Quick weather update
I am waiting to be told how catastrophic floods like the ones currently in force in Europe will disappear if we all just buy electric cars and give up the farts of cows, sheep, goats, and pigs. Preferably from the podium of a COP, WEF, or G7 conference where participants came in private jets.
Meanwhile, we’ll keep mining crypto-shit, and keep wasting energy on AI. I understand that it’s fashionable among those with beefy Nvidia cards to run LLMs at home, as they’re bored with cooling their PCs with water and adding disco lights to them just for gaming.
In fact, I’m also told that the TikTok generation, when they want to find out how much 6×7 makes, no longer use a pocket calculator or a smartphone app, but have switched from asking Google to asking ChatGPT! What could be “greener” than that? (Soylent Green, naturally, but we just cannot do that.)
And the 8 billion of us are going to consume more and more per capita, because it’s our due — especially the Americans (die US-Amerikaner, los estadounidenses) feel entitled to consume energy insatiably. We’ll keep packing ourselves in concrete megalopolises that are heat poles, and we’ll keep creating mega-sites and mega-industrial parks, be they in Guangdong. Why are these vortexes and tornadoes appearing? I don’t know. I really don’t get it. Was the Boris storm sent by Putin?
By the way, in the summer I consume less than 2.4 kWh/day at home with two laptops (the older one with a 65 W power adapter, the newer one with 45 W), LED bulbs, fridge, microwave, washing machine, and vacuum cleaner (no A/C). And there is a reason why durable goods, brown or white, are called durable. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t cut down any trees that are still viable, and I wouldn’t approve any building closer than 50 meters from another, except G+1 or G+2. Even Stalin had a plan to plant millions of trees, even though he didn’t care about people’s lives. But this planet really wants to destroy itself.
As for the excessive farts coming from Brussels or from Davos…
[Translation of a post of mine in Romanian on Facebook.]
I find here the issue here first being the communication…. And then, malice.
Scientists know for decades the global “warming” at first, and now renamed better “change” as a fact and some of the media well-intentioned did portrait it as end-of-civilization scenarios. Of course, other media found it easy to ridicule the entire premise as false and that there is nothing to worry about. And, to an audience with increasing AC units and heaters in their offices and vehicles does sound about right.
The truth is that 2 degrees increase does indicate hundreds of millions of people will be forced to be displaced, desertification of entire countries (mostly in the global south) and pests that usually were naturally contained in certain small areas will be affecting vast areas. These pests, with more brother areas will be increasing DNA iterations that will lead to dramatically become more virulent. Let’s forget what the impact will be for the entire ecosystem; I don’t care for Polar Bears, is billions of microorganisms and thousands of vertebrates and everything in between that will get affected with no chance to adapt.
But I share you skepticism to carbon taxes and the like. People have been cheated so much that I understand their anger. The truth is that, Germany uses 132M BTU of energy/person while the US does 285M (more than twice!) Big part of it is US taxing far less. How are you going to tell Germans to add now a carbon tax in top of it? I am 100% for “carbon tax” (although, like Béranger mentions, there are far more problems than CO2 alone), but if that tax brings 100 Billion Euros, are governments releasing pressure of equal amount for those affected like, for instance, reduce the VAT in similar amount? Never!!! And that is why people are angry at these proposals. Let’s not even mention the hypocrisy of more jets, wars, diverting high energy production to cheaper energy countries, and long etc.
By the way, your beloved China, in the last two decades, has planted more tress that the rest of the world combined! “Southern China was almost entirely deforested, but the region now hosts one of the largest tropical and subtropical forest fractions in the world”. Now, as we have learned in Spain, forestation done right, is complex to do and China has prioritized number of km2 rather than sustainable forests, but the “West” alternative, if CO2 is a priority, doing almost nothing and pointing at China is worse.
Finally, the building codes are controversial. We both are probably homeowners (or still half with mortgages) so we will be seen as bias when saying no more homes. Yet, still there is no lack of homes either, in Europe there are millions of uninhabited homes that for one reason (lack of protection against abusive rental) or another (people moving into cities) distorts the market. Now, all that is relatively easy to address but not in a 4-5 year cycle so no politician dares to touch it.
My Thinkpads should be in 65W but screw them, I just feed them with 25W and, despise the occasional complaint, they are fine!
