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Microsoft latest report shows 25% emissions raised due to AI data centers
Datacentres drive up big tech's carbon emissions to a third of those of France
21–30 of 121 posts
Re: Datacentres drive up big tech's carbon emissions to a third of those of France
#22But... Datacenters don't burn anything, right? Powerplants do and we try to switch all the transport and heating and whatever to be electric. So the answer is to build the damb nuclear power and a lot of it and price CO2 emissions at the actual cost of sucking the thing back out if the atmosphere
> price CO2 emissions at the actual cost of sucking the thing back out if the atmosphere This is the only relevant bit actually. The rest will follow from there. And in principle, at least in Europe, we already have some mechanisms to do this. We'd "just" have to up the prices. BUT of course with the right wing on the advance, and with them having identified basic physics (i.e. climate change) as a culture war terrai…
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Re: Datacentres drive up big tech's carbon emissions to a third of those of France
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know that market, and people for that matter don't care, but the environmentalist in me questions the word "needs" in the context of using AI.
I'd be more OK with it if prices weren't subsidized so much and people actually had to pay to ask opus how to pee, then maybe we would realize we don't need beefier models for everything
The fact is, you wouldn’t be okay with the real prices as well. All indications point to opus not being subsidised but having huge margins.
GLM 5.2 is not subsidised - it is an Opus tier model that costs a small fraction. I doubt you would be okay and all problems would suddenly vanish.
Re: Datacentres drive up big tech's carbon emissions to a third of those of France
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
The solution is simple: require datacenters to overprovision solar panels and grid-scale batteries for themselves, and use that capacity to strengthen the grid and transition off of hydrocarbons.
You can’t get a grid tie for those panels in most of the US right now. The process for connecting to the grid is done serially, and requires a large study for any new generation.
No idea what you're talking about. My local utility lit up 100MW of solar over the last year alone. Everywhere I look is doing the same.
Re: Datacentres drive up big tech's carbon emissions to a third of those of France
#25But... Datacenters don't burn anything, right? Powerplants do and we try to switch all the transport and heating and whatever to be electric. So the answer is to build the damb nuclear power and a lot of it and price CO2 emissions at the actual cost of sucking the thing back out if the atmosphere
They do have a growing amount of Scope 1 emissions (emissions from their on site sources) which originally was primarily on site diesel but due to grid interconnect delays have been growing number of on site gas turbines.
This certainly wouldn’t be necessary with adequate generation and transmission capacity.
Re: Datacentres drive up big tech's carbon emissions to a third of those of France
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know that market, and people for that matter don't care, but the environmentalist in me questions the word "needs" in the context of using AI.
I'd be more OK with it if prices weren't subsidized so much and people actually had to pay to ask opus how to pee, then maybe we would realize we don't need beefier models for everything
There isn't much evidence at all that inference is "subsidised" (and by whom?)
Training is quite expensive and it does look likely that the American providers have been doing that at a loss.
In any case, you can go buy a MacBook Pro M5 48GB or an AMD R9700 and run Qwen 3.6 35B-A3B (a very capable model) and the only "subsidy" is you plugging it in, and 140W is not exactly a huge amount of power (roughly 50¢ per day if you run it 24/7 at 100% load, which it is very unlikely you will).
Re: Datacentres drive up big tech's carbon emissions to a third of those of France
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
> price CO2 emissions at the actual cost of sucking the thing back out if the atmosphere This is the only relevant bit actually. The rest will follow from there. And in principle, at least in Europe, we already have some mechanisms to do this. We'd "just" have to up the prices. BUT of course with the right wing on the advance, and with them having identified basic physics (i.e. climate change) as a culture war terrai…
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If enough climate systems collapse, lots of existing farms will no longer be viable. That means famine and migration, which means war, which means lots of death. I don't know anyone who thinks we'll see extinction (outside of possible "hothouse earth" scenarios, where we become a second Venus) but societal collapse is definitely on the table. Saying this is "not scientific" would just be you not understanding the science.
Re: Datacentres drive up big tech's carbon emissions to a third of those of France
#28But... Datacenters don't burn anything, right? Powerplants do and we try to switch all the transport and heating and whatever to be electric. So the answer is to build the damb nuclear power and a lot of it and price CO2 emissions at the actual cost of sucking the thing back out if the atmosphere
They do have a growing amount of Scope 1 emissions (emissions from their on site sources) which originally was primarily on site diesel but due to grid interconnect delays have been growing number of on site gas turbines. This certainly wouldn’t be necessary with adequate generation and transmission capacity.
Which is why things like nuclear power plants, grid upgrades, hydroelectric projects, and intelligently placed wind/solar (instead of placing it due to subdisies or political concerns) should have been done a long time ago.
Re: Datacentres drive up big tech's carbon emissions to a third of those of France
#29[deleted]
Re: Datacentres drive up big tech's carbon emissions to a third of those of France
#30Pretty small if you consider the value they provide, honestly.
And they'll ride the transition to green energy for "free".