Essay by Eric Worrall
According to McKinsey and Company, Quantum Computing modelling can accelerate discovery of breakthrough technologies to solve the climate crisis. But is this an admission of how far we need to advance?
The role of quantum computing and AI in reversing climate change
By Velvet-Belle Templeman
Jun 20 2022 4:44PMAs the world grapples with the existential crisis that is climate change, technologies including quantum computing and AI can play a crucial role in reversing the damage.
According to a recent McKinsey and Company report, as businesses prepare for quantum advantage, they must consider the value in quantum computing as a significant tool for decarbonisation and limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees.
“Meeting the goal of net-zero emissions that countries and some industries have committed to won’t be possible without huge advances in climate technology that aren’t achievable today. Even the most powerful supercomputers available now are not able to solve some of these problems. Quantum computing could be a game-changer in those areas,” the report said.
The authors have attested that quantum computing could be leveraged to develop climate technologies that would contribute to an additional seven gigatons of carbon dioxide abatement by 2035.
…
Read more: https://www.itnews.com.au/digitalnation/news/the-role-of-quantum-computing-and-ai-in-reversing-climate-change-581573
The McKinsey and Company report is available here.
I like the frankness of the assessment that current renewable technologies are not ready. For example;
…
Improving the energy density of lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries enables applications in electric vehicles and energy storage at an affordable cost. Over the past ten years, however, innovation has stalled—battery energy density improved 50 percent between 2011 and 2016, but only 25 percent between 2016 and 2020, and is expected to improve by just 17 percent between 2020 and 2025.
Recent research3 has shown that quantum computing will be able to simulate the chemistry of batteries in ways that can’t be achieved now. Quantum computing could allow breakthroughs by providing a better understanding of electrolyte complex formation, by helping to find a replacement material for cathode/anode with the same properties and/or by eliminating the battery separator.
…
Read more: McKinsey and Company Report on Quantum Computing
The promise of quantum computing is in principle it can perform every possible calculation simultaneously, then collapse on the correct solution.
Imagine breaking a spy code. You know the key is 20 characters, but unless you have a mathematical cheat formula, you are pretty much stuck with trying every possible combination of those characters until you start getting valid data from your decoder. Assuming the key only contains capital letters and numbers, that’s (26 + 10)20 = 1.3 x 1031 possible keys – an impossible number of keys to test.
Quantum computing attempts to shortcut this impossibility by harnessing the universe’s real world solver to solve abstract problems, by testing every possible solution simultaneously in a single step.
The effect scientists are hoping to harness is, Quantum processes in some ways behave as if every possible interaction between particles was occurring simultaneously, then, even weirder, the different possible interactions interact with each other to produce the final outcome.
The most famous example of this is the double slit experiment, in which particles are fired through two adjacent vertical slits, to produce an interference pattern on a detector behind the slits.
The quantum weirdness comes in when, even when scientists fire one particle at a time through the double slit, the individual particles behave as if they go through both slits simultaneously. Even stranger, both possible particle paths interact with each other to produce a final pattern on the detector board.
Where this gets interesting is some paths cancel out. The pattern produced by the double slit experiment has empty areas, where the interaction between possible paths cancelled the possibility of particles arriving at those points on the detector.
Quantum computing scientists hope to harness this weird parallelism, the ability of all possible quantum interactions to contribute to the final calculation and in some cases cancel each other out, so that when every possible solution pathway is simultaneously tested by their quantum computer, only the correct solution, the solution they are looking for, survives the interaction. They want all the non solution paths to cancel each other out, leaving one bright spot on their detector, the solution they want.
Note this is a simplified explanation, today’s Quantum computers tend to use more exotic quantum processes and interactions than particles flying through double slits.
But for all the advances, to suggest this fascinating game of quantum pinball is in its infancy is an understatement. The quantum computation elements, or Qubits, are unstable and sensitive to external interference. This instability and sensitivity to interference from external influences, such as cosmic rays penetrating the computer hardware, is a serious impediment to the upscaling of Quantum Computer capabilities. I’m deeply skeptical of McKinsey’s claim that any reasonable investment can yield meaningful advances in quantum computing in the next few decades, and double skeptical that any quantum computing advances in the next few decades will noticeably change the dubious trajectory of our alleged green energy revolution.
