I would say dangers of AI controlling robots, we are not there yet. Nor AIs taking over governments and means of productions in big/unchecked scale (of, at the very least, robots).

What we have now is governments making robotic weapons, and governments building AIs, and nuclear/chemical/biological weapons, and weaponizing internet, controlling in the end the way global culture thinks and see reality. The common factor there are governments, not AIs, and against that we were warned in the other 1984.

... why they will use specifically ones that come from fossil fuels processing? Still it will keep getting fossil carbon added to the carbon cycle, no matter what colour you paint it.

Seems that we are about to enter the diamond age. But in reality, the devil is in the details.

The excess of GHG that is already in the atmosphere has been already triggering extreme weather events, increasing global yearly average temperature, starting positive feedback loops (like thawing permafrost, less ice over sea increasing albedo, etc that adds their own emissions and warming), and with a big component of CO2 that stays there for centuries.

But instead from capture it in meaningful amounts and actually reducing emissions, we are still uncapturing old carbon and increasing emissions and at a higher rate than in previous years.

And this article is just about official emissions of the energy sector, the fossil carbon from the extraction of oil/gas/coal that ends in emissions in a way or another can still be increasing.

I mean, by the time it reaches anywhere, we should have been gone for very long, its not like we should be afraid of becoming part of Flatland.

> 2) The US has done nasty stuff, not nearly this nasty. False equivalencies do not a compelling argument make.

Not as documented or widely known is not the same as not happening. Think all the Wikileaks pressure for releasing just a tiny bit of what was happening. And happened for more time and in far more countries.

And for measures that affects mostly the Russian population, it is argued that they didn't have fair elections, they may not be responsible about what a non democratic government does. While in US Bush was reelected even after was known what they had been doing in Middle East. And still the whole western world didn't lift a finger about that.

It is not so difficult to stop the asymmetries,

If mankind future and civilization were limitless and in more or less in similar conditions than is it today, it may be eventually possible, but not this century (I don't even know if it is solved the problem of actually sending someone to Mars and making him survive enough, from radiation shielding to physiological problems related to long term living in space).

The problem is that we might be running out of time, I don't know how environmental conditions will be here by 2100 (maybe even by 2050), and even that is more predictable than social trends, economy, world order and more factors that we might or not foresight now. Things will change for sure, and in a bad way (at the very least, for the feasibility of putting a lot of resources on space exploration).

Of course, there are alternate solutions. Maybe we have better chances venusforming Earth than terraforming Mars.

There will be no new normal in the foreseeable future. Just a series of milestones achieved, like this one, in the road to hell.

... people do. It is describing how people, corporations and governments could use a brand new tool, there it is not the tool that you should be afraid of, but the people using it. If you have dangerous people in those positions, then you are in danger if they use other tools too (nuclear weapons, economy, market and consumer manipulation, fake news or creating denialism campaigns, to name a few).

The scenario where an AI gets a conscience, an independent will, and plenty of tools to affect the real world seem to be far away still, but it would be the case of being afraid of AIs. Before reaching that point, be afraid of people with some kind of power.

Storing CO2 in the ocean with some of those techniques will change the ecosystem, affecting an already at risk life there (and elsewhere) maybe in ways we can't predict yet. And dissolving more CO2 into water may be short lived as warmer water holds less CO2, so it may release back the supposedly captured carbon. Not only will be very expensive, but also it may not work or make things even worse.

But we will keep extracting fossil carbon and not touching a penny of the companies that make trillions with that.

Warming has been uneven around the globe, and the Arctic region is between the most affected ones. And that is creating a ticking methane bomb that is already releasing massive amounts of methane. Once you reach the tipping point of that positive feedback loop the amount of methane in the atmosphere will still increase, even with 100% cut of emissions by most countries. Strong action should had been taken decades ago, when this was already evident to eventually happen. Now you have to deal with what you should have been done back then (that is now far bigger because now there are more industries that emits, and in bigger amounts), plus the extra load of what the consequences of delayed action does.

but they will be a minority.

It goes in layers, you can always step down another level (relevant xkcd)

It would be Elephant instead, even if you don't see it in the room.

they already use many times that amount of electricity just to stay connected. And then you must worry about display, running apps, etc. that use several orders that amount.

But for small/embeddable sensors, smart dust, or things like that, for smart homes, cities and clothing, and/or for pervasive surveillance, they might fit.