Technology, Science and the Environment.

[Daggers]

 

[leicsmac]

12 minutes ago, Daggers said:

 

Excellent stuff. And true, too - emissions need to be drawn down directly rather than offset - or at least, in a way that there is a net decrease in emissions ASAP.

 

However...it must be done in a way that doesn't significantly affect quality of life for enough people, or it won't happen. And that's the tricky part.

 

 

[leicsmac]

There was a rather interesting conference last week at the EU HQ - Beyond Growth.

 

https://www.euronews.com/2023/05/19/seeking-solutions-beyond-growth-in-2023

 

Quite apart from the tacky political soundbites regarding "decolonisation" (which doesn't really have much to do with it all), they are addressing a point that needs to be addressed: that continual economic "growth" and the striving for it isn't logically sustainable unless we find vasts of easily available resources elsewhere. And that just postpones the problem. Tech solutions to more efficiently use what we have rather than using more on a year by year basis has to be at least part of a solution going forward.

 

The powers that be have been paying lip service to the idea of green transitions and I know that @grobyfox1990 has assured me that big business are actually interested in playing their part...but without evidence that we're turning things around, taking that on faith is tough.

[leicsmac]

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-65673961

 

The good news: fewer people are dying (at the present time) due to extreme weather events due to better resilience and early warning systems.

 

The bad news: that these extreme events are becoming both more frequent and severe is a matter of record and if vital infrastructure (such as for sourcing food and potable water and shelter) keeps getting destroyed by them as they become more prevalent and severe (which they will), then it really isn't going to matter how good we are at predicting such events.

[grobyfox1990]

On 22/05/2023 at 12:19, leicsmac said:

There was a rather interesting conference last week at the EU HQ - Beyond Growth.

 

https://www.euronews.com/2023/05/19/seeking-solutions-beyond-growth-in-2023

 

Quite apart from the tacky political soundbites regarding "decolonisation" (which doesn't really have much to do with it all), they are addressing a point that needs to be addressed: that continual economic "growth" and the striving for it isn't logically sustainable unless we find vasts of easily available resources elsewhere. And that just postpones the problem. Tech solutions to more efficiently use what we have rather than using more on a year by year basis has to be at least part of a solution going forward.

 

The powers that be have been paying lip service to the idea of green transitions and I know that @grobyfox1990 has assured me that big business are actually interested in playing their part...but without evidence that we're turning things around, taking that on faith is tough.

Good article but it touches more on the S than the E in my opinion. Non stop growth that benefits certain people only and leaves most of us in misery is the main issue, not the emissions related to it. We have gone through a period of remarkable growth and wealth creation yet we are somehow worse off, we should be rioting about it, instead we're shopping on Amazon via Instagram. There's no point 'saving the world' if it's a miserable place to live for large percentages of the population.

 

Corporates are absolutely interested, because the transition makes money, but they're guided by public policy. Compare the IRA in the US to this news out today - https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcontent%2F03e2e207-3245-4b2d-92b9-340ba1a468f6

[dsr-burnley]

5 minutes ago, grobyfox1990 said:

Good article but it touches more on the S than the E in my opinion. Non stop growth that benefits certain people only and leaves most of us in misery is the main issue, not the emissions related to it. We have gone through a period of remarkable growth and wealth creation yet we are somehow worse off, we should be rioting about it, instead we're shopping on Amazon via Instagram. There's no point 'saving the world' if it's a miserable place to live for large percentages of the population.

 

Corporates are absolutely interested, because the transition makes money, but they're guided by public policy. Compare the IRA in the US to this news out today - https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcontent%2F03e2e207-3245-4b2d-92b9-340ba1a468f6

I think you need a sense of perspective.  To talk about "saving the world" and then saying that people are living in misery because they are buying from Amazon, is extreme.  For the vast majority of the world's population, being able to buy any consumer goods from anywhere would be wealth.

 

We are not getting worse off, unless you're looking very short term, ie. the last year or two.  Car ownership is higher than it has ever been.  Holidays taken per family is higher than it has ever been.  Houses are heated better and more thoroughly than ever before.  Christmas p[resents for children now run into hundreds of pounds and many toys per child; no longer one new toy shared between children and some second hand stuff.  Telephones are freely used by everyone individually, not restricted to evenings because it's cheaper.  People nowadays have more possessions - regardless of house prices - than they have ever had.

[grobyfox1990]

2 minutes ago, dsr-burnley said:

I think you need a sense of perspective.  To talk about "saving the world" and then saying that people are living in misery because they are buying from Amazon, is extreme.  For the vast majority of the world's population, being able to buy any consumer goods from anywhere would be wealth.

