I’ve been puzzled why climate change messaging seems to ignore the emissions of other large countries like China and India. If USA reduces emissions but others don’t, well we all share the same atmosphere so…

But similar to your angle, I’ve wondered if the climate change messaging is secretly targeted towards resource depletion. If USA switches off oil and oil runs out, who cares if others didn’t switch? But people have a hard time processing “going to run out in 50 years” as a crisis, so instead we get an apocalypse angle, I suppose because humans love the apocalypse (see: various religions).

> I’ve been puzzled why climate change messaging seems to ignore the emissions of other large countries like China and India.

It doesn't. The issue is likely more that you don't see or read widely enough.

Even here on HN you'll see mention of China and India's emissions and use of coal on a regular basis.

The US is a significant mention for two main reasons:-

* of all the human lofted additional CO2 of the past century plus (that sourced from formerly deep underground) the US is the single largest sole country contributor (although China is catching up (but may or may not equal the US)), ...

* the US is still a large per capita contributor today (ignoring tiny tiny outlier countries with small populations and near single export fossil fuel extraction countries) - it has an energy intensive economy.

My personal beef isn't so much with the US but specifically with US based fossil fuel and resource companies of the 1970s onwards (eg: Koch brothers) who were well aware of the problem with increasing the insulation factor of the atmosphere and doubled down anyway - spending large on "think tanks" to promote confusion via media, over sell the appeal of large cars, destroy any and all grass roots campaigns for public transport, etc. (CO2MaXXing ?).

The US has had influence across the planet post WWII, these campaigns just promoted a bad example for profit and deferred early and timely addressing of the issues.

In the 60s/70s they had the world is going into another ice age scare. Based on historical patterns we are in a cooling phase based on Milankovitch cycles. A long slow cooling phase going into another ice age. You can't blame the Koch brothers.

> they had the world is going into another ice age scare.

They did, didn't they! Not in the bulk of scientific discussion though, just in media outlets, broadsheets, opinion columns, etc.

It does rather sound like somebody bought into the Koch / Heartland propaganda stream whole heartedly.

Hopefully commenters can bring up "the little ice age" et al. so we can all play denialist talking point bingo.

So the Koch brothers came up with the Milankovitch cycles. Even though it was proposed in 1842 by Joseph Adhémar then in 1860 James Croll added orbital theory in 1911 Milutin Milankovitch came up with the math.

The big event that caused it to come into pop culture in the 70s was a landmark paper by James Hays, John Imbrie and Nicholas Shackleton, published in Science in 1976.

But you think its the Koch brothers. And anyone who actual knows history is playing denialist bingo.

You've won the hacker news Candace Owens conspiracy award for ignoring facts and doubling down on a silly conspiracy theory because it fits some narrative you want to promote today.

That's not what the poster above said. Go posture somewhere else.

> So the Koch brothers came up with the Milankovitch cycles.

No.

> But you think its the Koch brothers

That's your strawman. What is known is the amount of effort put in by Koch and others to muddy the waters and belittle what became accepted internationally in the late 1960s.

> You've won the hacker news Candace Owens conspiracy award

Is that someone I should know of?

> for ignoring facts

What facts have I ignored?

> and doubling down on a silly conspiracy theory

What, that tobacco companies hired PR firms to make their poison look good, and fossil fuel companies hired more or less the exact same firms to upsell CO2 ?

That's on the record for anyone that cares to look.

> because it fits some narrative you want to promote today.

It's been the case for nigh on 50 years now - hardly a flash in pan here today gone tomorrow made up story.

The USA is far wealthier, uses more carbon per-person, and is responsible for more historical emissions than China or India. We have an obligation to reduce our gluttony before asking others to go without.

The USA is not wealthy, some people and corporations are wealthy, most people are not. BIG difference.

I like to think of holidays and work / life balance as a measure of wealth. Rich people can take time away from work because they can afford it. If you need to work lots of hours and barely can have a few days off then you arent wealthy.

Let me ask again, if you need to work 2 - 3 jobs are you wealthy ?

If you can only take a weeks worth of holidays in a good year are you wealthy ?

What have you done to reduce your gluttony?

China and India have very, very low per capita emissions. They are also the countries working the hardest and fastest at installing renewable energy.

Messaging over here does not ignore that. A big chunk in Australia is about stopping exports of oil and coal, or at the very least taxing the exports more and making it more expensive. You might have to listen to people and organizations actually concerned though, rather than politicians intent on doing the bare minimum to capture the climate vote.

