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Parts of the world are literally on fire but the US is redirecting money to halt renewables and towards gas. The demand for energy is higher than ever due to A

Parts of the world are literally on fire but the US is redirecting money to halt renewables and towards gas. The demand for energy is higher than ever due to AI data centers, but I guess the next model is more important than a habitable environment.

spwa4 2mo ago
[flagged]
- fundatus 2mo ago
  Seems like you read some misinformation there. Share of coal in the German electricity mix: 2021 30.2% 2022 33.3% (the year that nuclear was shut off) 2023 26.0% 2024 21.2% 2025 22.4% Complete phase out is scheduled for the 2030s.
  - rcxdude 2mo ago
    The argument I think is that the share could be lower if the nuclear plants were kept running (broadly, based on your numbers, it could be less than 20% in 2025). Whether that would have made economic sense (especially in terms of redirections funds away from renewables), I am not so sure of.
- atoav 2mo ago
  This mixes several different things into one causal puddle. Yes, keeping the remaining nuclear plants running would have reduced emissions and electricity prices somewhat. A 2024 Energy Policy study estimates the 2022/23 extension lowered German wholesale prices by about €9/MWh. That's a real effect, but nowhere remotely close to "the nuclear phase-out doubled electricity prices." The huge price spike was primarily the European gas crisis. You know, the one for which LNG terminals had been built. Nor did Germany replace nuclear with coal. Coal generation subsequently fell to levels not seen in decades, while renewables grew substantially, so German emissions fell as well. Attributing the nuclear exit simply to "the Greens" is rather selective history. The original exit was SPD/Greens, but after reversing it in 2010, Merkel's CDU/FDP government legislated essentially the final phase-out schedule again in 2011. So basically: every party that was at the levers of power. You could make a perfectly reasonable argument that shutting existing nuclear before coal was bad climate policy in hindsight, because of the gas crisis. But I don't think you need to resort to the rather dubious claim that it doubled electricity prices as a singular cause.
  - throwaway473825 2mo ago
    A better question is why Germany invested in gas power plants in the first place. Gas has always been the most expensive source of electricity, even before "the gas crisis" (how many of those have we had already?): https://www.ffe.de/en/publications/merit-order-shifts-and-their-impact-on-the-electricity-price/ https://www.ffe.de/en/publications/merit-order-shifts-and-th... China is laughing at the prices Europe agreed to buy Russian gas for: https://asiatimes.com/2026/07/power-of-siberia-2-deadlock-cracks-russia-china-no-limits-pact/ https://asiatimes.com/2026/07/power-of-siberia-2-deadlock-cr... I get the idea that Germany would buy Russian gas in exchange for not having to spend on the military, but 2014 clearly showed that it didn't work. And Germany still doubled down on gas after 2022. Now the argument seems to be that Germany will buy American gas so that it can get lower tariffs. I don't see how Germany can compete with a China that refuses to reject the cheapest forms of energy, whatever that is (both nuclear and coal are cheaper than imported gas).
- fsh 2mo ago
  This is blatantly untrue: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/Fig2_Gross%20electricity%20production%20in%20Germany%201990%202025.png https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/Fig2_Gro...
  - ffsm8 2mo ago
    What was untrue specifically? I'm not sure what quoting the electricity by general source over the last decades disproves. Did you read something into spwas comment he didn't actually say?
    - deleted 2mo ago
      [deleted]
  - thatwasunusual 2mo ago
    Correct; On July 9, 2026, the Bundestag passed Germany's new electricity-capacity law, which subsidizes reserve/dispatchable power capacity as coal is phased out. SPD and CDU/CSU voted for it; the Greens and Die Linke voted against it. The Greens specifically argued against a long-term fossil-fuel lock-in, while Die Linke argued for renewables and batteries instead of subsidizing new fossil gas plants. The law itself is primarily about new hydrogen-ready/gas-capable reserve plants, not coal plants. Source: https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2026-07/kraftwerksgesetz-gaskraftwerke-bundestag-stromversorgung https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2026-07/kraftwerksge...
- eigenspace 2mo ago
  Crazy the sorts of lies people make up here.
- Y-bar 2mo ago
  When you say that the Greens provide subsidies to coal, but this can be found on a quick search… > The next fight is already brewing, over a Green push to accelerate the phase-out of coal-fired power generation in eastern Germany. In a draft resolution, seen by POLITICO, the party wants to bring the coal exit forward from 2038 to 2030, as is already the case for mining regions in the west of the country. https://www.politico.eu/article/german-government-coalition-greens-robert-habeck-combustion-motor-heat-pumps-coal-phase-out/ https://www.politico.eu/article/german-government-coalition-... … Are you sure you are talking about the Greens and not CDU or CSU which they occasionality form government coalitions with?