Update (EW): Added a diagram of the double slit experiment.
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What climate crisis?
There is no climate crisis. Probably should have strewn a few more “alleged”s around…
If you trained an AI with only IPCC reports and ‘consensus’ science, it would probably think there was a crisis and only harm. If you trained it with research from skeptics, it would conclude that there is no crisis and only benefit. If trained by both and asked to come to a conclusion, my guess is that it would go into an infinite loop.
If it worked it would tell you there was a controversy, the issue tree of which had several thousand component arguments. It should decide for skepticism but that would depend on its programming.
See http://www.stemed.info/reports/Wojick_Issue_Analysis_txt.pdf
“… depend on its programming.”
Human intelligence is no different.
Yes, the climate crisis is completely imaginary.
If it had not been for the modern global warming, we would still be in the depths of the Little Ice Age. Now that really would be a climate crisis!
Chris
Right, however the alarmists claim LIA was regional not global. AR6 SPM figure 1a is a hockey stick with no LIA or MWP.
Gary:
“What climate crisis”
Actually, there may be a climate crisis developing in our near future, because of the drive to net-zero.
It has recently been suggested that the drought .of the sixth century A.D.brought about the birth of Islam. I don’t know whether this is true, or not, but there was clearly a world-wide drought at that time.. It was caused by high global temperatures resulting from decreased volcanic activity and a consequent lack of their cooling SO2 aerosol emissions (also the cause of the MWP).
Dates of eruptions for that era (from “Volcanoes of the World) were 450, 490, 500, 512, 520, 540, 550, 580, 600, 610, 650, 680, resulting in decades with no eruptions, and ultra-clean air.
In addition to CO2 emissions, the burning of fossil fuels also produces SO2 aerosols, which cool our planet. Since the object of net-zero is to ban the burning of fossil fuels, temperatures WILL increase because of the cleaner air–and if there are no volcanic eruptions for about 5 years, soar to those of the sixth century era and the MWP.
.
In the resulting drought, millions will die!
.
They don’t know what a climate crise would like anyway.
But then they can’t tell a relevant fact about the theory of quantum physics.
Unlike Trump’s (allegedly) “poorly educated” people, these people got enough “éducation” to believe they have higher education and know abstract stuff. They think this pathetic babbling amounts to a simplistic explanation of quantum physics + computing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1W0b9nFnWY
There is no such thing as quantum memory that would store more data. Storage is not an issue. Anyone with a modicum of knowledge of regular computers and their evolution of the last few decades would have noticed.
(Also, hard disks don’t store 1 and 0 as if written on a piece of paper. They are much more “complex”. Neither do DSL lines transmit individual 1 and 0. Turdeau must be confusing computers and Morse operators.)
An d the magical green thinking marches on!
My analog Magic 8 Ball says, “Signs point to yes.”
“As the world grapples with the existential crisis that is climate change, […]”
If the AI is as smart as they think it is, it should conclude that there isn’t even remotely an existential crisis, though it may give us a clue as to when the next glaciation will occur.
AIs are sensitive to their training data, so if you feed the AI with alarmism laden training data, you end up with alarmist predictions.
Which is why it’s not remotely “AI”.
But it is also true of humans.
If it worked it would tell you there was a controversy, the issue tree of which had several thousand component arguments. If it trained on the web, which some now do, the controversy would be obvious.
It should decide for skepticism but that would depend on its decision programming, not its training.
See http://www.stemed.info/reports/Wojick_Issue_Analysis_txt.pdf for an explanation of issue trees, the natural structure of controversies.
Climate models base programming is based on the Horrorscope.
Same quote I picked out, and didn’t read any further.
“As the world grapples with the looming communist coup.”
would be closer to the truth.
If you cannot make a clear case for climate alarmism in simple language confuse your hearers with gobbledygook by throwing out phrases like existential crisis and by massaging the data.
