@gevoel@mastodon.greenGroot stuk in de Guardian over Klimaat in het algemeeen en Climate Tipping Points in het bijzonder, met links naar meer informatie.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2025/jun/24/tipping-p…
@primonatura@mstdn.social"‘Boiling frog’ effect makes people oblivious to threat of climate crisis, shows study"
#Climate #ClimateChange
@Dragofix@veganism.social‘It’s death by a thousand cuts’: marine ecologist on the collapse of coral reefs https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2025/jun/25/tipping-points-coral-oceans-climate-crisis-marine-ecologist
@paulwermer@sfba.socialEconomic denialism - we've heard bogus arguments for years (thanks, Prof. Nordhouse, for your enabling work on this) -
Now it has a name.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/may/28/andre-correa-do-lago-cop30…
@PaulWermer@sfba.socialEconomic denialism - we've heard bogus arguments for years (thanks, Prof. Nordhouse, for your enabling work on this) -
Now it has a name.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/may/28/andre-correa-do-lago-cop30…
@paulwermer@sfba.socialA #ClimateChange increase in a ticks range creates ever more people allergic to #meat and #dairy, which reduces demand for the products of an industry that aggravates the
@primonatura@mstdn.social"Antarctic ice has grown again – but this does not buck overall melt trend"
#Antarctic #Climate #ClimateChange
@elduvelle@neuromatch.social"Climate misinformation turning crisis into catastrophe, report says"
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jun/19/climate-misinformation-turning-crisis-into-catastrophe-ipie-report?
@tinoeberl@mastodon.online#Klimakrisen treffen #Frauen besonders hart, vor allem im Globalen Süden.
Sie tragen die Hauptlast bei Flucht, Versorgung und Wiederaufbau, oft unter gefährlichen Bedingungen. Gleichzeitig sind Frauen zentrale Akteurinnen der
@cdarwin@c.imYouth Who Fought the Climate Crisis in Court Are Now Targeting Trump
Many of the young plaintiffs have taken part in similar lawsuits before
-- and won key victories in Montana and Hawaii.
https://grist.org/justice/youth-climate-activis…
@primonatura@mstdn.social"Climate misinformation turning crisis into catastrophe, report says"
#Climate #ClimateChange
@ErikJonker@mastodon.social
@aral@mastodon.ar.alA small price to pay for having billionaires and trillion-dollar corporations, wouldn’t you say?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jul/09/europe-june-heatwave-study-climate-breakdown-tripled-death-toll
@jlpiraux@wallonie-bruxelles.socialEnviron 1500 des 2300 décès dus Š la chaleur lors de la canicule qui a frappé l'Europe Š la fin du mois de juin peuvent être attribués au changement climatique, selon l'analyse de la World Weather Attribution publiée par le Guardian.
#climat #changementclimatique
@MamasPinkyToe@mastodon.worldIf you fix the climate crisis, I will pay you ten dollars. Everyone will pay you ten dollars.
@primonatura@mstdn.social"‘Keeping us hooked on fossil fuels’: how can we negotiate with autocracies on the climate crisis?"
#Climate #ClimateChange #FossilFuels
@muz4now@mastodon.worldTop Ocean Experts Sound the Alarm Over Growing Marine Crisis Due To Climate Change https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04062025/one-ocean-science-congress…
@Erikmitk@mastodon.gamedev.placeThere's a lot of shit going on in the world: poverty, famine, wars, late stage capitalism, debugging obfuscated JavaScript code in a browser and the climate crisis.
The global community has to put an end to *all* of these!
@Dragofix@veganism.socialAmazon degradation increases by 163% in two years, while deforestation falls by 54% in the same period https://phys.org/news/2025-07-amazon-degradation-years-deforestation-falls.html
@cdarwin@c.imFour wealthy nations
—the United States, Canada, Norway, and Australia
—account for the majority of planned oil and gas expansion over the next decade,
according to new data published by Oil Change Internationalon Monday, the first day of the Bonn Climate Change Conference in Germany.
