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Comment by grafmax

6 months ago

Not just bills. These data centers, a major driver of new energy use, are contributing to climate change. Sadly it seems to be another way for large companies to offload externalities onto the public.

14 comments

grafmax

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kolinko  6 months ago

Are they? IIRC MS & Google were running on carbon neutral sources.

  • aurareturn  6 months ago 

      Are they? IIRC MS & Google were running on carbon neutral sources.

    It's like saying "our crypto mining energy is carbon neutral" but ignoring the fact that if the carbon neutral energy is going into crypto mining, it's not going into something more useful. If crypto mining buys all the carbon neutral energy sources, then those sources aren't being used by other industries.

    We have limited carbon neutral energy production.

  • rambojohnson  6 months ago

    Carbon neutrality doesn’t refill a drained reservoir used to cool off these machines. Running your servers on wind power doesn’t make the millions of gallons they’re dumping into cooling systems any less gone.

    • arghwhat  6 months ago

      The water cycle refills drained reservoirs - the "carbon cycle" is not one we want to be part of.

      Also note that there's other cooling solutions than evaporative cooling, such as closed loop water cooling with chillers, cooling with sea water, using heat pumps to redirect the heat to district heating loops (making use of the heat!), just building in colder places requiring less cooling, etc.

  • cma  6 months ago

    Google stopped claiming "operational carbon neutrality" shortly after the release of chatgpt.

rambojohnson  6 months ago

To say nothing of the exorbitant amount of water used to cool these machines, we’re on track to face a water shortage crisis long before any other climate change impact.

  • arghwhat  6 months ago

    Water availability is a regional climate change impact, which does not apply everywhere due to differences in water sourcing and weather patterns and how climate change affects these.

    It's very stupid to evaporate potable water on purpose in dry regions, but note that many numbers in this area are highly sensationalized by taking e.g. the maximum design capacity of the cooling system instead of the actual load, and that there are several other cooling solutions. Most proper facts die tragic deaths before they make it to mainstream news media. :/

    • grafmax  6 months ago

      Many of the reports are not sensationalized, but based on the companies’ own reporting of water usage. Water is preferred for cooling the dense data centers needed for AI - other methods are inadequate. And 2/3rds of new data centers in the US are built in water-stressed areas.

      While some reports may be sensationalized we deceive ourselves if we conclude that the water scarcity problem as a mirage. It’s a real problem.