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Net Zero vs AI: Starmer Hasn’t Worked Out That The U.K. Can’t Be a ‘Superpower’ in Both Climate and Computing

by Ben Pile
16 January 2025 7:00 AM

This week, a grateful country learned from our Glorious Leader that the U.K. was to be not just one superpower, but two. At an event at University College London on Monday, Keir Starmer unveiled his plans for making Britain an “artificial intelligence superpower”. According to Reuters, this includes promises “to take a pro-innovation approach to regulation, make public data available to researchers and create zones for data centres”. The problem with this plan, however, is obvious to anyone who knows anything about AI and who has sufficient memory to recall Starmer’s other promise: to make Britain a “clean energy superpower” by 2030.

As has been widely discussed, Britain industrial energy prices are now among the highest in the developed world. This is a problem for AI because, unlike most computing tasks, it is energy intensive, better thought of as an industrial process. AI is not an application that runs easily on a laptop. And this is because AI does not typically run on normal microprocessors, such as the CPUs that sit at the centre of powerful desktop workstations, but on the graphics processors known as GPUs that enable 3D games, among other things. In such an application, the CPU pushes the work of rendering graphics to the GPU, leaving the CPU free for other, less intense tasks.


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Tags: AIArtificial intelligenceEd MilibandKeir StarmerNet ZeroRenewable energySuperpower

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44 Comments
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GlassHalfFull
GlassHalfFull
1 year ago

This article is why I am happy to pay a monthly subscription to The Daily Sceptic.

55
0
Marcus Aurelius knew
Marcus Aurelius knew
1 year ago
Reply to  GlassHalfFull

Just this article?

😜

14
0
varmint
varmint
1 year ago
Reply to  Marcus Aurelius knew

Not just this article I suspect, but it concerns the most important commodity of all———-Energy, and how our access to cheap abundant energy is being removed under false pretences of a climate emergency that has no basis in science

36
0
JeremyP99
JeremyP99
1 year ago
Reply to  GlassHalfFull

The planet has been cooling for c7k years, after 2 or 3k years of warming. Ille est, the STANDARD process in recent interglacials. The cooling is interspersed with warm periods, each COOLER than the preceding one.

Here’s an excellent article on the Holocene climate

https://edmhdotme.wpcomstaging.com/2015/06/01/the-holocene-context-for-anthropogenic-global-warming-2/

And whilst I am here, there is no correlation between CO2 levels and temperature, long OR short term. Periods, such as the 30 years at the end of the last century (which followed cooling of c0.5 degrees C from 1940 TO 1970 with RISING CO2 levels), have no statistical significance whatsoever. Indeed, CO2 levels are close to an historic low. And the small rise in temperature since 1850 is nothing to do with CO2 (maybe just a tiny bit), rather leaving the Little Ice Age, the coolest period in some thousands of years.

Odd, innit, that the planet has warmed since leaving an ice age?

GISP-last-10000-years
Edhm2
C02_versus_Temperature
CO2-Temp_Correlation
GlobalWarmingCooling_1850-2016-Copy
CO2_LowestEver-2
40
0
JXB
JXB
1 year ago
Reply to  JeremyP99

According to geologists, for almost 70% of the Earth’s existence there have been no Polar ice caps, and having two is rare.

Therefore we must be in a rare cold period for Planet Earth.

33
-1
varmint
varmint
1 year ago
Reply to  JeremyP99

Thanks for your very good comment, but ofcourse while we can argue all day about “science”, western governments under their International Treaties like the Paris Agreement, Net Zero etc are getting on with the politics all based on the “official science” that gets preached from podiums at COP events and on bought and paid for mainstream news that has simply become a climate activist mouthpiece spouting the narrative the Global Government at the UN wants it to.

25
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
1 year ago

Off territory dump:

I have this morning been on the TCW site. Kathy Gyngell is celebrating ten years of TCW and I commend what she and Laura Perrins have done and achieved. Anyway, as they have reached a tenth birthday they have decided to give the site a makeover. I wish they hadn’t bothered. What an absolute Mess. It looks tatty, disorganised and cluttered. The previous layout was simple, column-like and functional. Now it’s awful.

Although I subscribe to TCW I do not use the comments sections because they use a filtering system called Disqus so my wrath cannot be aired over there.

The bottom line – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

37
-1
varmint
varmint
1 year ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

I am sorry to hear that about TCW. ——I have not visited myself except to occasionally look at some of your links. It is frustrating that you cannot express your “wrath” and I would imagine you have kept it clean so as to not break any of their rules, like the kind of thing you get with Mailonline where even using particular words like “terrorist” or “black” can often mean your comment not accepted. I have even had a comment declined for using “Africa”. But often the comment will not appear at all for no reason, and then ofcourse you articles where only 5 comments will appear when it is obvious that it is not just 5 people that have decided to attempt to pass comment. ——–I can only hope DS does not descend into this politically correct censorship type of nonsense.

9
-1
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
1 year ago

And another Off – T dump:

“I see Rishi has finally buckled and appointed an official Sharia Compliance Minister for Britain, Fiyaz Mughal, the founder of Faith Matters.”