Oil Change's analysis,
titled Planet Wreckers,
notes that if those four Global North nations stopped their planned new oil and gas extraction,
32 billion tons of carb…
@arXiv_physicssocph_bot@mastoxiv.pageCan Quantum Physics Help Fight Climate Change? A Thematic Analysis of Press Release Narratives
Maxwell Bernstein, Joanna Krajewski, Rachel Fisher
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.13600 …
@elduvelle@neuromatch.social"HSBC becomes first UK bank to quit industry’s net zero alliance"
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jul/11/hsbc-leaves-net-zero-banking-alliance-climate-crisis
-> Now's a good time to leave
@gevoel@mastodon.green
@tezoatlipoca@mas.to
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialWhy AI can't possibly make you more productive; long
#AI and "productivity", some thoughts:
Edit: fixed some typos.
Productivity is a concept that isn't entirely meaningless outside the context of capitalism, but it's a concept that is heavily inflected in a capitalist context. In many uses today it effectively means "how much you can satisfy and/or exceed your boss' expectations." This is not really what it should mean: even in an anarchist utopia, people would care about things like how many shirts they can produce in a week, although in an "I'd like to voluntarily help more people" way rather than an "I need to meet this quota to earn my survival" way. But let's roll with this definition for a second, because it's almost certainly what your boss means when they say "productivity", and understanding that word in a different (even if truer) sense is therefore inherently dangerous.
Accepting "productivity" to mean "satisfying your boss' expectations," I will now claim: the use of generative AI cannot increase your productivity.
Before I dive in, it's imperative to note that the big generative models which most people think of as constituting "AI" today are evil. They are 1: pouring fuel on our burning planet, 2: psychologically strip-mining a class of data laborers who are exploited for their precarity, 3: enclosing, exploiting, and polluting the digital commons, and 4: stealing labor from broad classes of people many of whom are otherwise glad to give that labor away for free provided they get a simple acknowledgement in return. Any of these four "ethical issues" should be enough *alone* to cause everyone to simply not use the technology. These ethical issues are the reason that I do not use generative AI right now, except for in extremely extenuating circumstances. These issues are also convincing for a wide range of people I talk to, from experts to those with no computer science background. So before I launch into a critique of the effectiveness of generative AI, I want to emphasize that such a critique should be entirely unnecessary.
But back to my thesis: generative AI cannot increase your productivity, where "productivity" has been defined as "how much you can satisfy and/or exceed your boss' expectations."
Why? In fact, what the fuck? Every AI booster I've met has claimed the opposite. They've given me personal examples of time saved by using generative AI. Some of them even truly believe this. Sometimes I even believe they saved time without horribly compromising on quality (and often, your boss doesn't care about quality anyways if the lack of quality is hard to measure of doesn't seem likely to impact short-term sales/feedback/revenue). So if generative AI genuinely lets you write more emails in a shorter period of time, or close more tickets, or something else along these lines, how can I say it isn't increasing your ability to meet your boss' expectations?
The problem is simple: your boss' expectations are not a fixed target. Never have been. In virtue of being someone who oversees and pays wages to others under capitalism, your boss' game has always been: pay you less than the worth of your labor, so that they can accumulate profit and thus more capital to remain in charge instead of being forced into working for a wage themselves. Sure, there are layers of management caught in between who aren't fully in this mode, but they are irrelevant to this analysis. It matters not how much you please your manager if your CEO thinks your work is not worth the wages you are being paid. And using AI actively lowers the value of your work relative to your wages.
Why do I say that? It's actually true in several ways. The most obvious: using generative AI lowers the quality of your work, because the work it produces is shot through with errors, and when your job is reduced to proofreading slop, you are bound to tire a bit, relax your diligence, and let some mistakes through. More than you would have if you are actually doing and taking pride in the work. Examples are innumerable and frequent, from journalists to lawyers to programmers, and we laugh at them "haha how stupid to not check whether the books the AI reviewed for you actually existed!" but on a deeper level if we're honest we know we'd eventually make the same mistake ourselves (bonus game: spot the swipe-typing typos I missed in this post; I'm sure there will be some).
