You might get me to actually start stitching :D Thanks!

I’m gonna be a bit nit-picky here. You linked the “Low-carbon” source, which includes nuclear energy. Granted, long discussions can be had, whether nuclear counts as green energy, but besides that, I’d argue that nuclear should not be used to generate hydrogen - if at all it should be used the same as hydrogen would be used: to bridge gaps when not enough renewable energy is available.

If you switch to renewables-only in the source just above that graph, the world is, according to latest data (2025), at 33.76% electricity generation from renewables. So when it comes to share of electricity generation with renewables we’re on par with sometime around the 1950s. If you switch that graph to absolute generation and fossil fuels, you can see that electricity generation from fossil fuels has not yet started to decline.

On top of all that, this is electricity generation, not primary energy use. For primary energy use we’re currently at 8.59% world-wide.

I’m not saying this to make us give in, I’m just saying that there is a long way to go - 100 years are (hopefully) a bit too much, but it’s definitely not around the corner. And as an aside maybe also highlight that reductions in (primary) energy consumption are as important as ever.

That’s why I have a dedicated bathing toaster!

True, that’s what they propose in the article, but it’s not like you get pure wood powder back, it’s a wood-epoxy powder mixture. To which you then add epoxy to make new stuff… at some point you just have a mass of epoxy with traces of wood. That’s downcycling at best.

Not sure how serious/scientific the author of the article is, as they also propose using the powder as mulch, which sounds like an ecological nightmare when considering that it’s mixed with epoxy. But that might not have been the idea of the engineers who designed the wooden blades.

I’m not saying this technology is bad, even if the wooden blades get burned in the end at least they are not left as landfill like the ones right now.

Recyclable doesn’t mean that it’s worth recycling them. Look for “wind turbine graveyards” (but also beware, there seem to be a lot of AI generated images -.-).

However I also don’t see how these wooden versions are much better. According to the article they are glued together using epoxy. They propose grinding it down and making other stuff with it. I guess in the best case it gets burned in the end.

Nice shifting of the goal post! At first it’s too expensive, now it doesn’t have the right density and takes too much time to prepare?

Apart from that, you already get most of your nutrition from plants: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/calorie-supply-by-food-group

This is not because people don’t eat as much meat, but rather because meat is really inefficient in providing energy when it comes down to farm area.

Veganism might not solve all our problems, but it’s an easy way of getting rid of a lot of environmental problems. Apart from the direct impacts, we could start regrowing the amazon forest instead of cutting it down even further https://ourworldindata.org/what-has-driven-deforestation-in-the-21st-century

I do agree, that it’s - depending on where you live, the USA is really fucked up - not always easy to switch to being vegan, but it’s definitely a societal problem, not a technical one.

Then what are you even trying to fix? I just see you arguing against veganism, not proposing anything else.

Thank you for telling us about it!

Fun indeed! How can you not give more information on something like that and just leave us hanging?

I found the Missoula floods that fit your description. Seems like we’re in for fun times ahead. Then again, it’s unlikely that the glacial lakes reform in the current climate, so maybe we just get to witness one devastating flood per glacier…

That’s what you get if you chose actual scientists as ministers of energy. Proper politics directed towards decarbonizing in a sustainable way. I’m jealous.

Yes and no. It is possible for someone earning 70k/year to emit below the average (let’s also keep in mind that the goal is not to be below the average, but to be at 0 emissions/impact), but everything you can buy has a CO2/environment-cost related to it.

As soon as you spend more, you have a higher impact. Of course there are more and less impactful ways of consumption, so you do raise a good point, but we’re not going to consume our way out of this misery.

A really nice book I shove down the throat of every single one of my friends who’s not running away fast enough is The Day the World Stops Shopping, in case you have way too much time at hand ^^

Or the printed copy!

It’s not like those major social media sites don’t have some kind of data center (or rent one) in every “major” (population wise) timezone they operate in. Your other arguments still hold true, but I think even then it would be better for all of us if those websites went down every now and then.

