Bürger können auch gegen Krieg sein ohne direkt die Invasion der Ukraine zu befürworten.

Das ist eine interessante Aussage in Bezug auf diese “Friedenskampagne”. Überflieg mal den Artikel dazu. In der Zusammenfassung steht ja schon

Der Grund: Die Sanktionen gegen Russland

Hier geht es nicht um Waffenlieferungen. Ich würde sogar unterstellen, dass es hier grundlegend um wirtschaftliche Interessen geht.

Ferner dürfe die Schweiz in Zukunft keine Sanktionen mehr gegen kriegführende Staaten ergreifen.

Ich würde sagen, dass diese Kampagne aus Sicht der Schweiz eher eine pro-Kriegs-Kampagne wäre. Wie sehr hilft es dem Frieden, wenn man kriegsführende Staaten nicht mehr sanktionieren darf? Sanktionen sind mit die friedlichste Art, Agressoren zu bestrafen.

Wer gegen Krieg ist, sollte für Sanktionen gegen kriegsführende Staaten sein.

Das war mir so nicht bewusst :D

Fahren wir die gleiche U-Bahn? Hab die Werbung hier (auch nicht Berlin) auch schon öfters gesehen, und ich find’s jedes mal widerlich.

[The guy working for Saudi Aramco] had declared the relationship on the IPCC’s conflict of interest form. “That didn’t seem to me a very good answer, but he was friendly and we had a very nice breakfast.”

Oh well, then I’m relieved. They are nice!

The article is quite good, but the situation is depressing. If the IPCC is not trustworthy, then what is there even left? But that’s apparently not the first time that problem came up. According to the article, the conflict of interest policy only exists since 2011, when similar things happened.

Here are some highlights from the article

At least a dozen IPCC lead authors are employed by or linked to Saudi Aramco, Saudi institutions and other oil and gas interests, the investigation found. One IPCC vice-chair, part of the body’s leadership group, also represents the kingdom at global climate negotiations as a government employee.

De Pryck sees the growing presence of Saudi-linked authors in the context of a broader shift in the kingdom’s climate diplomacy. Its longstanding opposition to cutting fossil fuel burning in UN climate negotiations is increasingly complemented by the promotion of technological climate solutions. “When it comes to the IPCC, the Saudi strategy now focuses on advocating technologies like carbon capture that would limit the impact on its fossil fuel economy,” says De Pryck.

Hoteit, at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, said: “There is no conflict of interest. My research and contributions related to the IPCC work were fully funded and supported by my employer, which is acknowledged in the referenced paper.” The multi-author paper also states: “We thank Saudi Aramco for conceiving and conducting this pilot project and for providing substantial financial support.”

That’s an interesting understanding of a “conflict of interest”.

And the last sentence hammers it home:

The IPCC said there was no process currently under way to amend its conflict of interest policy.

Absolutely. Even if it still is the world’s most important climate report, judging by how much the world cares for climate reports, I’d say that’s not really much.

You might get me to actually start stitching :D Thanks!

Man kann das als Zeichen von Bündnistreue sehen, oder auch als blindes, aber bewusstes, eingehen einer toxischen Beziehung. Da sollten eigentlich alle Alarmglocken angehen.

I had acquired a habit of typing a message, sending it, and only then reading it again and checking for typos. The lack of such an essential feature caused me to send incomprehensible messages, making the app almost unusable for me.

I’m sorry, what? This is the reason he starts with for saying Signal sucks? I can’t even bend my head around that logic.

Well, at least he backtracks at the end.

Signal doesn’t actually suck. It’s fine. It gets the job done. It lets me communicate with my friends. We are quick to dismiss a new thing after two minutes of trying it out just because it doesn’t meet our expectations. This is especially true if we are pressured into something instead of following intrinsic motivation. We obsess over the little things that ultimately don’t matter. However, if we earnestly give it a shot, we get used to it. We adapt.