Just posted in the comments section at TCW.

WTF?

27
-1
RTSC
RTSC
1 year ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

This is how the DT is reporting it:

“Michael Gove is to appoint a new adviser to tackle Islamophobia as he prepares to unveil a crackdown on Islamist and Right-wing extremism. Fiyaz Mughal, an outspoken critic of extremism and a campaigner for closer links between Muslim and Jewish communities, is understood to be a leading contender for the post.”

3
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
1 year ago

https://www.maidenhead-advertiser.co.uk/gallery/maidenhead/195180/maidenhead-mp-theresa-may-to-stand-down-at-next-election.html

This will be very sad loss to Maidenhead and British politics.

Fortunately.

29
-1
varmint
varmint
1 year ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

No loss at all ——-This is the silly woman that gave us the absurd Net Zero Amendment in 2019. Ofcourse had it not been her it would have some other UN lackey moron.

13
-1
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
1 year ago
Reply to  varmint

Thanks varmint but did you not get the sarcasm?

10
-1
varmint
varmint
1 year ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

I did——I was agreeing with you.

3
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
1 year ago

https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-climate-scaremongers-its-time-for-the-starving-polar-bears-again-trouble-is-theyre-thriving/

And here’s Paul Homewood’s useful accessory to this article.

Polar bears are thriving.

13
-1
varmint
varmint
1 year ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

Polar Bears are doing nicely, not that you will hear that on the BBC or see it in the Guardian.

11
0
JXB
JXB
1 year ago

Galileo expressed his frustration that his accusers just wouldn’t look at his evidence, his calculations, sketches or even look at the Moon’s surface down his telescope.

When it is about authority, power, control and the attendant wealth that brings, evidence no matter how compelling, truth no matter how evident are irrelevant – to be ignored and those presenting it discredited and vilified.

26
0
varmint
varmint
1 year ago

This article is ofcourse informative and welcome as are the many articles on DS, but personally and I suspect many readers here will not have had their opinions changed by it for we already knew that climate change is a smidgeon of the truth elevated into a planetary emergency purely for political purposes. ——Notice how climate change true believers accept the whole shebang. They accept the narrative of a climate emergency and that the world is on fire, but they also fully support every absurd alleged solution to that manufactured crisis. Every turbine, solar panel, heat pump, electric car, carbon capture, banning of coal and gas, banning of petrol and diesel, daft hydrogen projects, and are totally unconcerned at the astronomical cost of all of this or even if it will have any effect on global climate. They will also mostly not want to embrace Nuclear Energy despite it causing virtually zero CO2 emissions, which means it is not likely the CO2 they were concerned about in the first place. It is cheap abundant energy they are opposed to —-Why? Because it is the driver of Capitalism. Climate Change and its polices then are an anti capitalist package.

25
-1
varmint
varmint
1 year ago
Reply to  varmint

Notice the red thumbs down person has nothing to say about why they gave a thumbs down.

8
-1
Jabby Mcstiff
Jabby Mcstiff
1 year ago

You are barking up the wrong tree if you think things are going to get warmer in the next few decades quite the contrary. There is a great deal of warming coming from under the sea but if you think the British climate is going to improve then you are very mistaken. It isn’t just that the British pioneered weather modification it is the fact that the dampness of the British climate means that we have perfect weather conditions for them to employ their favourite new technologies and they haven’t even warmed up yet. They have got these islands set up to become the harbour and welcoming port of the new Satanic energy that their machinations are bringing into being.You can feel it in the air. Ask the insects. Leave your window open and see how few insects come in compared to ten years ago. Don’t be foolish in thinking that the fate of such small critters means nothing.

9
-1
Jabby Mcstiff
Jabby Mcstiff
1 year ago

Looking at the big picture events I think awarenss of the global warming scam gives the best cause for optimism. You could say it took a very long time but when you consider that this agenda only kicked into high gear in the early 1990s and just thirty years later it has been defeated, that really isn’t that long .And I think its demise will work as a fillip and an emblem in the battle against other more recalcitrant orthodoxies. A few years ago I thought this agenda would take hold of the world and would enslave it. It shows that there is way for the light to seep in.

9
0
Jabby Mcstiff
Jabby Mcstiff
1 year ago

We have the number 25920. This number cannot be escaped it represents stages in the cosmos and breaths in our body. This is the great year or true year, It is the time it takes in years for the sun to move through the Zodiac. Every 12600 years or so something big happens. Last time it happened by water and we had to start again like children with no recollection of what went before. We are ripe for such an event. We should not only continue our legacy but by discovering what went before we can break the spell. Those events have profound importance for our times.

4
-1
Jabby Mcstiff
Jabby Mcstiff
1 year ago

Don’t lose faith in feet and inches and what not. These are far older than Egypt or Sumeria, It is within us and also within us is the dreadful trauma that occurrerd at that time when they used their science with disastrous results, The mystery schools don’t hoard this knowledge out of a sense of vanity or covetousness it is simply an acknowlegemnt of the disaster that occurred before and a conecern about who might obtain the technology. This period from 2020-2040 will be a period of great revealing.

3
-1

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