Iceland is Planning For the Possibility That Its Climate Could Become Uninhabitable - Slashdot Iceland in October classified the potential collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation -- the ocean current system that ferries warm water northward from the tropics and essentially f...

Wow! A breakdown of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) will probably make Iceland unlivable (according to the article).

www.slashdot.org/story/452320

This would have profound environmental impacts as much of our electricity usage (as a planet) is now a result of dot product calculations used for AI.

The data buses for electricity-based LLM computation require vast amounts of electricity. Conversely the data buses for photon-based computation could require 1/1000th (or less) of the electricity to generate photons for computation.

The major advantage of optical computing over electrical computing is that the bus that moves data around runs at the speed of causation (speed of light). Many orders of magnitude faster than electricity.

Most LLMs electricity is spent on dot product (ie matrix multiplication) math.

YouTube video by Anastasi In Tech This Breakthrough Could Kill the GPU Race

The Achilles heel of optical computing has always been data storage (where electrons are key)

Old school CDs have an iridescent finish (when viewed at an angle). This finish is actually created by tiny dots. Imagine if data for optical systems could be stored via tiny dots

youtu.be/oGg96zK6Lvw?...

YouTube video by The Electric Viking BYD Reveals Solid State and Sodium Battery Breakthrough - 10,000 Cycles!

The 100 year battery is almost here! You'll pass your batteries down to your grandkids 😁

youtu.be/ULE6gJjThZA?...

I'm now realizing that tech billionaires care little about the companies they destroy to push AI (even their own).

I'm not sure if their intent is to slow down the population rate, a mad dash for power, or an insatiable curiosity.

Maybe the goal is to reduce green house gases via impoverishment 🤷🏽‍♂️

The boards of massive tech corps are fully prepared to bankrupt their tech companies in order to push AI forward as fast as possible.

They're destroying human-based markets everyday while at the same time accelerating the Climate Crisis and poisoning the economy with layoffs and wage stagnation.

I just want to own up to an AI prediction I made about 3 years ago. I thought the AI industry would realize that scaling out wouldn't be possible given grid and electricity limitations. And they instead would focus on energy efficiency. I was wrong! The AI industry is going full speed!

Not to be argumentative, but after we get to 95%+ RE then carbon capture would start to be productive for plastics, rocket fuel, etc.

And planting trees would be useful anytime.

Let's revisit this topic around 2045.

As if on cue

National lab projects enhanced geothermal cost could decline to $100/MWh by 2035

pv-magazine-usa.com/2026/02/02/n...

Would be curious to see how significantly EGS beats solar powered satellites for AI.

Musk listed grid connectivity delays and transformer delays as reasons why satellite AI datacenters would excel.

Satellites seem like a lot of GHGs to me, but more data is needed.

Oligarchs will probably desire a planet that isn't an inferno or a snowball if they can do it without losing money. In other words I envision a world where people have less access to GHG producing travel or products.

YouTube video by Wes Roth xAI will birth a SENTIENT SUN...

Here's a video on satellite datacenters. It'll probably happen AFAICS.

youtu.be/w52IzEfzz1E?...

Probably the most possible route is that billions of people are put out of work and will subsist in poverty. This is the most likely path as I see it. Democracies may not prevent this outcome.

Expect thousands of Starship-sized launches a year to move data centers to space as well.

YouTube video by Wes Roth OpenAI's FRONTIER might be the "JOB KILLER" we were waiting for

xAI has AI employees on it's org chart now. Probably many other large corps do as well. Scrub to 6:45 for that info.

@mzjacobson.bsky.social : Knowing this field well IMO we need projections for different AI futures. Along with projections for AI data centers in space.

youtu.be/MRLt90GMvOg?...

I wouldn't be 100% against a bill to make most all integrated batteries removable/replaceable by law (except for hearing aids maybe).

Integrated rechargeable batteries are actually causing fires in trash trucks and at the dump. A trash fire creates REALLY dangerous fumes for the entire community!

Some good advice here, make sure the batteries are not charged. Better yet dig them out of the appliances and dispose of them properly

How winter storms are reshaping the Devon and Cornwall coastline Why the coastline is eroding fast - after Storm Ingrid strips beaches in height and exposes homes.

Au revoir coastal #nuclear.
"We can't keep defending coastlines for the next 20, 30, 40 years. Unless we start casting the whole coast in concrete, we have to start retreating."
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

My understanding is that the Legion Solar solution has microinverters on the solar panels which will regulate the electricity to the house based on the wireless connection with the home main transmission line sensor. No decouple needed in this case. Electricity will not feed-back by design.

There's a solution that's even better than disabling the plug-in solar panels if there's no grid. You can match the load on the home grid so that electricity doesn't leave the house. So you can still run the house while the grid is off.

Legion Solar does this by monitoring the house main line.

In the US I bought equipment from a plug-in solar company called Legion Solar for a whole house plug-in array and battery backup. No permits needed. They've delivered product in the past, but been waiting years for the latest system.

Here's more info:
bsky.app/profile/berm...

Hopefully this California bill pushed adoption which may create new standards and new tech to push this market forward rapidly.

Not having to get a permit is a huge plus for most people.

I agree, but 800W is really just scratching the surface for this tech. The company that I bought some equipment from years ago was Legion Solar. Been waiting forever for the product I bought years ago, but they did have a complete plug-in solar home energy system that could scale to kWs.

My goal would be to figure out a way to maximize plug-in solar. Maybe 6kW!

A company I know (but wouldn't recommend) had a device that attached to your main to make sure the plug-in solar didn't push to the grid.

800W is nice, but could be a lot more.

bsky.app/profile/berm...

The max plugged into the house grid using plug-in solar could actually probably get close to the max that the main line to the house could handle (whatever that is for your house). BUT it'll have to be done over outlets on different circuits. 800 watts seems like only a fraction of what it could be.

Just arrive! I plan on going through "Still No Miracles Needed" by @mzjacobson.bsky.social in detail to see if I missed anything new. Will probably be posting a good bit about this book in 2026.

I'm not sure if the house voltage/amperage could be used to determine if the home electricity network is saturated. This is how the old home battery systems work, but not sure how that relates if there are no home batteries.

There may be a situation where a user plugs in too much solar for the house/etc to handle the reverse load. Especially if the house is off the grid.

A special device may need to be added to breaker boxes to handle these situations. Maybe an alarm with a disconnect feature for the circuits involved.

Products to do this used to require a device to make sure electricity wasn't uploaded to the grid. Maybe modern plug-ins have fixed this complexity?

Uploading to the grid without compensation would simplify things quite a bit. I'm not sure if the CA electrical system could handle this though.