4 ms·
I don’t buy that fusion is a prerequisite here, especially since just developing those reactors requires modeling on super computers. Yes, we should be powerin
by ch4s3 7y ago
I don’t buy that fusion is a prerequisite here, especially since just developing those reactors requires modeling on super computers.
Yes, we should be powering these things with renewables, but we should make cuts somewhere else before giving up on basic research.
I just can’t seem to relate to people who think we should all punish ourselves because society didn’t see climate change coming. Sure we need to do something, but it’s not practical for us to collectively put on hair shirts and wander into the woods.
- cjfd 7y agoI am not sure we should be punishing ourselves either but when I look at how things are currently going in my country, it seems we already are. There are climate plans that basically involve 25 centimeters of insulation to every house and heating by heat pumps. At the same time currently pretty much all building projects are on hold, not because of CO2 but because of nitrogen compounds. I am not really sure these are good things to do either. I am guessing maybe not. But in such a political climate the quite large amounts of CO2 emitted by training deep learning networks does feel like a frivolous expense.
- ch4s3 7y agoThe ideas that deep learning is meaningfully contributing to CO2 emissions seems dubious to me. Lots of data centers are powered by renewables. Furthermore I think advances in AI are probably critical to climate adaptation. “Turn off the computers to save the planet” strikes me as Luddite-ism. We need to be switching off coal fired power plants not computers.