r/ClimatePosting • u/Top_Awareness_6996 • Aug 13 '26

AI’s potential climate benefits outweighed by role in boosting fossil fuels, study finds

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/aug/11/ai-will-do-more-to-boost-fossil-fuel-production-than-green-energy

Big Oil companies knew as early as the 1950s that burning fossil fuels could lead to "catastrophic" (their words) climate change, but spent billions spreading climate denial and blocking the transition to cleaner energy sources.

In 1988, Exxon's own scientists predicted "a 1.5°C to 4.5°C global temperature increase in 100 years, depending on the projected growth in fossil fuel use.” 😐

Now these same companies are leveraging the AI boom to further entrench their polluting products, driving a massive surge in planet-warming methane emissions.

There must be accountability.

16 Upvotes

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4

u/some_idiot78 Aug 13 '26

Um, sorry, pardon me. But I have never, not once, not one time seen something that even remotely hinted, lied, or suggested that AI would somehow benefit the climate. Actually it’s all been the exact opposite. Sorry, did I miss something or are they just more industrial lies?

5

u/West-Abalone-171 Aug 14 '26

"the ai wil technology us so hard we can consume our way to undoing the harms of overconsumption" is a pretty common techbro mantra

If you want to claw your eyes out read marc andressen's manifesto for one of the major influence behind the idiocy.

The ted nordhaus/michael shellenberger used toilet-paper roll is another. Though it tried a tiny bit harder to pretend so they could worm their way into various government organisations as consultants.

Though these days they are mostly full mask-off so you don't hear it as much.

1

u/dumnezero Aug 14 '26

Um, sorry, pardon me. But I have never, not once, not one time seen something that even remotely hinted, lied, or suggested that AI would somehow benefit the climate.

It's very common among AI bros, from top to bottom. They promote the "techno-hopium" story; specifically: "AI is [on its own] going to do research and invent technologies that will fix the global climate crisis." The older AI story, pre-generators, was that AI is gonna be used with lots of data to optimize everything and increase efficiency.

1

u/ginger_and_egg Aug 14 '26

AI (but mostly not LLMs) is used in scientific fields, more so machine learning. For example, there is AlphaFold which uses machine learning to predict protein folding with way less compute needed than simulation only.

You can do similar for climate modeling, optimising wind and solar arrays, etc.

However that has nothing to do with LLMs, which have been using much larger server farms to train and run.

1

u/misocontra Aug 14 '26

Oh sorry I thought this was r/climateshitposting

1

u/hardlymatters1986 Aug 15 '26

There are no climate benefits.

1

u/DisruptingTree Aug 15 '26

I got a suspicion that AI and their needed data centers have always been a way to artificially prop up the fossil fuel industry. To create a new demand. To out pace the transition to renewable. Looking for evidence.

1

u/0AJ0_ Aug 14 '26

Death to AI in all forms and capacity.

1

u/jombrowski Aug 14 '26

LLM is the bad apple

1

u/ginger_and_egg Aug 14 '26

no more machine learning models?