I think we need to collectively get our heads out of our asses. The world is literally flying headfirst into an unimaginable crisis (food and water shortages, loss of inhabitable land, massive inequality, power shortages) via human induced climate change.
We won't have the luxury of having enough power to even keep an AI alive for more than 5 minutes. People need to get a grip and deal with real problems.
The crises you mention are way down the road, if they occur at all. If warming does become problematic, we'll have to geoengineer our way out of it, as according to the alarmists we've already passed a critical level of CO2 concentration. There's no end in sight to further CO2 emission, either. The good news is that the global warming alarmism is likely overblown, and even if not geoengineering and other mitigations will provide a workable solution.
The one crisis that will absolutely not occur due to "climate change" is "power shortages". Fission power is effectively unlimited, and so is fusion power once it comes online. Solar is also there for the long haul, though its land usage is prohibitive compared to nuclear sources. (Wind power is a waste of money, time, and materials, but that's another topic.)
The only viable way forward is to advance science and engineering to the point that addressing global warming as needed is feasible - which will also provide myriads of other benefits. The future is bright, and will be multiplanetary soon enough!
- Despite everything we've done, climate change is still reversible. Thinking that all is lost drives us to inaction.
- The solutions we need are largely political, not technological. Our leaders have everything they need to implement the policies needed to solve this. I urge you to read the latest UN Emissions Gap report (https://wedocs.unep.org/items/87c02cac-8da8-4c28-ba61-c846ee...)
> The opportunity to limit warming to 1.5°C without overshoot has been lost, but the future remains crucially dependent on decisions taken today. Countries can still limit peak warming, shorten the duration of overshoot and keep the goals of the Paris Agreement within reach. Doing so requires faster, deeper and sustained emission reductions starting immediately, as well as large-scale removals of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere.
Plants are already doing "large-scale removals of carbon dioxide". Other than plants, there is no cost-effective, practical technology for doing that. By the way, the beneficial effects of higher CO2 concentrations, which are NEVER discussed by the alarmists, include much improved plant growth. The overall greening of formerly barren regions is also happening due to increased CO2.
The way forward is to continue to evaluate the actual effects of current CO2 concentrations, which are not known precisely, while also pushing very hard to develop new technologies that will allow humanity to thrive both here on Earth, and throughout the Solar System.
Improved technologies, such as electric vehicles and next-gen nuclear power, will naturally and relatively quickly reduce human CO2 output.
Just a few tech advances can massively change things. The real problems are of different nature, who benefits from it? The entities who sell energy to the whole world won't just give it up for the benefit of humankind. It doesn't really work like that in the real world. Hell, there's a whole history of sabotaging energy sources, just so some countries depend on these entities for energy.
As long as humans are in control, there will be a lot of nonsense like this. It's not a problem that we cannot really solve it, it's rather...are we really allowed to solve it?
Even just the land used to grow corn for ethanol in the US is enough to power the entire country with solar power. [1] In no sense is solar's land footprint "prohibitive", other than maybe for micro-states.
> (Wind power is a waste of money, time, and materials, but that's another topic.)
The World Nuclear Association, a group that promotes nuclear power, admits that wind power is cheaper than nuclear.
"Nuclear energy averaged 0.4 euro ¢/kWh, much the same as hydro; coal was over 4.0 ¢/kWh (4.1-7.3), gas ranged 1.3-2.3 ¢/kWh and only wind showed up better than nuclear, at 0.1-0.2 ¢/kWh average. "[2]
Your current sources of information are lying to you. Drop them.
1. https://youtu.be/KtQ9nt2ZeGM?t=1835
2. https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspec...
All the brains have been completely drained put of the tech sector over the past four years.
None of the AI fantasy doomers can actually show clearly how current LLMs will accomplish such catastrophe or get around the inevitable physical limits they will eventually hit. It's all myopic thinking that is only convincing if you are a very uncritical person.
"Currently, roughly half of the world’s population are experiencing severe water scarcity for at least 1 month yr-1due to climatic and other factors (medium confidence)." Since it's how it already is, we have to be careful reading this that "severe" water scarcity is normal and not a crisis.
Or this https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/figures/technical-summary... which is apparently a map of uncertainty change in water scarcity index (presumably unimportant) and policy challenges.
Perhaps you can somehow describe what this water shortage is predicted to look like in real life? Would all Californians in 2100 turn on the tap and nothing comes out for 6 months of the year and they all just shrivel up an die? You did say unimaginable but you imply that you know what it is. Will we also run out of energy to be able to do desalination?