World will look back at 2023 as year humanity exposed its inability to tackle climate crisis, scientists say

the Guardian

Disastrous events included flash flooding in Africa and wildfires in Europe and North America. (...)

“When our children and grandchildren look back at the history of human-made climate change, this year and next will be seen as the turning point at which the futility of governments in dealing with climate change was finally exposed,” he said. “Not only did governments fail to stem global warming, the rate of global warming actually accelerated.” (...)

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Flash floods in the Libyan city of Derna were the most deadly climate disaster of 2023, killing 11,300 people. Photograph: Mahmud Turkia/AFP/Getty Images.

“The bright side of this clear dichotomy is that young people may realise that they must take charge of their future. The turbulent status of today’s politics may provide opportunity,” he said.

His comments are a reflection of the dismay among experts at the enormous gulf between scientific warnings and political action. It has taken almost 30 years for world leaders to acknowledge that fossil fuels are to blame for the climate crisis, yet this year’s United Nations Cop28 summit in Dubai ended with a limp and vague call for a “transition away” from them, even as evidence grows that the world is already heating to dangerous levels. (...)

Veteran climate watchers have been horrified at the pace of change. “The climate year 2023 is nothing but shocking, in terms of the strength of climate occurrences, from heatwaves, droughts, floods and fires, to rate of ice melt and temperature anomalies particularly in the ocean,” Prof Johan Rockström, the joint director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, said.

He said these new developments indicated the Earth was in uncharted territory ​​and under siege. (...)

[W]hat disturbed him most in 2023 was the sharp increase in sea surface temperatures, which have been abrupt even for an El Niño year. (...)

In the Antarctic, scientists have also been perplexed and worried by the pace of change. (...)

[H]uman influence – through the burning of fossil fuels – had also created “frightening” dynamics between the poles and the tropics. Cold wet fronts from the Antarctic had interacted with record heat and drought in the Amazon to create unprecedented storms in between. (...)

This year’s deadliest climate disaster was the flood in Libya that killed more than 11,300 people in the coastal city of Derna. In a single day, Storm Daniel unleashed 200 times as much rain as usually falls on the city in the entire month of September. (...)

Forest fires burned a record area in Canada and Europe, and killed about 100 people in Lahaina on Maui island, the deadliest wildfire in US history, which happened in August. (...)

Complete article

Tags: #climate #climate_change #climate_crisis #energy #energy_transition #carbon_footprint #global_warming #fossil_fuel #extreme_weather #storms #floodings #flash_floods #forest_fires #wildfires #heat_waves #cop28

Why AI is a disaster for the climate

The Guardian

Amid all the hysteria about ChatGPT and co, one thing is being missed: how energy-intensive the technology is. (...)

Given the current hysteria about AI, I thought I’d check to see where it is on the chart [of the Gartner Hype Cycle]. (...)

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The carbon footprint of server farms used to power generative AI could be problematic. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images.

All of this serves the useful function – for the tech industry, at least – of diverting attention from the downsides of the technology that we are already experiencing: bias, inscrutability, unaccountability and its tendency to “hallucinate”, to name just four. (...) Which is worrying because its environmental impact will, at best, be significant and, at worst, could be really problematic.

How come? Basically, because AI requires staggering amounts of computing power. And since computers require electricity, and the necessary GPUs (graphics processing units) run very hot (and therefore need cooling), the technology consumes electricity at a colossal rate. (...)

So maybe the best hope for the planet would be for generative AI to topple down the slippery slope into Gartner’s “trough of disillusionment”, enabling the rest of us to get on with life.

Complete article

Tags: #artificial_intelligence #ai #chatgtp #computing #energy #energy_transition #carbon_footprint #climate #climate_change #climate_crisis #global_warming

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Tags: #nederlands #lifestyle #klimaat #klimaatverandering #klimaatcrisis #ongelijkheid #armoede #duurzaamheid #duurzaam_leven #carbon_footprint

Het internet is vervuilender dan de luchtvaart, met dank aan alle mails, crypto’s, videogesprekken, streams en de cloud

NRC

Wie staat er stil bij zijn digitale voetafdruk? Al die foto’s in de cloud, bewaarde e-mails en streams eten stroom. Héél veel stroom. (...)

(Tekst loopt door onder de illustratie.)

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Exacte cijfers ontbreken, maar volgens de meest nauwkeurige schattingen is het digitale leven – denk aan het streamen van video en muziek, op afstand vergaderen, sociale media, apparaten als boordcomputers en voordeurcamera’s, virtual reality, cryptomunten, blockchain, nft’s – goed voor zo’n 4 procent van de totale wereldwijde uitstoot van broeikasgassen. Dat klinkt misschien niet als veel, maar het is ruim meer dan de luchtvaart.