‘If the AI is as smart as they think it i…’
“They’ should first turn quantum computing loose on numerically solving the Naiver-Stokes equations to correctly model the Earth’s climate with sufficient granularity to avoid the current GCMs’ need for ‘tuning’. But as the current garbage already gives them the alarmist answers they crave, they’ll skip this step and move right on to ‘mitigation’.
Sure, and then they can unify gravity, electromagnetism and the strong/weak nuclear forces. Then, after lunch, they can take a crack at dark matter & energy and the origin of the universe. There’s nothing that AI and quantum computers can’t do.
Yep, they are saying it can fix the deficiencies of battery storage, etc. which MAY HAVE NO SOLUTION.
Currently a given mass/volume can only store so much energy, and it appears that over 5 year time frames the improvement is being reduced by 1/2 each cycle, progressing to 0. How will anything make something impossible, like two or more times the “energy” storage from the same mass and/or volume, possible?
And no matter how one massages the output, weather dependent sources are not going to somehow become dispatchable.
Yep
I’m sure the answer will be more taxes to waste.
Funny that. The output will be “Raise taxes, eliminate fossil fuel use, stop eating meat, and form a One World Government.”
Aside from ’42’, that has always been the answer to every ‘existential crisis du jour’ that the commie elites have foisted on the sheeple.
They can get back to us when they find the nearest source of dilithium crystals.
The quantum computer works faster to come up with the wrong answer (referring to climate ‘science’).
I read, long long ago, of someone who had an analog traveling salesman solver. This is the problem of the shortest route between, say, a dozen cities. My memory of the solver is very hazy, but I do remember it was considered valid for that particular set of cities. Something to do with a peg board representing the city locations, then either an elastic cord wrapped around them, or a soap bubble — like I said, a long long time ago, and before I really cared about such problems.
The point is that it was a very specific analog solution. You had to move the pegs around, it could only handle so many, it didn’t allow for different routes between cities (A to B might be faster than C to B because it used different roads, even though they were the same distance apart).
I remember the caveats, but I’d bet that 99 out of 100 readers would not; they would only remember that the traveling salesman problem had been solved. I think it is the same with quantum computing. Too many people hear it can crack crypto problems instantaneously and apply that astounding result to every other computing problem.
Even though all the computational power in the world can not make the impossible possible.
As EW notes, quantum computing is not a happening thing. It requires magic at every step from from here to an operational, functional device. Science fiction, nothing more.
But first, a quantum computer in operation:
Dave: HAL, Open the pod bay door.
HAL: I’m sorry Dave, I am afraid I cannot do that.
For those of you who missed the movie 2001:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDrDUmuUBTo
Moral of the story: Be careful what you wish for.
The example given was a brute force problem. Climate and atmospheric science is not a brute force problem. We do not know why the climate changes all the time nor why one day is hot and the next day it is 10 C cooler. Meteorology is still based on probabilities and always will be, because the unknowns can never be knowable. Computers cannot think because they don’t know that they exist. A faster computer cannot discover a new scientific principle nor elucidate one of the unknowns. As Briggs likes to say: Computers only tell you what you program them to say. All of this is meaningless anyway because there is no climate emergency.
Alan,
what exactly is it about neurons that allows them to know that they exist and thus think? They are just a bunch of atoms no different in principle from a transistor. And if neurons can think then so can computers.
I tend towards the view that computers will learn to think in the same sense we think. I’ve built a few AIs, and watched my creations grow towards solving a problem, like watching something living put out branches and roots.
I am sorry you “feel” that way 😉
Far be it from me to know how brains work as they are not just neurons, but a physical-chemical system. Hard to believe that they are just digital although some seem that simple.
The brain is ELECTRICAL. The “Chemical” part happens BECAUSE of the electrical part, the electrical part doesn’t happen because of the chemical part.
