Plants want to be eaten only by big animals that take them on long and random walks and then die far away from where they are picked up to fertilize the seed.
Continued reliance on outdated nuclear technology might not have the same crucial global technology spillovers as investments in other clean energy (including advanced nuclear). Since the best path towards global decarbonization is through global technology spillover into emerging economies, the actors that have the best emissions score may, surprisingly, not be the most effective actors at reducing the global rate of emissions in the future. This has some counterintuitive implications. Consider that Germany has higher carbon emissions than France even though it has invested more heavily in solar than its neighbor, which uses much more nuclear. Should advanced economies like Germany leave their nuclear plants running? Perhaps, but it will not make a very large dent in global emissions because 75% of all future emissions will come from emerging economies, which will not adopt the kind of (non-advanced) nuclear power currently in use in Germany. Consider that German citizens environmental footprints are currently less than 4% of the global total, a share that is on the decline.
There's a good video by Robert Miles about that 'Why Not Just: Think of AGI Like a Corporation?' (youtube.com/watch?v=L5pUA3LsEaw)
Corporations are kind of like AIs, if you squint. How hard do you have to squint though, and is it worth it?
In this video we ask: Are corporations artificial general superintelligences?
I think evolution is not an undirected process in that sense because it's an optimization process, that optimizes to create more copies of itself. Superintelligence will likely use some Evolutionary Computation (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_computation ).
Also see Karl Sims 'Creatures' from the 90s:
youtube.com/watch?v=JBgG_VSP7f8
or
OpenAI's Multi-Agent Hide and Seek:
youtube.com/watch?v=kopoLzvh5jY
> Was any force ever able to get close to world domination?
Evolution? 2.5bn years ago stromatolites changed the atmosphere from a CO2-rich to O2-rich through photosynthesis, because they had no competition.
Now plants dominate the earth (≈450 Gt C, the dominant kingdom), then animals (≈2 Gt C, mainly marine, and bacteria (≈70 Gt C) and archaea (≈7 Gt C).
In 2020, global human-made mass exceeded all living biomass ( nature.com/articles/s41586-020-3010-5).
From ""Rapid Clinical Evaluation of Anosmia - The Alcohol Sniff Test" (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaotolaryngology/article-...):"Standard 70% isopropyl alcohol preparation pad is opened such that 0.5 cm of the pad itself is visible. The alcohol pad is placed beneath the patient's nostrils while the patient inspires twice, to familiarize himself or herself with the alcohol odor, and the subject is asked if he or she detects an odor. Odor thresholds for alcohols are 2 or more orders of magnitude lower than trigeminal thresholds for the same stimuli.6 Thus, an anosmic will detect the presence of alcohol trigeminally only when it is extremely close to the nose. The alcohol pad is withdrawn and the threshold test begun. The subject is asked to close the mouth and eyes, breathe normally, and indicate when the odor is detected. Active sniffing and deep inspiration are discouraged. The basic procedure follows the method of limits. A standard metric tape measure is extended downward from the patient's nares and held in place (Figure I ). The alcohol pad is placed 30 cm below the nose and, with each expiration, is moved 1 cm closer to the nares until the subject detects the presence of odor. The distance from the anterior nares to the alcohol padis measured in centimeters at the point at which the subject first detects the odor. The procedure is repeated 4 times and the mean distance defines the threshold.Butanol ThresholdFor purposes of comparison, all of the subjects completed a standard olfactory threshold test. A series of 10 concentrations of butanol ( -butyl alcohol) was used to determine absolute olfactory threshold sensitivity. The highest butanol concentration consisted of 4% vol/vol in distilled water. Each successive dilution was one third of the preceding dilution. Two "blanks," containing only distilled water, were also prepared. All bottles, including blanks, contained 60 mL of liquid. Olfactory threshold was assessed with a modified version7 of a 2-alternative, forced-choice,ascending method of limits procedure.8 The subject was presented with 2 bottles, one containing the odorant and the other consisting of distilled water. Each nostril was tested separately. The spout of the bottle was inserted into the nos tril of interest. The subject was asked to squeeze the bottleto generate a puff of air. The subject did this with both bottles. Subjects were asked to identify which of the 2 bottles contained the stronger odor.All subjects began at the lowest concentration to avoidadaptation.9 Incorrect choices led to presentation of a higher concentration and correct choices led to continued presentation of the same concentration to a criterion of 5 successive correct responses. The presentation of the odorantand blank were randomized for each comparison trial and the nostril to be tested first was also randomly determined. There were approximately 45 seconds between trials to allow time for recovery of the olfactory system and for the odor molecules to collect in the head space of the bottle."
