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Just woke up. It’s 6 am and 28 c.
I guess we should vote for fascists harder about it.
I work in HVAC, maybe I should move to Europe…
So I was curious about this, and asked my barber (yesterday) how much the aircon he had installed was.
I was told the unit costs (~£1600) were exceeded by the install/labour, and that all they did was the unit fitting & plumbing/pipe to the external unit. An electrician had to be separately hired to wire it all up.
So I’m conservatively guessing somewhere around 3.5k all in.
For one of those normal units, I’d estimate as about 70x25cm, cooling an area less than my living room.
I’d say anyone looking for a trade in the UK right now, would be wise to skill up on doing it as a one stop shop, and cash in for the next decade.
Most people are sheep. They just follow the stream and eat what big tech serves. As long as the entertainment in the arena (tiktok etc) is good enough, nothing else matters. No need to think, no time to reflect. With AI you don’t really have to think at all. (feels like this is true, but hope it is not)
We could really use a covid-style lockdown for a few years.
But this time no cure until we wipe out all the anti mask/ anti vaccine idiots first
Yeah, the people with the blood clots, myocarditis, infertility, and skyrocketing rates of ass cancer are the smart ones.
They knew that COVID is stopped by a mask, except you’re sitting down at a restaurant.
They get COVID again and again because the vaccine works!
Hmm. The Lemmy antivax crowd.
Decades of doctors, researchers, and Nobel prize winning immunologists willing to endure endless derision and destroy their careers.
Hundreds of thousands of parents with identical stories.
But we’re just the antivax crowd. Smart people believe the ads on TV.
I didn’t take the vaccine at first because they pushed it as having “no potential risks”. Every medical procedure has risks, so I knew they were bullshitting and was therefore unwilling to risk it. Mind you I worked through the entire pandemic as essential medical personnel (running a weed dispensary lmao)
Eventually, accurate risk information about the myocarditis / etc became available. That actually made me more comfortable because at least it was fucking honest. So I could evaluate, what is likely to cause me more harm, the vaccine or COVID?
The clear, science-based answer is COVID. You aren’t a free thinker, you just opted into a different lane of dogma.
You know that phrase when people show you who they are believe them? You knew they were lying. They told you they knew for sure it was safe and you knew they couldn’t know that. Then they admitted a little bit that it might be a little bit unsafe, and suddenly you trusted them?
Imagine a wife, who knows that her husband has cheated on her with dozens of women. She knows that he is currently sneaking out behind her back again and confront him. After some arguing and denial, he eventually admits that he did see another woman, but insists that they only kissed. Should she believe him?
That’s
not a remotely comparable analogy lol
Decades is a way to count people now? I think the number you’re looking for is 2%.
I don’t know where you got the 2% number and I think the real number is probably a lot higher, but let’s assume that number is right for a moment. I know what you’re probably thinking because I used to think the same thing. IF vaccines were not as safe and effective as claimed, that number would be a lot higher than 2%. Four vaccines to cause SIDS, cancer, autoimmune diseases, autism, etc. that would mean that a massive amount of very smart people we’re either dumb or lying.
It seems inconceivable. But, the pharmaceutical industry is incomprehensively, wealthy and powerful in part because they own or effectively own pretty much every major scientific and medical journal and every med school and medical textbook. And they have a government that mandates their products and protects them from lawsuits. You can’t sue a vaccine manufacturer.
Under those circumstances, at least one and 50 medical professionals is screaming from the rooftops that vaccines are not safe, even when the industry is dedicated to destroying their careers and reputations for doing so and is willing to throw essentially unlimited money at it.
And there’s the fact that every study done that truly compared vaccinated and unvaccinated, such as the recent Henry Ford health study, has found that the vaccinated had significantly higher rates of every disease studied. Whereas the unvaccinated had close to zero.
“Crowd” being, in this case, one guy lol
The vaccine did not work well for me: I got COVID at least 3 times. Was wearing N95 masks from the start (happened to have some). Stayed at home except for vital shopping. Grew my hair out. Social distanced the best I could. Played a lot of Animal Crossing. But interacting with work and family is unavoidable, and that’s who I believe I got it from every time, as they were generally not taking it seriously.
From what I read, when I got the shot and boosters I should have had some kind of mild reaction. Felt bad for a day or at least a few hours, something like that. But that never happened to me. However, others I talked to did have a reaction, and they also didn’t seem to get COVID. So I’m inclined to believe that the vaccine probably did work, for at least some segment of the population, just not for me for some reason. It was a rush job, so it not working for everyone isn’t a conspiracy, to me it’s somewhat expected. And maybe one of the other brands would have worked, but I don’t think you were allowed to mix them.
