Ice

joined 2 days ago
[–] Ice@lemmy.zip 10 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

The sad part is that the backbone of our clean energy system in Sweden, nuclear power, is being dismantled by persistent attacks from the environmental party. Since 2000 they've dismantled half of our nuclear fleet, and are commited to destroying the rest within twenty years.

Meanwhile our national grid operator is warning about the potential need for rolling blackouts during the winter demand peaks, which coincide the very coldest days of the year (which are also dark and windless). This winter there were below -40°C in parts of the country, and when the overwhelming majority of households rely on the grid for heating, extended outages have the potential to be lethal. Meanwhile, the electricity cost for a normal single family home can exceed 1'500€ equivalent for a single winter month, which can be compared to the median wage after taxes (3'000€ equivalent).

That's not to mention that many new companies are being refused electricity connections by the grid providers due to them being unable to guarantee electricity supply the whole year (despite massive surpluses & negative prices during summer & windy seasons).

Meanwhile wood fire heating is making a huge comeback, reaching levels not seen since the 80s. 2022 marked the first year in my lifetime when many built up areas smell like wood fire in the winter, and have done so every year since. Industry experts are talking about adding fossil gas turbines as a stop gap measure to shore up the system, until we can either expand hydro by damming up the last northern rivers (currently prohibited due to environmental regulations to protect fish) or increase nuclear capacity again.

[–] Ice@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Whilst nothing you say here is wrong, humans have a tendency to want more things than machines. A place to live (perhaps a mansion with its own pool), transportation (maybe a private jet or a million dollar supercar) and other general recreation (such as a datacenter full of GPU's hallucinating cartoons of scantily clad women). So really, a human is pretty energy intensive when you think about it, compared to their rather low number of working hours (eesh, sleep takes so much time).

[–] Ice@lemmy.zip 11 points 1 day ago

...and this was the moment that the Pentagon started developing its own llm, that doesn't complain about pesky things like "killing humans".