"I have not looked at this deeply, so take all of this with a grain of salt, but a quick scan makes me believe that this is very hyped.
Having skimmed the paper it seems the only thing the authors do and what is peer-reviewed is estimate earth's theoretical maximum capacity for reforestation.
There are few problems:
1) Feasibility: "200 GtC is a technical potential assuming every hectare of forestland on earth is increased to 100% forest cover"
"An assessment of the biophysical capacity for restoring global tree cover provides a necessary but insufficient foundation for evaluating where tree cover can be feasibly increased. The kinds of trees as well as how and where they are grown determine how and which people benefit. In some contexts, increasing tree cover can elevate fire risk, decrease water supplies, and cause crop damage by wildlife. Reforestation programs often favor single-species tree plantations over restoring native forest ecosystems. This approach can generate negative consequences for biodiversity and carbon storage (5), threaten food and land security, and exacerbate social inequities. How restored lands are governed determines how reforestation costs and benefits are distributed."
There are no dollar signs or economic feasibility analysis in that paper. So the people who wrote it just cited some number that is not peer-reviewed and even if loosely based on previous numbers might not work at the scale.
--
2) There seems to be no scientific consensus how much (or even if!) new trees are a GHG sink on net. Some legitimate papers even suggests that new trees could be a net GHG source. (the paper does not make any new contributions to this question and I think just assumes that trees absorb GHG).
For instance, see this recent paper in Nature communications:
b) this recent paper in PNAS (top journal as well)
"On-going carbon uptake due to forest demography is large, but much smaller than previous influential estimates have suggested. Contrary to previous findings, these latest data sources indicate that the sink is predominantly in mid-high latitude, rather than tropical, forests.
Brits' environmental footprints are less than 3% of the global total—and declining. Three percent is the upper bound of how much the UK can reduce emissions itself. Reducing 90% of UK emissions by 2050 will cost roughly $5 trillion. But this barely makes a dent in the current global emissions trajectory.
Because of diminishing returns, it is very hard to imagine reducing UK emissions to zero. This would mean replacing every last lightbulb with LEDs powered by zero carbon energy and having everyone fly in electric planes. It is much easier to conceive of an UK scientists or engineers improving technology, say, carbon capture technology so that the diffuse benefits reduce global emissions by >3%.
The importance of fossil fuel subsidy reform is overstated. Burning fossils fuels causes climate change, which has costs estimated to be in the trillions.[133] Some people refer to these negative externalities are “subsidies for fossil fuel”[134]. Perhaps it’s fair to refer to the amount untaxed negative externalities as ‘subsidies’, but some people might think that these ‘trillions in subsidies’ refer to funds in government budgets to directly lower the price of fossil fuels that could simply be cut.[135] But direct government support and tax breaks for fossil fuels that could be cut amounts to ‘only’ about $330 billion per year globally, according to a new study in Nature.[136] This means that unfortunately, fossil fuel subsidy reform will not increase the price of fossil fuels by trillions, because negative externalities (e.g. climate change and disease) make up most of these trillion dollar figures.
