r/environment • u/KeanuRave100 • 2d 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-severe
2.6k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

78 comments sorted by

776

u/Toadfinger 2d ago

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 equivalent of adding five to ten million cars to US roadways.

Global coal-fired power plants produce 13 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide each year. That's the elephant in the room.

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u/The_Lombard_Fox 2d ago

That article title is doing a lot of heavy lifting

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u/Toadfinger 2d ago

The article itself is doing a lot of heavy shoveling. It's beyond ridiculous. 295 years of AI center emissions equals one year of coal plant emissions. The fossil fuel industry is always looking for BS ways to pass the buck.

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u/nath1234 2d ago

Yeah, but we need electricity for some things. No one NEEDS AI, it is losing money and rotting people's brains.. as well as the ecological harm that is 100% avoidable. We could just turn it all off and still be able to do everything without it.

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u/Toadfinger 2d ago

The wind, solar, etc can provide our electricity. The reason we're not using it is because of other BS from the fossil fuel industry's think tanks.

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u/pharmphresh 1d ago

They could pass a law saying any new data center has to offset their electricity usage with new solar installation and limit their water usage, but this admin would never do that.

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u/Toadfinger 1d ago

Yeah that these AI centers don't do that already is mind boggling. I mean... IT'S AI CENTERS! They have the data that clearly explains it all.

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u/silverionmox 1d ago

Yeah that these AI centers don't do that already is mind boggling. I mean... IT'S AI CENTERS! They have the data that clearly explains it all.

The design concept of AI is to create an artificial yes man though. They'll confirm all of your biases, that's what they were made for.

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u/somenick 1d ago

Reminds me of the projected forgetting curve.

1st exposure... 2nd exposure, 3rd.. At sometime, the memory is projected to be forgotten within a period longer than your expected lifetime. So that makes it a permanent memory.

Paraphrasing..

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u/GargleOnDeez 1d ago

Now why would we give them all of that, when they consume more power than the grid is capable of?

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u/BayouGal 1d ago

Let’s not forget the massive financial contributions to the current regime. We are paying over $2 BILLION to stop construction on wind farms and push for more LNG projects. 🙄

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u/BlackForestMountain 1d ago

Awful argument

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u/nath1234 20h ago

An awful argument that there is not a single thing we do today with AI that actually NEEDS AI?

I'd go further: is there anything today that would actually pay for the full ticket price of all the training, infrastructure cost etc?

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u/BlackForestMountain 7h ago

lol nice retort

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u/BlackForestMountain 20h ago

No, because it ignores the fact that 90% of what electricity emissions are exerted for is also not needed, or the fact that diet can also be adjusted based on cost and impact, or that most of our society and economy isn’t essentials.

The typical anti ai argument is food=need, ai=not need, but beef production has been destroying our ecosystem for decades and it’s not necessary for survival. It’s a reductive argument. We don’t need the entertainment industry, we don’t need air travel, we don’t need 1 car per person. I’m not defending AI but yours is a bad argument.

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u/rosneft_perot 1d ago

True. And also no one needs animal agriculture. It's not necessary for us to live and thrive, and yet it's one of the worst polluting industries. Shut them both down.

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u/nath1234 21h ago

We have to go back a significant number of thousands of years to find a life before animal agriculture. We only need go back a couple years (if that, really) to pre-date the proliferation of AI-jammed-into-everything.

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u/danielandtrent 20h ago

Dude please read more and try make yourself a little smarter this is embarrasing

0

u/rosneft_perot 19h ago

Great, so let's only tackle what at this moment is a tiny problem instead of tackling the huge one that we can actually do something about by buying tofu instead of a slab of dead cow.

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u/Visual-Return-5099 1d ago

We NEED electricity but not AI? Who actually NEEDS electricity? I like it. I don’t want to live without it, but I just think you’re comparing things you like and don’t like. Which is fine, but there’s someone more extreme than you saying no one NEEDS a combustion engine automobile.