This is one of my favourite quotes out of that movie! This one is going on the fridge!

True, that’s what they propose in the article, but it’s not like you get pure wood powder back, it’s a wood-epoxy powder mixture. To which you then add epoxy to make new stuff… at some point you just have a mass of epoxy with traces of wood. That’s downcycling at best.

Not sure how serious/scientific the author of the article is, as they also propose using the powder as mulch, which sounds like an ecological nightmare when considering that it’s mixed with epoxy. But that might not have been the idea of the engineers who designed the wooden blades.

I’m not saying this technology is bad, even if the wooden blades get burned in the end at least they are not left as landfill like the ones right now.

Recyclable doesn’t mean that it’s worth recycling them. Look for “wind turbine graveyards” (but also beware, there seem to be a lot of AI generated images -.-).

However I also don’t see how these wooden versions are much better. According to the article they are glued together using epoxy. They propose grinding it down and making other stuff with it. I guess in the best case it gets burned in the end.

Thank you for telling us about it!

Fun indeed! How can you not give more information on something like that and just leave us hanging?

I found the Missoula floods that fit your description. Seems like we’re in for fun times ahead. Then again, it’s unlikely that the glacial lakes reform in the current climate, so maybe we just get to witness one devastating flood per glacier…

That’s what you get if you chose actual scientists as ministers of energy. Proper politics directed towards decarbonizing in a sustainable way. I’m jealous.

Yes and no. It is possible for someone earning 70k/year to emit below the average (let’s also keep in mind that the goal is not to be below the average, but to be at 0 emissions/impact), but everything you can buy has a CO2/environment-cost related to it.

As soon as you spend more, you have a higher impact. Of course there are more and less impactful ways of consumption, so you do raise a good point, but we’re not going to consume our way out of this misery.

A really nice book I shove down the throat of every single one of my friends who’s not running away fast enough is The Day the World Stops Shopping, in case you have way too much time at hand ^^

Yeah, that’s surely gonna work. As if the people dying from the heat right now aren’t too many already. I’m somewhat sure you’re not being serious, and while I see where you’re coming from, that would be treating symptoms at best. As long as society doesn’t fundamentally change, other “high consumers” would emerge again, and we’d be back where we started

That’s also what’s so frustrating to me. The world could be so much better, people just seem to not care. Summer really sucks currently, now I don’t just have winter depression, but also summer… anxiety? Haven’t thought of a good term yet. I’ve had this post open in a tab the last two days, and I do intend to write something, I just haven’t found the time yet, as I’m quite sure the length of the comment will get out of hand. Just know that you’re not alone with those thoughts.

Then I misunderstood that, but I still don’t agree. The “surplus energy” of the renewables is not really there. Granted, in some regions (not really sure about the USA, though, I don’t have data on that), renewables can provide > 100% of the required electricity for a few hours per day, but that’s not really a lot of surplus energy. If it was, they wouldn’t have to build power plants just for the data centers.

You even kind of mention that with

because this demand is outstripping even the excess supply

Electricity price definitely is a factor for data centers, but having electricity 24/7 is even more important to them. Also, what made AI feasible was the usage of GPUs or even more specialized hardware, that is tailored to those tasks. Machine learning as a concept has been around since the 1980s or even earlier, not just the last 20 years. Paradoxically, that increase in efficiency caused a drastic increase in total power consumption for AI.

Now that it’s not completely unfeasable thanks to renewable energy

Are we living in the same reality? Renewable energy has nothing to do with machine learning or especially LLMs being feasible. The data centers used/being built for AI use some of the dirtiest form of energy you can use, because it’s cheaper or easier available.

Point in case: Data centers are being built off-grid using gas turbines. In fact, the planned amount of gas-powered data centers use more electricity than Germany.

Also, they are not even using proper gas power plants for that, mostly just gas turbines, which are cheaper and faster to install, but way less efficient.

They don’t care about the power use of their data centers, and especially not whether they are renewable.