Hah, only an alien species would be of the idea that infinite growth in a finite planet is a bad idea. No, surely we can keep pressing the gas pedal forever, never slowing down sounds like a sound and reasonable plan.
I'm not a huge AI hype man, but I think you'll just have to accept it. It's a new useful tool, of course people are excited to apply it to everything.
Like it or not, programming will become largely LLMs. And the comment you're replying to is actually making a pretty good case for where the use of LLMs is good: generating code to be formally verified.
Something something halting problem. I never said don't use the tool!! I use the tool too! I just dont want to talk/read about it all the time.
Programming will never be dead.
1. Because the situation you describe is fantasy.
2. Even if it is a reality and all software can be verified (it cant), I will still be programming and so will millions of others because its fun, programming and sex are really damn close to things I cant live without. Not everyone got into engineering for the money. I legitimately love this activity, it is my actual passion. I would rather be poor than give it up.
Its like im being told everyday all day, non stop that the thing I love is not worth loving.
Of course people will still program for the foreseeable future. But it is still a legit question how long it will be before people come to accept a vibe coded program and are ready to deal with its flaws (of course with more vibe coding) compared to hiring a consultancy.
I'm not talking about mission critical software, but bespoke business applications that are produced by software engineering sweatshops and where the actual users are inured to incomplete features with sharp edges, arcane bugs, and incomprehensibly long intervals between bug report and fix.
Even in mission critical software we will likely see a lot of LLM tool usage. Even if the copyright plug is pulled and all vibecoded applications are regarded as copyright violations, its uses to analyze existing code and give advice will remain. In this world, writing applications entirely by hand will become an artisanal discipline.
I see. I'm not trying to put down your love of programming. The only programming that I really can say excites me (C64 or the like) died a long time ago, before I even started programming for money.
Nothing is stopping you from enjoying the sort of programming that you like. But I think it's healthy to accept that that style will soon not be mainstream. It will be like knitting your own clothes, and that's okay.
Regarding formal verification, it's not needed, as LLMs already make on average about as many errors as the average human programmer.
For me, 90% of programming is just a tool to get the job done. It's like a machine in a factory that spits out 50 spoons a minute, and it doesn't need to be any more beautiful than that. If you enjoy woodcarving and want to spend an hour making your own spoon, do that and don't let the existence of the machine make you feel that hobby is any less worth loving.
I guess that’s something you need to work through that you’re just so sick of reading about the single biggest evolution in technology since the internet :(
Maybe tech isn’t for you if you don’t like trying to stay on top of it.
Anyways, I probably know more about llms than you, I probably use them more than you. I just dont want to turn every conversation into a discussion about them.
I would argue the smartphone is 1000x more impactful than LLMs, along with many other inventions since the internet. I'm not really sure what contribution llms have had that are actually THAT impactful for peoples lives. Its possibly (but unlikely) a net negative, time will tell. Most people using them are not getting smarter, thats concerning. Most are just making more money for their bosses who are itching to replace them with an llm.
I think the problem you're seeing is not with LLMs per se, but with capitalism. Imagine we have a quite useful machine that's reducing the amount of work needed to accomplish stuff, and all normal people are afraid of that machine simply because they worry they'll have less work. How backwards is that!
If we didn't let people live off the work of others, as the capitalists do, then we could all rejoice in that we've found yet another way of reducing the labor required to produce stuff.
Yet, in the real world, it seems as despite the progress of technology, the labor of the everyman is constant, and only the richest get more and more shiny jets and yachts.
It holds that ¬(∀subsets: isverified(subset)) but it's not true that ∀subsets: ¬isverified(subset), which it think most people would interpret "the whole system is unverified" as
If I independently verify that subsystem A properly consumes apples, and that subsystem B is properly emitting oranges, but never verify that subsystem A is receiving apples, and just connect subsystem B to it, then yeah, the system is not verified.
you’re deeply confused but the words “validation” and “qualification” may help untangle the web, there’s a lot more to assurance than what your model seems to hold (and you’re drawing batshit deductions from it)
Entirely correct. The current US president has become the scapegoat for a huge number of problems that are more accurately described as symptoms of the capitalism that's ruling a lot of western countries.