The conflation of antivaxxers with tin foil hat conspiracy theorists is the product of huge marketing and PR budgets. I read that Pfizer had something like 112 employees just dedicated to Reddit.
It’s not a grand conspiracy theory. It’s just money and perverse incentives.
People like Biden and Fauci went on TV and said “when you get vaccinated, the virus stops with you… you can’t get it and you can’t transmit it.” They forced people to get the vaccine or lose their jobs.
And as you noted, it didn’t work, or at least not well. The data shows that it offered some protection to the initial variant, but the protection waned quickly, and once it wore off, your immune system was primed for a variant that no longer existed, which meant that you were actually at increased risk for new variants.
I know vaccinated people who have been hospitalized with COVID multiple times, and unvaccinated people who can’t seem to get COVID if they tried. It didn’t work. They lied and made billions on that lie.
Now think about what else they’re lying about.
And “AI” idiots who insist on burning entire areas just to generate shrimp Jesus memes
And the fascist oligarchs. Maybe lock em in submarines and drown the lot of em.
i know the perfect company for that one, im sure they still use a logitech controller.
We don’t need a covid-style lockdown to do that. Just saying.
Ai data centres used about 0.5% of global electricity production last year. Electricity production is about 26,000 TWh annually, versus total energy production of 185 TWh annually, so AI was about 0.07% of all energy consumption. Energy production causes the bulk of greenhouse emissions: 73.2%, putting AI on 0.05% (this is unfair to AI, because electricity is cleaner than the average energy production which includes just burning gas for heat).
In comparison, trying to find something small on https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector my favourite comparison is that energy for making paper consumes more than 10x as much as does AI.
A large TV might consume about 100W while on, so 100Wh to watch for an hour. To reach the same consumption with AI, you’d need to run about 55 expensive (the upper estimate I found was 6700J - I assume this means long coding answers, research or image generation) chatgpt queries.
Personally I think it unlikely that someone would reach that 1 prompt per minute at that expensive estimate, so all yourself: is AI really “burning entire areas” compared to just watching TV?
It has it’s problems but this is a moral panic.
However there is sharp growth in demand being predicted and I don’t see any sign of humanity trading in some other power usage to get their data center power allocation. Even if we’re are greening the grid it is all for nothing if the extra capacity has to be filled in by more fossil fuels.
Yes, about 12% per year these days. Not enough to really change the picture for a long time, though.
It all well and good comparing data centre energy usage with global production. But you miss out the important reality that a good chunk of the data centres running today and in the near future are using fossil fuel power on-site, without a grid connection, which is so much worse.
Be honest. Even if every single data centre did that, would it worse enough to really change the picture? It’s still going to be less than paper production by a long way for a long while.
You’re fighting a losing battle here, some people just have decided that AI is bad no matter what. There are quite many here on lemmy, which is a shame because there are good and bad sides about AI, but IMO it for sure is here to stay, so discussions would be interesting, again IMO.
some people just have decided that AI is bad no matter what.
Correct, because outside of scientific and medical applications (run by actual scientists and medical professionals), all AI is bad no matter what.
Nothing it can possibly do for you justifies the harm it does, and your reliance on it atrophies your cognitive skills.
AI is bad, but it’s bizarre to point to its energy usage, out of all things. It’s really missing the forest for the trees. As top commenter’s data shows, even gaming on a gaming PC is so much worse (considering a 650W PSU, which is 6.5 times the TV example).
Yep, I’ve not had a productive discussion about it that I remember. It’s not just that people have made their minds up; they also will not hear anything that is misaligned with their belief, even if ultimately compatible: you don’t need to think that ai is useful or good to realise its energy use is not especially important. But if it’s bad everything about it must be bad.
I mean you’re talking to a guy who has halved his total energy usage over the past four years including watching fewer shows, playing fewer games, and sharing more books with friends from our already existing libraries. Trying to convince me that AI isn’t that bad because it only adds a little more energy usage is a real lost cause when I’m constantly trying to push things to less energy usage in every way I can because I hear climate scientists sounding all the alarm bells.
It’s an extra 0.5% that didn’t need to exist on top of everything else we need to reduce.
Do you complain that everyone is being immoral for continuing to watch TV? Or do you accept that energy usage for entertainment is allowed?
How do you compare the relative moral value of using AI, watching TV, driving 10 miles, eating a steak and catching a flight?
If I wanted to halve my carbon footprint I’d further reduce my meat consumption. I would do nothing about gaming, safe in the knowledge that it’s basically irrelevant.