We really don’t know how humans think. We have some theories, but they don’t explain the full range of human behavior. Self-awareness, creativity, emotions, intuition, are all complete mysteries. Roger Penrose argues that Godel’s incompleteness theorem implies that any system based on computation will be unable to “understand” anything, and thus will be incapable of sentience. As far as we can tell, human brains are analog in nature anyway, not digital, so current AI research is probably a dead end.
At best, AI will be a sociopath with no empathy, little knowledge of right/wrong, and a big dose of narcissism. The ability to form an independent purpose in life and a passion toward that purpose will be lacking. Asimov’s rules for robots can be easily bypassed, by mistake if not on purpose. Thinking is far more than performing calculations quickly.
So AI will be a liberal?
Your DNA ain’t analog.
whiten,
Completely irrelevant. I can store the design for an analog electronic circuit (like an amplifier) in digital form, but it still performs as an analog circuit when built and powered up. Everything we know about the human body implies an analog mode. Digital is just a concept imposed on an analog world to help simplify it.
Apparently, the best test for determining whether or not I am human is my ability to tick all the squares containing traffic lights.
Yep, AI’s do have a big lough at it… the best we humans can do with testing, else we may not even pass… a very low bar test.
🙂
Next, Quantum Computing will be sold to governments as the way to overcome covid, end the war in Ukraine, win the war on drugs, Save The Planet and Eradicate Evil, all at the same time. I sense a strong aroma of snake-oil!
‘Next, Quantum Computing will be sold to governments as the way to…’
Eliminate opponents and other useless eaters?
Who needs to involve quantum computing magic? The Green alarmists have their own version of magic as evidenced by so many of their magicians they can call upon.
Kerry, the grand master of the Green magic circle has Greta as his pixie assistant and Mick the Mann as his bag carrier. Biden and Gore with their magic wands can conjure up anything they can imagine. It makes Harry Potter seem tame by comparison.
Those broom sticks don’t run on hot fairy dust alone, oh no. It requires plenty of state financing to get the full ‘accelerarmous’ going.
The unicorns just haven’t been performing to spec lately and too many activists are on Santa’s naughty list. Something else is needed.
“Recent research has shown that quantum computing will be able to simulate the chemistry of batteries in ways that can’t be achieved now. Quantum computing could allow breakthroughs by providing a better understanding of electrolyte complex formation, by helping to find a replacement material for cathode/anode with the same properties and/or by eliminating the battery separator.“
Maybe.
Probably not.
Very likely not.
Get your wildly unreliable computer models, at quantum speed.
Computers don’t think. Computers do what they are designed and programed to do. Period. Full stop. Garbage in, garbage out. This is more greentarded horseshit, total waste of money, time and materials.
As evidenced by the regurgitation of the standard climate pr0n:
Note the “must”—what happens if “businesses” fail to consider the standard propaganda?
Thus far our logical processing of weather data has simply produced a mess of science’s own making – we have assumed a theory to be correct (CO2 produced by burning fossil fuel causes global warming) in spite of the fact CO2 hasn’t been proven to be a major player and many more likely other contributing factors are not well enough understood after decades of trying to understand or discount them.
If climate science was a computer game it would have received nul points from its reviewers and have zero popularity among game players because it would not only be repetitious nonsense with absolutely no point to it but you could never solve the puzzle it poses for you at the beginning because the playing field would forever change. The rules would also make absolutely no sense – win or lose your dead anyway.
Playing the same game on a more powerful quantuum machine repetively would most likely speed up the outbreak of ever more serious forms of mental illness … which of course may be the desired intention of the inscrutable ones who started this mess up in the first place…
The notion that CO2 is a pollutant is called INVERTED MEANING. As above, so below. The Key of Solomon, the Star of Saturn.
If they claim CO2 is harmful, then we know the OPPOSITE to be true. And in fact this is what anyone that passes grade school science knows, that plants turn CO2 into FOOD, and thus CO2 FEEDS THE WORLD.
Always remember, everything is INVERTED MEANING.
“Patriot Act”.
“Safe and effective.”
“It’s for your benefit.”
Always, the OPPOSITE is true.