The issue of whether the AI-generated images are copyright infringement is entirely separate from whether the AI is capable of independently creating derived works.
Though, what actually decides isn't really the merits of one's case, but rather who has the money to fight in court. And we all know who'd win in AI companies vs cartoonists, unfortunately.
Sounds implausible, because even if you can rationalize, "I probably didn't get contaminated" after breaking the test tube and being worried about retaliations, once you start developing symptoms, why would you go to a normal hospital and not tell them that you suspect plague, almost surely guaranting your own death?
There are as many possibilities as one could imagine. This is still hypothetical (as I said in my comment above, I know what I will assume only if it disrupts the elections, and hope it does not, which will restore some trust), but means, motives and who benefits are important to remember when evaluating unknowable situations. Granting the benefit of the doubt is not something I do for this US administration and their fellow travelers.
I agree, which is why it's important to realize that the means for the US administration to cause this are very remote, and the potential benefits of this situation (particularly on the elections as you mention) are even more obscure.
I'm not saying the US hasn't done its fair share of shady and immoral operations, probably more than any other country in the world, but the scenario you propose is more akin to a Rube Goldberg machine than any realistic covert operation.
Once again, this is hypothetical- only if this is not contained, i.e., what ever safety precautions to prevent this were broken.
Your lack of belief in how covert operations work shows a lack of history. I obviously have no secret knowledge about his, but even reading one or two historical accounts about intelligence services (and others) would prove you wrong
A lack of history? Don't make me laugh. Show me one historical example of such an operation as you suggest. While the CIA and others in the US government have often engaged in absurd and sometimes downright ridiculous plots, such as Operation Northwoods, Castro assassination attempts, and MKUltra, your suggested scenario is at least ten times more far fetched.
I'm not sure if I'm demonstrating a lack of belief in how covert operations work (whatever that means), but you sure are demonstrating a lack of common sense about what covert operations are even possible.
You don't think there's an easier way of manipulating domestic elections than sneaking into a hostile country across the world and infecting a random scientist with the plague?
Well, I'm laughing at you then, because the planned or actual use of plague as an overt or covert weapon has an extremely long history from the siege of Caffa (1346) to the proposed Japanese operation to spread plague in the US during WWII. Other diseases have equally extensive overt and covert planned or actual use. Overturning governments and preventing elections also has an equally long and storied past. The fact that you think it is more absurd that a pathogen might be used to prevent an election, than any of the plots to kill Castro, or the proposed Operation Northwoods where the US Joint Chiefs of Staff approved bombing its own population as a pretext to invade Cuba shocks me.
So let me get this straight, in order to prevent an election, they used plague as a weapon, against a lab that's coincidentally studying plagues, that's located 8000 km away from where the election takes place, on the day of the start of the election? Genius plan!
You still haven't given any historical example of such an operation (unless you're suggesting the Japanese planned to spread plague in the US during WWII in order to influence domestic Japanese politics. That'd probably be a less ridiculous story then whatever you're actually claiming though). Maybe instead you can try to answer how exactly this advances the claimed goal, how you even suppose they practically did it, and why there was no simpler method of achieving the goal?
You seem to be forgetting that diseases can travel fast, and do not stop at the border, especially respiratory ones. You also seem to be forgetting that governments go into lockdowns during the onset of pandemics (or fears of one).
Another commenter pointed out that we had elections during covid, but that was several months after the initial onset, and after shelter-in-place orders were lifted. It is true that it took three weeks from the first reported case in China until we had the first reported case in the US, and then another eight weeks until the first lockdowns. It would have to be an accelerated timeline for the US to use it as a pretext to stop elections, but we are also much more sensitive to the threat of respiratory pandemics, having just gone through the first one in living history. If a US case is reported within the next three weeks, it is possible that it could be used as a pretext; especially because it would benefit the group who last time were the biggest opponents of the lockdowns.