  - spwa4 2mo ago
    And yet ... read the articles. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy04ykxrj5eo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy04ykxrj5eo Like all such articles they present a LONG list of politicians with "we're committed to/promising to/... phase out coal". And then a statement or two by the executive that they're increasing coal usage because they have no choice. The problem is that there is no option left BUT coal.
ZiiS 2mo ago
It is important to keep the main issue clear. Failing to invest in renewables is an existential risk to humanity's future. Permanently shutting all Datacenters (not just AI) saves us about 1 year.
- einpoklum 2mo ago
  I believe you may be basing your figure on current Data Center power consumption. But - it's estimately to grow significantly: https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/doe-data-centers-consumed-44-of-us-power-in-2023-could-hit-12-by-2028/ https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/doe-data-centers-... also - 1 year is a lot, if we actually act diligently to stave the warming crisis and to prepare for some of the effects through changes to construction & infrastructure. Still, I would agree that Data Centers are just one particular aspect of the struggle against global warming.
  - benjiro29 2mo ago
    Ironically, we are also moving to more capable / faster models that use less power. DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 is so extreme capable and comparability to a lot of models cheap to run. We are seeing stuff like AMD buying Taalas, with their Llama 3 8B on a chip, being able to push 17.000 tokens / second. https://chatjimmy.ai/ https://chatjimmy.ai/ Generated in 0,033s • 14.212 tok/s ... People need to understand, that even AI companies do not like to build datacenters and the high energy needs. It cost them money and they are also looking at ways to develop better hardware / solutions that gives them more inference for cheaper (what means less power draw / heat generated).
    - niek_pas 2mo ago
      Unfortunately, "more capable / faster models that use less power" will likely mean those models will be used in more places than ever before. LLMs on laptops, on tablets, on phones, on fridges, in your web browser. See the Jevons paradox.
    - smolder 2mo ago
      I just tested out chatjimmy and a bit and it did some misinterpretation of my prompts, E.g. "write me a python script to generate insults for a name given by command line" had multiple of the same insult in the insult list, and it had a list of names like John and Jane instead of doing the obvious thing and making the name a variable. Not good code.
Jumpstylish 2mo ago
[flagged]
- estearum 2mo ago
  The goal is not to "gain better control" over the earth's temperature, it's to stop actively throwing the temperature out of control. Worth scrolling through this if you have been midwit-pilled into thinking humans have no levers of control on this question: https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/ Please explain your alternative hypothesis.
  - Jumpstylish 2mo ago
    “midwit-pilled”? Is this a “How do you do, fellow kids” rhetorical ploy? You’ve got it backwards. The average American and European thinks the Earth will be destroyed in current year + 5 years, and modern sumptuary laws or ersatz-religious rituals around recycling or performative bicycling have a material impact on climatic fluctuations that take thousands of years. If XKCD is your source, you’re not on the right side of the bell curve. Sorry, friend. It’s not your fault. It’s just cruel statistics to be average. We can smugly scoff at how religions exploited the gullible for their own empowerment, and yet be oblivious to how it’s happening to them. Wow, an eschatological crisis? Guess I better vote how I’m told and self-flagellate.
    - estearum 2mo ago
      > The average American and European thinks the Earth will be destroyed in current year + 5 years Midwit take, not evidenced whatsoever. Please cite a single source showing any substantial number of people who believe "the earth will be destroyed" within 5 years. Less than 20% of Americans even believe climate change will seriously negatively affect them personally within 50 years. Or is this just lazy and dishonest shorthand for something like "believe we will encounter a higher rate of catastrophes?" If so, you should be sure to lump in all those stupid emotional insurers who are also apparently under some eschatological spell that you're just too brilliant to be taken in by. You could make an absolute fuck ton of money by insuring the areas that the stupid midwit cultist insurers think are uninsurable due to climate risk, you know. Literally just mountains of cash waiting to reward your brilliant contrarianism. > If XKCD is your source One little trick to claw your way up the curve of midwittery: when you encounter new information, look for the string "Source: " and then look up the text immediately following that. I provided the nearest thing to a picture-book that I could find, because exactly 0 people I've ever met with this attitude actually have the attention span to read even a single scientific paper, never mind a couple dozen or couple hundred. You are invited to defy the odds, find the backing sources, and dispute them directly.
