Rant Environmentally we cant afford AI-so why?

[Pamela Jo]

Discussions have touched on how astronomically expensive it is to run ChatGPX outside of any other social costs. This article goes into more detail. We cant afford the cloud or most of the technology being sold if it were billed honestly. In Ireland data storage brings the government billions. 16 in the exchequer this year. 20 next. That's after everyone has taken a taste. But Irish citizens who paid to generate the electricity now can't pay for it to heat their houses, let alone afford to buy the much touted electric cars. Which come with their own environmental disasters.

Turns out there’s another problem with AI – its environmental toll

AI uses huge amounts of electricity and water to work, and the problem is only going to get worse – what can be done? Plus, the wider TechScape

www.theguardian.com

 

[Hannah F]

Electric cars: the enormous environmental cost of manufacturing the batteries plus manufacturing a greater number of cars (since, with the battery built into the chassis, they are much easier to right off) plus the environmental cost of the greater amount of wear on the tyres (heavier vehicles) and the resultant polluting particles escaping into both air and earth. Removing one polluting source by replacing it with another will not save our planet.

I drive, but when I don't need to go great distances at a fairly quick speed I walk or run. (I don't cycle on roads because Cars, lorries and buses are far too scary.) I will always have to do some driving as I don't live in a place where I can get everywhere I need to go by public transport. Many people need to drive. The government should spend their money on a more wide-ranging and better public transport service that doesn't cost more than driving costs - it's often a lot cheaper to fly than catch a train! And certainly cheaper to drive - so that the number of necessary driving journeys can be reduced. As it is, some rural communities are seeing their buses disappear as part of cost cutting measures!

 

[Pamela Jo]

Electric cars: the enormous environmental cost of manufacturing the batteries plus manufacturing a greater number of cars (since, with the battery built into the chassis, they are much easier to right off) plus the environmental cost of the greater amount of wear on the tyres (heavier vehicles) and the resultant polluting particles escaping into both air and earth. Removing one polluting source by replacing it with another will not save our planet.

I drive, but when I don't need to go great distances at a fairly quick speed I walk or run. (I don't cycle on roads because Cars, lorries and buses are far too scary.) I will always have to do some driving as I don't live in a place where I can get everywhere I need to go by public transport. Many people need to drive. The government should spend their money on a more wide-ranging and better public transport service that doesn't cost more than driving costs - it's often a lot cheaper to fly than catch a train! And certainly cheaper to drive - so that the number of necessary driving journeys can be reduced. As it is, some rural communities are seeing their buses disappear as part of cost cutting measures!

Frustrated because the local council is replacing train tracks with a "greenway" . Recreational walking is not really a step forward. Not all of us can cycle and horses are barred. My plan is to teach a mare that isn't used for productions so much anymore to drive. I have to teach me too. It'll take me about 40 minutest to make it to the nearest village supermarket so I'll have to plan better than I do now. But horses are already being used again in villages in France. It would be nice if governments accepted that electric cars are not the solution. In fact we need to start with the oceans pollution and not the air by recent research papers. The change in the ocean current that warms Ireland and the UK will catapult the entire world into a future scientists literally cannot imagine or predict. That is happening so fast the tipping point could be next year and it is due mostly to plastic pollution and surface reflection.

 

[Hannah F]

Frustrated because the local council is replacing train tracks with a "greenway" . Recreational walking is not really a step forward. Not all of us can cycle and horses are barred. My plan is to teach a mare that isn't used for productions so much anymore to drive. I have to teach me too. It'll take me about 40 minutest to make it to the nearest village supermarket so I'll have to plan better than I do now. But horses are already being used again in villages in France. It would be nice if governments accepted that electric cars are not the solution. In fact we need to start with the oceans pollution and not the air by recent research papers. The change in the ocean current that warms Ireland and the UK will catapult the entire world into a future scientists literally cannot imagine or predict. That is happening so fast the tipping point could be next year and it is due mostly to plastic pollution and surface reflection.

But most of us who can't afford electric cars or train tickets can neither afford the horse itself or the field, stabling, nutrition insurance etc etc it needs. Horses are very expensive. Also, a historic issue (which would return) was that horses produce a fair amount of organic pollution out of their back-end (though the Dutch had a canny trick: the trap/carriage driver had a poop-catcher on a long handle. He would position it under the horse's lifted tail).

 

[Rachel Caldecott]

Electric cars: the enormous environmental cost of manufacturing the batteries plus manufacturing a greater number of cars (since, with the battery built into the chassis, they are much easier to right off) plus the environmental cost of the greater amount of wear on the tyres (heavier vehicles) and the resultant polluting particles escaping into both air and earth. Removing one polluting source by replacing it with another will not save our planet.