But once again, I am not arguing for this. I am only explaining my hypothetical: if this is used as a pretext to disrupt the elections, I will assume it was intentional (until proven otherwise).
And like I said in my comments, if this was a serious attempt by the CIA to disrupt midterms, they started too late. And COVID was a worse pandemic than this non-pandemic (presently) and we still held our national elections. It's an extremely absurd theory.
This disease is generally highly treatable. Your conspiracy theory hinges on a belief that a treatable disease in a foreign country will be used to do something with the ongoing (ballots are already going out) US midterm elections, when in 2020 the US still held regular elections despite the ongoing, and far less treatable at the time, COVID pandemic.
My original comment is flagged, so I will assume you didn’t read it and don’t understand my hypothetical. Here it is: if this is used as a pretext to prevent the US mid-term elections, then I will assume that it was intentional (accepting that it might have merely just been taken advantage of), because this is an unknowable situation for me (and you), and this administration does not deserve the benefit of the doubt in anything it does anymore
I did read it. It was an idiotic hypothetical. Your hypothetical is hinged on something not based in reality.
2020 with COVID was far worse than something that's still literally thousands of miles from the US and we still held elections in the US. Midterm elections have already started, so even if this was some bizarre CIA plot, it'd be the least effective way to achieve their goals. They failed before they began because, again, the elections are already happening.
So, I’ll ignore the insults because you seem to still not understand. If this is used as a pretext, then I will make my assumption. We have not completed the election yet even if early voting may have started in some districts. We are a month from election day. The majority of votes have not been cast, counted, verified, and the new congress seated. I would rebut that your beliefs are not based on reality because you state it as if it’s already completed and don’t seem to understand hypotheticals (and use insults to try to make your point:)
> Invest in nuclear power and nukes
> See North Korea vs Iran.
Both countries invested in nukes (it is claimed). Only Iran didn't get there in time, before the US stepped in to stop them (it is claimed). So unless the US lets you, it's probably a bad idea to invest in nukes, no? Or is your point that the US's nuke story was a lie, and that Iran actually should have invested in nukes?
> Solar on every structure, every vehicle is an EV
Have you done any calculations as to whether this would actually work? My gut feeling is that even if you put solar panels on literally every structure, you'd be far off from managing to power every vehicle. See if I get around to calculating later, but I at least advise you to do so yourself before making this argument.
> EVs are batteries on wheels! They can go charge and come back
Yes, Iran’s problem was they didn’t develop nuclear weapons.
The lesson all countries will take from Ukraine, Iran, and North Korea is: develop nuclear weapons.
Ukraine and Iran both don’t have nuclear weapons and they were both attacked by countries that do. North Korea does have them and they are apparently in no danger of being attacked.
North Korea's nuclear capabilities isn't what kept them from being attacked. It was Seoul being in artillery range and the refugee crisis on the chinese border that would result.
IMO, North Korea having nuclear weapons and Seoul being in artillery range of NK are strategically very similar, therefore hard to separate. Both allow NK to cause great destruction and many deaths in a short time.
> North Korea does have them and they are apparently in no danger of being attacked.
North Korea was never in danger of being attacked anyway. They don’t need nuclear weapons to flatten Seoul. The only country capable of invading NK is China, and they benefit much more from NK remaining buffer zone.
The moral of the story is you should always invest in nukes, since if you don't the US will just lie and say you are developing nukes as a pretext anyway.
> > Solar on every structure, every vehicle is an EV
> Have you done any calculations as to whether this would actually work?
Yes. All cars and vans in the UK drive a total of 320 billion miles a year. My own electric car tells me this would require 80 billion kWh. 1kWp produces 1000 kWh a year, so you need 80 million kWp or 80 TWh a year.