But using generative AI also lowers the value of your work in another much more frightening way: in this era of hype, it demonstrates to your boss that you could be replaced by AI. The more you use it, and no matter how much you can see that your human skills are really necessary to correct its mistakes, the more it appears to your boss that they should hire the AI instead of you. Or perhaps retain 10% of the people in roles like yours to manage the AI doing the other 90% of the work. Paradoxically, the *more* you get done in terms of raw output using generative AI, the more it looks to your boss as if there's an opportunity to get enough work done with even fewer expensive humans. Of course, the decision to fire you and lean more heavily into AI isn't really a good one for long-term profits and success, but the modern boss did not get where they are by considering long-term profits. By using AI, you are merely demonstrating your redundancy, and the more you get done with it, the more redundant you seem.
In fact, there's even a third dimension to this: by using generative AI, you're also providing its purveyors with invaluable training data that allows them to make it better at replacing you. It's generally quite shitty right now, but the more use it gets by competent & clever people, the better it can become at the tasks those specific people use it for. Using the currently-popular algorithm family, there are limits to this; I'm not saying it will eventually transcend the mediocrity it's entwined with. But it can absolutely go from underwhelmingly mediocre to almost-reasonably mediocre with the right training data, and data from prompting sessions is both rarer and more useful than the base datasets it's built on.
For all of these reasons, using generative AI in your job is a mistake that will likely lead to your future unemployment. To reiterate, you should already not be using it because it is evil and causes specific and inexcusable harms, but in case like so many you just don't care about those harms, I've just explained to you why for entirely selfish reasons you should not use it.
If you're in a position where your boss is forcing you to use it, my condolences. I suggest leaning into its failures instead of trying to get the most out of it, and as much as possible, showing your boss very clearly how it wastes your time and makes things slower. Also, point out the dangers of legal liability for its mistakes, and make sure your boss is aware of the degree to which any of your AI-eager coworkers are producing low-quality work that harms organizational goals.
Also, if you've read this far and aren't yet of an anarchist mindset, I encourage you to think about the implications of firing 75% of (at least the white-collar) workforce in order to make more profit while fueling the climate crisis and in most cases also propping up dictatorial figureheads in government. When *either* the AI bubble bursts *or* if the techbros get to live out the beginnings of their worker-replacement fantasies, there are going to be an unimaginable number of economically desperate people living in increasingly expensive times. I'm the kind of optimist who thinks that the resulting social crucible, though perhaps through terrible violence, will lead to deep social changes that effectively unseat from power the ultra-rich that continue to drag us all down this destructive path, and I think its worth some thinking now about what you might want the succeeding stable social configuration to look like so you can advocate towards that during points of malleability.
As others have said more eloquently, generative AI *should* be a technology that makes human lives on average easier, and it would be were it developed & controlled by humanists. The only reason that it's not, is that it's developed and controlled by terrible greedy people who use their unfairly hoarded wealth to immiserate the rest of us in order to maintain their dominance. In the long run, for our very survival, we need to depose them, and I look forward to what the term "generative AI" will mean after that finally happens.
@gfriend@mas.toWe're live in one hour with this month's Living Between Worlds salon.
Please join us for another conversation for possibility about how we might live effectively in these times, with courage, grace, and power.
Our topic this month? Well, it’s a moving target—just like the world these days! You’ll have to attend to find out. ;-)
Register here:
@primonatura@mstdn.social"Pupils in England face lost learning from flooding and extreme heat, study finds"
#UK #UnitedKingdom #Climate #ClimateChange
@brichapman@mastodon.socialUNESCO appoints Indigenous co-chairs to protect languages and knowledge amid climate crisis. Valuable traditional ecological knowledge within Indigenous languages is a climate solution. #climatechange #climatesolutions
@midtsveen@social.linux.pizzaI think it’s pretty notable that Greta Thunberg has openly blamed capitalism for the climate crisis we’re in.