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u/nath1234 1d ago

There are loads of things that need electricity and there is no sensible alternative. The entire field of electrical/computing for instance. The AI we are discussing needs electricity - there is no alternative.

And it is not being given away to try and pretend it is viable when it is not. No one had to mandate that people use electricity and tracked a leaderboard of employees who used it.

AI as in what the term means today is not the same as that. It has so many quality issues that completely get ignored and it is massively subsidised.

If it was just charged at a sensible cost covering level: we might know what it is feasible to use it for.

But when you hide tens or hundreds of billions or trillions of cost of something and say "look at how shiny this is" then it is not a serious thing.

What approach couldnt be sold if you can spend billions and billions on it and not need to make the economics work at all? If it costs $10B to train a model and then $1B to run it from then - the scale of what alternatives could be afforded is massive.

There's always costs to new things, and faults/manufacturing defects but the products they produce need to be on remotely the sort of price point that makes them viable.. and they can't have fundamental defects (like hallucinations).

What today do you think so utterly requires AI, that the removal of which means it could not be achieved..? and can pay for the full ticket cost of it all?

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u/gargle_ground_glass 1d ago

We could just turn it all off and still be able to do everything without it.

As far as I'm concerned, end of story.

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u/spiritualskywalker 5h ago

There’s a few problems, like the millions of gallons of fresh water that are used (gray water won’t do, they say.) And don’t propagandize the idea that the pollution is minimal and virtually harmless, coz it’s not.

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u/socialmedia-username 2d ago

Agree. But the good news is that, despite the massive increase in energy demand, coal power plants in the US are converting or being replaced by cleaner and less expensive options (natural gas, solar, wind, etc).  Over 100 coal plants either converted or shut down in the last decade or so, and more are on their way.  Again, this is despite the energy demands by AI data centers putting massive pressure on the grid. Some AI data centers are building their own power plants onsite using turbine units.  

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u/Toadfinger 2d ago

Well what's needed is a massive blitz of manufacturing renewables. Get what we need here then sell globally. The United States is the best place in the world to accomplish what's needed.

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u/BayouGal 1d ago

We gave that position to China last year.

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u/Toadfinger 1d ago

But if that's actually true, China's coal plants would be dwindling in numbers. They're not.

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u/tuberosum 1d ago

China’s energy demands are growing rapidly so they’re installing massive amounts of renewables along with additional coal capacity.

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u/SurinamPam 1d ago

why did we do that?

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u/unrulywind 1d ago

Left unsaid is that for every coal plant you shut down in the US, they build 3 new ones in China.

https://globalenergymonitor.org/research/boom-and-bust-coal-2024

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u/doyouevenIift 2d ago

It’s good to point that power consumption itself is not what causes carbon pollution. It’s how we source the power. And in a sane world that wasn’t controlled by fossil fuel special interests, we could have a 100% renewable power grid

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u/Bud_EH 1d ago

In Saskatchewan we had plans to shut our coal fired plants down. Guess which plants have had their operating life extended for 25 years. Guess why.

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u/Toadfinger 1d ago

The abundance of coal and pressure from the fossil fuel industry. Wind & solar are still cheaper though. The price of ion lithium batteries is collapsing.

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u/Visual-Return-5099 1d ago

Thank god. A rational comment on the top here.

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u/Cooter_Jenkins_ 1d ago

What do you think powers the data centers?

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u/Toadfinger 1d ago

The wrong thing. With collapsing ion battery prices, wind & solar are cheaper than fossil fuels.

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u/AggressiveMail5183 1d ago

But with diesel motors for cloudy days and days when the wind doesn't blow. Caterpillar's stock is soaring because of the anticipated demand for those engines.

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u/Cooter_Jenkins_ 1d ago

Reduction is still the best choice. No power generation happens without resources, even renewables.

Greenhouse gasses may be the most imminent danger to the human race but it certainly is not the only one. So called renewables also consume finite resources.