My house will easily provide 8kWp, meaning you'd need 10 million houses. There's 30 million homes, and that's before you factor in non-domestic buildings.
A single shooting estate in the uk could produce 20TWh a year with solar alone. Throw in wind and that would petty much double.
Small amount, easilly covered by roof space of commercial buildings.
Cars and vans use 16.5 billion litres of diesel and 15.5 billion litres of petrol
HGVs and busses use 8 billion litres of diesel, about 20% of the total of cars and vans. Agriculture adds another 1.5b and trains half a billion, so call it 10 billion litres, 30% of total fuel use by cars and vans. Push it 50% up from 80TWh to 120TWh if you want and require 15 million roofs
Of course the most economic way to deliver solar isn't by putting it on the roof
Look man, why haven't you done the math? It's your argument after all. Anyway, a very optimistic calculations means you need the flat area of at least 800 m^2 in a sunny climate, to charge a single electric truck to full power. Plus you need a battery bank to store it during the day, supposing you're charging at night.
So, now you do the math how many trucks and how much area for solar panels a typical military has.
I don't need to do any calculations for combustion engines: IT'S WHAT THE MILITARY IS USING RIGHT NOW TODAY!
Corn for bioethanol is not feeding the nation, it's exploiting the fertile land to literally burn the output.
The argument about corn is to actually stop the waste of the fertile land for fuel. Solar panels can be installed wherever they're necessary, no one is proposing replacing the corn in situ.
Eh. Just stop feeding your crops to cows and you need a lot less space to grow stuff. Also you can put the panels on marginal lands first and save a lot of actual good land for grains and vegetables.
> Anyway, a very optimistic calculations means you need the flat area of at least 800 m^2 in a sunny climate, to charge a single electric truck to full power.
The math the person you're replying to was talking about was solar power vs ethanol. While your 800 m^2 sounds like a lot of land area for enough solar panels to fully charge a large electric truck, it's basically nothing compared to how much land area you'd need to grown enough corn to produce enough ethanol to power a similar truck. It's about 500 times as much land area, a fairly obvious result when you consider you get solar power from the land basically every day and corn once a year. Growing plants for ethanol is dumb.
Of course the benefit of a combustion engine is that you don't need to grow corn to make ethanol for it, at least as long as you can get fossil fuels out of the ground and the enemy doesn't disrupt your supply chain for drilling and refining fuel oil. But that's irrelevant since that wasn't the land-use comparison the parent poster was making.
I have done the math, several times. The last time was to plan a hypothetical solar "highway gas station" capable of charging 100 teslas EVs per hour 24/7/365. Assuming flat ground at Vancouver's latitude, it came to a solar farm approaching square kilometers/miles in scale.
10kwh x 100 x 24 = 24,000kwh
Solar panels nominaly produce 1000kwh/m so 24,000m2 of panels... if facing the sun perfectly during normal day/night cycles. But non-equator latitudes need far more land than that because the sun isnt directly overhead, plus winter/rainy days... it is a massive solar farm (and a massive battery) just to replace an average highway gas station.
Given that any future 2-lane highway might see a couple thousand thousand EVs each hour, each needing charging every couple hundred miles, the number and size of solar charging stations per mile is crazy.
I've done the math. The average car in Canada does 11,000 miles a year. A Tesla isn't great efficiency, it uses about 3.5 miles per kWh. Throw in inefficiency of charging and you're talking about 3MWh per car per year, and with about 25 million vehicles that means about 75TWh a year
Travers Solar in Alberta generates about 2.5TWh a year from under 14 sqkm.
Build 30 of them and that's 400 sqkm.
A 20sqkm by 20sqkm solar plant would power every car and light van in Canada forever (setting aside seasonality).
Factor in lower generation in December, you'd need 10 times that amount of solar, about 70km by 70km, 5000 square km.
That's less than 1 quarter of 1 percent of the land in Alberta alone.
