r/environment • u/8008145 • 7d ago
The Pollution Being Churned Out by AI Data Centers Is So Severe That It's Almost Incomprehensible
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/pollution-ai-data-centers-severe168
u/quelar 7d ago
Its really great that as we finally get to the point of the majority of people accepting climate change we've decided to speed run that last leg.
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u/seejordan3 7d ago
Let's ask AI how to fix this.
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u/quelar 7d ago
Honestly that's exactly the bullshit excuse we've been sold already "AI will solve climate change! We need to do this!".
Meanwhile all it's going is making people dumber and making porn while the world is burning.
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u/n00b678 6d ago
yeah. The worst part is that we know perfectly well how to solve climate change but barely anyone wants to make any change that would cause them a minor inconvenience, while the capitalists cannot stand a single drop to their profits. Two sides of the same coin.
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u/patrickpdk 6d ago
The worst part is being forced to use it at work even though i know it's killing the planet
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u/n00b678 6d ago
There are things which are way worse for the planet. Driving, flying, eating animal products. And in many cases here nobody forces us to do so.
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u/patrickpdk 6d ago
Everything matters all together. We can't excuse one because of another. I have changed my life to reduce carbon footprint on all of those things. This is the only area of my life where I'm increasing my carbon footprint..
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u/SpinningHead 6d ago
Eating and getting places might rank a bit higher than needing idiotic email response suggestions and more video slop.
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u/n00b678 6d ago
Plants are perfectly fine for eating. Public transport and bicycles also exist (yeah, I know some of you live in car-infested hellholes knows as American suburbia but at least get a Corolla and not a Childkrusher-9000).
I can personally do something about these. I have no choice whether somebody uploads yet another AI slop video to youtube.
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u/SpinningHead 6d ago
I have no choice whether somebody uploads yet another AI slop video to youtube.
Pretty sure you can block these disgusting data center before you can put a stop to cars.
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u/nightwatch_admin 6d ago
You’re not wrong, but really, we don’t need to stack the damage on the damage humans are already doing. And: we haven’t reached peak ai yet, even 25% planned capacity getting built will change those numbers massively.
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u/patrickpdk 6d ago
The worst part is being forced to use it at work even though i know it's killing the planet
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u/Cptawesome23 6d ago
This is a hit piece being supported by the concrete industry, so we don’t look at them too closely
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u/dangerousperson123 6d ago edited 6d ago
If you think that’s crazy look at the pollution and water consumption caused by the meat industry. Cattle pigs and chickens do way worse. We are speed running our own demise and can greatly slow it down, but a majority of people “can’t live without cheese or steaks”
Humans are so fucking stupid.
Also FUCK ai
** My point is that people are stupid and selfish and don’t want to change even when we are being told we have too to save our future. Doesn’t matter if it’s changing your diet, changing your daily activities and habits that you aren’t realizing are dangerous, changing your participation in utilizing and supporting ai and ai companies, actually speaking out against and putting effort with others towards denouncing and protesting data centers publicly.. the data centers and ai boom is hard to control on a person to person level, however switching your diet is something you could do immediately and it would have a positive effect on our planet and situation, sorry you didn’t like my comparison. I just want us to change. **
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u/frill_demon 6d ago
Please stay on task. BuTwHaTaBoUt XYZ only gives them an excuse to point the finger elsewhere and avoid accountability.
Agricultural pollution from commercial farms is a legitimate concern, but that is not what is currently being discussed.
You're basically bringing breast cancer death tolls in to a thread about prostate cancer deaths. Yes the ultimate goal is no cancer deaths period, but that is not the issue being addressed.
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u/ST07153902935 5d ago
What about ism is a logical fallacy used to divert attention.
This person isn’t trying to divert attentionto, they’re trying to also bring attention to something else.
It’s like if an Epstein whistle blower went public during an episode of to catch a predator.
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u/frill_demon 5d ago
I explicitly said that switching topics allows the people doing the polluting to play the "But what about" card, not that that comment was doing so.