She argues that the current system, driven by fossil fuel interests, colonialism, imperialism, and exploitation, is fundamentally responsible for environmental destruction and social injustice.
While she has been a prominent figure for several years, her media presence has fluctuated. Recently, she has received renewed attention, particularly after high-profile events lik…
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot"Breaching the target would ramp up the extreme weather already devastating communities around the world. It would also require carbon dioxide to be sucked from the atmosphere in future to restore the stable climate in which the whole of civilisation developed over the past 10,000 years."
This is bogus. Carbon-neutral #CarbonCaptureAndStorage is the modern perpetual…
@Dragofix@veganism.socialUN Climate Expert Urges Criminalization of Fossil Fuel Disinformation to Protect Basic Human Rights https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-crisis-disinformation-criminalization.html
@elduvelle@neuromatch.socialSo.. This is what has been happening recently:
Climate breakdown tripled death toll in Europe’s June heatwave, study finds
A…
@primonatura@mstdn.social"Climate disasters can alter kids’ brains — before they’re even born"
#Climate #ClimateChange #Health
@MamasPinkyToe@mastodon.worldGreta Thunberg's turned her attention to Gaza. I might have to rely on the Linda Lindas to solve the climate crisis.
@servelan@newsie.social‘It was our hope spot’: scientists heartbroken as pristine coral gardens hit by Western Australia’s worst bleaching event | Climate crisis | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jun/07/wa-coral-unprecedented-bleaching-event-ningaloo-reef
@cdarwin@c.imHousing, food and energy security are “more important now than ever with climate change,”
Haíɫzaqv Hereditary Chief λšλíya sila, Frank Brown, says.
“Housing is a human right.
It’s imperative we make some progress around ensuring people have adequate housing and that it’s appropriate for the threats that are coming.”
https://
@arXiv_csSE_bot@mastoxiv.pageTowards a Knowledge Base of Common Sustainability Weaknesses in Green Software Development
Priyavanshi Pathania, Rohit Mehra, Vibhu Saujanya Sharma, Vikrant Kaulgud, Sanjay Podder, Adam P. Burden
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08812
@Dragofix@veganism.socialCorals in crisis: A hidden chemical shift is reshaping Hawaiian reefs #Hawaii
@cdarwin@c.imBlood-sucking ticks
that trigger a bizarre allergy to meat in the people they bite
are exploding in number
and spreading across the US,
to the extent that they could cover the entire eastern half of the country
and infect millions of people
https://www.
@primonatura@mstdn.social"Only two years left of world’s carbon budget to meet 1.5C target, scientists warn"
#Climate #ClimateChange #ParisAgreement
@brichapman@mastodon.socialFlint's lead pipe replacement marks the end of a 10-year crisis. #climatechange #climatesolutions #climate
@Erikmitk@mastodon.gamedev.placeGreat stuff in this article but I do not know if unplugging from the broligarch's platforms is the solution to end their delusional grandeur.
It is the same with the climate crisis. This cannot hinge on the individual to solve but the whole system has to change. Individual action is good but that is not enough.
(For all its shortfalls the EU is regulating parts of the tech industry, but there has to be more.)
@PaulWermer@sfba.socialThe #ClimateCrisis is fueled by #disinformation, aka #lies. (And the liars have become more sophisticated since the #TobaccoIndustry
@primonatura@mstdn.social @primonatura@mstdn.social"‘Win-win’: new maps reveal best opportunities for global reforestation"
#Environment #Reforestation
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot"more than half of the world’s food production will be at risk of failure in the next 25 years"
#ClimateEmergency
https://www.
@Dragofix@veganism.socialJoin the millions using their voices and everyday choices to tackle the climate crisis! #climate
@paulwermer@sfba.socialThe #ClimateCrisis is fueled by #disinformation, aka #lies. (And the liars have become more sophisticated since the #TobaccoIndustry
@primonatura@mstdn.social"Top Ocean Experts Sound the Alarm Over Growing Marine Crisis Due To Climate Change"
#Oceans #Climate #ClimateChange
@Dragofix@veganism.socialJoin the millions using their voices and everyday choices to tackle the climate crisis! #climate
@midtsveen@social.linux.pizza @primonatura@mstdn.social"More than 80% of UK farmers worried about climate crisis harming livelihood, study finds"
#UK #UnitedKingdom #Farming
@chris@mstdn.chrisalemany.caYou're damn right it is madness. We need to scrap these terrible systems.