In fact, sometimes it’s even complete NONSENSE. “Greenhouse gasses”. Can someone tell me just what that MEANS? Greenhouses work by stopping CONVECTIVE HEAT LOSS. They don’t work because they “trap a special kind of CO2 that won’t re-radiate a photon in a random direction, violating thermodynamic law”.
“Quantum Computing Magic can Solve the Climate Crisis”
Not where the UK’s Secretary of State for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport is concerned.
“[Nadine] Dorries arrived at a meeting with software giant Microsoft and immediately asked when they were going to get rid of algorithms”
https://www.politico.eu/article/nadine-dorries-digital-minister-big-tech/
There’s an intelligence crisis in the elites.
Maybe she meant, get rid of their Al Gore rhythm? It’s a form of birth control in some quarters apparently….. 🙂
The newspapers often confuse algorithms and logarithms.
About what “the world” might do, yes.
About climate change, not so much.
From the quoted article: “Improving the energy density of lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries enables applications in electric vehicles and energy storage at an affordable cost.”
Suppose you could instantly double the battery’s energy density. An EV with the same weight could end up with. say, 200 kWh of useful stored energy and perhaps 600 miles of range. Let’s say you are targeting a 10-minute charging time to approach parity with gasoline or diesel fuel. The charger needs to deliver 1,200 kW. The circuit feeding the charger must go from zero to 1,200 kW and back to zero.
My point? With plug-in EV’s, no matter what you do with energy density of the storage unit, the inherent limitations of charging time and charging infrastructure cannot be overcome by quantum computing, no matter how it might be deployed via AI. You can’t get there, if the objective is to claim parity with what can be readily accomplished with liquid hydrocarbon fuels.
Well said, BUT. the article states that battery storage is improving by a 50% reduced value moving toward no improvement at all within 20 years or so. Last mentioned 5 years, 17%, next 8.5%, thus can never get to 100% improvement from here on out.
Just like an ICE, all the improvements at any reasonable cost have already be achieved.
Now with an ICE, if you can get room temperature and above superconductivity to make the bearings frictionless, then you could REALLY improve the efficiency, but at what cost?
How is it possible to get ANYTHING so WRONG
All the technology that’s needed already exists, at quarries and farms.
Simply get it organised to dig up basalt or any black coloured rock from wherever you find it, under and around volcanoes are great places to start
Run it through a mill (a nice job for windmills and solar panels – the crushed product is your ‘stored energy)
When it’s crushed enough to pass a 6mm mesh sieve and then take it out and spread it around.
On fields, farms, forests, deserts, grasslands.
Maybe run a drag-harrow over it to rub it in and optionally sprinkle some water onto it.
THEN you will witness true global greening and inside a single generation will be desperately searching for extra CO2 to put into the sky
What would be a lovely extra touch to get things really moving, use your windmills and solar panels to ‘oxidise air‘
i.e. Make some nitrogen oxide
Dissolve that into some water and pre-treat your crushed rock with it to loosen up the embedded nutrients.
The Cherry On The Cake would be to rustle up some Sulphur from power stations scrubbers
Old car tyres ran through the crushers would be nice too = organic material containing more Sulphur
(Oh dear, I’ve gone ‘all tingly’ just thinking about it)
Yep. “Modeling” again. I’m not a computer whizbang, but I seem to recall from somewhere in my past a so-called expert telling me that the info from computers depends upon the input. In other words, garbage in, garbage out.
There is no climate crisis, its just weather doing what mother nature does.
Just sayin’.
The so-called climate “scientists” have yet to history-match the warming/cooling cycles of the last 30 ice ages. Until they do, their so-called “computer models” are worthless…except as unjustified propaganda.
I find Green Luddites blind faith in technological breakthroughs sublime irony. OTOH why wouldn’t they have blind faith in computer artificial intelligence and any port in a storm.
Blind faith in FUTURE technological breakthroughs that will make their pie in the sky dream net zero energy schemes work.
It a race, will the advanced technology aliens or the magic AI save us first?
Two comments:
Computers caused the climate “crisis”. So, it’s no surprise that computers will solve the climate “crisis”.