Sorry, but the computer says no.
This is propaganda. “The climate refugees.” Nope. The desertification is a complex process influenced by multiple factors, and a slight increase in average temperature alone is generally not enough to cause it. Deforestation, unsustainable land use, poor water management and other factors are crucial for this to happen on a significant scale.
As I said before, the current climate fuckup would be almost as severe even if the AVERAGE temperature were UNCHANGED, as long as: (i) when it’s warm, it’s too warm; (ii) when it’s cold, it’s too cold; (iii) episodes of cold weather take place during summer, and episodes of extreme warmth take place in the cold season.
What you should do is this:
(1) Read the works of Constantin Crânganu, professor of geophysics and petroleum geology at the City University of New York, Brooklyn College. His research focuses on CO2 capture and sequestration, applying AI and ML approaches in geosciences, and studying the overpressure regimes in sedimentary basins. His published works in English don’t approach the “climate change dogma” frontally, but he also has some contributions to some magazines. Unfortunately, he’s extremely prolific in Romanian, with most of its thoughts and arguments posted in this series of articles (280 to date).
Perplexity AI, when asked, “Is Professor Cranganu a climate change denier, a climate change skeptic or a climate change proponent?”, started the answer this way: “Professor Constantin Cranganu presents a nuanced perspective on climate change, which does not fit neatly into the categories of denier, skeptic, or proponent.”
(2) Read the books of Bjørn Lomborg, specifically The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World (2001) and False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet (2020).
From the 2nd one:
EVERYTHING IS MISLEADING THESE DAYS. Stalin lied. Radio Free Europe lied. Putin lies. The “defenders of this mostly-blue-and-not-green-enough planet” are lying. Dogmas, postulates, misinterpretations, manipulations, and lies. As the example of Tuvalu, Kiribati, and the Marshall Islands shows, there are natural processes that mitigate the outcome of warmer waters, but the dogmatic and ignorant environmental campaigners couldn’t care less! People don’t want to think NUANCED: they’re 1-bit devices, for which everything is either BLACK or WHITE.
If China is planting trees, that’s a wise thing to do, especially as China manufactures so many goods for the rest of the planet, because the rest of the planet is lazy, greedy, and stupid.
How do you do that? By keeping the CPU to “powersave” it will probably average to 10-12W if the TDP is 15W, but the RAM and the SSD(s) will take as much energy as they need for the respective bus frequency (for RAM). The power adapter will still be able to provide 65W, and occasionally your Thinkpads will require some peaks of power, albeit not at 65W. I even wonder why they made it at 65W. Most laptops that came with 65W adapters could use 45W ones without “burning” them. The key is to use CPUs with a TDP of 15W and to never use the “performance” scheduler in Linux, if we’re talking Linux.
Bjørn Lomborg got some vigorous debunking, if debunking is what it is. LSE Commentary by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, on August 10, 2020: A closer examination of the fantastical numbers in Bjorn Lomborg’s new book (video).
And another video by Climate Club: Exposing Bjorn Lomborg’s Climate Change Lies.
Now, Lomborg does indeed some cherry-picking—quite a lot, actually. And it uses obsolete data or obsolete models at times. (Yet it was OK when they terrorized us with wrong models, eh?) But these debunkers are also cherry-picking irrelevant facts: I don’t care who subsidizes a study; what I care is whether its conclusions are correct or not. And they also chose to simply disregard the non-debunkable aspects described by Lomborg.
You cannot debunk something that’s biased with another thing that’s also biased, just the other way.
Bjørn Lomborg made a return, and he explained the issue of the heavier EVs in Real Time with Bill Maher. Here’s the segment: Overtime: Bjorn Lomborg, Stephanie Ruhle, Bret Stephens (HBO). The mining of lithium and the production of energy might be tackled somehow, but a heavier EV contradicts our declared attempts at diminishing pollution.
I have to recognize that it would be very easy to have fool me with “data” in something I only had read sparely. But I was raised as a farmer and in Spain we have indeed observed changes not previously known. I am from the very green Spain and not so affected but we still does.
Now, you do mention very important points, a big part of it is water misusage (overexploitation of well and rivers is a big one). Another is unappropriated farming.
That Constantin Cranganu seems very interesting to read… maybe I should exchange the Romanians I follow, there is so much one can take!
