Don Sutherland's photos with the keyword: AI

AI-generated image: With CO2 now exceeding 420 PPM, humanity is leaving the Holocene and returning to the Mid-Pliocene warm period. Glacial erratics provide reminders of the ice sheets that once existed. Rising seas have claimed land. Tropical plants have migrated northward. The world is a vastly different one from which modern humans evolved, proliferated, and prospered. Despite overwhelming scientific evidence concerning climate change and its causes and growing urgency for humanity to choose a safer climatic future, COP 28 failed to adopt even minimal targets for curbing and reducing the fossil fuel emissions driving climate change. Despite bold rhetoric about addressing climate change, the United States became the world's largest oil and gas producer on record. Both outcomes are a de facto choice to take humanity into a climate that has not been seen since the Mid-Pliocene period, which was 1.8°C-3.6°C (3.2°F-6.5°F) warmer than the pre-industrial climate. Then, seas peaked at 25 meters above current levels. Those outcomes represent an unspoken but real down payment toward sacrificing some of the world's great coastal metropolises—Amsterdam, Bangkok, Jakarta, Lagos, London,New York, and Tokyo—to Neptune for only human misery in return.

AI visualization: A young cosmologist ponders the origin and development of the Universe from her seat in the cosmos as space-time curves beneath her feet and Earth comes into view behind her.

AI generation: A pianist plays with one hand during a moonlit night while a nearby volcano explodes. The image represents humanity’s largely business-as-usual course even as rising greenhouse gases lead to severe heatwaves, intense precipitation, severe droughts, and widespread marine heatwaves. The use of a single hand symbolizes humanity’s less than full effort to address climate change. The erupting volcano warns of the dangers that lie ahead. The full Moon and clear night sky represent the flourishing world that is fast disappearing.

An AI generation inspired by the work of Pierre-Auguste Renoir and style of Vincent Van Gogh. The gold represents the timeless and priceless value fine art has. The distant tornado represents the power and passion that is behind artistic excellence. The swirls represent the dancer's motion.

An AI generation. A young lifeguard stares in disbelief at her smartphone after receiving a text message alert that sharks have been spotted in the water. She is unaware that one of the sharks has come ashore. Fortunately for her, the shark begins to fall apart outside the water much as a hurricane falls apart after making landfall.

On this opening day of Cupid's "hunting season," it's worth recalling Shakespeare's observation, "And when love speaks, the voice of all the gods make heaven drowsy with the harmony." Love can transform the soul and, in doing so, the world. May all have a very happy Valentine's Day.

An AI generation of fish fleeing warming, increasingly acidic waters in search of refuge from climate change. Climate change has led to an increased frequency, expanse, and magnitude of marine heatwaves, along with growing acidification of the world's oceans.

An AI-generated visualization of the chaotic early days of the Milky Way Galaxy

An AI generation where the gold represents how precious the world and its ecosystems are, the snow and ice represent its fragility, and the fractals illustrate how complexity is built from simplicity.

AI-generated image of a young woman's power of attraction.

An AI-generated visualization of how Vincent Van Gogh might have painted his masterpiece had he resided on Mars.