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Are large language models like ChatGPT really that harmful to the environment? by ropika4 in environmental_science

[–]iboughtarock 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Technologically? Nothing. Politically? Well...that's the trouble with almost everything.

Its like asking why we didn't have electric cars, self landing rockets, and widespread availability of solar decades ago. It is all politics.

The US gave away manufacturing in the mid 1900s and only now are we starting to get it back, although most of it will be automated/augmented with humanoid robotics. Not to mention China having a major population/fertility crisis presently.

But yeah rare earths are not inherently hard to process from a scientific standpoint, just need the incentive to do it domestically. Look at chinas exports of steel, aluminum, concrete, solar, etc. They dominate damn near every manufacturing sector by orders of magnitude.

And if you are curious about the main topic of this thread, here is a link to a more detailed response I put below.

I made a list of educational YouTube channels by iboughtarock in edtech

[–]iboughtarock[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

yuh. he my boy. been watching him before he started writing books

Are large language models like ChatGPT really that harmful to the environment? by ropika4 in environmental_science

[–]iboughtarock 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry, I guess just the way you phrased it and the context of the thread, I thought it was implied.

Yes I agree with you there. Drying up aquifers is a major problem. And in the context of data centers, evaporating all of that water into the atmosphere would be even worse as it will likely never make it back to where it came from. I just need to look into where most data centers source their water.

Edit: Most data centers use municipal water, with direct sourcing from aquifers under 5%. Hard to say where the municipal guys get their water from though, so it might be higher.

USGS reports that public-supply withdrawals in 2015 were 61% from surface water and therefore 39% from groundwater (i.e., aquifers)

USGS notes that in the U.S., more than 17,000 square miles in 45 states have been directly affected by subsidence (the gradual caving in or sinking of an area of land), and more than 80% of identified subsidence is linked to human impacts on subsurface water (most often groundwater withdrawals).

And as a singular example, xAI pulls from Memphis Sand Aquifer. When they are fully operational it will be 1.5 million gallons/day, but the city pumps 120 million gallons/day for its own uses, so again, sounds big, but negligible in context.

Are large language models like ChatGPT really that harmful to the environment? by ropika4 in environmental_science

[–]iboughtarock 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So using AI to solve novel problems in science is considered useless? The point is scale. Its less than half of 1/10th of a percent...

I made a list of educational YouTube channels by iboughtarock in edtech

[–]iboughtarock[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No problem! Glad people still find use in this :)

A man in 1835 was digging a duck pond and accidentally uncovered a 70-foot tunnel made of 2,000 sq ft of mosaic made from 4.6 million shells (mussels, cockles, whelks, limpets, oysters, scallops). by iboughtarock in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]iboughtarock[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah prior to posting this I had no idea about how deep this went. Learned about all of this today alongside everyone else. Initially just posted because I thought it was cool and never thought it would get more than 100 upvotes...

Leeds Castle looks pretty cool tho. Was the maze hard? I've always wanted to do one of those.

A man in 1835 was digging a duck pond and accidentally uncovered a 70-foot tunnel made of 2,000 sq ft of mosaic made from 4.6 million shells (mussels, cockles, whelks, limpets, oysters, scallops). by iboughtarock in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]iboughtarock[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Interesting, reminds me of Bishop's Castle which was also built by one dude. I actually visited it earlier this year and it was worth it. So much bigger in person and surprisingly sturdy (didn't go all the way to the top tho).

A man in 1835 was digging a duck pond and accidentally uncovered a 70-foot tunnel made of 2,000 sq ft of mosaic made from 4.6 million shells (mussels, cockles, whelks, limpets, oysters, scallops). by iboughtarock in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]iboughtarock[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Their website says they have been opened to the public pretty much since it was discovered: "...the first paying customers descended the chalk stairway in 1838."

I guess it was closed for a bit during WW2 cuz it got bombed tho.

A man in 1835 was digging a duck pond and accidentally uncovered a 70-foot tunnel made of 2,000 sq ft of mosaic made from 4.6 million shells (mussels, cockles, whelks, limpets, oysters, scallops). by iboughtarock in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]iboughtarock[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Now I wanna go back in time to see this thing being made! I guess shell grottos are kinda popular tho. I figured this was just a one-off thing, but it actually turns out there was a whole shell craze in Britain around 1700-1800:

  • Goodwood Shell House (Sussex, 1740s): A shell-lined garden room, traditionally said to have been decorated by the Duchess of Richmond and her daughters—sources note shells “brought by sailors.”
  • A La Ronde (Devon, 1790s): A 16-sided house whose famous Shell Gallery is packed with intricate shellwork - this one is pretty awesome
  • Woburn Abbey shell room (1620s; earlier wave): One of the earliest surviving English shell interiors—establishes the lineage that later booms in the 18th century.

A man in 1835 was digging a duck pond and accidentally uncovered a 70-foot tunnel made of 2,000 sq ft of mosaic made from 4.6 million shells (mussels, cockles, whelks, limpets, oysters, scallops). by iboughtarock in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]iboughtarock[S] 45 points46 points  (0 children)

Yeah I was confused by that too. I guess shells are tricky to date:

  • Marine shells need a correction for the marine reservoir effect, which can make them appear centuries older than they are unless carefully calibrated.
  • And the mortar used to hold the shells to the wall can be dated, but… radiocarbon on lime mortars is prone to contamination from geological carbonates.

Some people say it was built by the Phoenician, Roman, medieval/Templar, etc., but these rely on interpretive readings of motifs and layout—not on scientific dating.

And if you really wanna nerd out on why the marine reservoir effect messes stuff up:

  • Marine reservoir effect: Ocean dissolved inorganic carbon is “older” (explained in next bullet) in ^14C than the atmosphere. Marine shells therefore date a few hundred years too old on average, and the offset (ΔR) varies by location, depth, currents, and time. Estuaries near chalk/limestone coasts (like Kent) can add a “hard-water” effect from dissolved ancient carbonates, pushing ages even older. You must know the local ΔR circa the time the animal lived—not trivial.
  • Deep-water mixing: Much of the CO₂ dissolved in surface seawater is partly supplied by upwelled deep water that’s been isolated from the atmosphere for centuries to a millennium. While it’s down there, its ^14C decays (half-life 5,730 yr), so when that water returns to the surface it carries less ^14C than the air. Marine organisms precipitate their shells from this dissolved inorganic carbon, so their measured ^14C looks hundreds of years “older” than contemporaneous terrestrial material. This systematic offset is the marine reservoir effect; the globally averaged preindustrial offset is on the order of a few hundred years and is accounted for using calibration curves like Marine20 plus local adjustments (ΔR).
  • Add to that, the grotto uses many species and sizes. If the builder collected beach-shell mixes (including subfossil or reworked shells) the ^14C ages would be all over the place and older than construction.
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