A bubble popping doesnt mean the tech goes away, it just means corporate restructuring and people losing their savings.

So, no, I doubt it would have a meaningful impact.

any economic slowdown lowers emissions, yes.

No, under Capitalism emissions too often act like inflation. You might hit a lower number than originally thought, but that's not the same as the total number decreasing over time.

Capitalism is about infinitely growing the economy. Inflation measures that increase. So when the inflation rate drops, they mean, the rate OF INCREASE dropped (meaning didn't increase as fast but still increased).

The same thing generally happens with emissions most of the time. AI data centers that exist will still exist, but rather than being used for AI some other function would be found, either as server space, or online gaming, subscription services, research departments, mapping/processing centers. There'll be other uses.

During the bubble, other industries will have grown their emissions, covering over any fall.

Without mass switching to green energy in multiple countries/industries at once, we won't see a genuine drop. Here's the world's emissions graphed:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/thumbnail/ghg-emissions-by-world-region.png?imType=og

The "drops" last in the range of months before the yearly trend of an increasing continues up. There appears to be a plateau but the global south's developing nations are still able to erase that progress as their manufacturing bases grow.

Even if we switch to green energy, emissions will just dip, then continue back up at a slower rate, because Capitalism will find new growth industries - that's the problem and why defrowth is so important.

The question is, how much? There's the stopping of the actual power use. But since AI is now ingrained in everything, what kind of backlash will that cause, and how will it affect emissions? Lots of variables. Maybe overall they go back up if everyone gets pulled back into working like before. Or maybe something else happens and productivity drops, income drops, shipping and production drops, etc.

Not likely. AI data center hype is just the latest chapter in a long series of data center expansions.

If every AI company closed up shop tomorrow (not likely), the existing data centers would just be repurposed for some other use, otherwise it's just leaving money on the table.

No, the methane in the bubble is a greenhouse gas

It would initiate the expansion of supercooled matter and antimatter, which in turn would cause said matter to turn into hot and dense plasma, but my math could be off.

yes if all the ai datacenters becomes defunct due to the collapse.

lower it over very recent heightened levels. likely not. someone will buy the data centers at the least. stop the faster increasing. maybe.

Remember the bitcoin bubble? Remember the IT bubble?

yes

All I know is I'll be making a whole lot of emissions if it happens