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Humans have caused 1.5 °C of long-term global warming according to new estimates

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399 points gmays | 2 comments | 17 Nov 24 18:49 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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oezi ◴[17 Nov 24 19:06 UTC] No.42166179[source]▶
Looking into the numbers a couple if months ago I was surprised how little it costs to stop climate change.

On the order of 100-200 trillion USD. Which is roughly 100-200% of global yearly GDP. Or 2-5% of yearly GDP until 2050. This could well be provided by printing money at all the federal reserve banks.

This investment will likely bring in a positive return on investment because it reduces the negative climate impacts.

Without such investments the downstream costs in climate change adaptation will be very expensive

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1. josefx ◴[17 Nov 24 19:31 UTC] No.42166407[source]▶
> I was surprised how little it costs to stop climate change.

Is that the cost for the duct tape needed to plug the airvents of data centers all over the world? The whole AI hype is driving energy consumption through the roof and when you see the companies behind the hype eye having their own nuclear power plants you know they are going to outscale cities housing millions in waste heat production.

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2. boulos ◴[17 Nov 24 19:40 UTC] No.42166477[source]▶
While people are excited about AI and datacenter use, it's still tiny in comparison to global energy consumption (1-2%) though that excludes all the crypto folks who are another 100 TWh per year or so:

> Estimated global data centre electricity consumption in 2022 was 240-340 TWh1, or around 1-1.3% of global final electricity demand. This excludes energy used for cryptocurrency mining, which was estimated to be around 110 TWh in 2022, accounting for 0.4% of annual global electricity demand.

You're hearing about the potential for a Gigwatt site, but a Gigwatt full out is less than 10 TWh per year (8960 hours/year). These things make the news, but they're pretty efficient electrically. The question is whether they have utility.

https://www.iea.org/energy-system/buildings/data-centres-and...