Can AI Reduce the Climate Emergency? Maybe.

Readers of this blog know the main obstacle to reducing the climate emergency is lack of political will in developed nations. However, recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) show AI could help decision-makers at all levels, in all places, reduce greenhouse gases/climate impacts as long as climate tipping points are not crossed before we get the chance. I expect you to be skeptical like I was so let me explain. Imagine a space alien with a billion times more intelligence than any human who ever lived arriving to advise humanity. According to some of the world's best computer experts, this is exactly where AI is taking us. "By 2049 AI will be a billion times more intelligent than humans" wrote Mo Gawdat, author of the 2021 book Scary Smart, and former chief business officer for Google X, the group responsible for self-driving cars. 

After listening to AI-themed videos, and reading various sources, I think seven main challenges using AI to solve climate issues may be: 1) intended or unintended negative effects (in the case of bad actors pirating the technology for profit or terrorism); 2) unintended negative effects by those trying to help; 3) convenient excuse for developed nations to ignore human rights and equity considerations because they can say "blame the AI;" 4) convenient excuse to avoid cuts to global carbon and methane emissions, already reaching dangerously high levels, because of too much government and/or corporate faith in AI; 5) inaccurate reporting of AI results to the public due to political or corporate filtering; 6) "The Obscene Energy Demands of A. I." as noted in Elizabeth Kolbert's March 9, 2024 essay in The New Yorker; and 7) AI may be used to protect ultrarich from billions of desperate humans as tipping points are crossed, and climate emergency increases. 

For those new to understanding AI, Cleo Abram gave an excellent summary of "What We Get Wrong About AI (feat. former Google CEO [Eric Schmidt])." This 12 minute, 40 second YouTube, with 749,666 views since Aug 3, 2023. begins with Sundar Pichai, Google CEO and CEO of its parent company, Alphabet, noting AI for humanity is "more profound than fire or electricity." Abram's YouTube includes a March 19, 2023 cnet.com article by Daniel Van Boom with a headline,"ChatGPT Can Pass the Bar Exam. Does That Actually Matter?" The article notes, "In mid-March, artificial intelligence company OpenAI announced that, thanks to a new update, its ChatGPT chatbot is now smart enough to not only pass the bar exam, but score in the top 10%." 

AI's more detailed explanation is the nearly 3 hour YouTube on Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory, "MEGATHREAT: Why AI Is So Dangerous & How It Could Destroy Humanity | Mo Gawdat." Posted June 20, 2023, it has 1,145,110 views. I watched the entire YouTube for climate implications. 

At 36:07 on the timeline Gawdat says, "That exponential growth is just mind boggling because the growth on the next chip in your phone is going to be a million times more than the computer that put people on the moon. [ . . . . ] I remember in my google years when we were working on Sycamore, google's quantum computer, Sycamore performed an algorithm that would have taken the world's biggest supercomputer 10,000 years to solve, and it took Sycamore [ . . . ] 200 seconds." 

These technology breakthroughs remind me of my October 28, 2017 post noting, "Last night I watched The Imitation Game about British codebreaker Alan Turing deciphering the Nazi's Enigma machine code.  The code was considered 'unbreakable' because of huge obstacles including, as the linked Enigma video notes, 'If you had 100,000 people with 100,000 Enigma machines, all testing different settings [ . . .], test a different setting once a second 24 by 7, it would take twice the age of the universe to break the code.'  In other words, as multiple sources noted, it would take finding 'one of these 15 billion billion settings.' [par break] However, Turing's team broke it [ . . . . ]."

I also wrote, "The beautiful 'flaw' (feature, not a bug) is conscience.  The Internet offers speed. Reducing carbon use is the goal." Could AI generate technical/political/social answers regarding the climate emergency? I don't know. Humans are stubborn, but listening to an intelligence a billion times smarter will be worth a try.

I wrote in my April 12, 2023 post, "instead of the millions of lives Turing saved [in World War II by inventing the theory for the first computer], the number would now be in the billions." 

At 1:07:08 on the timeline Gawdat continues, "If you look at us today you would think [ . . . ] the biggest idiots on the planet [ . . . ] are destroying the planet not even understanding that they are. Right? You become little more intelligent and you say, 'I'm destroying the planet but it's not my problem, but I undertstand that I'm destroying it.' Okay? You get a little more intelligent and you go like 'No, no, no. Hold on. I'm destroying the planet. I should stop doing what I'm doing.' You get even more intelligent then you say, 'I'm destroying the planet. I should do something to reverse it.' [ . . . . ] The eco-challenge that we go through is not needed. [ . . . . ] Getting together just requires a little more intelligence, a little more communication, [ . . . ] a better presentation of the numbers so that every leader around the world suddenly realizes 'Yeah, it doesn't look good for my country in 50 years time.' The reality of the matter is that as AI goes through that trajectory of more and more and more intelligence, zooms through human stupidity, to [ . . . ] best IQ, beyond humans' intelligence, [ AI machines] will by definition have our best interests in mind, have the best interest of the ecosystem in mind. Just like the most intelligent of us don't want us to kill the giraffes, and [ . . . ] the other species that we're killing every day, a more intelligent AI than us will behave like the intelligence of life itself [ . . . . ]"