Yeah, that’s surely gonna work. As if the people dying from the heat right now aren’t too many already. I’m somewhat sure you’re not being serious, and while I see where you’re coming from, that would be treating symptoms at best. As long as society doesn’t fundamentally change, other “high consumers” would emerge again, and we’d be back where we started

That’s also what’s so frustrating to me. The world could be so much better, people just seem to not care. Summer really sucks currently, now I don’t just have winter depression, but also summer… anxiety? Haven’t thought of a good term yet. I’ve had this post open in a tab the last two days, and I do intend to write something, I just haven’t found the time yet, as I’m quite sure the length of the comment will get out of hand. Just know that you’re not alone with those thoughts.

Then I misunderstood that, but I still don’t agree. The “surplus energy” of the renewables is not really there. Granted, in some regions (not really sure about the USA, though, I don’t have data on that), renewables can provide > 100% of the required electricity for a few hours per day, but that’s not really a lot of surplus energy. If it was, they wouldn’t have to build power plants just for the data centers.

You even kind of mention that with

because this demand is outstripping even the excess supply

Electricity price definitely is a factor for data centers, but having electricity 24/7 is even more important to them. Also, what made AI feasible was the usage of GPUs or even more specialized hardware, that is tailored to those tasks. Machine learning as a concept has been around since the 1980s or even earlier, not just the last 20 years. Paradoxically, that increase in efficiency caused a drastic increase in total power consumption for AI.

Germany 1923.

Now that it’s not completely unfeasable thanks to renewable energy

Are we living in the same reality? Renewable energy has nothing to do with machine learning or especially LLMs being feasible. The data centers used/being built for AI use some of the dirtiest form of energy you can use, because it’s cheaper or easier available.

Point in case: Data centers are being built off-grid using gas turbines. In fact, the planned amount of gas-powered data centers use more electricity than Germany.

Also, they are not even using proper gas power plants for that, mostly just gas turbines, which are cheaper and faster to install, but way less efficient.

They don’t care about the power use of their data centers, and especially not whether they are renewable.

I also can’t really come up with reasonable uses for excess power, there is only so much a household can use.

I just looked up the law and it’s even more fucked up than I remember. It only applies to installations with > 2 kWp, so the famous Balkonkraftwerke are not affected.

As long as you don’t have a smart meter (only about 5% of homes in Germany have a smart meter yet, disregard the 23.3% “Pflicht-Rollout”, they are misleading)), you are only allowed to feed up to 60% of the installed power back to the grid (e.g. if you have 10 kWp installed, and you generate an excess of more than 6 kW, you have to limit its output so that you only feed 6 kW to the grid).

The regulations for installations with a smart meter also changed, the details are too convoluted for me to really care, but in the end the new law aims to reduce solar power output during “noon”/peak production hours.

There are several reasons this annoys me, but the worst is, that the grid is not really “overloaded”, it’s mostly just that coal/oil/gas power plants don’t get regulated down as much.

Take, for example, this months electricity generation in Germany (You can click on the legend below to filter out generation types) - even though solar, wind and biomass is regularly able to provide enough power to meet demand for several hours a day, fossil fuel power plants are running during those times. Even gas, which supposedly is so flexible and only there to provide power when necessary.

Anyway, this is getting way too long already - the blame is put on solar and renewables, when it is also fossil fuel power plants that are not properly regulated.

That’s an interesting concept, sounds similar to the german WG (Wohngemeinschaft), but that’s, to my knowledge, also mostly used by younger people that are still studying or similar.

Should have mined bitcoin.

And since we’re already straying off topic, germany “recently” introduced a law where you have to limit rooftop solar production to 60% of the installed peak power (you’re not allowed to feed more than that back to the grid). Now I’m wondering whether I should start mining bitcoin at my parents place, despite my disgust for bitcoin. I’ll have to see whether I can get some E-waste to put together an appropriate rig, I’m definitely not getting new hardware for that, if at all.