Hmm one of the major relevant cultural values seems to be nepotism, though. Which is common across many cultures and I personally believe it's human nature so I'm not knocking it, per se. I wish I could nepotism too!

So are you recommending that, for example, protestants of German descent begin preferentially funding or buying from people in their in-group? People of anglo descent should start preferring other anglos? Catholics should buy from catholics?

I think the issue is that it's considered okay for some groups to do it while simultaneously being considered EXTREMELY EVIL for other groups to do it.

We can't really recommend that other groups do it with a straight face, they would be instantly shunned and vilified.

EDIT: When I say BUY I mean B2B deals, not consumer level, hence "funding or buying". Sorry for the confusion.

So if USA hadn’t interfered in the middle east or supported Israel, ever, the oil supply coming from the Middle East would be significantly less stable? How…?

“Wealth” isn’t just shiny things you buy, beyond a certain point it’s mostly the amount of the economy you control.

I’m curious how you propose that business ownership should work?

Is anyone else getting regulatory capture play vibes from the media coverage of AI and data centers?

It would be awfully convenient for the current big players if friction was added to bringing additional large scale compute resources online. Existing data centers would be grandfathered of course…

I'm not even sure I'd point to "media coverage" when it is Anthropic's own employees stating plainly on Twitter that they think there is a >10% chance AI kills all humans within the next decade.

Given that “this is just like skynet!!!” narrative seems to drive sales and not impede them, I wouldn’t be surprised.

Nonsense. Of course. But for all non-tech-savvy this is a “bad” narrative in a good way. If it can kill humans in the future then it surely can make me a “what I would like in the 80s” photo, right?

I think that media coverage simply reflects the growing anxiety among the public about the capabilities of new models and what future awaits us. Personally, I think that this anxiety is justified. If this leads to tough regulations about AGI/ASI (e.g., a permanent ban), I doubt that AI companies would benefit financially.

As with the debate around open weights and self-hosting,

"both can be true."

There can be a quotidian benefit to existing leaders in friction.

There are also real costs of various kinds associated with data centers,

and, to the point in this case,

there are also real risks associated with the current AI trajectory.

Would it? Don’t they all desperately want more compute, and not the banning of new data centres?

They want to make money.

I don't picture new data centers being banned outright. I picture a lot more regulatory friction driven by public reaction which is in large part driven by media (which then also amplifies the perception of the public reaction).

Regulatory friction is generally considered beneficial to established companies, because it makes it harder for new companies to enter the market and for smaller companies to expand.

For example if in the 1960s computers became regulated because they will replace a lot of jobs or enable the building of advanced weapons or whatever, IBM would probably be in a very different position today.

I don’t think that’s whataboutism?

Maybe I’m confused, but I thought whataboutism was more like “you are saying I am doing X bad thing? What about Y bad thing you’re doing, let’s discuss that instead”.

It’s a deflection technique, not a check on logical consistency.

    >  “you are saying I am doing X bad thing? What about Y bad thing you’re doing, let’s discuss that instead”.

no one is generally expecting or even asking for "let’s discuss that instead". what they are doing is trying to point out that your lack of of care about Y implies that you never actually cared about X in the first place but rather you only care about me doing X.

often times X is actually bad but human nature is such that no one actually cares about it while wanting to appear to when locked down on it. for this reason arguing about X directly is bad optics.

whataboustism is basically an effort to draw attention to the selective enforcement of norms, laws, morality, whatever. hypocrisy is implied.

It can also be used to derail a conversation. I.e. "I find subject X unpleasant, so I am going to imply that you don't care enough about subject Y, which has a passing similarity to it, so that the subject of the conversation turns to Y rather than X. I do not actually care about subject Y, but I won't say that out loud". See also "concern trolling".

I feel like most projects like this must be run by people who are independently wealthy(ish) already and are in it for the long run? Like if this style took off enough to mass produce they could eventually make a lot of money, but if they keep it niche they are never going to make significant money no matter how much they charge.

I could definitely imagine a smaller cheap plasticky version of this being pitched as a more intuitive way for kids to learn piano, maybe that's where they're aiming?

So, like if Batman was into optimizing musical keyboard layouts instead of whatever he’s doing.

Go on…

Have you actually talked to people from other places about racism?

People in the Middle East and the far east and Africa are maaaassively more racist than the euro diaspora is today. How are you surprised that an Iranian is racist against Indians or whatever, that’s absolutely typical for that part of the world.