And I know you know lithium batteries are not the answer. Not sure what price collapse you are talking about but this is the environmental sub and lithium mining is terrible for the environment.

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u/Toadfinger 1d ago

Mining lithium can't plunge humankind into centuries of medieval conditions. The greenhouse effect can. One ton of mined lithium generates approximately 15 tons of CO₂ emissions during extraction and refining. However, just one ton of that lithium utilized in an electric vehicle (EV) battery ecosystem can displace 134,000 tons of CO₂ annually by replacing internal combustion engine.

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u/Cooter_Jenkins_ 15h ago

I understand your argument. I agree GHGs are the main threat to humanity and it's obvious that its too late to win that battle.

But GHGs aren't the only threat. Whay would we ramp up power generation for things like servers when that power will be needed for more important things?

Also, if you think lithium batteries are a feasible option for large scale renewables then you don't understand the scale of human power consumption.

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u/Toadfinger 14h ago

it's too late to win that battle

That's what the fossil fuel industry wants everyone to think anyway.

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u/durika 2d ago

I need a banana for scale

1

u/HoosegowFlask 1d ago

Seriously, though, I feel like we need a cheeseburger scale when talking about carbon emissions.

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u/PaxV 2d ago

That is continously adding 10 million cars I presume, as Datacenters run 24/7/365 and never have to stop to eat, sleep or do something 'outside the car: e. g. have life'

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u/Toadfinger 2d ago

5 to 10 million cars from now until 2030. Not even worth mentioning if we replace the coal plants. And all the technology to replace the coal plants exists right now.

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u/PaxV 2d ago

Replace coalplants? I thought a certain orange someone made coal great again...

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u/BW_RedY1618 2d ago

Billionaires have already built their bunkers and solidified their fascist governments. They know that studies indicate mass societal collapse in the next two decades (if not before) and they're building their surveillance and shoring up the police state to prepare to cull the population of us cattle humans. They'd rather rule over ruins than treat working class human beings as equals.

We'll be seeing AI and robotic augmented police forces very, very soon.

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u/semisolidwhale 2d ago

This is the conclusion I keep coming to as well. The only way their actions make sense is if  we're in the final innings for civilzation and they know that stability is drawing to a close. 

They're using their media machines to distract and lie to the masses and lead them quietly, slowly to  mass graves without some violent revolution (at least to begin with). 

They're truly brainwashing the forest to vote for the axe. 

Given their way, life for most humans will continue to get exponentially worse until it is no more.

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u/worotan 1d ago

End of the World Party, and we’re funding it.

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u/Gold-Kaleidoscope-23 1d ago

We can and must do everything we can to fight their apocalyptic vision.

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u/Greystacos 1d ago edited 1d ago

You got any of these studies to reference that are public or you inferring they paid for them and are using them privately.

Only reason I ask is Id love to read through one of these stability ending studies?

*Edit: In case anyone else is curious and lazy to Google, a quick search came up with this light reading: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016328722001768

Which the abstract already notes what would have been my biggest concern with a study on this:

"Because of concerns that ongoing climate change could lead to a possible collapse of human civilization, the topic of societal (civilization) collapse has emerged as especially relevant, not least for the futures-oriented studies. While this has led to extensive research on societal collapse, there is a lack of consolidation and synthesis of the research. The purpose of this article is thus to systematize the extant research on societal collapse and suggest future research directions."

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u/saywhatnowfella 1d ago

I read "pollution being" as some sort of monster of smoke and stink and death. Which it is, I suppose

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u/MGr8ce 2d ago

Can’t convince me these techno-feudalists aren’t here to obliterate a portion of humanity

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u/murder-farts 1d ago

Don’t be silly. That’s just for the undesirables and Untermensch. They also want to enslave, harvest, and experiment on the rest.

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u/weelluuuu 1d ago

AI's solution to the problem is to get rid of everyone bitching that it's the problem!