(Of course you wouldn't put it in one location, it would be spread out across the country)
Funnily enough 5000 square km is about the total land use of Canada's oil land use (surface use)
You'd have a lot of excess power in the summer -- you'd be generating 650TWh of excess power a year
> Factor in lower generation in December, you'd need 10 times that amount of solar, about 70km by 70km, 5000 square km.
Or, convert the solar energy to heat, then back to electricity at 40% round trip efficiency. Needs only 2.5x the solar (or less, because some solar goes directly to the users without long term storage). The heat is very storable at scale, even for seasonal storage.
Lol, 11,000 is for all the city-bound teslas that only drive from suburb to the office. Actual average car use is closer to 25,000km/year (15,000 miles is the us average). But cars are not all road users. The "100 teslas/hour" standard is to accomidate trucks too.
If you are planning infrastructure like highways, national averages are irrelevant. It is the same debate that Hertz had when it dropped teslas: charging infrastructure is local and rental car locations (airports) cannot support the needed power density.
Averages are meaningless. You need to understand trips.
28% of trips are under a mile, 52% under three, 64% under five, 79% under ten, 93% under twenty-five, and 98% under 50 miles.
Only 0.8% of the trips are over 100 miles!
> Lol, 11,000 is for all the city-bound teslas that only drive from suburb to the office.
Most countries have electricity at home and at office. They can charge at both locations. If you are still using kerosene lamps and haven't started using electricity at home, you have bigger problems than charging infrastructure.
It would require electricity to provide for 587500 million km of driving each year, that's about 118,000 million kWh, or 118 TWh.
Your statement
> 10kwh x 100 x 24 = 24,000kwh Solar panels
Is tricky to understand what you are on abbout as it's not clear what on earth you mean by this as solar panels aren't measured in kWh. kWh per year perhaps.
You are talking about delivering power to a specific location, not generating power. This is an argument from a decade ago, reality has proven that isn't a problem.
For what its worth, I drive over 30,000 km a year and very rarely use a public charger.
Don't do the math for homeless people. Most people live in homes. Homes usually have electricity, unless you live in a 4th world country. All buildings have electricity. Just park and plug in.
You need to go to a gas station BECAUSE there is no supply of gasoline straight to home. Homes have electricity. Even in sub-Saharan Africa, South Sudan, Yemen, remotest village in India. I don't know where you live, but if your home doesn't have electricity, your country has bigger problems to deal with than buying Teslas and DC Fast Chargers.
Highways. Highways need to support people traveling beyond the range of thier vehicles, be that a car or bus/truck. People could also eat and use the bathroom at home, but highways must still make space for restaurants and restrooms.
I ran into that problem during covid. I had to do a few work-related 1000-mile drives and they had closed most all the restrooms!
And my home is also home to a few hundred other people. Installing enough chargers for all our cars would require a massive grid upgrade that our city would never support. Not everyone lives in a suburb.
Highways often have powerlines nearby at least every now and then. With those you can take power from roofs many kilometres away!
And what you say about apartments is wrong, it’s definitely not impossible. I’ve heard of plenty of apartment blocks installing chargers, they have load management systems to manage the load and believe it or not, not every single apartment occupant will need to charge their car every day at exactly the same time as everyone else!
My building looked into it (a complex of several buildings sharing one giant underground carpark). Installing 300 chargers (one at each spot) would cost millions and take years to radar and cut the channels in the concrete. Even if done, the city connection to the facility would need a million-dollar upgrade too going all the way to the local substation. And then the local fire department had an opinion: they were not happy at the concept of 300 EVs in one underground structure. There are no rules limiting such things today (also on car ferries) but we are one bad fire away from some firecode regulation about EVs underground.
Except not every home has a driveway. With on street parking the norm in many places. Trailing a lead to your car on the other side of the road is frowned upon
Streets have streetlights. Streetlights are on poles. Poles have electricity that lights need. Utility can add chargers. Magically, the problem is solved.
