Now your emails and memes are destroying the planet
AI data centres eat grids for breakfast
By Jo Nova
So you hit “Reply All” and ten years later the heatwaves begin. You know it makes sense — the global cloud is full of cat videos, and storing the code that made Socks sing Bohemian Catsody in a million emails requires another data centre. And as the old copies accumulate the “dark data” that no one looks at piles up. And those servers need electricity.
If only we had cheap reliable, renewable energy sources that worked 24 hours a day, we wouldn’t have to worry, would we? But data centers that only work when the wind blows are not much use to anyone (except maybe Hillary and Hunter). But the awful truth is that the more data we store the more CO2 we produce. Thus in the cult of climate change, the O-so-human quest to connect needs to be suppressed so we can cool the world by a thousandth of a degree in 2143.
Anyone who liked humans would just say “build a nuclear plant”. (Anyone who liked plants would say “build a coal one”). That would solve it. But here we are in the modern era and professors are effectively telling us that our emails are killing koalas.
https://joannenova.com.au/2024/08/now-your-emails-and-memes-are-destroying-the-planet/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=now-your-emails-and-memes-are-destroying-the-planet
