Discussion
Google's emissions are up over 50%, Amazon builds huge data centers powered by 75% natural gas.
Remember all those posts telling us that "AIs climate impact isn't that bad" supported by some really funky math/perspective and/or numbers Sam Altman invented?
Here's the actual impact.
"AI" is a fossil fuel technology.
i'm surprised the municipal electricity can just ramp up like that
Know this fact: they've been reading your mail for 20 years now unless you've been smart enough to cancel them, and now everything they do is powered by AI.
Now wtf is with this gmail?
I absolutely do not exchange mail with people who self sabotage by using #Google. #gmail
the weather that affects people the most is not becoming more extreme or more dangerous; temperatures were higher in the 1930s than today; between 1895 and 2015, 14 of the top 15 years with the highest heat records occurred before 1960; the temperatures we are experiencing now in 2021 were the same as 120 years ago
quotetoot: Jun 25, 2025, 10:21 AM
(p.s., Mastodon: end the anal BS around #quotetoots, enough!)
We definately should change the name of 'natural gas' since it's misleading.
LNG is tons more poluting then normal gas.
Cause on aggregate AI is adding a ton of additional emissions
It is called methane.
Is AI polluting? Of course! Wasteful? Of course!
Because we're only building so much renewables per year, and had the AI bullshit not consumed that capacity, that capacity could have displaced capacity from worse sources. Without AI, we'd still install the same amount of renewables capacity.
The AI energy consumption isn't that bad.
Read the numbers yourself. The actual numbers vs baselines, not the percentage word salad.
These numbers are all percentages of percentages with goalposts moving back and forth all the time. It's fakery and number juggling that impresses folks who have difficulties balancing their budget, much less global emissions values.
Whoa! 11 Million tons of CO2... That's huge!
It's about 0.2% of global carbon emissions.
Terrible!
Also, it's google, half of those racks do your work for you when you "write" your googlitcles.
DATA CENTRES CONSUME POWER !
Call the wahOHMbulance!
50% of datacenters are your Facebook's, iclouds and your precious self hosted shit.
Where do you think Fediverse lives?
In wooden cabin basements?
Powered by gerbils treadmills and fairies?
Just about the only legitimate critique of AI energy excesses is its agregious use of water.
And even there there is a room for dramatization as water use vs water consumption.
Quick, what's the difference without googling?
Anything else is dishonest scaremongering by journalist terrified they will be replaced by 2000 lines of code and a terabyte of a multidimensional vector tree.
50% percent of journalistic integrity was reduced by 75% growth in their fawning subservience to the oligarchs who own the media and are now backpedling for any sort of relevancy at projected 200% of estimates of loss of consequent public trust.
/eyeroll
Missing actual impact in meaningful global context. We can do better.
Data centers accounted for around 1.5% of the world’s electricity consumption in 2024.
Data centers will use twice as much energy by 2030 — driven by AI use... but that's just 10% of global electricity demand 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘁𝗵 to 2030, less than the share from industrial motors, air conditioning in homes and offices, or electric vehicles.
Good news for the European Union and it's future with AI
"With its decarbonized, abundant electricity supply, expanding high-voltage electric grid and more than 30 ready-to-use, low-carbon AI sites throughout the country, France is poised to become one of the world’s greenest leaders in artificial intelligence."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulhsieh/2025/02/28/when-medical-ai-starts-getting-better-than-human-doctors/
non-fossile fuels are only carbon-neutral, after emitted carbon-dioxide is again bound in wood or other plants.
When the Saudis are throwing $100 billion at products no one wants... AI, cryptocurrency, state surveillance
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/05/13/trump-tech-execs-riyadh/
https://thebulletin.org/2025/06/trumps-ai-gamble-in-the-gulf-doesnt-put-america-first/
Tech oligarchs got that flood of investment by promising that fossil fuels would never be phased out, no matter the urgency.
https://www.desmog.com/2025/04/22/ai-energy-demand-can-keep-fossil-fuels-alive-tech-backers-promise-worlds-two-biggest-oil-producers/
While #nuclearenergy is not #fossil it not #green at all - but #colonial , #deadly & totally unfair because, like in AI, the #profits are being privatised, the costs are hitting the whole #society & the #planet
But from the point of view of someone believing in #cybernetics or one of its #TESCREAL grandchildren it is great - because in cybernetics EVERY problem will be solved in "the future" by "technology"
Well, not everyone. Some by choice, some by not having access
And nuclear is only low in CO2 if you find a ready build nuclear power plant and a store of ready-to-use nuclear fuel
And do not take any of the storage/treatment of waste into your calculation
And… much more
Nuclear is deadly. And shifts responsibility to later generation that were not asked nor do they profit
We do not even have a form of communication that can exist as long as nuclear is deadly
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