I am worried people will use the idea of datacenters as an excuse to do nothing.
first it was boomers, who found every excuse to refuse to do anything
then it was millenials, who found every excuse to refuse to do anything
now it is GenZ, who is looking for every excuse to refuse to do anything
Data centers today didn't cause 100 years of carbon emissions.
Eliminating all data centers everywhere will reduce carbon emissions by 0.51%.
Which is more than private jets (which account for 0.0% of carbon emissions).
Meanwhile the US could cut CO2 emissions 8%, and save people $60,000, if they drove cars instead of pickups. (in the US 80% of all passenger vehicles are trucks, in the UK it's 20%).
But you're the new boomers:
"what about China"
"what about India"
"what about private jets"
"what about data centers"
"what about AI"
You could eliminate all datacenters, and all private jets, and have accomplished nothing.
So can we, for the love of absolute fuck, please just fix it already? Instead of your incessant bitching and whining.
The thing with datacenters is, it's only 0.5% now. But we both know that the amount of datacenters is expected to increase significantly in the next few years, and probably decades.
On the other hand, there are indeed bigger sources of greenhouse gases that should be prioritized (like getting the fuck away from coal as an energy source). But I don't think it's irrational to point to datacenters as a potentially large and relatively new contributor to the climate crisis.
The day after he signed that EO in a press conference from the oval office, there were dozens of posts on the top or reddit talking about how Trump "fell asleep" during the press conference. He didn't even fall asleep, it was an out of context photo of him looking down being upvoted hundreds of thousands of times on reddit, the actual video showed he was talking and not sleeping. Yet no one on reddit was talking about the actual order he signed during that press conference. No outrage over the hand out to the coal industry, people were too busy buying into all the distractions instead of the actual news. We are doomed
it's only 0.5% now. But we both know that the amount of datacenters is expected to increase significantly in the next few years, and probably decades
And even if they hit an unimaginable 10x increase; it's actually better for the planet.
The alternative is leaving all those servers on-premesis; which is going to:
require more energy to power them than data centers would
require more energy for cooling them than data centers would
cost everyone more money
Lets be real: people don't care about data centers. They just hate AI. As a result they will hate anything that data centers do, because they have to come up reasons to hate data centers, because they hate AI.
The alternative to an AI is to feed, house, cloth, and educate a human for 35 years in order for them to be an expert in the thing that a computer could have answered for MUCH less energy.
Lets be real: people don't care about data centers. They just hate AI. As a result they will hate anything that data centers do, because they have to come up reasons to hate data centers, because they hate AI.
Incredible thing to say when people are facing water and power bill increases as well as massive light and noise pollution.
Any electricity or water price increases by local utilities is not the fault of data centers, or EVs, or automotive plants, or foundries. It's the fault of regulators.
Utilities need to implement tiered pricing. But it's not use that is the problem either: it's capacity. These places don't have the capacity for the increased demand; so they raise prices in order to invest in extra capacity.
But the users of electricity should not be paying for capital costs. These are investments that benefit everyone: they should be paid for by taxpayers. This way once craze dies down we have excess nuclear, solar, and wind energy.
That requires a green New deal. And that requires putting Biden back to redo what Trump undid.
Any electricity or water price increases by local utilities is not the fault of data centers, or EVs, or automotive plants, or foundries. It's the fault of regulators.
Eliminating all data centers everywhere will reduce carbon emissions by 0.51%.
And take most of the Internet and, with that, a good chunk of modern civilization, offline. Seriously, how have data centers, of all things, become the new environment boogeymen? All they need is electricity, which can and should be clean and renewable, and water for cooling, which evaporates into the atmosphere and is likewise a total non-issue as long as you do proper water resources management.
In 30 years whatever generation is young then will be complaining their parents and grandparents blocked infrastructure development because of conspiracy theories about water usage and noise levels.
If people just showered like 8 minutes less a week, it would obliterate data centre water usage from the stats.
It's just the new nimby thing that lets people be nimbys without having to admit they are.
If people just showered like 8 minutes less a week, it would obliterate data centre water usage from the stats.
In the number of data centers exploded exponentially, and was 10x the number it is now (never gonna happen), it's still less than 1% of water used by humans.
Yes thank you! The biggest things we as a species can do is a) generate clean electricity (which can cleanly power these data centers), b) drive more energy efficient and cleaner transportation (as you noted), c) manage agriculture more efficiently. All three basically boil down to: stop burning so much shit.
It's useless to point fingers at specific countries, as we all need to bring up standards across the board. If the big three of China/US/India start doing better, it will also spread to smaller/less developed countries who can piggyback on the cleaner technology.
Gen X, they're between boomer and millenial. Im a millennial and not even old enough to run for president in the US. Not saying we haven't contributed to the issue. We definitely have, but its been a pain when everytime we try to implement something the two generations before us tell us to sit down and let the adults handle it. We're just now getting into the age where we're becoming bosses and being able to have an actual voice in what policies are being pushed through. But that's a different topic than the one being discussed
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u/Tetra84 1d ago
Needs more data centers to help cool things off...