The entire video is worth seeing for many reasons. While I disagree with Gawdat's idea that just planting more trees will solve our climate issues, I deeply respect most of his other points, spiritual beliefs in Sufism, and vision to use AI to find complex answers currently beyond the capacity of human minds. 

Even at a billion times the intelligence of humans by 2049, it is unreasonable to expect AI to have the compassion and justice of the Creator of everything seen and unseen in all directions forever whose will can not be undone. AI will be able to perform what seems like miracles, but God is accessible in the present moment to everyone willing to listen, sans expensive technology and supercomputers cooled to just above absolute zero (-459 degrees Fahrenheit). His data can not be corrupted, and no virus can destroy it. It survives the death of galaxies. 

Sufi poet Rumi was quoted, "Ecstatic love is an ocean, and the Milky Way is a flake of foam floating on it." I first saw that quote in The Kabir Book by Robert Bly. Rumi's poem "An Empty Garlic," used with permission of  translator Coleman Barks, is one of the most-visted posts on this blog.

Gawdat said at 2:45:53 on the timeline, "But I will always ask myself this question: 'if what I'm using is ethical, healthy, and human?' And this is a question that I ask every single individual listening to us. Please do not use unethical AI. Please do not develop unethical AI. Please don't fall in a trap where your AI is going to hurt someone. One of the things I ask of governments is if something is generated by AI, it needs to be marked as AI [ . . . ]"

I respected that in the video Gawdat said he turned away from having a garage with 16 cars to giving away most of what he earns. This reminded me of the 2010 documentary I Am, I mentioned before, where the Dalai Lama said the most important meditation of our time is "critical thinking followed by action."

Outgoing U. S. Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry Refers to Global Public Apathy as "a kind of de facto signature on a suicide pact"

In David Wallace-Wells March 6, 2024 New York Times interview "John Kerry: ‘I Feel Deeply Frustrated’," Kerry was quoted about global public climate apathy, "I’ve likened it to a kind of de facto signature on a suicide pact."

Well, yeah.

In my 2018 book Carbonfish Blues the end of my poem "Welcome to the Future" noted:

"as Arizona’s wild horses die of drought, and
sooner or later we must individually decide

if we will take suicide pill of apathy with others.
The brown eye of a raven up close

is enough to convince us otherwise."

Kerry's frustration also reminds me of Eisenhower's farewell address cited in my 2015 book Industrial Oz in my poem, "Why All US-Made Nuclear Waste Must Be Stored at the White House":

Eisenhower, in his farewell address,
spoke the truth
about dangers
of the military-industrial complex,
but to whom? Sparrows?

His words were recorded
by reporters
and microfiched in libraries.

I saw a film praising
the two-time president and 5-star general
for his courage to speak
and thought it ridiculous.

Give the guy credit for D-Day,
but his farewell address was like
if Jesus had said at Gethsemane,
“Father, instead of being crucified,
I just say Satan is bad, okay?”

Eisenhower’s conscience, like Oppenheimer’s
and ours, is a dreaded glowing
that can never be buried deep enough
to avoid leaching into groundwater.

I would have respected John Kerry more if instead of calling UAE appointment of oil chief Sultan al-Jaber to oversee COP28 UN climate talks "a terrific choice," Kerry said, like former President of Ireland Mary Robinson tweeted about COP26, "[ . . . . ] While millions around the world are already in crisis, not enough leaders were in crisis mode. People will see this as a historically shameful dereliction of duty."  

Kerry's self-described "Deeply Frustrated" voice could have said, "COP28 is mostly over even before it has begun" then, as I wrote in my December 14, 2023 post, "[but] given billions of human and nonhuman lives at stake, one possible solution would be for the global community to incentivize 'Saudi Arabia and allies' with huge economic and social benefits to get a fossil fuel phase-out approved at COP29 November 11-24, 2024 '[tentative]' in Baku, Azerbaijan, or COP30, 2025, in Belém do Pará, Brazil near the Amazon forest. Otherwise, small-scale geoengineering seems likely with significant risk of wars due to intended or unintended effects on different countries. Large-scale geoengineering, if even possible over 1°C [above year 1850 baseline], would bring a financial burden for many, or all, future human generations, and serious risk of the dreaded "termination effect" if financing were cut for any reason. Tim Krueger, a James Martin Fellow at University of Oxford Geoengineering Programme, made a great Youtube about 3 minutes long explaining "The Termination Effect on GeoEngineering."