throw0101d 2mo ago
> Parts of the world are literally on fire but the US is redirecting money to halt renewables and towards gas. Parts of the US are literally on fire. * https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/usfs/map/#d:24hrs;@-100.0,40.0,4.0z https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/usfs/map/#d:24hrs;@-100... * https://wfca.com/fire-map https://wfca.com/fire-map * https://www.nifc.gov/fire-information/maps https://www.nifc.gov/fire-information/maps
- zelphirkalt 2mo ago
  The issue will be "out of sight, out of mind" (or rather knowingly ignored) until the issue appears at scales as small as the home village, which in terms of the US government means the front and back yard of the white house or similar. These people are living in parallel societies, where they are completely detached from the reality for many people living in the country. And that is not merely a problem in the US.
  - dolmen 2mo ago
    > The issue will be "out of sight, out of mind" [...] ... while an offshore wind farm was once in DT's sight in Scotland.
- RobotToaster 2mo ago
  Nobody will care until the white house burns down (again)
  - smallerize 2mo ago
    That will not change their minds. They already demolished a bunch of the White House.
- bluerooibos 2mo ago
  These damn arsonists are really going for it this year, huh? The coordination between them is amazing - being able to pull this off in multiple European countries, the US and Canada at the same time.
- 2mo ago
crowbahr 2mo ago
Fun tidbit: Climate change is real, caused by humans, and the fires were seeing are absolutely exacerbated by the effects of the climate. However this is the _least_ on fire the world has been for a while because it's usually Asian and Africa that are rampantly burning and they're improving land management techniques enough that it's tamping down on the worst of the burns. Progress isn't evenly distributed
- bjackman 2mo ago
  For anyone who wants to learn more about this claim, I thought this video was cool: https://youtu.be/M9Hoy9Kn1u0?is=1O5AJPEziihH1MSJ https://youtu.be/M9Hoy9Kn1u0?is=1O5AJPEziihH1MSJ
greenleafone7 2mo ago
If we all die, whom will they charge 100 Euros per 1M tokens I wonder. True dilemma right here.
- throw-the-towel 2mo ago
  I think there is progress on allowing agents to pay?
  - greenleafone7 2mo ago
    A fully agentified economy. I'm sure some tech-overlord will love the idea. Let's hope they don't frequent HN.
ChoGGi 2mo ago
And coal, he loves coal; same as our idiot Premier.
Flere-Imsaho 2mo ago
The statistics for the number of deaths from climate-based disasters is clear: fewer and fewer people are dying the richer the world becomes. In fact the decrease in deaths is very significant: "Annual climate-disaster deaths averaged around 77,000 per year in the 1960s–70s, dropped to about 33,000/year in the 1980s–90s, and fell further to roughly 27,000/year in 2000–2019 even as the number of recorded climate disasters rose from about 1,171 to 3,656 to 6,641 across those same periods." If you're optimising for human life, then "drill baby drill", as more energy = more wealth. More wealth = better infrastructure, health care, dealing with extreme weather conditions.
- dsauerbrun 2mo ago
  If you think about this in terms of systems... it's unsustainable. You'll eventually get to a point where the damage you've done requires a flow of wealth/energy that cannot be generated for everyone. I'm assuming that we can drive our environment to that kind of state, maybe there's an upper limit on how bad the environment can get. I'm not a climate scientist and don't have the curiosity to look into if there's a limit to climate change.
- Mawr 2mo ago
  1. The past is not a predictor of the future. Driving towards a cliff has very positive results right up until a sharply negative one. 2. Energy does not require damaging the environment through drilling. We can get it straight from our star, for example. 3. Dealing with the consequences of something is always more expensive than preventing it in the first place.
  - Flere-Imsaho 2mo ago
    1. Of course it is. That is how models are built. They are not always correct of course, but it's the best we have. 2. We need to choose the cheapest energy option at the time. If renewables are cheaper then great, but making the poor even poorer to make is rich people feel better is not a good solution. 3. The consequences of making the world poorer is more people will die from climate related disasters.
barfingclouds 2mo ago
Offshore wind can power the data center too. Your dichotomy is not relevant

