Holy crap. In the EU, fuel consumption monitoring devices are required on new cars. They studied over 10% of all cars sold in 2021 and turns out they use way more fuel, and generate way more CO2, than anybody thought. Nearly a quarter more. Plug-in Hybrids do poorly too.

This means our projections about getting cars off the road for the climate crisis is hugely undercounting the effects. More rail, more e-bikes, more electric, faster.

#ClimateCrisis #CO2 #TheWarOnCars
mastodon.ie/@sinabhfuil/112138…

⚠️ Cada vez que compones una imagen mediante modelos generativos emites #CO2. Ya, ¿pero cuánto? ¿Es mucho? ¿Comparado con qué?

Según uno de los papers más recientes en la materia, generar 1 imagen con Stable Diffusion XL —uno de los sistemas de más impacto por unidad generada— emite lo mismo que conducir un coche gasolina a lo largo de 0,0041 millas. En efecto, unos 6,59 milímetros de conducción.

¿Con qué habría que comparar esta emisión? Con tomar una foto o pintar un dibujo por un humano. Vaya por delante que no tengo ni idea de a cuánto ascienden estas emisiones.

Estudio completo:
arxiv.org/pdf/2311.16863.pdf

What if I told you that most promoted actions about climate-friendly software are misguided?

Backing data for that claim and my opinion on the low-hanging fruits:

blog.ltgt.net/climate-friendly…

Key takeaways:
* Pick servers in carbon-neutral or low-carbon datacenters first
* Optimize for the perceived performance and battery life
* Don't be the one that will make your users change their device
* Sometimes, ideas aren't even worth their impacts

#greenIT #climate #sustainability #carbonfootprint #co2

Climate-friendly software: don't fight the wrong battle

What if I told you that most promoted actions about climate-friendly software are misguided? Here's backing data for that claim and my opinion on the low-hanging fruits.

^{tbroyer's pages}

For those who haven’t seen it before, here is my review of The Climate Book, by Greta Thunberg…
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I've read dozens of books about climate change, and this one is easily the best. It's packed with information, written to be accessible for anyone from high school (or a bright middle school student) on up, and most importantly it does NOT shy away from the true severity of our situation and the imperative need not only for individual action but for system change.

It's stunning to me that a young woman who just turned twenty years old was able to pull together such a massive project — coordinating the submissions of more than a hundred scientists, activists, and educators — while also writing a large part of the content herself. A truly amazing accomplishment.

This essential work should be in every school library and in every home. It will remain relevant for years to come, I believe, because although there certainly is plenty of data, mostly it's about *ideas* which will never age.
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bookwyrm.social/user/BreadAndC…

#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency #CO2 #Emissions #Capitalism #BusinessAsUsual #ClimateAction #ClimateJustice

We can have one of two things — but not both.

We can either have a society that tolerates millionaires and billionaires polluting the planet and destroying the biosphere. Or we can have a planet with a healthy biosphere but with fewer millionaires and no billionaires at all.

This is from a recently published peer-reviewed scientific paper titled “Millionaire Spending Incompatible with 1.5 C Ambitions”...
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Much evidence suggests that the wealthiest individuals contribute disproportionately to climate change. Here we study the implications of a continued growth in the number of millionaires for emissions, and its impact on the depletion of the remaining carbon budget to limit global warming to 1.5°C.

Our findings suggest that the share of millionaires in the world population will grow from 0.7% today to 3.3% in 2050, and cause accumulated emissions equivalent to 72% of the remaining carbon budget. This significantly reduces the chance of stabilizing climate change at 1.5°C.

The concentration of wealth at the top means that a significant share of the remaining carbon budget to 1.5°C is depleted by a very small share of humanity. This comparably small group is also likely to invest its wealth in ways that further increase emissions.

Continued growth in emissions at the top makes a low-carbon transition less likely, as the acceleration of energy consumption by the wealthiest is likely beyond the system's capacity to decarbonize. To this end, we question whether policy designs such as progressive taxes targeting the high emitters will be sufficient.
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Like I said, we can have one thing or the other — but not both.

READ THE PAPER --sciencedirect.com/science/arti…

#Politics #Capitalism #Inequality #CO2 #Emissions #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateAction #ClimateJustice