Head of Cop29 is a fossil fuels guy

As if it wasn't already clear enough that the Cop's are mostly about corporate greenwashing.

The chief executive of Cop29 has been filmed apparently agreeing to facilitate fossil fuel deals at the climate summit.

The recording has amplified calls by campaigners who want the fossil fuel industry and its lobbyists to be banned from future Cop talks.

The campaign group Global Witness posed undercover as a fake oil and gas group asking for deals to be facilitated in exchange for sponsoring the event.

In the calls, Elnur Soltanov, Azerbaijan’s deputy energy minister and chief executive of Cop29, agreed to this and spoke of a future that includes fossil fuels “perhaps for ever”. Cop officials also introduced the fake investor to a senior executive at the national oil and gas company Socar to discuss investment opportunities. - The Guardian

Big Tech is prostrating itself before Trump

And all of us will probably pay, sooner or later. I'd say the top likelihood is after the AI bros get to create a bubble and it bursts.

Donald Trump was re-elected President of the United States on Tuesday, defeating Vice President Kamala Harris not just in the Electoral College tally but also in the popular vote. And Big Tech leaders wasted no time congratulating Trump on Wednesday, tweeting out messages that make it clear they’re ready to serve his needs however they can. It feels like a preview of the next phase, where so many will go meet Trump in person and kiss the ring of the 47th president, a man who’s promised to become a dictator on day one and deport millions of people in a scheme that’s pretty much guaranteed to devastate the economy. And it’s already making us nauseous. - Gizmodo

Big Finance is having its doubts about AI

For me the noteworthy thing is that even Wall Street, which is generally pretty gullible about The Next Big Thing, is displaying at least a measure of rational skepticism about artificial "intelligence."

For tech’s biggest players, this earnings season is starting to feel like a scene from the movie Jerry Maguire— and the “show me the money” demands aren’t working out any better than they did for Tom Cruise. Some analysts are even dubbing this the “show me the money” quarter, as Wall Street’s patience with massive AI spending begins to wear thin...

Almost two years after ChatGPT kicked off Silicon Valley’s AI gold rush, this week’s tech earnings revealed both the promise and the staggering price tag of the AI revolution. While companies reported significant gains from AI initiatives —Meta’s ad prices up 11%, Google Cloud revenue surging 35% to $11.4 billion, Amazon’s AWS growing 19% to $27.5 billion — their warnings about future spending sparked a broad market retreat…

Tech executives’ unwavering faith in AI’s potential stands in stark contrast to investors’ growing anxiety about the costs. - Quartz

New bank rules should make it easier to switch

I haven't seen anything about court battles over this. Maybe the big banks are more or less OK with it.

It’s about to get harder for banks to hold onto unsatisfied customers — and their money.

It has long been a challenge for people to ditch the banks where they keep their checking accounts. Blame tricky data transfer processes, lengthy and time-consuming requests, and other hurdles. But the first so-called open banking rules in the U.S. aims to change that.

New rules finalized by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) on Tuesday will require banks to simplify how customers transfer their data from one bank to another without losing their transaction and bill history.

The aim of the regulations, formally known as 1033, is to empower consumers by giving them unprecedented control over their financial data, including who to share it with and when. As a result, customers will be able to direct their bank to move their account to a competing one with ease and use third-party applications with just the click of a button — all without paying a fee.

“Imagine being able to switch banks as easily as switching streaming services,” said James McCarthy, a founding member of the CFPB who is now chairman of financial services solutions firm McCarthy Hatch. “That’s what it’s really going to be like.” - Quartz

The first big US carbon sequestration plant is spouting leaks

People have been warning for years that this was pretty much inevitable.

ADM’s facility in central Illinois was the first permitted commercial carbon sequestration operation in the country, and it’s on the forefront of a booming, multibillion-dollar carbon capture and storage, or CCS, industry that promises to permanently sequester planet-warming carbon dioxide deep underground.

The emerging technology has become a cornerstone of government strategies to slash fossil fuel emissions and meet climate goals. Meanwhile, the Biden administration’s signature climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, has supercharged industry subsidies and tax credits and set off a CCS gold rush…

In September, the public learned of a leak at ADM’s Decatur site after it was reported by E&E News, which covers energy and environmental issues. Additional testing mandated by the EPA turned up a second leak later that month. - Grist

Utilities are doing a pitiful job in clean energy transition

This is unsurprising on the whole, but I admit that I was a little startled to see how little is being done.

To address the climate crisis, utilities must transition from fossil fuels to clean energy. We published the first Dirty Truth Report in 2021, evaluating utility plans to transition to clean energy based on their commitments to retire coal, build clean energy, and not build new gas through 2030. In 2021, these utilities failed to plan for the clean energy transition, scoring an aggregate of 17 out of 100.1. Unfortunately, instead of correcting course, many utilities continue to fail to appropriately prepare for a clean energy future, wasting time as the clean energy transition becomes more urgent. This failure has led to the timing and cost challenges that these companies are now trying to use as excuses to remain reliant on fossil fuels.

The solutions to move away from fossil fuels exist today. Utilities are well positioned to take action with cost reductions in clean energy, strong public support for the clean energy transition, and government support for climate solutions... - Sierra Club

Tech bros hype military AI

That anyone regards this with terminology like "promise" and "game-changing" is despicable.

Since the emergence of generative artificial intelligence, scholars have speculated about the technology’s implications for the character, if not nature, of war. The promise of AI on battlefields and in war rooms has beguiled scholars. They characterize AI as “game-changing,” “revolutionary,” and “perilous,” especially given the potential of great power war involving the United States and China or Russia...

While experts caution that militaries are confronting a “eureka” or “Oppenheimer” moment, harkening back to the development of the atomic bomb during World War II, this characterization distorts the merits and limits of AI for warfighting. It encourages policymakers and defense officials to follow what can be called a “primrose path of AI-enabled warfare,” which is codified in the US military’s “third offset” strategy. This vision of AI-enabled warfare is fueled by gross prognostications and over-determination of emerging capabilities enhanced with some form of AI, rather than rigorous empirical analysis of its implications across all (tactical, operational, and strategic) levels of war.

The current debate on military AI is largely driven by “tech bros” and other entrepreneurs who stand to profit immensely from militaries’ uptake of AI-enabled capabilities. - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists