houseofleft

How much CO2 does AI use compared to other industries? I know it's a horrific use compared to all other software, but have no idea how it factors in global carbon emmissions?

Also, just to be clear, I'm genuinely curious and not defending burning huge amounts of carbon for profit if the AI sector is comparatively small. That kind of backwards "but it just a small amount of everything else" logic would be a great way to accelerate our already too fast death spiral.

Yeah, hopefully this is some genuinely good news, but it's hard not to see it as an unbelievably positive spin on the fact that this year we'll emit more CO2 than any year in record.

I don't know specifics on this battery farm, but almost all are essentially fleets of shipping containers filled with smaller batteries, rather than some super-cool-mega-battery, so it's probably a safe assumption that this is a landmark project in scale, rather than in technology specifics.

Yes, for sure!! I hope my call for policitcal action didn't come across as "don't do anything and wait for politicians to sort it out!".

I was trying to get at the need for collective discussion and action, over the idea of a climate change fix that's based on people's feeling superior for their individual actions, especially because without political change, a lot of even the individual changes we need to make (more heatpumps, EVs over ICEs, etc) are only accessible to those with sufficient wealth.

Oh boy, have fun! CTEs have pretty wide support, so you might be in luck (well at least in that respect, in all other cases you're still using saleforce amd my commiserations are with you)

Honestly moral superiority needs to get taken out of climate change as a whole. It's a global issue that needs political solutions. Nobody's individual actions are gonna change their nation's heating systems from gas, grids energy make up to solar, or billionaires to climate activists.

I have advice that you didn't ask for at all!

SQL's declarative ordering annoys me too. In most languages you order things based on when you want them to happen, SQL doesn't work like that- you need to order query dyntax based on where that bit goes according to the rules of SQL. It's meant to aid readability, some people like it a lot,but for me it's just a bunch of extra rules to remember.

Anyway, for nested expressions, I think CTEs make stuff a lot easier, and SQL query optimisers mean you probably shouldn't have to worry about performance.

I.e. instead of:

SELECT
  one.col_a,
  two.col_b
FROM one
LEFT JOIN
    (SELECT * FROM somewhere WHERE something) as two
    ON one.x = two.x

you can do this:

WITH two as (
     SELECT * FROM somewhere
     WHERE something
)

SELECT
  one.col_a,
  two.col_b
FROM one
LEFT JOIN two
ON one.x = two.x

Especially when things are a little gnarly with lots of nested CTEs, this style makes stuff a tonne easier to reason with.

I find meat eaters ask me "would you eat grown meat?" a lot, but my response is always just "I guess maybe? I honestly don't miss meat that much". I haven't come across any vegetarians/vegans who are particularly psyched about it either.

This is all speculation, but I'm not particularly convinced there's much of a market for lab grown meat over soy based products given how much more expensive they need to be.

I know your comment is satirical so I don't really want to take it in bad faith, but all the same. . . .

Lots of people are working reeaaally hard at changing society for the better, and reducing environmental catastrophe, the studies from the 80s sparked soneof the biggest environmental groups we have today (the likes of Green Peace and Friends of the Earth).

Lots of other people, often with money, are cynically blocking the protection of the human race for their own gain. And the majority of people are caught between these groups, often feeling despondent.

My point is, don't get despondent, get involved! You can join the first groups efforts today, and it you do, you'll be concretely helping the survival of our planet and society.

If you're interested in specifics, both Green Peace and Just Stop Oil hold regular monthly/weekly welcome to all sessions (if you know about others, post them here!)

I sorta have three not entirely coherent and increasingly cynical feelings about this.

1. That's neat! If redesigning bottles helps a little with emmissions then that's cool!

2. Even though it might reduce emmisions, sometimes I worry that people think this is what ecological stewardship looks like. "Keep on burning fossil fuels and running an economy based on the exploitation of the earth, just change the shape of your wine bottles and we'll be ok!". We're not ok and this isn't enough, small actions like this don't cut it and we need to hold fossil fuel companies to account for the destruction they cause because it's too late.

3. Wait, it's plastic!?!? Are we gonna pretend like CO2 is the only issue and killing millions of fish with plastic a year is something to ignore? Also, doesn't that effect the global carbon heat pump? Seriously, why is it plastic!?!? My only thought here now is that this is some cynical greenwash of a decision that was made to maximise profits and reduce costs.

This is really beautiful! I think it's pretty common if you're switched on to the damage we're doing to our world to feel very anxious and negative, but it's important to remember that reducing climate change is not just about avoiding disaster, but building a utopia too. Thanks @[email protected] !

• Am driving into a wall
• Turning or breaking in time sounds tricky
• Might as well accelerate, maybe car will take off and fly over wall?
• Woops, I died!