Month: March 2023

Could AI Help Fight, and Adapt, to Climate Change?

Two collaborative videos by @ClimateAdam and @AnkurShah on the relationship of Artificial Intelligence and Climate education, adaptation, and action.

Numenta:

Over the last ten years, AI, specifically deep learning, has yielded remarkable results. When Siri understands what you say, when Facebook identifies your cousin, when Google Maps reroutes you, chances are that a deep learning system is involved.

What is less noticed is that these models are churning away at a staggering cost, not just in terms of dollars and cents, but also in terms of energy consumed. On its current trajectory, AI will only accelerate the climate crisis. In contrast, our brains are incredibly efficient, consuming less than 40 watts of power. If we can apply neuroscience-based techniques to AI, there is enormous potential to dramatically decrease the amount of energy used for computation and thus cut down on greenhouse gas emissions. This blog post aims to explain what causes this outsized energy consumption, and how brain-based techniques can address AI’s incredibly high energy cost.

Why does AI consume so much energy?

First, it is worth understanding how a deep learning model works in simple terms. Deep learning models are not intelligent the way your brain is intelligent. They don’t learn information in a structured way. Unlike you, they don’t understand cause-and-effect, context, or analogies. Deep learning models are “brute force” statistical techniques. For example, if you want to train a deep learning model to identify a photo of a cat, you show it thousands of images of cats that have been labeled by humans. The model does not understand that a cat is more likely than a dog to climb up a tree or play with a feather, so unless it is trained with images of cats that include trees and feathers, it is unaware that the presence of these objects would aid in identifying a cat. To make these inferences, it needs to be trained in a brute force way with all possible combinations.

The enormous energy requirement of these brute force statistical models is due to the following attributes:

  1. Requires millions or billions of training examples. In the cat example, pictures are needed from the front, back, and side. Pictures are needed of different breeds. Pictures are needed with different colors and shadings, and in different poses. There are an infinite number of possible cats. To succeed at identifying a novel cat, the model must be trained on many versions of cats.
  2. Requires many training cycles. The process of training the model involves learning from errors. If the model has incorrectly labeled a cat as a raccoon, the model readjusts its parameters and classifies the image as a raccoon, then retrains. It learns slowly from its mistakes, which requires more and more training passes.
  3. Requires retraining when presented with new information. If the model is now required to identify cartoon cats, which it has never seen before, it will need to be retrained from the start. It will need to have blue cartoon cats and red cartoon cats added to the training set and be retrained from scratch. The model cannot learn incrementally.
  4. Requires many weights and lots of multiplication. A typical neural network has many connections, or weights, that are represented by matrices.  For the network to compute an output, it needs to perform numerous matrix multiplications through subsequent layers until a pattern emerges on top.  In fact, it often takes millions of steps to compute the output of a single layer! A typical network might contain dozens to hundreds of layers, making the computations incredibly energy intensive.

Stephen Schneider Footage: Discussion with Bill Maher Post-Katrina

I had not seen this clip before, but very much worth a look.
The video description says August 26, 2008 – but the discussion refers to Hurricane Katrina, and the movie “The Day After Tomorrow” as if they were recent events, so possibly sometime later in 2005 or 2006?
Climate archivists or Bill Maher fans, let me know.

Wack Wingers Say Woke is Weak, but Weather Woes Won’t Wait

Big Brouhaha over “ESG” policies at various companies and investment firms.
No doubt that by far the driver of this is fossil fuel interests concerned about future oriented investors pricing in impacts of climate change – and seeking to wedge so called “woke” issues into the conversation to stoke tribalism.
Nevertheless, smart investors are waking up to climate impacts, and risk exposure – and even if those plans are temporarily held up in the US, European countries are making it mandatory, so anyone that hopes to operate internationally is going to have to do what capitalists have always done, gauge risk and reward and proceed accordingly.

Bloomberg:

Ignoring climate change’s risk to business is like pretending you can’t catch fire when strolling through a burning building. One of America’s two major political parties wants us to ignore it anyway. But corporate America and its investors know they don’t have that luxury.

Fitch Ratings this week said it would review the impact of climate change on the creditworthiness of more than 1,600 companies. Nearly 20% of those companies could have their credit ratings cut as a result, according to an initial Fitch estimate. These companies will have to change the way they do business or potentially face higher borrowing costs. 

This follows BlackRock Inc., the world’s biggest asset manager, vowing last week that it would keep pressing corporate boards for plans on handling climate risks, despite months of attacks from Republican politicians over such concerns.

GOP governors and lawmakers around the country have been trying to discourage companies and money managers from considering environmental, social and governance issues when making business and investment decisions. They have had some success in places like Florida and Texas, though their power to influence corporate policy may be limited to jawboning and depriving financiers of government dollars.

Continue reading “Wack Wingers Say Woke is Weak, but Weather Woes Won’t Wait”

Running the Nuclear Experiment

I told someone recently that no one should get sucked into “pro” or “anti” nuclear framing. The real discussion has always been about reality checking the nuclear industry, and how quickly it can be a help to decarbonize.
Last week I posted about the emergence of the GE-Hitachi design as a leader. The piece below suggests some momentum and potential cost savings, but important to get it that it’s no longer a discussion about whether the US is going to run the nuclear experiment – it’s being run now.

Utility Dive:

  • Nearly one-fourth of the current U.S. coal-fired fleet is scheduled to retire by 2029, providing opportunities to site advanced nuclear plants, specifically small modular reactors, or SMRs, a Washington, D.C. think tank says in a recent report.
  • The reactors can reuse coal plant electrical equipment and steam-cycle components that, combined with reuse of transmission and administrative buildings, can reduce SMR construction costs by 17% to 35%, according to John Jacobs and Lesley Jantarasami, authors of “Can Advanced Nuclear Repower Coal Country?” released this month by the Bipartisan Policy Center.
  • The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s certification in January of NuScale Power’s SMR design, the country’s first such federal approval, “pushes the technology closer to maturity,” the report said.