 

We are not getting worse off, unless you're looking very short term, ie. the last year or two.  Car ownership is higher than it has ever been.  Holidays taken per family is higher than it has ever been.  Houses are heated better and more thoroughly than ever before.  Christmas p[resents for children now run into hundreds of pounds and many toys per child; no longer one new toy shared between children and some second hand stuff.  Telephones are freely used by everyone individually, not restricted to evenings because it's cheaper.  People nowadays have more possessions - regardless of house prices - than they have ever had.

You've definitely misunderstood what I said, it's not because of Amazon, but the response to the degradation of living standards is to shop on Amazon. Likewise, the tone of your comment is ignoring the huge, Moore's Law level, advancements, growth rates and creation of wealth over the last few decades. You can't explain away the fact that hasn't been shared equally because my grandad p1ssed in the garden and I don't and I can take a £19.87 flight to Malaga on Ryanair. Inequality is the biggest risk facing the world according to the WEF, because global growth and global living standards have not increased in lockstep. That's not an opinion, that's fact, but I am grateful to be able to check football scores on my mobile....

 

I'd welcome any stat to back up what you've said aside from anecdotes given the average global wage is probably still less than $10k I think, I cannot imagine the average person is spending hundreds of pounds on Xmas presents or even knows what Xmas is. 

[leicsmac]

39 minutes ago, grobyfox1990 said:

Good article but it touches more on the S than the E in my opinion. Non stop growth that benefits certain people only and leaves most of us in misery is the main issue, not the emissions related to it. We have gone through a period of remarkable growth and wealth creation yet we are somehow worse off, we should be rioting about it, instead we're shopping on Amazon via Instagram. There's no point 'saving the world' if it's a miserable place to live for large percentages of the population.

 

Corporates are absolutely interested, because the transition makes money, but they're guided by public policy. Compare the IRA in the US to this news out today - https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcontent%2F03e2e207-3245-4b2d-92b9-340ba1a468f6

 

29 minutes ago, dsr-burnley said:

I think you need a sense of perspective.  To talk about "saving the world" and then saying that people are living in misery because they are buying from Amazon, is extreme.  For the vast majority of the world's population, being able to buy any consumer goods from anywhere would be wealth.

 

We are not getting worse off, unless you're looking very short term, ie. the last year or two.  Car ownership is higher than it has ever been.  Holidays taken per family is higher than it has ever been.  Houses are heated better and more thoroughly than ever before.  Christmas p[resents for children now run into hundreds of pounds and many toys per child; no longer one new toy shared between children and some second hand stuff.  Telephones are freely used by everyone individually, not restricted to evenings because it's cheaper.  People nowadays have more possessions - regardless of house prices - than they have ever had.

 

15 minutes ago, grobyfox1990 said:

You've definitely misunderstood what I said, it's not because of Amazon, but the response to the degradation of living standards is to shop on Amazon. Likewise, the tone of your comment is ignoring the huge, Moore's Law level, advancements, growth rates and creation of wealth over the last few decades. You can't explain away the fact that hasn't been shared equally because my grandad p1ssed in the garden and I don't and I can take a £19.87 flight to Malaga on Ryanair. Inequality is the biggest risk facing the world according to the WEF, because global growth and global living standards have not increased in lockstep. That's not an opinion, that's fact, but I am grateful to be able to check football scores on my mobile....

 

I'd welcome any stat to back up what you've said aside from anecdotes given the average global wage is probably still less than $10k I think, I cannot imagine the average person is spending hundreds of pounds on Xmas presents or even knows what Xmas is. 

Interesting discussion and points, fellas.

 

Speaking personally, addressing systemic inequality is a big part of taking on climate change itself...but for it to succeed that has to be done globally, not just in the OECD nations. There's no point bringing folks in the UK, USA and elsewhere up to more egalitarian and better living standards when countless billions of others will simply have to do all that's necessary to survive - including contributing on a large scale to carbon emissions, which will end up screwing both themselves and everyone else.

 

So you're both right - folks in OECD countries are mostly better off in terms of possessions and material wealth than they have been at any point in history, but unless the OECD then turns round and helps the rest of the world up the ladder as well that period of growth and prosperity will end rather messily (because a billion and a half people with no food or potable water over the course of less than a decade of time is going to cause a dent no matter where those people happen to be, even if it's "only" in the less well-off nations).

 

And it will do so soon.

[davieG]

 

At the start of the year, France made it compulsory for all large car parks (existing & new) to be covered in solar panels.