I drive 90-130 miles a day and charge every night using the same power my oven pulls. It costs me 3 cents a mile, or equivalent of about $1 a gallon. It takes about 4 or 5 hours.
> Plus you couldn't do it anywhere where thieves steal copper. Car charging cables would quickly become a theft target.
Are you from the past? This simply doesn't happen. The reality is millions of people drive electric cars, and while there are some issues - mainly around the minority who don't have their own driveway, and the tiny numbers who drive over 70,000km year, it simply works.
Exactly the point of the article: that power is many times what a streetlamp uses or can provide.
Your charging likely wouldn't work from a streetlamp.
> Are you from the past?
No need to be snarky. Read guidelines.
I had two brass taps stolen from outside my house and the thieves left the main water line in broken. Worth nothing - maybe it was kids? The plumber cost me plenty to fix it. The inconvenience cost me more. In another suburb I had my spare tire stolen: for the aluminium rim.
I was thinking of catalytic converter thefts: an industry of theft that was constructed around valuable untraceable metals. Fortunately I haven't seen that in my neighborhood.
Home solar arrays are 10-100kw (order of magnitude).
EVs go 2-5 miles per kWh.
So, the charge rate is 20-500 miles per hour when the sun is out.
Assume one extra EV per house, round robin. New EVs are $10-60K, depending on county. The solar is, say, $30K.
So, $60-210K per house for ten years of energy independence for a two car ICE house. ICE cars wear out faster than EVs. You can figure gas, grid and inflated maintenance on the ICE route yourself, but the math works.
Sure, but you don't have inexhaustible source of crude oil and a refinery in your backyard!
But Sun reliably shows up most days. It doesn't ghost. Sunlight can't be sanctioned, tariffed, taxed, embargoed, pirated, nuked, rebuked, rebuffed, offended. Sunlight is also compatible with most religious beliefs (god is light, etc).
Gonna need a citation on that, where I live in the Midwest there are legitimately times where I haven't seen the sun for 2 straight weeks. Not to mention some latitudes I've lived at where the sun doesn't get up till like 9 and is already almost gone by 4.
Like AZ, CA, Texas sure go nuts solarizing. But there are plenty of people for whom that's not really an option.
Solar panels work even if its cloudy: Power generation typically drops to 10% to 25% of normal capacity under heavy, grey overcast skies, but can reach 40% to 60% (or higher) under thin or partly cloudy skies.
Funny thing is, fuel can be transported, so that's not needed!
If you want to look at the geopolitics of it, all of the bigger countries do in fact have their own sources of oil and their own refineries.
And if you're going the solar route, you still need the raw materials to build the solar panels (and batteries, and EVs) in the first place. They don't grow on trees.
I'm sure we'll see a transition to electric some day, it is more efficient purely from a physics standpoint. But I'd be shocked to see the military transition before civilian industry.
Most countries do not have enough to independently supply their own energy needs from fossil fuels, and they need to import more or less continuously, while renewable energy infrastructure needs building out and then lasts a very long time. This massively affects the strategic effects of losing your supply: one becomes an acute problem very quickly while the other is still a problem but it takes a lot longer to become a real problem.
I don't think the main focus is on converting military operations themselves to work without fossil fuels, but more that if you can convert your civilian industry then you have a much better overall strategic position because your total demand for fossil fuels is much lower. (Strategy is a lot more than just your military)
You only need solar panels once. They do not need fueling, refueling, lubricants, anything at all.
Solar panels have 25 year warranty. Can you think of anything that you have bought or can buy with a 25 year warranty?
At the end of 25 years, they will produce 92%. Perfectly acceptable for a few more decades. The latest panels produce 740 - 800W+/panel, this is sufficient for a lifetime without ever having to think of upgrades.
> And if you're going the solar route, you still need the raw materials to build the solar panels (and batteries, and EVs) in the first place. They don't grow on trees.