I drive, but when I don't need to go great distances at a fairly quick speed I walk or run. (I don't cycle on roads because Cars, lorries and buses are far too scary.) I will always have to do some driving as I don't live in a place where I can get everywhere I need to go by public transport. Many people need to drive. The government should spend their money on a more wide-ranging and better public transport service that doesn't cost more than driving costs - it's often a lot cheaper to fly than catch a train! And certainly cheaper to drive - so that the number of necessary driving journeys can be reduced. As it is, some rural communities are seeing their buses disappear as part of cost cutting measures!

Could not agree more!! I've been ranting about all this for a while now.
My other pet peeve is programmes on TV which tout e-bikes as the green alternative.

 

[Pamela Jo]

But most of us who can't afford electric cars or train tickets can neither afford the horse itself or the field, stabling, nutrition insurance etc etc it needs. Horses are very expensive. Also, a historic issue (which would return) was that horses produce a fair amount of organic pollution out of their back-end (though the Dutch had a canny trick: the trap/carriage driver had a poop-catcher on a long handle. He would position it under the horse's lifted tail).

Horse "pollution" is called compost and exactly what the dying soil needs. Horse and chicken manure are the two types of shite that can be used to produce electricity and there are housing developments in the US that are coalescing around that fact.

The problem you are emphasising here is the one of the "grid". The idea that such a complex problem of how we've fucked up our water, soil and air can be solved with one magic bullet. That my solution has to be everyone's instead of unleashing the creativity of each human who is part of the problem. The reason we don't have alternative energy is because engineers and economists have clung to this idea.

John Kenneth Galbraith defied it in the 1960's with, "The New Industrial State." The idea is because it takes so much capital to build something like a power plant or car factory, small private enterprise is dead. But the reality is that small farms, small businesses and everyone putting in their own energy supply is the only thing that actually makes change affordable. Ask any consumer and they will say they want to produce their own electricity. In rural US this is exactly how electricity rolled out in the last century. There was no grid. Communities and individuals invested in and paid for how much electricity they wanted to produce. But the idea of "grid" has prevented modern governments from letting that happen. In Ireland you cant even sell electricity you produce back to the government owned electric company.

The idea that everyone give up cars for horses is as ridiculous as everyone give up diesel for electric. But for hundreds of thousands of people in the US, In Europe, SA. In Mexico who never got that far away from the horse economy it is feasible to become part of daily life again. As I said villages in France are already returning to using them. Countries like Poland, Romania, Mexico never really got away from using them. Draft horses are being used to plow hard to reach fields in the UK so farmers can grow where they couldn't before. I know a girl who is supporting herself and her horses doing that.

For people in the cities bikes are a reasonable alternative. If rural areas revive the distances to the pub or shopping might become short enough again. But now not so much. If people ask "What can I do" "What is possible" instead of trying to force their ideas on everyone else change gains momentum.
Lithium batteries are already obsolete. That Dutch barge full of burning cars-the lithium batteries were the cause. Pristine green areas are being mined for lithium and it is as big a problem as diesel fuels. But Bezos, Musk and the other tech billionaires have invested in that mining so to stop it would mean that a) they aren't the smartest people in the world. b) They lose a lot of money.

It's the Industrial State Galbraith warned about. The new feudalism.

 

[MattScho]

The heavy use of power for AI is kind of similar to the use for crypto-currency. I guess the upside of AI is that it will, inevitably, kill us all.

Five ways AI might destroy the world: ‘Everyone on Earth could fall over dead in the same second’

Artificial intelligence is already advancing at a worrying pace. What if we don’t slam on the brakes? Experts explain what keeps them up at night

www.theguardian.com

 

[Pamela Jo]

The heavy use of power for AI is kind of similar to the use for crypto-currency. I guess the upside of AI is that it will, inevitably, kill us all.

Five ways AI might destroy the world: ‘Everyone on Earth could fall over dead in the same second’

Artificial intelligence is already advancing at a worrying pace. What if we don’t slam on the brakes? Experts explain what keeps them up at night

www.theguardian.com

I saw that. I'm afraid death often comes when you are looking the other way. Esp for Americans used to driving on the left. It is astonishing how much energy crypto currency uses. So again... WHY?
My favourite story about that is the Irish beekeeper who started growing pot for his bees and then naturally a market developed for the end product. He was successful beyond his dreams and invested it in crypto currency and stored the codes in his angling case. Until the day he was stopped for a wonky rear light and the Garda discovered the trunk full of product. He was sent to prison for a few years. When he got out his now ex wife had hauled all of his belongings to the tip. The missing angling bag is worth a few cool million if found