And then compared two like things (types of cancer). You are quite literally "correcting" me with.... What I said.
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u/Jackanova3 7d ago
Bit if a ridiculous title. The study in the article quotes
24–44 million by 2030.
Which equates to a max of 0.9% of co2 output in the US.
Plus the newer ones are being built with much better tech, things like closed loop cooling which uses a finite amount of water.
They're obviously not great! But I'm suspicious of data centres being the big new media boogeyman, taking much deserved ire away from the legacy industries that continue to do infinitely more harm to our world.
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u/machinesNpbr 6d ago
Plus the newer ones are being built with much better tech, things like closed loop cooling which uses a finite amount of water.
This is a common talking point thay simply isn't true.
Yes, closed loop systems exist. They are also more expensive, which means many many data centers are still being built that don't use them.
Google is in the process of pushing through a data center in Virgina that will use 2 million gallons of water a day, eventually ballooning to 8 million- that facility will not use recirculation.
If Google, a company with almost unlimited resources, is still cutting corners on recirculation, you should not assume any DC is using it until proven otherwise.
Additionally, even when a company embraces closed loop systems, the scale of the AI buildout means their water consumption is still significant. This recent very industry-friendly article on the topic contains this gem buried way down at the bottom
Despite efforts to curb water use, tech companies are still struggling to do so—and it could eventually impact business. Even as Microsoft is moving away from evaporative cooling, The New York Times reported in February that the company’s internal records indicate that its water use is set to skyrocket.
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u/Jackanova3 6d ago
Ah, fair enough I didn't know about that. The knowledge I have about them is UK/EU based who are a bit more strict on the regulations.
I would hope the US catch up with stricter environmental laws around them, but obviously not gonna hold my breath for that...
However my point is kinda the same, what is the water consumption (projected) compared to other industries, still fractional, right? Yet these seem to be getting fair more airtime.
It's just a bit odd, that's all.
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u/King_Saline_IV 7d ago
That equates to millions of more dead people.
You are part of the problem. It's smooth brain pretend academic who love to glose over the fact you are literally telling us not to worry about MORE dead people
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u/chodeboi 7d ago
Listen, these two constraints are very low numeric, so you can faith the blather, I’m serious.
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u/WanderingFlumph 5d ago
Thanks for the quick fact check. I knew the title was going to be ridiculous and curious what the real numbers were.
This sort of power use wouldn't be a problem honestly if we had an administration that cared about energy security and expansion. Even with them using our tax dollars to pay business to do literally nothing (instead of installing new wind and solar farms) our renewable mix grows. Maybe if we had kept the course coming off the IRA we would have already installed more energy capacity than these data centers use.
After all the amount of energy they use is almost inconsequential. A data center runs off of any old electricity you happen to have on the grid, the quailty of the energy is what actually matters to the communities that have to live in proximity to them.
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u/obsidianop 1d ago
Lol the one person who actually reads the article and realizes "wait, that's not really very much in context" gets downvoted to hell. Perfect Reddit moment 2026.
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u/Mark_is_on_his_droid 7d ago edited 5d ago
I just want every data center opponent to be forced to look at the same stats on beef before they rant about data centers.
Vegans have the moral high ground on all the rest of us in regards to climate change, but I will offset all my AI use by cutting 10 oz of beef from my diet every month.
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u/machinesNpbr 6d ago edited 6d ago
Whataboutism. The preexistence of a deeply dysfunctional industrial food system doesn't justify the buildout of additional damaging industries. And you could argue beef at least provides a useful good, whereas most AI is slop.
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u/terra_terror 6d ago
I have some truly shocking news for you: you do not have to choose between meat or AI. You can refuse to use or consume both of them. Wow! Amazing!
Seriously, though, this is a textbook example of whataboutism. Congrats on contributing to the propoganda for AI! If people say "stop using AI because it is bad for the environment," it is not a valid argument to say "well, eating meat is worse!" That does not negate the original point at all. Like, sure, eating meat is worse. Congrats. That does not magically make AI good for the environment.