"Suzuki says that, despite his understanding of the climate crisis, Carney — like all of us — is trapped by the economic and political systems we've created. And for Suzuki, our only hope for survival is to scrap those systems entirely.
David Suzuki joins Jayme Poisson on the podcast for a wide-ranging discussion from what a world of irreversible climate change looks like to what he describes as the "madness" of continued investment in fossil fuels to the lessons environmentalists of the future can take from the past.”
#ClimateChange #ClimateEmergency #EndFossilFuels #CanPoli #CdnPoli #Canada #Energy #EndGrowth #LateStageCapitalism #Capitalism #Racism
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/david-suzuki-warns-carney-of-pipeline-and-growth-madness-1.7586960
@cdarwin@c.imA controversial new book:
"We are eating the Earth"
says excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a long-term challenge resulting from an otherwise cheerful story,
in which more people live better lives with fuller bellies and bigger dreams.
Lawyer-turned-science-cop Tim Searchinger discovered that the popular carbon solution of 20 years ago,
-- plant-based biofuels,
-- was a disaster in the making.
His insight: Land used to grow fuel w…
@primonatura@mstdn.social“World faces new danger of ‘economic denial’ in climate fight, Cop30 head says”
#COp30 #Climate #ClimateChange
@arXiv_physicschemph_bot@mastoxiv.pageTransparent and heat-insulation bionic hydrogel-based smart window system for long-term cooling and waste heat collection
Qianwang Ye, Hanqing Dai, Yukun Yan, Liwei Wang, Xinlin Du, Yimeng Wang, Zhile Han, Wanlu Zhang, Ruiqian Guo
https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.23213
@primonatura@mstdn.social"Flight tax could raise €100bn to tackle climate crisis, study finds"
#Aviation #Aeroplanes #Climate #ClimateChange
@brichapman@mastodon.socialWater reuse is the future! Just like electric lights, it's becoming a necessity. #climatechange #climatesolutions #climate
@cdarwin@c.imEnormous early-season wildfireshave erupted across the prairie provinces of Canada this week,
taxing local emergency response and threatening a long stretch of dangerous air quality across eastern North America.
The country’s largest fires
– the Bird River fire and the Border fire
– remain completely uncontained in northern Manitoba.
In Manitoba alone, wildfires have burned about 200,000 hectares already this year – already about three times the recent full-year …
@Dragofix@veganism.social @primonatura@mstdn.social"Droughts worldwide pushing tens of millions towards starvation, says report"
#Droughts #Climate #ClimateChange
@primonatura@mstdn.social"How farmers are becoming unexpected heroes in the bird migration crisis"
#Birds #Farming #Agriculture
@primonatura@mstdn.social"Scottish households urged to cut water use as climate crisis limits supplies"
#UK #UnitedKingdom #Scotland #Climate
@primonatura@mstdn.social"Microplastics and melting ice reveal deepening crisis in Antarctica"
#Antarctica #Microplastics #Plastic #Plastics
@primonatura@mstdn.social"Ed Miliband says Tories are ‘anti-science’ for abandoning net zero consensus"
#UK #UnitedKingdom #NetZero #Climate
@primonatura@mstdn.social"HSBC becomes first UK bank to quit industry’s net zero alliance"
#UK #UnitedKingdom #HSBC #Banks
@primonatura@mstdn.social"Revealed: Nato rearmament could increase emissions by 200m tonnes a year"
#Nato #Emissions #Climate #ClimateChange
@primonatura@mstdn.social"The Race to Engineer Coral Reef Solutions in the U.S. Virgin Islands"
#US #USA #America #CoralReef