Shade providing, energy producing & no extra space required!

Win, win, situation.

[leicsmac]

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-65321487

 

Human ingenuity rising to the challenge. Let's keep at it!

[grobyfox1990]

Good article this r.e avoiding the mistakes made in climate for many decades with the upcoming threat of AI:

 

Moreover, the IPCC is part of a wider global climate framework that offers a lot of lessons in what not to do for artificial intelligence.

The panel was established in 1988, a year of climate turning points that mirror many of those we are seeing for AI in 2023. In both years, respected experts have issued jolting warnings. In 1988, Nasa scientist James Hansen testified to the US Senate that “the greenhouse effect has been detected and is changing our climate now”. This was not the first official alarm bell sounded about global warming but it made front-page headlines and bolstered early efforts to address carbon emissions.

 

Something similar has happened in 2023 as Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and more recently, AI “godfather” Geoffrey Hinton have warned of the risks to humanity the technology poses.

This month alone, the G7 has called for new standards to keep AI “trustworthy”, while the White House, US Senate and 10 Downing Street have met AI chiefs to discuss their contentious technology. Meanwhile, the EU is finalising a groundbreaking AI Act aimed at making systems safer and more transparent.

Still, there is growing agreement that international collaboration on AI is needed. Some like the model of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Others prefer the less intrusive example of the International Civil Aviation Organization. It’s an agency of the UN, which is also home to the climate secretariat that emerged after world leaders backed an international treaty to combat climate change in 1992.

Annual meetings of the “conference of the parties” to the treaty, or COPs, led to more detailed climate targets being established in the 1997 Kyoto protocol and 2015 Paris agreement. Yet today, emissions remain at record levels. The reasons for this are complex and manifold but it has not helped that climate COPs have given new meaning to the word “glacial”. 

That is partly because COP decisions in effect require consensus from nearly 200 countries — a recipe for hopelessly slow progress and more. In 2018, Trump administration officials helped to block a COP meeting from embracing the conclusions of an IPCC report commissioned at an earlier gathering.

Climate COPs serve a range of useful purposes. We would be far worse off without them. But they also show what must be avoided as we seek ways to ensure that AI works for us, not the other way around.

[Trumpet]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-us-canada-65769172
 

 

Seems as though the narrative is slowly changing with UFOs, or UAPs as they’re now commonly referred to. Of course, many of these sightings are nothing and can be explained but there’s a small percent that truly are unexplainable at the moment. Great to see that the topic in general is worthy of the front page on the BBC website.

[leicsmac]

14 hours ago, grobyfox1990 said:

Good article this r.e avoiding the mistakes made in climate for many decades with the upcoming threat of AI:

 

Moreover, the IPCC is part of a wider global climate framework that offers a lot of lessons in what not to do for artificial intelligence.

The panel was established in 1988, a year of climate turning points that mirror many of those we are seeing for AI in 2023. In both years, respected experts have issued jolting warnings. In 1988, Nasa scientist James Hansen testified to the US Senate that “the greenhouse effect has been detected and is changing our climate now”. This was not the first official alarm bell sounded about global warming but it made front-page headlines and bolstered early efforts to address carbon emissions.

 

Something similar has happened in 2023 as Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and more recently, AI “godfather” Geoffrey Hinton have warned of the risks to humanity the technology poses.

This month alone, the G7 has called for new standards to keep AI “trustworthy”, while the White House, US Senate and 10 Downing Street have met AI chiefs to discuss their contentious technology. Meanwhile, the EU is finalising a groundbreaking AI Act aimed at making systems safer and more transparent.

Still, there is growing agreement that international collaboration on AI is needed. Some like the model of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Others prefer the less intrusive example of the International Civil Aviation Organization. It’s an agency of the UN, which is also home to the climate secretariat that emerged after world leaders backed an international treaty to combat climate change in 1992.

Annual meetings of the “conference of the parties” to the treaty, or COPs, led to more detailed climate targets being established in the 1997 Kyoto protocol and 2015 Paris agreement. Yet today, emissions remain at record levels. The reasons for this are complex and manifold but it has not helped that climate COPs have given new meaning to the word “glacial”. 

That is partly because COP decisions in effect require consensus from nearly 200 countries — a recipe for hopelessly slow progress and more. In 2018, Trump administration officials helped to block a COP meeting from embracing the conclusions of an IPCC report commissioned at an earlier gathering.

Climate COPs serve a range of useful purposes. We would be far worse off without them. But they also show what must be avoided as we seek ways to ensure that AI works for us, not the other way around.

