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.
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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;
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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.
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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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Attention, paging Braniac. Braniac to the front desk to “solve” mankind’s “problem”.
Yes, maybe Braniac can come up with a Final Solution.
Did they consider the massive amount of energy required to run the quantum computations and the resultant warming?
Quantum computing, like fusion reactors for electricity, a “breakthrough” always 10 years away.
Why do imaginary crises always require real money to “solve” them – or rather, keep them going so they can be milked forever?
Magical thinking is a hallmark characteristic of liberals. As a group, they cannot correctly process information.
There are 2 drivers of Earth (and all planetary) “climate”.
1: Solar output.
2: The temperature of intergalactic space.
This is what they don’t tell you about “space weather”. Certain spots in the galaxy are WARMER, and certain spots are COLDER. These “hot and cold spots” are the direct result of GALACTIC CANNIBALIZATION. If you go to the southern hemisphere, you can see the large and small Magellanic clouds. These are 2 smaller galaxies cannibalized by the milky way billions of years ago.
When galaxies ‘collide’, what actually happens is the bending and flexing of space is so severe from gravity (if you believe in such a thing) that it heats up space around it. So in our 250,000,000 year orbit around the center of the milky way, we go through “hot spots” and “cold spots”, and those hot and cold spots are what governs the radical and, to some of us, unexplainable shifts in planetary climate.
This is also linked inexorably to planetary extinctions. “Scientists” would like us all to think that planetary formation is chaotic and full of bombardments. But what you will find is in galaxies that have NOT cannibalized or been cannibalized BY another galaxy, is a galaxy full of planets with VERY FEW impact craters, like we have here in our solar system.
To wit, ALL PLANETARY IMPACTS are caused by EXTRA-GALACTIC INFLUENCE. When planets form from a dust cloud (planets form FIRST, btw, not LAST after stars form, as they would have you believe), this formation is actually quite orderly. It is only when the Oort cloud is “swirled up” from “rogue planetary systems” passing through OUR planetary system that disturbs the natural order of things and causes asteroids and comets to leave their happy homes.
That’s right. Look around our solar system. Start with the moon. All those tens of thousands of craters have all occurred because of galactic cannibalization remnants traveling through our galaxy in a direction OTHER than the normal flow of stars. EVERY ONE is a direct result of extra-galactic influence, and NONE of them have occurred from purely internal forces.
All the “unexplainable” features of our solar system are caused by extra-galactic extremely high relative velocity impacts.
1: Earth having “plate tectonics” is a result of an extra-galactic “grazing” impact with the Earth.
2: Mariner Valley on Mars is a “grazing” impact with an extra-galactic planet that passed through our solar system.
3: The great red spot on Jupiter is likely the core of a large planet floating on a lake of metallic hydrogen that impacted with Jupiter after entering our solar system.
4: The “asteroid belt” was a planet that was struck by an extra-galactic impactor. What, you thought the gravity of Jupiter “disrupted a planet from forming”? So our solar system and between Jupiter and Mars specifically is the only place in the ENTIRE UNIVERSE where gravity IMPEDES planetary formation? Um, NO. Ridiculous.
5: The rings of Saturn were pulverized moons from extra-galactic impacts.
6: The strange tilt of Uranus “sideways” on its axis is a result of a VERY close flyby of another large planet.
This is the hidden world of astrophysics they use to fool us.
As explained by visitors from Saturn.
the world grapples with the existential crisis that is climate change,
haha
On another point,what’s the difference between a computer making guesses and climate modellers?
Ha, easy one: one’s the monkey, the other’s the organ grinder.
Any program is dependent upon the data given. Until we know all the variables involved with natural climate variance, we cannot hope to find a definitive answer.
A faster computer is not going to help without the correct inputs.
Wow. And those folks get PAID for this kind of crap. Good work if you can get it.
The technology for coping with this non-problem was commercialized two generations ago, and has been improved since. Nuclear fission.
And many fission ideas have not been explored or tested, for example very hot reactors.
Why don’t we invest on fission research instead of the tokamak nonsense?
Many of the ideas may be unworkable in term of material or engineering, but at least we could try instead of clearly, patently unworkable crap.
More magical thinking from people that write about things they are mostly ignorant about.
Instead of using QC to diddle around with batteries, why aren’t they trying to solve clouds formation and behaviors?
Iirc, just a 4% change in clouds can overwhelm any effects CO2 levels can bring about.
Simultaneously? Methinks Velvet doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
The details are lost on me, but isn’t the selection of the right answer supposed to come from collapse of a superposition of all possibles wrapped up in the wave function?
Maybe that’s true only if one accepts the “Copenhagen Interpretation” of Quantum mechanics?
How to build a physical system to model a real world problem seems the devilish detail.
No degrees in Physics, so I’m just regurgitating.
Tom my understanding is the quantum computer crowd want to leverage the ability of possible quantum pathways to interact with each other, to test each possible pathway simultaneously, and to design their system so non solution pathways self cancel.
Your fingers and toes can solve the climate crisis because there isn’t one. It’s just a bunch of fake news for the elites to funnel money to themselves. Wake up, Sheeple. There’s an ice age every 20,000 years or so. We are due. It is all a big hoax for money…
McKinsey you say?
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/ex-enron-ceo-taps-mckinsey-colleagues-energy-investment-venture-sources-2021-06-03/
https://amp.theguardian.com/business/2002/mar/24/enron.theobserver
Quantum computing can handle even more complex equations faster but that still leaves them as models. The models we have now for global climate change (mmgw) still give forecasts that do not matvh actual measured results.
Such models may be useful research tools to try to evolve better ones but they are far from being good enough to base policies upon. They are certainl;y far too inaccurate to base any decision to spend trillions of pounds/dollars or to impoverish my country.
Indeed, they are so weak they may have got cause and effect the wrong way round. maybe warming comes before the additional CO2. It is pretty clear the greening of the planet follows additional CO2 but that is nowhere in their models.
“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 turning them off!
Quantum computing is to physics what climate change is to environmental science,
what AI is to computer science and what fusion energy is to plasma physics – an idea far from reality for which innumerable resources can be wasted and innumerable papers can be written. So naturally a quantum computer with AI powered by fusion will solve the climate change problem and freeze hell.
I have realized that some people I talk to don’t like, and don’t “understand”, my explanations of stuff because I’m sound, I’m clear, and intelligible.
People love to “understand” (“feel”) what they can’t understand.
How people do you know, who couldn’t describe the equations of playing the pool, love to discuss black holes, quantum physics, what time really is?
People think that there is a logical connection between anything two things they understand nothing about.
Cant fix something that doesn’t exist.
Pure fantasy.
‘McKinsey and Company’ assume that undiscovered abilities will emerge from bleeding edge technology that will, “Quantum computing could be a game-changer in those areas,” the report said.” suddenly solve climate problems.
Essentially, ‘McKinsey and Company’ claim the inability of human programmed super computers to model Earth’s atmosphere will self correct if we inly used quantum computing.
More unicorn fart climate assumptions without real evidence.
I read that quantum physicists want to use quantum computers to do quantum physics (modeling). Because the equations are so hard that they can’t use regular computers (or they can but on simplified ones).
But the physics of the greenhouse effect is described as well established, so what would you use a qcomputer for?
The current state of modelling – especially climate models – would suggest that finding ways to do more of it and faster is like tripling your alcohol intake when your liver is on its last days.