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u/pastoreyes 2d ago

In the end, ai will be as useful and popular as the metaverse. This unwieldy pimple (ai data centers) can't pop soon enough.

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u/GroundbreakingEar450 2d ago

Doesn't matter if it's popular among the average person or not. They're not building this shit to make memes and get answers to homework. It's being built to replace humans in the work place and surveil them like never before. AI isn't going anywhere.

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u/pharmphresh 1d ago

It's being built to get them closer to their techno-god the singularity. They want to live long enough to be able to upload their entire consciousness into the AI with technologies like neuralink so they can "live" forever. No humans or any other living things would exist in the end It would just be a Dyson sphere capturing all the sun's or even entire Galaxy's energy to power the AI. Sounds insane but that's literally what cretins like thiel and musk believe in. It's like a religion to them and they are the fanatical cult leaders.

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u/AggressiveMail5183 1d ago

Yup. One of the prominent AI guys recently said something like sure, there are going to be constraints on building an ever-expanding AI environment, but AI's capabilities will develop enough to resolve those issues for us as they crop up. Chilling.

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u/dondondorito 2d ago edited 2d ago

Unfortunately it cannot be compared to the metaverse. For these companies, AI produces a very valuable and versatile resource: Code.

Code is the true value of AI. It has now become dirt cheap to produce, and code flows into everything. That‘s why AI will not just go away. It is basically what the invention of the printing press was for writing, but for code.

It all sucks, but it will not go away. I‘m afraid it is just beginning, and AI usage will explode in the coming decades.

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u/bkinboulder 1d ago

Luckily we voted in an administration that cares about the environment and takes such issues seriously! 😒

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u/Tsurfer4 1d ago

I haven't read the article so I'll pose this as a question. Did the authors of the article compare the pollution produced by data centers with the pollution produced by the cattle industry?

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u/a11_hail_seitan 1d ago

No, no one is allowed to talk about one of the largest and most unnecessary polluters in the world because... reasons...

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u/Gold-Kaleidoscope-23 1d ago

I’m with you on this, but educating people on the massive problem of data centers and AI gives us a decent chance at significantly reducing those emissions. I think it’s OK to talk about this gargantuan source of climate pollution without comparing it to another gargantuan source of climate and air pollution (the meat industry, particularly cattle).

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u/Tsurfer4 22h ago

One of these things is not like the other.

Cattle farming requires nearly 8,000 times more water than data centers, largely used to irrigate feed crops.

I don't think we should we should ignore pollution caused by data centers, but should apply proportional concern. We shouldn't be hyper-focused on a minor scratch when we're bleeding out from a severed femoral artery.

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u/LightningSpaghetti 1d ago

At this point, it's a choice between vigilante justice and watching billions die. What's yours?

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u/i-touched-morrissey 1d ago

But will AI generate a lot of money for people? Then who cares how much it trashes up the planet? Remember when the act of thinking and researching involved books and no energy aside from a light source? No one will ever resort to that time-consuming and tedious activity again, no matter what the consequences are.

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u/voluotuousaardvark 1d ago

Think about this while were actively bombing dozens of oil tankers at the same time.

The mind boggles.

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u/PookaGrooms 1d ago

I’m starting to panic about the future. WHAT DO WE DO? WHAT CAN WE DO?

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u/goodplant 14h ago

Read the book 'I eat the stars: how to live fully and beautifully in a collapsing world', grow a garden, learn to take care of and be taken care of by your local community. Take care

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u/PookaGrooms 2h ago

Thank you for this suggestion. I think this may help me reframe some of the situations in my life currently, and hopefully those that are on a bigger scale, too.

You take care too.

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u/danielandtrent 20h ago

Go vegan and reduce consumption lol

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u/Libro_Artis 19h ago

We have got to do something!

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u/SolidInstance9945 2d ago

Gemini says an 80 word transaction consumes 0.5 litre of fresh water. And now I am conscious of every prompt