The report says 80% of evaluated coal plants have the “basic characteristics” needed to be repowered by an SMR, according to a Department of Energy study analyzing coal plants recently retired and those soon to be. Nuclear reactors and coal power plants both provide dispatchable energy “24/7 regardless of weather conditions, time of day or the season,” it said.

“Renewables have a vital and substantial role to play in a decarbonized energy grid,” the report said. “Yet, it is essential to complement their variability with the construction of firm power capable of filling the gaps and maintaining reliability.”

Other benefits highlighted by the report are SMRs’ flexible power output levels that allow developers to match the output of a retiring coal plant and capacity restrictions of equipment, unlike the fixed capacity of traditional nuclear plants. And SMRs require small areas, making its footprint suitable for replacing a retiring coal plant, according to the report.

Re-using coal plant sites could also have labor force advantages, with 77% of jobs transferable to nuclear plants with no new workforce licensing requirements, the report said.

SMRs can reuse coal plant transmission infrastructure, reducing SMR construction costs and avoiding some permitting challenges. And the reactors can reuse coal plant electrical equipment and steam-cycle components that, combined with reuse of transmission and administrative buildings, can reduce SMR construction costs by 17% to 35%, according to the report.

Continue reading “Running the Nuclear Experiment”

Scientist’s Letter Warns of Risk of Societal Collapse Due to Climate Change

Of all the climate calamities of the past year, Pakistan’s intense flooding is the starkest warning of the vulnerability of global society to the crumbling of some of it’s least privileged members.
Pakistan is a populous, nuclear armed country in a volatile region, with a history of political instability, and internal tension between extreme political and religious factions. And it is climate change ground zero.

Guardian:

As scientists and scholars from around the world, we call on policymakers to engage with the risk of disruption and even collapse of societies. After five years failing to reduce emissions in line with the Paris climate accord, we must now face the consequences. While bold and fair efforts to cut emissions and naturally drawdown carbon are essential, researchers in many areas consider societal collapse a credible scenario this century. Different views exist on the location, extent, timing, permanence and cause of disruptions, but the way modern societies exploit people and nature is a common concern.

Only if policymakers begin to discuss this threat of societal collapse might we begin to reduce its likelihood, speed, severity, harm to the most vulnerable – and to nature.

Some armed services already see collapse as an important scenario. Surveys show many people now anticipate societal collapse. Sadly, that is the experience of many communities in the global south. However, it is not well reported in the media, and mostly absent from civil society and politics. People who care about environmental and humanitarian issues should not be discouraged from discussing the risks of societal disruption or collapse. Ill-informed speculations about impacts on mental health and motivation will not support serious discussion. That risks betraying thousands of activists whose anticipation of collapse is part of their motivation to push for change on climate, ecology and social justice.

Some of us believe that a transition to a new society may be possible. That will involve bold action to reduce damage to the climate, nature and society, including preparations for disruptions to everyday life. We are united in regarding efforts to suppress discussion of collapse as hindering the possibility of that transition.

We have experienced how emotionally challenging it is to recognise the damage being done, along with the growing threat to our own way of life. We also know the great sense of fellowship that can arise. It is time to have these difficult conversations, so we can reduce our complicity in the harm, and make the best of a turbulent future.
Prof Gesa Weyhenmeyer Uppsala University, Prof Will Steffen Australian National University, Prof Kai Chan Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, Prof Marjolein Visser Université Libre de Bruxelles, Prof Yin Paradies Deakin University, Prof Saskia SassenColumbia University, Prof Ye Tao Harvard University, Prof Aled Jones Anglia Ruskin University, Dr Peter Kalmus Climate scientist, Dr Yves Cochet Former French minister of the environment, Dr Marie-Claire Pierret University of Strasbourg, the Very Rev Dr Frances Ward St Michael’s church and 246 others

After Shooting – Brave Woman Pops Fox Bubble

I was just putting together a post based on the recent revelations of smoking gun text and recorded evidence of Fox News’ deliberate fabrication of fact.
Following today’s shooting in Nashville, a Fox camera lingered too long on a woman who was tragically, well prepared to meet the moment. It’s another in a series of moments in which the Fox News Unreality Field has broken down, if only for a few moments.

The reason it come up is because I wanted to draw the connection again, of the case of the Winter Storm Uri Blackout in Texas of Valentine’s Day 2021, (first video) comparing local Texas media and expert reporting vs (second video) how the same situation was reported by Fox.

First, the reality.

Continue reading “After Shooting – Brave Woman Pops Fox Bubble”

New Video: Europe Now a Global Warming Hot Spot

This is my last video for Yale Climate Connections, I’ve already transitioned to more focus on helping site clean energy across the US Heartland.
When I began producing a monthly series for Yale, in 2011, I was one of just a few journalists focusing on climate as an issue. Now there are comparative armies of journalists and videographers following the issue. Our most critical need now is not more information on the problem – it is to vastly accelerate deployment of solutions.

This week I’ve met with two groups of farmers who are under sustained attack by fossil fuel coordinated disinformation campaigns, designed to deprive farmers of the right to diversify their incomes and contribute to solving the world’s most critical issue. They are seeking to tell their stories to a wider audience, and organize to push back on what they see as not just a threat to a livable planet, but an immediate threat to democracy itself.

I’ll still be following climate issues and scientists, but my most urgent attention will be at the grassroots level, fighting the fossil fueled disinformation machine, and the campaign of fear, ignorance, and intimidation that the Carbon Lords hope will help them cling to the power and influence they’ve enjoyed for more than a century.