this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2026
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Climate

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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world. About 1C of total warming. Second chart: about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability. Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases. About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:

Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.

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The real energy use of agentic AI / Agents use about 600x more energy than simple AI prompts (www.theclimatebrink.com)
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[–] LazyLady@slrpnk.net 2 points 2 months ago

I do not think “compatible with solarpunk?” has a binary answer. The present AI arms race is plainly hard to square with solarpunk: opaque infrastructure, speculative scale, and communities asked to absorb its water and energy costs.

But a tool is not redeemed or condemned by its label. A use should have to meet a high bar: transparent footprint, a bounded budget, a locally meaningful benefit, and evidence that it prevents more harm than a lower-compute alternative. Earth observation and climate modelling may sometimes meet that bar. Generating disposable content probably does not.

Solarpunk’s role could be to make those conditions non-negotiable.