this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2026
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Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.

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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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‘Just an unbelievable amount of pollution’: how big a threat is AI to the climate? (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 1 week ago by solo@piefed.social to c/climate@slrpnk.net
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Datacentres consume just 1% of the world’s electricity but may soon demand much more. Their share of US electricity is projected to more than double to 8.6% by 2035, according to BloombergNEF, while the IEA projects datacentres will account for at least 20% of the rich world’s growth in electricity demand to the end of the decade.

“This idea that the lower cost of renewables alone will drive decarbonisation – it’s not enough,” said Daly. “Because if there’s a huge source of energy demand that wants to grow, it will land on these stranded fossil fuel assets.”

Tech companies have resisted pressure to provide detailed data on their AI energy footprints,

The IEA estimates that AI could boost technically recoverable oil and gas reserves by 5% and cut the cost of a deepwater offshore project by 10%. Big oil is even more bullish. “Artificial intelligence is, ultimately, within the industry, going to be the next fracking boom,” Mike Sommers, head of the American Petroleum Institute, told Axios.

At the same time, the oil and gas industry says AI can cut its carbon intensity, for instance by analysing satellite data to spot methane leaks. But even here, critics say there is a gap between digital insights and corporate actions.

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[–] coyootje@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

I agree, uncle Bob does not need AI to make a video of a polar bear shooting an RPG into a house after ringing the door bell. My main issue with AI is that it's so publicly available that people have started using it for the dumbest shit. Why do you need to constantly ask it stuff? People are truly being ridiculous about it, I have lots of coworkers who barely even write their own emails anymore... I'm even starting to wonder what they do during the day.

There's great use cases for AI, especially in medicine and other fields. But for commercial use it's basically useless besides being a gimmick.