- cross-posted to:
- climate@slrpnk.net
- cross-posted to:
- climate@slrpnk.net
The key problem is that they cause deforestation:
Bio-energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) has been touted as a clean way of producing baseload power, substituting for gas and coal, which could even result in “negative emissions” as when replacement forests are grown they take up CO2 from the air.
But such systems could take 150 years to be “carbon negative”, researchers from the US, UK and China have found, in part because of the long time it takes to regrow forests, and because of the damage done when existing savannah, pasture or cropland is converted to grow biomass for burning.
The paper is here
Social media UI facilitates that behavior, I agree. It trivializes the pipeline of reading a headline and then broadcasting one’s stupid, uninformed, baselessly authoritative thoughts about it. Nevertheless, everyone has a choice; the UI is not making exercising basic responsibility any harder than it was before. When I fail to do that, that’s my fault.
UI design sharply increases the probability of behaving in this way; it takes a real fundamental rethink of the UI in order to change that. For what it’s worth, commercial platforms are increasingly pushing people away from providing a link, either by banning links like Instagram, or by having a feed ranking algorithm which discourages their inclusion (X, Facebook, others)
I don’t blame individual choices for something that’s largely a result of platform design.
i mean:
news outlets turning their pages into ad-riddled hellscapes that make the user feel as if they entered the dirtiest back alley they’ve ever seen could, possibly have something to do with the vast majority only reading the headlines…but sure, blaming the users works too!
honestly news sites are simply commonitng a slow suicide with the advertising based financial model…the whole internet is.
(yes, the UI on social media makes this problem worse, but it didn’t create the problem)