Het aandeel gaat bovendien sterk stijgen met de komst van de 5G- en 6G-netwerken en de brede toepassing van kunstmatige intelligentie. (...)

De hardware van het 5G-netwerk dat nu wordt uitgerold gebruikt minder energie dan 4G, maar naar verwachting wordt die winst tenietgedaan door de explosie aan dataverkeer die de nieuwe gebruiksmogelijkheden zullen veroorzaken. (...)

„In Nederland is het politieke debat over de digitale voetafdruk beperkt tot ophef over het energieverbruik van datacentra”, zegt Gámez. „Dat zou veel breder moeten zijn.” (...)

Hele artikel

Tags: #nederlands #internet #streaming #cloud_services #crypto #zelfrijdende_auto #e-mail #videovergaderen #energie #energieverbruik #5g #4g #uitstoot #carbon_footprint #co2 #klimaat #klimaatverandering #klimaatcrisis #broeikaseffect #energietransitie

Fossil fuel firms among biggest spenders on Google ads that look like search results

The Guardian

One in five ads served on search results for 78 climate-related terms placed by firms with interests in fossil fuels, research finds.

Fossil fuel companies and firms that work closely with them are among the biggest spenders on ads designed to look like Google search results, in what campaigners say is an example of “endemic greenwashing”. (...)

Advertisers pay for their ads to appear on the search engine when a user queries certain terms. The ads are appealing to businesses because they are very similar in appearance to search results: more than half of users in a 2020 survey reported they could not tell the difference between a paid-for listing and a normal Google result. (...)

However, Shell’s net-zero strategy relies heavily on carbon capture and offsetting, according to a Carbon Brief analysis, which says: “Despite its ‘highly ambitious’ framing … Shell’s vision of a continued role for oil, gas and coal until the end of the century remains essentially the same.” (...)

“Since at least the 1980s in the US, there has been a very concerted effort by public relations agents to help polluting companies develop strategies to ‘go green’ while maintaining business as usual.

“Many of the initiatives companies are taking are very piecemeal and will not amount to any kind of long-term or systemic change.” (...)

The analysis also looked at “snippets”, which are not paid-for but are chosen by Google’s algorithm as the most relevant result. The Guardian found the snippet chosen for “fracking” linked to the website of an oil and gas lobby group, the Independent Petroleum Association of America. (...)

A years-long piece of research by the US Environmental Protection Agency concluded in 2016 that in some cases fracking had harmed drinking water supplies.

Unlike Facebook, Google does not have a publicly accessible ad library, meaning it is difficult to analyse advertising on the platform. (...)

Complete article

> See also: The forgotten oil ads that told us climate change was nothing (The Guardian)

Tags: #capitalism #environment #pollution #waste #climate #climate_change #climate_crisis #cop26 #global_warming #aur_pollution #neoliberalism #market_fundamentalism #inequality #cerrado #desert #rivers #amazon #co2 #nox #fossil_fuel #deforestation #brazil #brasil #flooding #heat_dome #extreme_weather #forest_fires #media #carbon_footprint #oil_industry #lobby #desinformation #economic_growth #consumerism #citizen #protest #Fridays_for_Future #Green_New_Deal_Rising #Extinction_Rebellion #ExxonMobil #Royal_Dutch #shell #Aramco #Goldman_Sachs #google #greenwashing #McKinsey #Independent_Petroleum_Association_of_America #alphabet #snippets #google_snippets #lobby

The forgotten oil ads that told us climate change was nothing

The Guardian

Since the 1980s, fossil fuel firms have run ads touting climate denial messages – many of which they’d now like us to forget. Here’s our visual guide.

Why is meaningful action to avert the climate crisis proving so difficult? It is, at least in part, because of ads.

The fossil fuel industry has perpetrated a multi-decade, multibillion dollar disinformation, propaganda and lobbying campaign to delay climate action by confusing the public and policymakers about the climate crisis and its solutions. This has involved a remarkable array of advertisements – with headlines ranging from “Lies they tell our children” to “Oil pumps life” – seeking to convince the public that the climate crisis is not real, not human-made, not serious and not solvable. The campaign continues to this day. (...)

Complete article

Tags: #capitalism #environment #pollution #waste #climate #climate_change #climate_crisis #cop26 #global_warming #aur_pollution #neoliberalism #market_fundamentalism #inequality #cerrado #desert #rivers #amazon #co2 #nox #fossil_fuel #deforestation #brazil #brasil #flooding #heat_dome #extreme_weather #forest_fires #media #carbon_footprint #oil_industry #lobby #desinformation #economic_growth #consumerism #citizen #protest #Fridays_for_Future #Green_New_Deal_Rising #Extinction_Rebellion