Everyone should be doing what they can was more my point. I went for the biggest things for myself. I already was mostly vegetarian and didn’t drive much so nothing to change there. Most of my carbon footprint was gaming, TV, and AC. Things I was able to work on easily. I do understand I’m fortunate enough to be able to add more insulation to my house and get more efficient appliances and so on. I do know we need to tackle things at the industrial level for best effect.
My point, again was that adding more power consumption and heat generation is definitely not the way.
Sure, but everyone needs to stay sane and alive - so whether someone is generating a slop meme, or watching TV - or using Claude to keep their boss happy, or whatever, these are relatively morally equivalent things. Yet here, AI is singled out as if it were uniquely damaging, when in fact it’s similar. Just more hated.
The anti-mask/no jab people were convinced to be dangerous by billionaire propaganda.
So? Matrix rules motherfucker, I don’t care if you’ve been manipulated into trying to kill me, I just care that you’re trying to kill me and it’s not my responsibility to deprogram your death cult ass. Fuck em, every last one.
And also made to be susceptible to that level of stupidity by capitalists & their owned politicians gutting education / failing to fund it adequately to begin with. (For US anyway.)
Genocide is cool so long as it’s targeting the people I think are vile and sub-human.
Disingenuous bullshit for 300 Alex.
Naaah. Get your lazy asses back to the office… so its market value doesn’t decrease.
Also, no wind turbines or any such humbug in our neighborhood… so we can keep increasing rents. Which we, the boomers, decided ourselves, through collective hypnosis. Also, what’s with this freeloader mentality? Imagine if any of the hoi-polloi could simply use wind and sun. Like, for themselves.
Chat are we cooked??
ChatGPT, how do I cook a climate? Please respond in Old English and rhyme
Tis better the weather threw back into flight
A cyclone, a tempest, a sky without blightThanks you just wasted 2 gallons of potable water.
AI (specifically chatbots) is crap, has stolen and monetized work people shared for free, violates copyrights (including the GPL), has already caused job loss, is biased and bigoted, I’d even say somewhat unethical to use due to the aforementioned things. People are better off not using it (although it’s basically forced on you now when you go to certain websites). But I’ll just mention a couple things:
It takes around 200 ChatGPT queries to use 2 gallons of water for cooling(EDIT: seeing a lot of different answers on this, some as high as 2 gallons for only 15 queries. Lets go with that instead. It still means that taking a shower for only 4 seconds uses more water than a single ChatGPT query.)- A standard shower head uses 2½ gallons of water per minute
So to save water, taking a shorter shower, not having a swimming pool, not watering a lawn, not washing your car, not spraying driveways, flushing the toilet less often, washing a full load of laundry and running a full dishwasher instead of hand washing are all much more impactful than cutting out the occasional AI query.
I do hope that awareness of AI water waste will also motivate people to cut water use in other ways too, so it’s good that the issue keeps coming up.
(I wrote this myself 🥲)
Chat we’re not just cooked we are battered and deep fried.
”salivates in southern US”
You shouldn’t needlessly salivate. That water is needed for datacentres.
Oh yea my bad, umm what if I salivate Brawndo? It’s got electrolytes
Slow cooked until our meat falls off the bone…
The only thing that can save us now is for the top governments across the world to work together on climate change. Most importantly they need to be proactive instead of reactive.
That being said, yeah, we are absolutely cooked. Even when people start dying they’ll still just fight over resources instead of working together. You can already see signs of it like Trump having his grubby little fingers in Greenland.
The one thing that I look forward to is if I remain healthy and with a bit of luck, I’ll live long enough to watch this dystopian shithole come crashing down.
Boiling
No you just haven’t adjusted the numbers for inflation
I expect climate change to be consistently worse than the mainstream predictions.
There’s a huge political incentive to err on the side of downplaying than to exaggerate, and those models should have been bad enough to make the point.
About a decade ago a group did a study on it.
They first created a simplified model. That model was still a fairly good match with the fully featured models. They then varied the parameters around reasonable possible values. If scientists were using most likely assumptions, you would expect a 50/50 split of better/worse predictions.
In practice it was 93% worse. Scientists were (unconsciously) using a lot of best case figures, not expected case.
When I read about that, and the complete lack of follow-up coverage, I knew we were fucked.
Which I don’t blame the original scientists or studies for. Their predictions were bad enough that we should have done something then. It’s been clear for at least 30 years.
They did what they thought would have the most traction and not get them dismissed as crackpots. And, to be clear, they were still within a margin of error. They weren’t generally wrong, considering their margins. It’s just that they’re not going to be perfect and they made the better choice.