spwa4 2mo ago

[flagged]

fundatus 2mo ago
Seems like you read some misinformation there. Share of coal in the German electricity mix: 2021 30.2% 2022 33.3% (the year that nuclear was shut off) 2023 26.0% 2024 21.2% 2025 22.4% Complete phase out is scheduled for the 2030s.
- rcxdude 2mo ago
  The argument I think is that the share could be lower if the nuclear plants were kept running (broadly, based on your numbers, it could be less than 20% in 2025). Whether that would have made economic sense (especially in terms of redirections funds away from renewables), I am not so sure of.
atoav 2mo ago
This mixes several different things into one causal puddle. Yes, keeping the remaining nuclear plants running would have reduced emissions and electricity prices somewhat. A 2024 Energy Policy study estimates the 2022/23 extension lowered German wholesale prices by about €9/MWh. That's a real effect, but nowhere remotely close to "the nuclear phase-out doubled electricity prices." The huge price spike was primarily the European gas crisis. You know, the one for which LNG terminals had been built. Nor did Germany replace nuclear with coal. Coal generation subsequently fell to levels not seen in decades, while renewables grew substantially, so German emissions fell as well. Attributing the nuclear exit simply to "the Greens" is rather selective history. The original exit was SPD/Greens, but after reversing it in 2010, Merkel's CDU/FDP government legislated essentially the final phase-out schedule again in 2011. So basically: every party that was at the levers of power. You could make a perfectly reasonable argument that shutting existing nuclear before coal was bad climate policy in hindsight, because of the gas crisis. But I don't think you need to resort to the rather dubious claim that it doubled electricity prices as a singular cause.
- throwaway473825 2mo ago
  A better question is why Germany invested in gas power plants in the first place. Gas has always been the most expensive source of electricity, even before "the gas crisis" (how many of those have we had already?): https://www.ffe.de/en/publications/merit-order-shifts-and-their-impact-on-the-electricity-price/ https://www.ffe.de/en/publications/merit-order-shifts-and-th... China is laughing at the prices Europe agreed to buy Russian gas for: https://asiatimes.com/2026/07/power-of-siberia-2-deadlock-cracks-russia-china-no-limits-pact/ https://asiatimes.com/2026/07/power-of-siberia-2-deadlock-cr... I get the idea that Germany would buy Russian gas in exchange for not having to spend on the military, but 2014 clearly showed that it didn't work. And Germany still doubled down on gas after 2022. Now the argument seems to be that Germany will buy American gas so that it can get lower tariffs. I don't see how Germany can compete with a China that refuses to reject the cheapest forms of energy, whatever that is (both nuclear and coal are cheaper than imported gas).
fsh 2mo ago
This is blatantly untrue: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/Fig2_Gross%20electricity%20production%20in%20Germany%201990%202025.png https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/Fig2_Gro...
- ffsm8 2mo ago
  What was untrue specifically? I'm not sure what quoting the electricity by general source over the last decades disproves. Did you read something into spwas comment he didn't actually say?
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
- thatwasunusual 2mo ago
  Correct; On July 9, 2026, the Bundestag passed Germany's new electricity-capacity law, which subsidizes reserve/dispatchable power capacity as coal is phased out. SPD and CDU/CSU voted for it; the Greens and Die Linke voted against it. The Greens specifically argued against a long-term fossil-fuel lock-in, while Die Linke argued for renewables and batteries instead of subsidizing new fossil gas plants. The law itself is primarily about new hydrogen-ready/gas-capable reserve plants, not coal plants. Source: https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2026-07/kraftwerksgesetz-gaskraftwerke-bundestag-stromversorgung https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2026-07/kraftwerksge...
eigenspace 2mo ago
Crazy the sorts of lies people make up here.
Y-bar 2mo ago
When you say that the Greens provide subsidies to coal, but this can be found on a quick search… > The next fight is already brewing, over a Green push to accelerate the phase-out of coal-fired power generation in eastern Germany. In a draft resolution, seen by POLITICO, the party wants to bring the coal exit forward from 2038 to 2030, as is already the case for mining regions in the west of the country. https://www.politico.eu/article/german-government-coalition-greens-robert-habeck-combustion-motor-heat-pumps-coal-phase-out/ https://www.politico.eu/article/german-government-coalition-... … Are you sure you are talking about the Greens and not CDU or CSU which they occasionality form government coalitions with?
- spwa4 2mo ago
  And yet ... read the articles. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy04ykxrj5eo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy04ykxrj5eo Like all such articles they present a LONG list of politicians with "we're committed to/promising to/... phase out coal". And then a statement or two by the executive that they're increasing coal usage because they have no choice. The problem is that there is no option left BUT coal.

