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[–] 137 points 2 months ago (17 children)

Cornell researchers found that at the current rate of AI growth, the burgeoning industry could represent 24 to 44 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions by 2030

The United States emitted 4.9 billion tonnes of CO₂ in 2024.

So by 2030 the AI industry CO2 release might be 0.9% of total US emissions.

That 'almost' in "Almost Incomprehensible" is doing a lot of work there.

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  • [–] 70 points 2 months ago

    I've said it before and I'll say it again.

    I love Lemmy math nerds and honestly appreciate how there's always at least one to put things in perspective for those of us who worked really fucking hard to get a C in college algebra. Cheers.

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  • [–] 25 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    Consider how rapidly they have been built, and the capitalists’ plans to make many many more. Now also consider the state of the planet’s ecology and the already terrible effects of climate change.

    To me, it’s incomprehensible that regular people haven’t already revolted against the death spiral the capitalist class has put us on.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Can you name a moment in time when regular people did stand in solidarity and revolt against something that wasn’t already at the point of causing them grave, direct, unavoidable, and consistent harm?

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  • [–] 17 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    To me it seems the root of the problem is that humanity depends on fossil fuels for energy.

    AI data centers are just one of many things contributing to CO2 emisions.

    Lond tsory short, humanity needs to start getting it's energy from non CO2 emmiting sources (solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear).

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago

    "AI data centers are just one of many things contributing to CO2 emisions."

    A useful perspective is to reverse how we frame the causative logic here; the fossil fuel industry is contributing to the AI data centre madness. There's a lot of evidence of fossil fuel executives and lobbyists pushing for AI because it helps to justify their existence in a world where renewable energy isn't just cleaner, it's cheaper.

    What this means is that we have two problems to solve when it comes to CO2 emissions:

    • Humanity's apparent level of dependence on fossil fuels, when accounting for deliberately wasteful endeavours like mega data centres. and
    • Humanity's actual level of dependence on fossil fuels. This is higher than it should be and requires some changes to society to improve, but it's not nearly as high as it might seem at a glance.

    These are both problems we need to solve, but the method is different for esch

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  • [–] 35 points 2 months ago (5 children)

    .9% from a single source is RIDICULOUS though

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  • [–] 23 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    Ok how much is beef farming accountable for

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  • [–] 44 points 2 months ago*

    A huge amount too, 37.9%

    But more than one thing can be bad a time, a novel idea, I know

    And how many beef farms are there compared to data centers? A lot of a lot more.

    If a tiny amount of physical space can do such a large amount of pollution, that's a worry, when the plan is to increase the amount of them.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    I'm sure that my argument isn't bullet-proof, but raping animals, raising their babies based on the profit you can make out of processing their corpses and running an endless ad cycle and bribe system aimed at making people want to participate in and perpetrate this practice of cynical violence on sentient beings doesn't scale well.

    PS: I'm not even a vegetarian, but the argument may be unpleasant in terms of form, not of content.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    Listen, an AI waifu is worth the increased speed of destruction to the planet.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (2 children)

    You: "How much will this speed up our doom?"

    Your waifu: "Calculating… oh, it's actually less than 1%."

    tears in your eyes the Old Yeller soundtrack starts playing

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (1 child)

    I probably should have /s this comment. I don't have or want at AI waifu. If I'm wrong please say so, but it sounds like you're nbd'ing AI waifus because they aren't the worst offender.

    P.S. Please cite ya sources for this 1% number.

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