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.

Fair point with megafauna, but my counterpoint would be that we were struggling to exist, like any other animal, and extinction is a part of nature. Driving things extinct isn't inherently unnatural.

But then you could say, "Yes, but the same applies to climate change. The earliest oxygen-exhaling plants poisoned the atmosphere and lead to the extinction of more ancient plants." (Or was it the giant fungus? I forget.) And you'd have a point there too.

But I think the key difference is having a viable alternative and being aware of the suffering we're causing. We know what we're doing; the plants did not, they just evolved that way. We have alternatives to farming and hunting animals until their extinction; early inhabitants of Aotearoa, who drove the Moa to extinction, probably didn't. I will pick preserving megafauna over having my hypothetical preferred megafauna dinner, but I can't pretend I'd pick preserving megafauna over preventing my family from starving to death.

If we really want to get to the heart of it, it is the monotheistic notion that the world was created for us, that there is another (better) world for us after we die, and that therefore it is our birthright to use this land in any way we see fit. Capitalism and industrialisation have provided humanity with the tools to proliferate to such an extent that the scale of the damage we are causing is far greater than anything we were capable of previously, but the Christian imperative to reap the land has been around far longer.

I agree so strongly that that philosophy definitely makes it much worse. My main issue with Abrahamic religions is the notion that god resembles man (and vice versa) instead of resembling forces of nature.

But I don't think monotheism was a prevailing philosophy when the megafauna were driven to extinction. Animals (and sometimes even plants) have driven each other to extinction many times in our planet's history, and we're just animals. I think the only thing that gives us the potential to rise above that status is knowledge, and that acting as caretakers to all other living beings on this planet is the highest application of that knowledge in the short-term. Long-term, the highest application is extending the reach of life to other planets, even if it's as simple as intentional panspermia with extremophile microbes.

And the fascist oligarchs. Maybe lock em in submarines and drown the lot of em.

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 ask yourself: is AI really "burning entire areas" compared to just watching TV?

It has its problems but this is a moral panic.

If you're downvoting, leave me a comment to say why.

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.)

Disingenuous bullshit for 300 Alex.

I dunno about "divisive." Sometimes thats a legitimate criticism, and pot-stirrers are little shits, IMO.

"cattle" is neither capable of starting a revolution, not is it capable of sticking with it for more than half a year.

Tested and true in most first world countries

only some of it not all