ZiiS 2mo ago

It is important to keep the main issue clear. Failing to invest in renewables is an existential risk to humanity's future. Permanently shutting all Datacenters (not just AI) saves us about 1 year.

einpoklum 2mo ago
I believe you may be basing your figure on current Data Center power consumption. But - it's estimately to grow significantly: https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/doe-data-centers-consumed-44-of-us-power-in-2023-could-hit-12-by-2028/ https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/doe-data-centers-... also - 1 year is a lot, if we actually act diligently to stave the warming crisis and to prepare for some of the effects through changes to construction & infrastructure. Still, I would agree that Data Centers are just one particular aspect of the struggle against global warming.
- benjiro29 2mo ago
  Ironically, we are also moving to more capable / faster models that use less power. DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 is so extreme capable and comparability to a lot of models cheap to run. We are seeing stuff like AMD buying Taalas, with their Llama 3 8B on a chip, being able to push 17.000 tokens / second. https://chatjimmy.ai/ https://chatjimmy.ai/ Generated in 0,033s • 14.212 tok/s ... People need to understand, that even AI companies do not like to build datacenters and the high energy needs. It cost them money and they are also looking at ways to develop better hardware / solutions that gives them more inference for cheaper (what means less power draw / heat generated).
  - niek_pas 2mo ago
    Unfortunately, "more capable / faster models that use less power" will likely mean those models will be used in more places than ever before. LLMs on laptops, on tablets, on phones, on fridges, in your web browser. See the Jevons paradox.
  - smolder 2mo ago
    I just tested out chatjimmy and a bit and it did some misinterpretation of my prompts, E.g. "write me a python script to generate insults for a name given by command line" had multiple of the same insult in the insult list, and it had a list of names like John and Jane instead of doing the obvious thing and making the name a variable. Not good code.

Jumpstylish 2mo ago

[flagged]

estearum 2mo ago
The goal is not to "gain better control" over the earth's temperature, it's to stop actively throwing the temperature out of control. Worth scrolling through this if you have been midwit-pilled into thinking humans have no levers of control on this question: https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/ Please explain your alternative hypothesis.
- Jumpstylish 2mo ago
  “midwit-pilled”? Is this a “How do you do, fellow kids” rhetorical ploy? You’ve got it backwards. The average American and European thinks the Earth will be destroyed in current year + 5 years, and modern sumptuary laws or ersatz-religious rituals around recycling or performative bicycling have a material impact on climatic fluctuations that take thousands of years. If XKCD is your source, you’re not on the right side of the bell curve. Sorry, friend. It’s not your fault. It’s just cruel statistics to be average. We can smugly scoff at how religions exploited the gullible for their own empowerment, and yet be oblivious to how it’s happening to them. Wow, an eschatological crisis? Guess I better vote how I’m told and self-flagellate.
  - estearum 2mo ago
    > The average American and European thinks the Earth will be destroyed in current year + 5 years Midwit take, not evidenced whatsoever. Please cite a single source showing any substantial number of people who believe "the earth will be destroyed" within 5 years. Less than 20% of Americans even believe climate change will seriously negatively affect them personally within 50 years. Or is this just lazy and dishonest shorthand for something like "believe we will encounter a higher rate of catastrophes?" If so, you should be sure to lump in all those stupid emotional insurers who are also apparently under some eschatological spell that you're just too brilliant to be taken in by. You could make an absolute fuck ton of money by insuring the areas that the stupid midwit cultist insurers think are uninsurable due to climate risk, you know. Literally just mountains of cash waiting to reward your brilliant contrarianism. > If XKCD is your source One little trick to claw your way up the curve of midwittery: when you encounter new information, look for the string "Source: " and then look up the text immediately following that. I provided the nearest thing to a picture-book that I could find, because exactly 0 people I've ever met with this attitude actually have the attention span to read even a single scientific paper, never mind a couple dozen or couple hundred. You are invited to defy the odds, find the backing sources, and dispute them directly.

