climate crisis
Flip. I knew the electricity cost of AI was high, but the water cost is awful, too:
For inference (i.e., conversation with ChatGPT), our estimate shows that ChatGPT needs a 500-ml bottle of water for a short conversation of roughly 20 to 50 questions and answers, depending on when and where the model is deployed. Given ChatGPT’s huge user base, the total water footprint for inference can be enormous.
And, really, nothing is more political than the way we engage with the world around us. We have an obligation to see the world for what it is, the bad as well as the good, and we have to blinker ourselves to keep on pretending that it is not broken.
– From The Circling Sky by Neil Ansell 📚
📷 May Photoblogging
Day 8: Union
The union of car and house. I’ll eventually get used to the fact that I plug my car in these days. But after decades of fuel being something you got elsewhere, it’s a mindset shift.
“Organisers are people who have noticed what is happening and want to do something about it. We roll up our sleeves and get on with it. Organisers can be all of us.”
— Do Earth by Tamsin Omond 📚
“The way nature brings peace to my busy mind feels like one of the most abandoned parts of who I am. Slowly I am rekindling it. I walk in the woods and I feel at ease. It becomes easy to hear the world whisper, ‘This is everything that is happening right now.'“
— Do Earth by Tamsin Omond 📚
Requiem for a lamp
I’m saying “goodbye” to an old friend this morning. For the last 23 years, whenever I’ve been working at my desk, across three different properties, this old, battered lamp has lit my work. Last week — in the middle of a lecture — it finally, catastrophically fell apart.
I didn’t even choose it. It came into my life because my girlfriend of the time was working at Terry Farrell & Partners, a firm of architects. They were having an office refurb (or was it a move? I can’t recall at this distance) and she grabbed some things that were being thrown out.
She left it behind when she exited my life and, amusingly, my relationship with the lamp has lasted well over ten times longer than my relationship with her… But I’m proud that I’ve used this thing that came my way for so long. This lamp has had over two decades of extra use after it was first consigned to the bin, and in an era when we’re ever more aware of the climatic cost of a throw-away culture, this small choice has proven to be surprisingly satisfying.
Trees and the climate crisis
I do worry, however, that a destructively naive view of nature and a rush to get trees in the ground will sweep all before it. We risk repeating the errors of the past and once again cause great ecological damage. Simple solutions to complex problems are always wrong.
Tree-planting has a role to play in combating the climate crisis - but it’s not everything, it appears. That brings us back to rewilding.
Why aren't we taking Australia's bushfire apocalypse more seriously?
But the response to what’s transpired in Australia — again, over a period that has stretched into months — is unfamiliar, to me at least, and not in a good way. Those California fires transfixed the world’s attention, but while the ones still burning uncontrolled in Australia have gotten some media attention outside the country, in general they have been treated as a scary, but not apocalyptic, local news story.
It’s a harrowing glimpse into the future that awaits many of us if the climate crisis continues in its current direction. And we’re just not paying attention to it.
If you haven’t been paying attention to just how massive the bushfire crisis is in Australia, this set of information and links will open your eyes.
And possibly your bowels.