How Can AI Fight Climate Change?
Climate change is one of the most alarming concerns we are facing today. It affects everyone, starting from individuals to organizations and governments. The biggest concern of all is the speed at which the climate is changing despite the efforts to control it. The majority of the measures taken to control climate change have been futile so far. In fact, some efforts to control climate change have aggravated the situation instead of resolving it. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to shift the balance by enabling us to control climate change. In this article, we are going to discuss different ways in which AI can help us fight climate change effectively. So, without further ado, let’s dive into it!
How Is AI Suitable For Helping Manage Climate Change?
AI collects data and creates predictions based on patterns and trends. Human beings, no matter how intelligent they are, cannot compete with the processing speed of an AI model. As a result, human predictive analyses are based on limited data and, therefore, cannot be fully trusted. This accuracy can be increased slightly by increasing the number of people. However, it would dramatically increase the cost.
AI, on the other hand, can collect, parse, and analyze a wide range of data streams to provide valuable insight into various uncertainties that are related to climate change. Therefore, using AI in managing climate change can help improve the accuracy of predictive models while reducing the cost as well.
Ways In Which AI Can Help Manage Climate Change
A fine example of how AI can be used to fight climate change is through plummeting emissions from agriculture, industry, and transportation. It can also help people adapt to the fluctuations caused by climate change through better weather predictions and by providing people with decision support tools that can improve our response rate.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the ability to increase the resilience of mankind towards the rapid effects of climate change by identifying factors of potential risk and developing strategies to alleviate them. Let’s discuss some other ways in which AI can help fight climate change.
1- Reducing Plastic Pollution
Plastic pollution is undoubtedly one of the major causes of climate change. People have been blindly dumping plastic into oceans for ages. This can be controlled by using remote-sensing plastic detectors. In fact, a non-profit organization named Ocean Cleanup is already using AI to reduce plastic waste, which has shown significant success in controlling the percentage of plastic waste.
Using AI tools on a large scale will enable us to detect and remove plastic waste from the ocean. This will allow us to control plastic pollution sufficiently, which in turn will allow us to control climate change.
2- Sustainable Cities
With the use of AI tools, cities can be made clean, sustainable, and safe. AI offers some tools that can help in predicting the change in climate beforehand. This gives people time to prepare before a negative impact hits their area. For instance, if a hurricane is about to hit a specific region, AI can predict it beforehand and alert the authorities. This will give margin to the residents to take countermeasures for their safety.
3- Predicting Deforestation Through Satellite Imagery
Trees clean the environment naturally and help us fight climate change. That’s why almost all the countries in the world are running tree-planting campaigns to promote forestry. Having said that, there are a lot of places in the world where deforestation is happening either due to the fault of humans or naturally.
Using satellite imagery in combination with AI, we can analyze the chances of deforestation in an area by observing cities, water sources, and more key factors. This would also help us pinpoint the root cause of deforestation and enable us to take appropriate measures to protect forests. In fact, a project created by WWF, The Deloitte Impact Foundation, is already using an AI tool to predict deforestation.
4- Energy Efficiency
Due to the drastic changes in the world’s climate, it has become essential to make sustainability a goal. The planned use of AI can help us increase energy efficiency in data centers and IT operations. There are already a few AI-powered tools that allow us to track and minimize energy consumption in real-time. A fine example of AI tools helping us use energy efficiently is IBM Instana for Observability and IBM LinuxONE.
5- Digital Agriculture
Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools can be used to decarbonize the agricultural sector. AI enables us to observe and optimize inputs and outputs in agriculture through precise control of fertilizers being used on lands to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The best thing is that using this method would also allow farmers to get a better yield from their crops and harvests.
Final Thoughts:
All in all, Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help mankind fight against climate change in more ways than we can imagine. It is a life-changing technology that holds a lot of potential in helping humanity against climate change. From mitigating the factors contributing to climate change to helping us take appropriate measures to protect our environment, AI can help us control climate change and build a more resilient and prosperous future.