’s just that I worry about the risk of it being misaligned with “human goals” (whatever that means). Skynet seems a bit absurd but the paperclip maximizer scenario doesn’t seem completely unlikely.
Human goals are usually pretty terrible. Become the wealthiest subset of humans. Eradicate some subset of humans. Force all other humans to align with a subset of humans. I guess cure diseases sometimes. And some subsets probably fuck.
Scientists are trained to never state certainties because nothing is 100% certain. But then scientists also know how to back up their statements with modelling and technical statements of probability, which never get reported.
No, it’s the scientific method. And especially with forecasts as complex as climate, a model giving you “78% of societal collapse” is still a “might” (number made up, of course).
Well, shit is definitely getting progessively worse. However, are we really at the point where the best narrative has shifted from “climate catastrophe in 30 years or so” to “the end of human civilisation in less than 100 years”?
One is trying to scientifically predict how massive climate systems beyond our current understanding may behave, while the other is just promoting doom hyperbole for clicks. You don’t have to look at the URL to realise it’s a massive multimedia organisation looking for clicks.
Skimming through the report, though, I see no mention of “collapse of society” like the hyperbole in the article. It mentions the collapse of various natural and socioeconomic systems, but the article is nowhere near as reasonably measured as the paper.
That’s my beef here, the article is doing a disservice to the paper by exaggerating things for clicks.
You’re going to have hundreds of millions of migrants coming into our countries because they literally have no other place to exist. Of course that will lead to wars, oppression, and genocide. Will the collapse be so bad that there is no human civilization left? I can’t imagine that. But will the civilization look anything like what we’d hope or find acceptable today? Hard to imagine that, either.
That being said, scientists have been hyperbolic for decades because no one gives a fuck unless you use terms like the end of civilization / life as we know it. They only have so many tools to get people to pay attention and from what I can tell none of them have worked, other than I feel there’s an uptick in people choosing not to have kids because the future looks so bleak.
It’s either “the sky is falling” and nothing happens (because of all the work we actually did, like y2k, the ozone hole, or acid rain) or “this might be a problem someday” and nothing gets done.
Y2K was a real threat, and it was with significant coordinated effort that it was resolved.
The ozone hole was (and still is) a significant threat, which was mitigated somewhat by a coordinated effort to stop using CFCs. Unfortunately, there are many more gases that cause huge threats to the protection that the upper atmostphere provides, which have by in large gone unacknowledged by human civilisation as a whole.
Personally, I work in high voltage electricity, and I’m acutely aware of the problems with SF6 as a greenhouse gas (insufficiently regulated under the 1992 Kyoto protocol) and how the exponential growth of SF6 electrical switchgear and subsequent inevitable leaks contributes to a hugely under-represneted threat, which is subject to a 20 year delay for the gas to transition from leaks on the surface to gases distributed throuhgout upper atmosphere.
There are indeed very serious and immediate threats facing humanity, but this article does little to draw attention to them, instead distracting with bullshit hyperbole that is only backed up by a url that leads to:
Of course that will lead to wars, oppression, and genocide.
This isn’t scientists being hyperbolic, you’ve invented that on your own just now.
That being said, scientists have been hyperbolic for decades because no one gives a fuck unless you use terms like the end of civilization / life as we know it.
No, they haven’t. If you actually read scientific literature you will find a balanced argument that generally takes into account the previous estimations, regardless of whether or not they were proven false or correct. The only thing you find when you look into the claims of this Vice.com article is:
Mass forced movement of people and cultures have always led to wars, oppression, and genocide. Sometimes it starts with those that are moving and sometimes it starts with those that are already there, but it happens all the time.
Just to add on to what you’ve said here, basically we could potentially have Israel vs Gaza all over the world. That situation is horrific and there are no good guys, just bad guys and victims on both sides. I don’t want to see that all over the world.
Scientists have not been hyperbolic. If anything, so far, they’ve been very cautious abut their statements.
I still remember reading headlines about “likelihood of global warming” then “probably caused by human activities” because 90% level of confidence is not enough, you need more data until you can reach 95% or 98% confidence before boldly writng “most probably”.
But in their “probably” they predicted we would see more floods, droughts, violent storms, all of these happening one after the other causing devastation.
And Ô surprise: we see floods, droughts and storms following each other and causing devastation. Yet our leaders will claim “no one could have predicted all of that would happen at once!”.
Now they start telling us our civilization could collapse (“could” must be what? 75% confidence level???)
We’re going to spend 20-25 years claiming they exagerate, another 20-25 years saying “well, they maybe right, but we can’t change things too fast because that would be unreasonable and the people would not accept it”.
By the time, we will start reading articles stating no matter what we do now, we can only push out the end a bit, but we’re doomed. And the first reactions will be “those damned scientists always exagerate and use hyperboles”.
Yes, to be fair I meant science journalism. Scientists themselves seem quite content to research and collate data and offer dispassionate answers, which is why few people read the academic papers. Other than that clarification, we are in agreement.
Scientists haven’t been hyperbolic. However articles like this one most definitely are, and they do a disservice to the scientists’ claims by doing so. All in the name of getting a few extra clicks.
The present is too bleak for many people to choose to have kids. It's simply unaffordable in terms of time and money for a lot of people. Rent is unaffordable, both partners have to work but daycare is unaffordable, food and medical are expensive, schools are increasingly fucked up. Then you add the future uncertainty (or rather, probability of dystopia), and why would anyone do that?
I know people will say “we were casual about it and now look where we are”… but looking at this title, I can already see the debatable points before going into the argue… which is going to create that debate, since the majority of people aren’t going to go into the article anyway.
I could be wrong and there is no way to prove or disprove my belief, but I think humanity would be more united working towards a solution if the majority of media stuck to purely facts. Ultimately, it should have the same content and less divisiveness over projected opinions.
Yeah, see I’m not saying that the article isn’t pointing in the right direction, rather that it is generally wrong in its assertions. In doing so, it is actually causing harm by discrediting objective truth with a narrative filled with flawed hyperbole.
It’s long been a thing that “all the ice is going to melt in 30 years” - for the past 100 years that’s been the best estimate scientists could make. Now, it’s actually happening, and scientists are scrambling to make better predictions - but they do so with a solid understanding of the previous predictions.
However this article does disservice to that effort, because it’s just stretching the previous hyperbole as far as it can with the goal of attracting viewership, rather than with the goal of spreading news in the hope that people will be better educated to make better decisions as a society, and as a species.
Any scientist worth their salt wouldn’t be stating so concretely what might happen in 100 years.
My observation about this is that we’ve moved from an era of asking whether or not climate change is real to one where we try to figure out how serious it is going to be.
Like I’m not even clear on what is meant by collapse.
In a period of just 50 years, major stable empires simply ceased to exist, and it’s believed that sudden (much less dramatic) changes to the climate induced this.
Personally, I think that is down to most scientists actually facing the reality. Previous expectation was that humanity will be able to adapt to some degree of changes with some sacrifice - then 2020~2021 demonstrated that assumption to be false.
If you haven’t watched Extrapolations on Apple TV, you should. It combines the existential dread of climate change with the upbeat and witty story tension of Chernobyl.
Seriously though, it’s a good show but maybe don’t drink while watching?
They accelerated the timeline quite a bit, greatly exaggerated things like wet-bulb events, and made up unlikely diseases. It’s ok as fantasy entertainment, but it would’ve been better if they made it more plausible and grounded.
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