This level of honesty is needed for families in island nations, Somalia, Syria, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, Yemen, Chad, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Pakistan, and many other places as carbon emissions keep rising according to "The Global Carbon Budget Office [ . . . ] led by Professor Pierre Friedlingstein from the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute with the support of more than 100 people from 70 organisations in 18 countries." 

I told a group discussing the climate issue, "In politics belief is reality. In physics belief is irrelevant. The global climate only responds to actions." 

My favorite recent climate item is Bill McGuire's March 7, 2024 cnn.com, "Opinion: I’m a climate scientist. If you knew what I know, you’d be terrified too." Recently, I told different groups "The reason to keep trying is that some climate scientists noted every tenth of a degree matters to humans and nonhumans."

Same Planet, Different Worlds

World 1: Koala scorched in Australia due to massive fires according to a 2019 YouTube by The Sun with over 47 million views. The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) noted, "Nearly 6,382 koalas are estimated to have perished during the 2019/2020 bushfires, nearly 15% of the population." My June 5, 2023 post linked a July 28, 2020 bbc.com article, "Australia's fires 'killed or harmed three billion animals.'" I also noted the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat dome in which over "one billion marine intertidal animals may have perished along the shores of the Salish Sea" according University of British Columbia researcher Chris Harley; and estimated nearly eleven billion snow crab that likely died from one or more heat-related reasons off Alaska from 2018 to 2021 according to Molly Olmstead's October 21, 2022 article at slate.com. The climate madness continues with over 160 dead elephants in Zimbabwe reported in January 2024, due to drought according to The Zimbabwe Parks & Wildlife Management Authority (Zimparks) cited by Tawanda Karombo in a January 17, 2024 article in The Guardian.

World 2: Exxon CEO Darren Woods, cited in a February 27, 2024 Fortune article by Jane Thier and reported in a March 4, 2024 article in The Guardian by Dharna Noor and Oliver Milman, said, “The people who are generating those emissions need to be aware of and pay the price for generating those emissions. That is ultimately how you solve the problem.”  In other words, koalas, marine intertidal animals, snow crab, elephants, and billions of humans at this rate be damned, Exxon's obscene profits are simply not negotiable!"

In The Guardian article by Noor and Milman, Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School, responded to Woods, "It’s like a drug lord blaming everyone but himself for drug problems." The article also quoted Naomi Oreskes, Henry Charles Lea Professor of the History of Science, and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, "For decades, they told us that the science was too uncertain to justify action, that it was premature to act, and that we could and should wait and see how things developed. Now the CEO says: oh dear, we’ve waited too long. If this isn’t gaslighting, I don’t know what is.” She added, "The playbook is this: sell consumers a product that you know is dangerous, while publicly denying or downplaying those dangers. Then, when the dangers are no longer deniable, deny responsibility and blame the consumer.”

The situation is laughable for its logic, and tragic for global implications. My December 14, 2023 post "130 nations at Cop28 [called] for a fossil fuel phase-out" but Big Oil and Major Oil-Producing Nations Said No included an imagined COP 300 about 272 years from now:

Big Oil Company Press Release at COP300

We understand
there are only
10 million humans left.

We’re not sorry.
This was war,
and we won.

So what if most
everything on Earth
must die?

We underwent
extensive blame
and denial therapy.

Reader,
you and your children
are the problem.

It’s not our fault
oil kills people
and nonhumans.

We’re not responsible
for anything
but making money.

We’re not saints.
We own politicians
and corporations.

Remember your
ancestors elected them,
and bought our products.

I didn't expect many parts of my poem to sadly come true in 2024.

The 2014 documentary film Merchants of Doubt, based on a book by Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, has this scene about one minute long explaining how Exxon and other Big Oil firms sold delayed climate action far beyond what is reasonable. In the scene, Bob Inglis, a former U.S. representative from South Carolina, says about those resisting climate science, "The whole way I've created my life is wrong? You're saying I shouldn't have this house in the suburb. I shouldn't be driving this car where I take my kids to soccer. And you're not going to tell me to live the way that you want me to live. And along comes some people with sowing some doubt, and it's pretty effective because I'm looking for that answer. I want it to be that the science is not real." I greatly respect Christian Republican Bob Inglis for his courage accepting ice core evidence from Antarctica, and coral bleaching rates at the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. A February 22, 2017 article from australiainstitute.org cites Adam Morton in a Fairfax interview and Fran Kelly on RN Breakfast showing "How the Gospel helped Republican Bob Inglis to champion climate action."

Legal penalties for Darren Woods, and others at Exxon, could include having to watch "World 1: Koala scorched in Australia" ten times without looking away.