The climate crisis
2023 is now the hottest year the human race has ever measured officially.
According to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service Report, 2023 was the hottest 12-month span ever measured. During this time, global average temperatures rose 1.52 degrees Celsius above average temperatures at the start of the Industrial Revolution, which occurred about 170 years ago.
The 1.5 degrees Celsius stands out because it was a limit established as part of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. Every country on Earth agreed that humanity needs to hold the temperature during this century ideally limiting the rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The recent rise in temperature brought extraordinary drought, deadly rainfall, and searing heat waves.
We cannot blame that as the only reason for such recent global warming. Several natural forces were converging on top of human-caused issues such as greenhouse gasses from burning fossil fuels, temperature cycles in the Atlantic Ocean, and the El Nino pattern in the Pacific Ocean overged in their hot phases recently.
However, there is no doubt that the human race is the main reason for the global climate crisis, and with the development of science and technology, such negative contributions are getting more and more vitalized. One of the main issues is Artificial Intelligence (AI). Artificial Intelligence is definitely the most significant game changer in many industries, but its impact on the environment is not negligible.
According to findings from OpenAI researchers, the computing power necessary for training advanced AI models has been doubling approximately every 3.4 months since 2012. Projections indicate that by 2040, emissions from the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry could escalate to 14% of global emissions, with the lion's share emanating from ICT infrastructure, notably data centers and communication networks. Recently, a study conducted by University of Massachusetts researchers aimed to quantify the energy consumption for training several popular large AI models. The results revealed that training can generate approximately 626,000 pounds of carbon dioxide, equivalent to around 300 round-trip flights between New York and San Francisco—almost five times the lifetime emissions of the average car.
Commercialization of Artificial Intelligence is just the beginning. Global climate will continue to witness a crisis unless the human race starts its actions.
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