July 2024

Tech Doom

AI

Tech companies seem to be giving up the pretense of reducing their emissions, because AI. Google’s emissions have soared 48% since they made a commitment to net-zero. But don’t worry, Google says AI will help solve climate change. The article also casually mentions that Microsoft’s emissions are up 29% since 2020. We can just stack that against Microsoft quietly giving up on avoiding conflict minerals last year.

Of course, another month, another clear and well reasoned article for why promises (and fears) about AGI (tech’s holy grail) are unfounded. As are promises of monetary returns; even tech investors are now warning of a bubble, which is closer to ever than popping when you consider that consumers are now actively avoiding things touting AI. It’s bad enough my goddamned Logitech drivers now come with an “AI Prompt Builder”. I would rather live without power than have to deal with appliances trying to shill that garbage.

Software

Did you get a day off thanks to Crowdstrike? The Guardian had some choice words about software monopolies in the aftermath. Don’t worry though, Crowdstrike gave their customers ubereats vouchers as compensation… which were immediately flagged as potential fraud.

I’ve long maintained that software developers will be responsible for the end of the world, and while partially tongue in cheek, between Crowdstrike crippling hospitals and other necessary services around the globe and the growing sophistication of software backdoors, it’s hard not to feel like it’s not a possibility but a guarantee. You wouldn’t sleep at night if you understood how thoroughly the world runs on software libraries maintained by some random guy who is probably tired of doing so.

By the way, I hope you didn’t think google still provided a search engine.

Space

I mentioned the event in back in May, but professor Samantha Lawler wrote a great article summarizing the recent SpaceX rocket debris finds in Saskwatchewan. We’re also seeing more articles warning about space junk destroying the ozone layer. Calls for a space tax may possibly be the origins of a way of limiting space pollution. If capitalists hate anything, it’s spending a single dollar.

Climate Doom

Environment

We all know that fracking is bad, but Canada is trying hard to be the worst. Why leave carbon in the ground when you can just trash everything to put it into the atmosphere? Also, as a chaser, just a reminder that we’re running out of sand. You know, the stuff we need to build computers with. There’s a lot of reasons to stop fracking, but Canada cares about none of them. But why even sell natural gas when you can just vent it into the atmosphere?

On a visit to the Permian in mid-March, near Midland, Tex., natural gas prices there were negative, meaning oil and gas producers have to pay to have their gas taken away instead of selling it, because of a basic supply and demand issue. As oil wells in the Permian also produce increasing amounts of gas, there is more gas being produced there than customers willing to buy it. In the Permian this year we saw several events of large emissions at oil and gas production facilities—emissions of methane that had negative economic value at the time. It was cheaper for the companies to vent it than sell it. That means we all end up paying the cost for their pollution.

I was reading an interesting article about rocks that generate oxygen in the deep ocean. Cool right? Well, nothing goes unnoticed by techbros hellbent on making money, and those rocks are full of precious metals. So why not destroy one of the last untouched ecosystems in the world?

Weather

Fire! Evacuations in BC, Jasper nearly wiped off the map while Alberta’s Premier sheds crocodile tears and oil infrastructure reaps their own rewards.

Air! Las Vegas was brutalized by a heat wave, a heat dome decided to attend the olympics, and this past year has clocked in over 1.5C above average.

Death Valley is flirting with its record for anywhere-in-the-world hottest — living up to its name for ill-advised adventurers, including one motorcyclist. Emergency helicopters can’t airlift the stricken because the air is too thin to fly.

Water! Toronto was hit by back to back flooding from torrential rains less than two weeks apart. Ground still soaked from hurricane Beryl in Vermont led to serious infrastructure damage when hit by their own torrential rains. Oh, and nearly all of earth’s oceans are experiencing “unusual warmth”.

Earth! Just kidding. Nothing I can lump under earth happened in July. As a consolation prize, read about how a nearly century old farmer co-op shut down because of weather-generated crop failures, and please enjoy this nightmare heatwave scenario.

In Dr. Chester’s scenario, a compounding crisis of extreme heat and a power failure in a major city like Houston could lead to cascading failures, exposing vulnerabilities in the region’s infrastructure that are difficult to foresee and could result in thousands, or even tens of thousands, of deaths from heat exposure in a matter of days. The risk to people in cities would be higher because all the concrete and asphalt amplifies the heat, pushing temperatures in the midafternoon as much as 15 degrees to 20 degrees higher than in surrounding vegetated areas.

But wait!

Scientists may have figured out how to cure Lupus, we may be able to use waste brine as a source of precious minerals, and two game development studios unionized. God damn.

I will leave you with this insane programmer rant which is worth reading even if you have no idea what it’s talking about.