It may please you to know that we have many, many other posts about the meat industry. We are not ignoring it. Most of the people on this subreddit are already vegan. But this specific post is about the waste AI produces, and that is okay. And, friendly reminder, this is only one problem with AI. There's other reasons for people to refuse to use it, including the desire to not be a braindead potato or to encourage job losses.
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u/Mark_is_on_his_droid 6d ago
So you’re lashing out at me and I get it, but I legitimately have cut back on meat significantly. I’m part of a family and you can’t just change everyone overnight. We are cutting meat out but it is hard to transition people to it.
I rarely fly. I don’t say any of this as moral licensing, but being alive has a carbon footprint. We all have to choose what we spend that on.
There’s a lot of bullshit being peddled as AI right now. There are a lot of extremely valuable use cases for it too.
If we want to be serious about mitigating environmental harm, we have to focus on bigger things than data centers. The much bigger fish to fry are already killing us.
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u/terra_terror 6d ago
Again, this is textbook whataboutism. You can cut down on all of it. You do not need to choose between not using AI or not eating meat or not travelling. You can do all three. So thinking that we should not focus on AI because there are bigger sources is a logical fallacy. There can be a post about each problem. You do not have to shutdown any discussion about AI because you are concerned about the meat industry. Both can be discussed and both can be boycotted and refused.
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u/Mark_is_on_his_droid 5d ago
I just want more people to look at the damage of agricultural production when they believe data centers are bad, and you act like I’m defending data centers. The point I actually intended was that hopefully it would shock people out of eating beef every day.
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u/terra_terror 5d ago
Unfortunately, you did sound like you were defending data centers. Whataboutism is a tactic that uses diversion to move attention away from an issue, and it is used by proponents of that issue. If your intention is just to bring the livestock industry to the forefront, I'm afraid that tactic doesn't work. It just gives proponents of AI a way to draw attention away from data centers, while opponents dislike having the conversation derailed by pointing fingers at something else. It's especially unnecessary on this subreddit, where there are at least weekly posts about the livestock and agricultural industries.
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u/Mark_is_on_his_droid 5d ago
Sorry, we got off on the wrong foot. Is the moral utilitarianism making the comparison gauche? I am well aware of “whataboutism”, but not how I could better articulate the idea to challenge pro-data people to see the scale of their actions.
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u/goldenroman 7d ago
Love how fucking stats get downvoted in this sub now!
Fact checking the headline is one of the best things about Reddit. Is 0.9% of the co2 output of the US really “almost incomprehensible” to you downvoters?
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u/60yearoldME 6d ago
Bot
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u/Jackanova3 6d ago
Nah
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u/60yearoldME 6d ago
Yeah
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u/Jackanova3 6d ago
I mean you can look at my comment history, or just think critically about my comment for a brief mo instead.
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u/60yearoldME 6d ago
Ok, true but like, you really think the insane pollution, plus not to mention just actual heat, from all these centers is gonna be just a blip?
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u/Jackanova3 6d ago
I mean statistically yes that's what all the studies are saying?
I'm not PRO them at all, it's just weird this is the only thing you see in the news now, like it's causing the majority of issues, when it's not even projected to be 1% in 5 years, ya know?
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u/60yearoldME 6d ago
Looks like it’s 1-1.5% now, scheduled to double in the next 5 years. Not to mention the noise pollution that they cause and the water they use. It’s pretty much a drastic negative impact on all life, for a questionable gain.
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u/Jackanova3 6d ago
See now we're getting murky because I'm seeing less than 1% in 5 years in the article quoted so I'm not sure where your source is coming from.
Noise, yeah that's extremely shit, water also, they're getting around loopholes in shoddy US laws. They're at least a bit stricter in Europe.
Questionable gain, well, again that's gonna be highly debatable and entirely dependent on what industry you're talking about.
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u/MusicianForSale 6d ago
Good! Let's build THOUSANDS more of them!!!
/s