Would cutting these—still considerable—subsidies reduce emissions substantially? The Nature study suggests that global subsidy removal would only lead to a small, 1%–5% decrease in global CO₂ emissions. Only a small share of this can be influenced by policy in advanced economies: There are $43 billion in subsidies, amounting to 13% of global subsidies, within Europe, North America, and the Pacific OECD, and this number is not projected to grow much in the future. In fact, EU member states and G7 nations have pledged to end fossil fuel subsidies by 2020 and 2025 respectively (although they are currently not on track to fulfill this pledge).[137] Advanced economies might be able to use their influence to push fossil fuel subsidy reform in emerging economies, but this would be hard because even though it would have many benefits,[138] they are nevertheless often seen as regressive[139].
The Nature study has been criticized[140] for leaving out some subsidies, such as capacity market payments to ensure the constant electricity supply, public finance, and investment by state-owned fossil fuel enterprises. Others estimate subsidies in European countries alone to be $138 billion a year.[141] But even if we were to use these higher estimates to naively extrapolate them to get a rough upper bound of the direct government support in all advanced economies, then this number would probably not be much higher than the $330 billion. Thus, advocacy for subsidy reform in advanced economies is unlikely to reduce emissions by much more than 5%. Because phasing out these minor subsidies is theoretically equivalent to a very small tax on carbon, it will not substantially stimulate the kind of energy innovation that could spill over to emerging economies. Thus, the net benefits of advocacy might be lower than other policy areas.
Reducing emissions by 5% is not insignificant and worth promoting, especially if broad support can be garnered from both environmentalist and libertarian camps to end support of fossil fuel subsidies. Also, any country can unilaterally cut their fossil fuel consumption without the need for international coordination. But because the world must lower emissions to zero or even negative emissions soon,[142] phasing out fossil fuel subsidies can only be a small part of the answer. It is not the silver bullet some advocates claim.
Meatless Mondays won't cut it. But even if we were to offset our worst carbon excesses—such as intercontinental air-travel and meat—ethical consumerism won't solve the climate crisis. Most other people simply won't offset their emissions. We need coordinated policy approaches to climate change.
And policy needs to be global in scope. Because even if advanced economies were to reduce their emissions to zero, this would be insufficient to prevent warming with substantial risks. Note that emerging economies are producing an increasingly large share of total global emissions, while the share from advanced economies is dwindling, now accounting for only 35% of global emissions. This trend continued past 2015 and is forecast to continue in the coming years.
By 2040, emerging economies will produce 75% of all emissions, while only 25% will come from advanced economies.
But policy-makers are still stuck in a mid-2000s mindset. Back then, their emissions were still the highest in the world and they had to focus their policies on reducing their own emissions. This no longer makes sense.
Advanced economies have a special obligation to do more to lower emissions in all countries. Why is it our responsibility? Because our per capita emissions are still the highest and we have emitted the most carbon since the industrial revolution.
Only if the policies of advanced economies lead to reduced emissions in all countries, can we prevent dangerous climate change. The most effective policies to prevent climate change are those that stimulate clean energy innovation. In other words, those that stimulate progress or breakthroughs in clean energy technologies (or any low-carbon technology that lowers emissions as well as demonstration projects, i.e. RD&D). Providing the global public good of cheaper clean energy technology helps all countries reduce their emissions.
The point is not to shift responsibility away from advanced economies. They have been responsible for more emissions historically and the carbon footprints of their citizens are much higher.[112] The typical per capita carbon footprint in an emerging economy is only one tonne per year, compared to up to 30 tonnes per year in advanced economies such as the U.S. and Luxembourg[113]. And yes, maybe this disparity is even worse due to the fact that advanced economies are consuming energy-intensive goods that are imported from emerging economies[114]). ]
But the problem of population growth and higher overall populations in emerging economies adopting more energy intensive lifestyles remains. These economies and their citizens are likely to use an enormous amount of cheap energy to grow their economies: Global energy demand is forecasted to rise by 30% as of 2040[119] because energy demand and thus per capita carbon footprints increase in proportion to income.
Also, xarbon tariffs (or border carbon adjustments) might prevent some, but not all,[152] carbon leakage and reduce emissions but are very difficult to calculate and lower trade flows and welfare, especially in emerging economies.[153]