Ok, Ok you are right… I checked the Thinkpads with the multimeter and one is at 35W and the other 45W… and the 35W complains all the time. Still, for the environment, I don’t feed them with 65W!! Now, and keep it a secret, the 65W brick probably delivers that juice more efficiency than the other 2 bricks… but heck, how am I going to appear more ecological if not with a small power brick… my Lenovo’s TCO Certification logos don’t have the same stand in public!
Desertification is real, it happens in other European countries too, including Romania. But I know why it happens in Romania, and climate change is the least important cause in Romania!
I never owned a ThinkPad when they were still labeled “IBM”; they were bloody expensive. But I had a Lenovo (“just Lenovo”) purchased in 2012: the worst laptop I’ve ever seen! It came with a TFT that had so many colored lines from several wide scratches under the protective adhesive film, that it became clear that no living soul has ever watched that screen, not even for a split second! The replacement was better, but the display was still one of the worst I’ve ever encountered (some cheap laptops today still feature similar “cloudy/milky” screens), but the chiclet keyboard was fantastic! The best keyboard with the worst screen. Apparently, they don’t make good keyboards anymore these days.
The IBM PCs and their CRT displays, all “Made in Mexico” even for Europe somewhere around 1994, were extensively (intensively?) tested in Romania by the local importer, especially the CRTs. In my view, this was an exaggeration, as the displays were working just fine, but they feared issues following the transport. Well, Lenovo’s TFTs were damaged before being assembled in a laptop, yet nofuckingbody looked at them in China!
But the real problem with that laptop was another one. Some Lenovo laptop models manufactured between 2010 and 2012 experienced issues with screws loosening and falling out. This problem has been documented on various platforms, including the official Lenovo forums, indicating a design flaw or manufacturing issue. And, sure enough, two of my laptop’s screws fell out. Screwing them back together broke the cheap plastic. So I lost my confidence in Lenovo.
My history of laptops:
— HP Omnibook XE3 (2000 or 2001)
— Acer TravelMate (2006 or 2007)
— Lenovo G570 (2012)
— Acer TravelMate P645 (2016) — still in use
— Acer Aspire 3 A315-59 (2023) — in use
I’m going cheap, usually.
Oh, after working for HP, all my were Thinkpads, since late 90s and always with latest model (I recognize I did had a thing for statement too). Now, it was never the most popular but the most versatile. Now, since 2015, there is no need to upgrade. I envy my kids playing with my 8th generation black Thinkpads and I detest the aluminum body of my grey 13th generation Pentium, if it were not for the 32GB RAM, I would go back to the 8th generation in a second. Thinkpads for me are very reliable, outstanding service, easy to get parts and, most important, the nipple!
You problem is not having been using the IPS screens that Thinkpads had available since way before even Apple hear about them.
My best best Laptop I had owned in last 2 decades: Thinkpad X220 Tablet.
Best Phones: Nokia 808 (camera well ahead of its time!), Sony Xperia Z3 Compact (the most practical phone ever) and Pixel 5 (with GrapheneOS, three steps back from Xperia, but private). Now, a Pixel 8 that I detests too, but due to lack of secure and privacy alternatives, have no choice.
But all my Acers have IPS screens with huge viewing angles at unchanged hue. No matter the device, if it ain’t IPS, I’m not using it.
I cannot use that nipple. Tried it and hated it.
Pixel, secure and privacy in the same sentence? Huh.
I also exclusively only use IPS and since the first year it was available in 2005 (Thinkpad T42p). Apple first introduced the IPS screen 7 years later!!! The rest, ACER, Toshiba, Dell also did it much latter. Thinkpads were pioneers in key parts an highly reliable and, if needed, of of spare parts. Now, don’t do like me and get it new, get a use one… plenty even are in outstanding warranty (usually 3 years and extendable and even next day).
Pixels are great with GrapheneOS (or /e/OS, or CalyxOS…). Pixels, as hardware devices, are mediocre, if not worse, thought, especially compared with my beloved Xperias. In the US , due to frequencies, we don’t have the vast hardware choices you guys have there. But, in the security/privacy aspect on phones, with all the extra options, you are not better.