There's certainly a lot of salient points buried there, the most important of which is that the weakness of a gigantic democratic talking shop is best shown when dealing with something like climate change - a matter where the whole world will feel the consequences and procrastination has a large cost.

[SpacedX]

 

[davieG]

 

Vintage Electronic Test Equipment (VETE)  · 

Join

 

Don E Hayes  ·   · 

 

 

A 10MB hard drive from the 1960s

[leicsmac]

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-65754296

 

"On Monday, countries meet for the Bonn climate conference, to discuss their pledges and look ahead to the next big UN climate conference, COP28, which opens in Dubai in November.  So which countries are on track with their climate commitments to help stick to 1.5C and which are not? Find out using the interactive chart below."

 

Long story short, no one is doing enough, a lot of places are doing far from enough, and based on what we know about historic carbon emissions and their link to temperature increase, keeping overall temperature increase below 1.5 degrees C is not going to happen.

 

May we all live in interesting times.

[leicsmac]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65828469

 

Millions of people in North America have been advised to wear N95 masks outdoors due to poor air quality levels sparked by intense wildfires in Canada.

New York will begin distributing free masks on Thursday. Canada has said that people should wear a mask if they are unable to remain indoors.

Officials warn that the dangerously smoky conditions are expected to persist into the weekend.

Much of the smoke is coming from Quebec, where 150 fires are burning.

 

Grim stuff.

[Daggers]

4 hours ago, leicsmac said:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65828469

 

Millions of people in North America have been advised to wear N95 masks outdoors due to poor air quality levels sparked by intense wildfires in Canada.

New York will begin distributing free masks on Thursday. Canada has said that people should wear a mask if they are unable to remain indoors.

Officials warn that the dangerously smoky conditions are expected to persist into the weekend.

Much of the smoke is coming from Quebec, where 150 fires are burning.

 

Grim stuff.

I’m sure they can shoot the air quality better with guns. 

[Innovindil]

7 hours ago, leicsmac said:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65828469

 

Millions of people in North America have been advised to wear N95 masks outdoors due to poor air quality levels sparked by intense wildfires in Canada.

New York will begin distributing free masks on Thursday. Canada has said that people should wear a mask if they are unable to remain indoors.

Officials warn that the dangerously smoky conditions are expected to persist into the weekend.

Much of the smoke is coming from Quebec, where 150 fires are burning.

 

Grim stuff.

D4 ad in new York looks ridiculous against this backdrop. 

 

 

[SpacedX]

On 08/06/2023 at 02:11, leicsmac said:

 

Millions of people in North America have been advised to wear N95 masks outdoors due to poor air quality levels sparked by intense wildfires in Canada.

 

But, but...it's been "scientifically proven that facemasks don't work" I read it on the Covid thread. 

 

Presumably, the same people will construe even an advisory as an assault on civil liberties? 

[grobyfox1990]

20 minutes ago, Line-X said:

But, but...it's been "scientifically proven that facemasks don't work" I read it on the Covid thread. 

 

Presumably, the same people will construe even an advisory as an assault on civil liberties? 

Who cares, no point getting annoyed about it, let them get respiratory problems and die. 

[SpacedX]

9 minutes ago, grobyfox1990 said:

Who cares, no point getting annoyed about it, let them get respiratory problems and die. 

I'm not in the slightest bit annoyed - I find it funny, I did make the point at the time that I've worn an N95 cycling around London for years, so I don't regard a mask as the slightest bit of an inconvenience or in any way restrictive. 

[grobyfox1990]

29 minutes ago, Line-X said:

I'm not in the slightest bit annoyed - I find it funny, I did make the point at the time that I've worn an N95 cycling around London for years, so I don't regard a mask as the slightest bit of an inconvenience or in any way restrictive. 

Understood and agreed.

[dsr-burnley]

5 hours ago, Line-X said:

But, but...it's been "scientifically proven that facemasks don't work" I read it on the Covid thread. 

 

Presumably, the same people will construe even an advisory as an assault on civil liberties? 

I think perhaps on that thread they were talking about facemasks as protection against covid.  

[SpacedX]

51 minutes ago, dsr-burnley said:

I think perhaps on that thread they were talking about facemasks as protection against covid.  

Really? Thanks for that - which was also completely incorrect. And one particular member in question - remember? the one that you supported when he hilariously alleged that the UK is a totalitarian state - was also adamant that face masks and respirators offered no protection against anything, not simply airborne pathogens and aerosols. 

 

Meantime, I was talking about wearing them for years as protection from  PM_2.5 when exercising in parts of London, which is a no brainer really.