Categoriearchief: Klimaattransitie

Slow Burn. The Everyday consequences of Climate Change.

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Book review of: R. Jisung Park (2024). Slow Burn. The Hidden Costs of a Warming World, Princeton University Press, 336 pp. For a Dutch translation of this review see here.

Dr. G.J. van Bussel

R. Jisung Park is an environmental and labour economist and Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He holds concurrent appointments within the School of Social Policy and Practice and the Wharton School’s Department of Business Economics and Public Policy. His expertise lies in identifying the impact of environmental factors on economic outcomes. Before joining the University of Pennsylvania, he was a faculty member at the University of California, Los Angeles, and held a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. Employing data analysis, experimental methods, and economic theory, his research examines environmental change, its consequences for economic systems, and the effectiveness of policy responses. Specifically, he investigates issues such as the effects of heat on workers, the impacts of natural disasters on human capital, and the mechanisms through which workers and firms adapt to a changing environment.

In his book Slow Burn. The Hidden Costs of a Warming World, he offers a fresh and compelling perspective on the impact of climate change. The book’s central thesis is that conventional assessments underestimate the true economic, social, and biological costs of a warming planet because they focus on dramatic, discrete catastrophes, such as exceptional hurricanes or acute droughts (‘fast burns’, like, as Park explains, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE).

Park shifts the focus towards the subtle, chronic and everyday consequences that are already occurring, such as the erosion of agricultural crops, the gradual extension of pollen seasons, the strain on public health from prolonged heatwaves, and the combined economic impact of reduced labour productivity and disrupted supply chains. The ‘slow burn’ is the opposite of the ‘fast burn’: the cumulative, incremental and often invisible erosion of human capabilities and economic productivity caused by a gradually changing environment. Park compares this with the gradual decline of the Roman Empire over several centuries.

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More and More and More

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Book review of J.B. Fressoz (2024). More and More and More. An All-Consuming History of Energy, Penguin Random House, 400 pp. For a Dutch translation of this review see here.

Dr. G.J. van Bussel

The focus on energy, and the attached corporate and governmental agendas, has exerted a large influence upon the social sciences. Although political ecology maintains a stance of hostility towards the claims of sustainable development, [1] it has acquiesced to the proposition of an energy transition and the concepts associated with it: ‘green’, ‘clean’, and ‘renewable’ energy. [2] This narrative of transition combines the profit-driven aspirations of green capitalism with a pacification of existing climate anxieties. It is for this reason that reading Jean-Baptiste Fressoz’s new book More and More and More. An All-Consuming History of Energy, is a ‘must’.

Fressoz, a historian at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and Professor at the École des Ponts ParisTech, examines the historical dynamics between humanity and its environment. His work challenges conventional narratives of industrial progress and ecological awareness. In his monograph, Happy Apocalypse. A History of Technological Risk (2024), Fressoz puts forward the provocative idea that environmental and industrial regulations, introduced from the early nineteenth century onwards, were rarely designed to reduce environmental degradation or protect workers. Instead, he argues that their main purpose was to legalize these dangers, thereby creating a legal framework that allowed industrialists to pursue profit. Fressoz suggests that this process of legal normalization systematically externalized the costs of industrialization onto society and the natural world.

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AI’s Power Demand

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AI results in a large increase of data center power demand, and does have a large effect on natural resources.

In 2018, OpenAI concluded that the computing power required to train a large AI model had doubled every 3.5 months from 2012 onwards. The accuracy of results and time efficiency that can be achieved by harnessing the computing power of a vast number of computers in data centres necessitates a considerable amount of electricity. A significant proportion of data centres globally continue to rely, to some extent, on fossil fuels, resulting in a notable surge in CO₂ emissions.

In 2020, researchers at the University of Massachusetts conducted an analysis of several natural language processing (NLP) models and determined that the energy expenditure associated with training a single model resulted in CO2 emissions of approximately 300,000 kg on average (equivalent to 125 return flights from New York to Beijing). The training of ChatGPT-3 has been found to require the consumption of 1.3 gigawatt hours of electricity, resulting in the generation of 550,000 kg of CO2. It is estimated by Bloomberg that the energy consumption necessary for training is only 40% of that required for operational purposes. Moreover, the training process necessitates the consumption of approximately 700,000 litres of water for the purpose of computer cooling. This quantity of water is equivalent to that which would be required by a nuclear power plant cooling tower.

In 2023, data centres operated by Google extracted a total of 24 billion litres of water from the environment. This represents a 14% increase compared to figures recorded in the previous year. In 2022, 20 billion litres of water were employed for the purpose of cooling. Two-thirds of this quantity was comprised of potable water.

Furthermore, data from Microsoft’s facilities indicate a 34% increase in cooling water consumption during the same period. In 2024, Microsoft’s CO₂ emissions were 30% higher than in 2020, while Google’s emissions increased by 48% over the past five years.

See this blogpost by GoldmanSachs

For literature used to compose this post, see here.

Publishd in a LinkedIn-post, november 2024.

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Vertalingen: ‘Ecological footprint’ en ‘Archiving in 2050’

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Op verzoek van enkele van mijn internationale relaties heb ik mijn onlangs gepubliceerde artikelen: ‘De ecologische voetafdruk van Artificial Intelligence’ en ‘Archivering in 2050’ vertaald naar het Engels. Ik neem beide vertalingen hieronder op. Ze zijn vrij om te downloaden en te verspreiden.

In response to requests from several of my international colleagues, I have translated two recently published articles, ‘De ecologische voetafdruk van Artificial Intelligence’ and ‘Archivering in 2050’, into English. Both translations are presented below and are available for download and distribution at no cost.

Follow ‘Continue Reading’ to view and download.

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De ecologische voetafdruk van Artificial Intelligence

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) biedt kansen. Het biedt mogelijkheden voor vooruitgang in gezondheidszorg, communicatie, bestuur en productie. Het biedt mogelijkheden voor het creëren van tekst, beeld, geluid en kunst. Het helpt om de effecten van de klimaatcrisis op te vangen door intelligente energienetten te ontwikkelen, door infrastructuren te ontwikkelen die geen of nauwelijks CO2 emissie hebben en door klimaatvoorspellingen te modelleren.

Niet alles is positief. AI speelt een groeiende rol in de verspreiding van ‘fake news’, ‘deep fakes’ en andere vormen van misinformatie waardoor onze democratische samenleving wordt bedreigd door populisme en polarisatie.

Een onduidelijker effect van AI is het ecologisch effect dat het heeft. Daar is de afgelopen paar jaar veel over gepubliceerd, maar het duurt lang voordat berichten daarover in het maatschappelijke bewustzijn indalen.

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