The Pollution Being Churned Out by AI Data Centers Is So Severe That It's Almost Incomprehensible

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.

.9% from a single source is RIDICULOUS though

Ok how much is beef farming accountable for

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.

Well, sure, but when everyone loses their fucking minds about the tiniest thing, that even requires us to buy all the lies from billionaires about how much the build out will be, while having never done anything about the biggest thing they could personally change, it starts sounding mightily hypocritical.

It seems like the personal responsibility to boycott polluting and unnecessary industries is limited to whatever doesn’t require any personal effort from the person speaking.

Napkin math:

• 40% of americans are very or extremely concerned about AIs environmental impact
• To save 34 million tonnes of CO2e, you need about 5.2 million vegans from now until 2030
• So only 5% of ONLY the complainers would need to go vegan to make up for this “tremendous” impact
• That’s 2% of all americans

That’s the thing we’re even attacking random strangers online for. The thing that we pretend is going to bring about the end times. But sure, veganism is the extreme position…

By the way, what other resources are we saving?

• Water — about 8.8 trillion gallons (~33 billion m³)
• Land — around 1–1.5 million acres of forest/land
• Animals — roughly 8 billion animals including fish and shellfish

More than one thing can be bad.

Why don’t we do both? Less AI, Less Meat

Also, I’m not American, don’t insult me by assuming I’m one

Or, just eat less meat and you can still have AI

So less food variety and I get trash for the trade, are you the White run merchant buying any random crap the Dragonborn drags in by any chance?

Listen, I didn’t say you can’t ever eat meat. Just eat a single patty hamburger instead of a double. It’s not less food variety, it’s called not gorging yourself on things that are bad for your heart health.

Dude I barely eat half the time, regardless it’s a piss poor trade given how AI is quite literally worthless to me. It could disappear tomorrow and I wouldn’t notice if no one talked about it at least for the shit that these data centers are for. For all the resources dumped into this dumbfuck AI race we could’ve done damned near anything else and have gotten more value for it with a fraction of the economic and environmental cost, even a bridge to nowhere has better utility.

So how’s bout we go down the have no AI and do literally anything else bargain.

It’s useless to you, but not to other people. Libraries are useless to me because I pirate books, but I’m not going to say it’s a waste