You still need raw materials to build oil tanks and pipelines and fuel trucks. They don't grow on trees.
> If you want to look at the geopolitics of it, all of the bigger countries do in fact have their own sources of oil and their own refineries.
The problem is net usage. The UK has oil fields and it owns refineries, but it uses a lot more fuel than could be extracted and processed with these operations even if somehow Capitalism was dead and the State seized control of everything for domestic use rather than corporate profit.
The energy balance data I've looked at doesn't go back more than this century so maybe in the 1980s or something it would have been theoretically possible, but it isn't today and hasn't been for decades.
> If you want to look at the geopolitics of it, all of the bigger countries do in fact have their own sources of oil and their own refineries.
That won't help you if you can't refine it. Russia has more oil than most and has/had lots of refineries. Ukraine has taken out so many of them that Trump is complaining it's affecting the price of diesel (even though the US also has lots of oil and lots of refineries).
Oil infrastructure is temporary, expensive and fragile whereas panels work for 30 years.
That's not what greenwashing means. Greenwashing refers to marketing that sells a product as environmentally beneficial, while it's not in reality.
Your claim is that they're selling a product (renewables) as beneficial for the war, while it's not. If I were to invent a term for that, it might be "camo-washing".
Whether your argument makes sense or not, I don't know. But you fail to note the drawback of a diesel generator: it needs diesel, and thus logistics.
I meant greenwashing as pulling a reason to make something about renewables out of thin air. In this case article's choice to center it's argument on renewables is greenwashing. Maybe I need a different word, not sure.
The argument that decentralization (diesel or renewable) helps makes sense to me. What they do though is attribute the benefits of decentralized to renewables (ignoring how many buildings are powered by diesel in Ukraine today, those which did not receive that grant from Denmark to do solar), then completely skip potential downsides of renewables, and draw a conclusion from there.
> The argument that decentralization (diesel or renewable) helps makes sense to me.
Sure, but also in the real world, fossil fuel infrastructure is always centralised. "decentralised diesel" might exist in the sense that you can run lots of generators all over, but that's energy consumption not energy supply.
Those generators have to be supplied with fuel or they're useless. That supply is always centralised. Fossil fuels cannot be decentralised in the same way as solar.
Yeah, I agree greenwashing is not the word here. I don't know what is, but if anything I would say you're trying to express something that is in an important sense opposite to greenwashing (greenwashing is trying to make something look good by falsely presenting it as eco-friendly, you're accusing something of boosting renewables by falsely presenting it as tied to them)
And yes, decentralization is the core aspect that is important, but renewables are importantly much more decentralized end-to-end compared to a diesel generator, because renewables, once in place, have no real central point of failure, while the supply chain for the diesel in the generator still has very important central points of failure that can be attacked (and explode quite easily due to the large amounts of flammable material they are carrying). Distributing the generation does help smooth over short-term disruptions but the overall throughput in the longer term can still be disrupted.
Also, while renewables might be out in the open, they are cheap and spread out over a wide area, which makes them pretty cost-ineffective to attack compared to more concentrated facilities.
I don't think it's out of thin air, it's the reality of what's actually being used in Ukraine, and as comments in this thread have borne out it seems to have legitimate benefits, and so doesn't qualify as greenwashing.
Also if there's greenwashing, it means some questionable practice is being green washed. Apparently you think the idea of decentralization is the thing in this case... but you agree that decentralizing is a good idea and are more against the merits renewables, which is an anti renewables argument but not a correct diagnosis of something being greenwashed.
> the last few decades have shown we don't GAF about the environment
And here you have people seemingly caring about the environment, even if it's only as you say a "green-washing" (that's not what that term means, normally) of AI fears. And you're telling them to stop it?
Also, the claim of "people would misinterpret the information, so better not release the info at all" is just some sort of elitist "the average person is dumb" sentiment. If you take that to its logical conclusion, nobody should tell the public anything at all. Reminiscent of a lot of the public debate during the covid times.
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