throw0101d 2mo ago

> Parts of the world are literally on fire but the US is redirecting money to halt renewables and towards gas. Parts of the US are literally on fire. * https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/usfs/map/#d:24hrs;@-100.0,40.0,4.0z https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/usfs/map/#d:24hrs;@-100... * https://wfca.com/fire-map https://wfca.com/fire-map * https://www.nifc.gov/fire-information/maps https://www.nifc.gov/fire-information/maps

zelphirkalt 2mo ago
The issue will be "out of sight, out of mind" (or rather knowingly ignored) until the issue appears at scales as small as the home village, which in terms of the US government means the front and back yard of the white house or similar. These people are living in parallel societies, where they are completely detached from the reality for many people living in the country. And that is not merely a problem in the US.
- dolmen 2mo ago
  > The issue will be "out of sight, out of mind" [...] ... while an offshore wind farm was once in DT's sight in Scotland.
RobotToaster 2mo ago
Nobody will care until the white house burns down (again)
- smallerize 2mo ago
  That will not change their minds. They already demolished a bunch of the White House.
bluerooibos 2mo ago
These damn arsonists are really going for it this year, huh? The coordination between them is amazing - being able to pull this off in multiple European countries, the US and Canada at the same time.
2mo ago

crowbahr 2mo ago

Fun tidbit: Climate change is real, caused by humans, and the fires were seeing are absolutely exacerbated by the effects of the climate. However this is the _least_ on fire the world has been for a while because it's usually Asian and Africa that are rampantly burning and they're improving land management techniques enough that it's tamping down on the worst of the burns. Progress isn't evenly distributed

bjackman 2mo ago
For anyone who wants to learn more about this claim, I thought this video was cool: https://youtu.be/M9Hoy9Kn1u0?is=1O5AJPEziihH1MSJ https://youtu.be/M9Hoy9Kn1u0?is=1O5AJPEziihH1MSJ

greenleafone7 2mo ago

If we all die, whom will they charge 100 Euros per 1M tokens I wonder. True dilemma right here.

throw-the-towel 2mo ago
I think there is progress on allowing agents to pay?
- greenleafone7 2mo ago
  A fully agentified economy. I'm sure some tech-overlord will love the idea. Let's hope they don't frequent HN.

ChoGGi 2mo ago

And coal, he loves coal; same as our idiot Premier.

Flere-Imsaho 2mo ago

The statistics for the number of deaths from climate-based disasters is clear: fewer and fewer people are dying the richer the world becomes. In fact the decrease in deaths is very significant: "Annual climate-disaster deaths averaged around 77,000 per year in the 1960s–70s, dropped to about 33,000/year in the 1980s–90s, and fell further to roughly 27,000/year in 2000–2019 even as the number of recorded climate disasters rose from about 1,171 to 3,656 to 6,641 across those same periods." If you're optimising for human life, then "drill baby drill", as more energy = more wealth. More wealth = better infrastructure, health care, dealing with extreme weather conditions.

dsauerbrun 2mo ago
If you think about this in terms of systems... it's unsustainable. You'll eventually get to a point where the damage you've done requires a flow of wealth/energy that cannot be generated for everyone. I'm assuming that we can drive our environment to that kind of state, maybe there's an upper limit on how bad the environment can get. I'm not a climate scientist and don't have the curiosity to look into if there's a limit to climate change.
Mawr 2mo ago
1. The past is not a predictor of the future. Driving towards a cliff has very positive results right up until a sharply negative one. 2. Energy does not require damaging the environment through drilling. We can get it straight from our star, for example. 3. Dealing with the consequences of something is always more expensive than preventing it in the first place.
- Flere-Imsaho 2mo ago
  1. Of course it is. That is how models are built. They are not always correct of course, but it's the best we have. 2. We need to choose the cheapest energy option at the time. If renewables are cheaper then great, but making the poor even poorer to make is rich people feel better is not a good solution. 3. The consequences of making the world poorer is more people will die from climate related disasters.

barfingclouds 2mo ago

Offshore wind can power the data center too. Your dichotomy is not relevant