Now, the ideal would have been using a better hardware that supports boot relock and drivers (Xperia does that!) but their high prices made it unatractive for putting an secure Android OS on it. Other candidates are Murena phone and Fairphone but they are two big for me and do not cover all the bands for the US… so I am stuck with Pixels now.
I worship the nipple… had never stand the Touchpad. The trackpoint requires indeed more energy concentrated in a single finger (so it will be hard and even painful the first weeks) but your hands requires no movement at all, so, after those 2 initiation weeks, for me is far more relaxed that giving 3 or 4 entire finger and hand movements. Precision-wise, both are identical.
Precision-wise, a trackball is better. I have one bought some 2 years ago and never used. I still rely on a mouse.
I just had a chat with ChatGPT on the underground storage of CO2, a concept I highly disapprove. Here’s the entire chat. Color me unimpressed.
For what it’s worth, ChatGPT conceded that “This skepticism is healthy, especially when it comes to something as crucial as CO2 storage.” and that “CO2 storage isn’t risk-free.”
I like things that are simple and straightforward. The underground CO2 storage isn’t such a thing. (I also hate the absurdly complicated software architectures of our days, so it’s not just something about this issue.)
I tried to access but does not populate anything to me (maybe a VPN setting, WebRTC, cookie restriction,… who knows).
I don’t use much AI but I do remember having it concede defeat like two or three times in the 5 or 6 times I talked to it (was the free one 3.5). Entertaining and helpful in precise tasks but no much more for now.
Can’t agree more, whether with CO2 storage, and pretty much everything, skepticism is healthy (up to the very point of Paranoia).
Oh, it did populate the chat at the end… it just took some time!
Funny; it starts with “This conversation may reflect the link creator’s personalized data, which isn’t shared and can meaningfully change how the model responds.”!
Really, should it though?!
Ha ha… I like the verbose questions you ask… I still do in telegram style!
Yep, I see how easy AI is persuaded to one’s camp… a bit too easy I think. My only true test is my wife, if I can change her mind in something, my argument is 100% gold!
Wives are immutable.
One day, I’ll write about the five AI engines I’m using. Crappy, but useful at times.
Well, shit happens. Typhoon Bebinca lashes Shanghai, strongest storm to hit city since 1949 (Reuters, CNN).
I forgot to mention another pet peeve of mine: the huge scam of the heat pumps.
The sites that “debunk” the “anti-heat pump conspiracies” write such things (Factcheck: 18 misleading myths about heat pumps):
Yeah, sure. Air source heat pumps are what individual dwellings are pushed into. But in Norway, Sweden, and Finland, they prefer ground source heat pumps, because the air-based ones don’t work!
There was even a huge press scandal in France: everyone who bought into this scam saw their electricity bills increase by absurd amounts, while the temperature in their homes was much lower than before. In brief, they paid much more for much less!
This is by no means false. Ask everyone who has switched to heat pumps. In Britain, France, Romania. I only heard of unhappy people.
Again, this isn’t something to be debunked, because it happens to be true. And the price of electricity is only going to rise in the coming years because of the increasing needs: EVs, A/C, heat pumps, data centers, AI—all the crap runs on electricity!
But it’s OK; the sheeple will switch to air-source heat pumps, because their Masters told them to do so. The green mold from Greta’s cunt aside, I’m pretty sure there is a lot of lobbying from the manufacturers of such installations.
Right now, it’s virtually impossible to build a new house in Germany without a heat pump. Starting in 2024, every newly installed heating system in Germany must be powered by at least 65% renewable energy under the new Building Energy Act (Gebäudeenergiegesetz, GEG). This effectively rules out installing a new gas or oil boiler on its own, as they do not meet the 65% renewable energy requirement. Alternatives like “hydrogen-ready” gas boilers are allowed (the FDP pushed for them), but they must use an increasing share of biogas, which makes them too expensive.
Of course, new buildings in Germany use ground source heat pumps, which are likely to be OK, but… Freedom in Europe? Who came up with such an insane idea?
Besides, if literally everything will use electricity, from heat pumps to EVs, the price of electricity will soon skyrocket. And how are they going to produce that much electricity, once they decommissioned the nuclear power plants? Oh, wait! They will use the natural gas that people aren’t allowed to use anymore, and coal, and fuel oil, to generate electricity! Yay, we’re green!