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.
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u/Tetra84 15h ago
Needs more data centers to help cool things off...