> Climate change disaster timelines are longer than AI timelines.
Sure ... and we've already let Koch and Co. piss 50 years of lead time up against the wall since the first global recognition of the problem in the 1970s.
Now that it's starting to bite and properly ramp up there's far too many that are stretched out lizard like on Titanic deckchairs asking AI Jeeves for another drink.
The biggest contributor to climate change was widespread protests against nuclear power, which arrested what had been rapid growth in a safe non-CO2-emitting base load power source that could have replaced hydrocarbon generators within two generations.
The Green parties in Europe successfully stopped the expansion of every nuclear energy program in the EU. Greenpeace engaged in a number of terrorist attacks to sabotage nuclear energy.
Seems unlikely given the expansion in standard of living in developing countries, the use of fossil fuels in ICE's .. and elsewhere outside of power generation in the EU.
It's a factor, sure, but "biggest" .. not so much.
The rate of growth in nuclear power was putting on a trajectory to replace all or nearly all hydrocarbon based base load power sources. And it was political opposition to nuclear power that put a stop to that. No other factor comes close as a contributor to climate change in my estimation.
The transition from ICEs to electric battery cars is largely orthogonal to base load power, but even electric battery cars depend on a base load source, so the extent that CO2 emitting energy sources have been replaced by non-emitting ones is highly dependent on the base load sources.
Climate change will became very bad possibly as soon as 5-10 years. Widespread starvation, resource war, bad.
At the rate AI is accelerating we may not get even 3. It's the final force multiplier. If we end create runaway automation feedback loops, there may not be much of a recognizable planet left to have a climate in ten years. A spot of hull rust quickly consumes the entire ship once it takes root.
I grasp the looming disaster of climate-driven global collapse. We simply found a way to speedrun disaster even more efficiently.
Geometric growth doesn't feel like much until you slam into the wall.