Even now it would be easier to dismiss climate change if the reality ended up better than predicted, even if it was still bad.
One simplified model is not the reason for this. They’ve been expected to use a number of different climate scenarios in their work for a long time. Stop making shit up.
The point was to test for human bias in the data. The initial complaint was that scientists were cherry picking the data to make it look worse than it was. By looking at the spread, it showed they were minorly cherry picking to understate the problem. A fact that is now more and more obvious as it plays out.
Funny you say that, my wife does climate change mitigation research. She definitely isn’t cherry picking data. Climate change is just very uncertain.
It wasn’t deliberate. It was more likely scientists being overly cautious about overstating their case. The end results pushed the normal agreed values closer to best case predictions rather than middle.
This was back when the main models needed weeks of super computer time, so only a few were run, and everyone else analysed the shared results.
I came to the same conclusion after reading papers and articles for years and every year it got a little bit worse and a little bit sooner. Just following the trajectory of the changes in their expectations told me that we would hit ~+6°C by 2100.
You can argue with scientists all that you want to, they’re not infallible, it’s true.
But you were warned for many decades, don’t act all shocked and surprised.
Future is way hipper than we expected it to be.
Do you reckon the USA actions in the last 2 years have contributed to the speed up?
Defenetly but its not the only thing
As someone who doesn’t know much of anything about this topic could you elaborate on what actions the US has taken? I am genuinely curious.
Removal of subsidies for EVs, launching rockets for space garbage every 5 seconds, and bombing everything. I’m sure hitting the gas/fuel plant with missiles was especially great for greenhouse gases.
This is one of the reasons my spouse and I opted to not have kids. This place is doomed.
Given that overpopulation likely contributes to climate change, you’re also doing your part for those who do have to live through this hellscape!
It doesn’t really make a huge difference tbf, also, most of the work is done by a few countries (see India, China and many african countries), countries like South Korea or Italy actually have the opposite problem, there aren’t enough kids
Honestly having kids or not doesn’t make a huge difference since most countries are below replacement already anyway. Not like it’s normal to have 3+ kids anymore even if you do have kids.
I actually think it might even be worse to not have kids at this point, someone needs to fix all the issues previous generations have created. I’m pretty sure we need human intervention, some kind of Geo-engineering/Terraforming to avoid a runway hot house earth (something like effective carbon capture)… So I don’t think antinatalism helps…
brother, we have a couple years left. capitalism was and will be extremely efficient.
it actively even degraded people’s intelligence level to maximize consumerism and most importantly the holiest of all: profit accumulation. education is completely indoctrinating us in every aspect to affirm the system.
change is completely out of reach to have every human being on earth to emancipate, so we’d dissolve all borders and switch from this hellscape of commodity based production to a to a needs based one.
its not going to work within national solutions, all those will have to play the game of the mightiest, we need all people to realize this but media already done its job to scare people out of reach for years. its literally the allegory of the cave, and people choose the chains.
Dude I feel so incredibly guilty for bringing my kids into this horror. You’re doing the right thing.
Thanks; it’s a super depressing choice but I know it’s the right one.
Someone linked this as the 2014 broadcast: https://youtu.be/_s55xNz26qQ
You know what would help this situation?
AI
Lots and lots of AI.
Also more religion.
Don’t forget more Trillionaires
More religion? So just all, okay…guess the “life in balance with nature”-type of religions are also evil and protecting nature is cutting down trees
Isn’t Ai a religion already ? 🤔
Faster than expected, and worse than anticipated. It will get much faster and much worse. Practice growing your own food and stay in shape.
Every time the IPCC publishes a report it’s like: oh yeah may have gone way past the most pessimistic option this year, yet again, for the seventh time in a row, so here’s a new set of predictions that will surely not be overly optimistic this time round.
It’s designed to keep us passive while we continue to fail.
Actually, in line with what was actually anticipated and taught in science classes in 2000. People decided to go with the best case scenarios as if global emissions would go down for some reason. No one who has been paying attention should be surprised.
Yeah limits to growth I think was in the 70s. Seems pretty accurate so far.
Global emissions did go down. https://climateactiontracker.org/media/images/CAT_2025-11_Graph_ParisProgress.width-777.png
That graph doesn’t show that emissions gone down, that shows the estimated effect on temperature growth based on targets agreed on by the Paris agreement. Neither the targets nor the temperature estimates in this graph have been met.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas_emissions
Per capita emissions growth has slowed, not reversed but the population has INCREASED. Not only is industry emitting more per person, but there are more people.
Every single type of GHG has increased as well.
We’re fucked.
