this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2024
318 points (96.5% liked)
A Boring Dystopia
9773 readers
289 users here now
Pictures, Videos, Articles showing just how boring it is to live in a dystopic society, or with signs of a dystopic society.
Rules (Subject to Change)
--Be a Decent Human Being
--Posting news articles: include the source name and exact title from article in your post title
--Posts must have something to do with the topic
--Zero tolerance for Racism/Sexism/Ableism/etc.
--No NSFW content
--Abide by the rules of lemmy.world
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
That’s a stupid reaso, but I’d buy: we should go all in on ai data centers since that’s a new economic sector that we can dominate, plus it’s less polluting than lusting after a coal industry that never was or steel that never will be again
Actually we have discovered the liquid Natural Gas plants we have been building to get more "clean" power to handle the demand for electricity is actually worse for the world and more polluting than coal! Neat right?
Also metal work will literally always be needed or what are we building all these data centers with?
Natural gas is generally converted to LNG for shipping, especially exports but also wherever pipelines are insufficient. US is a huge producer of natural gas and has hundreds of thousands of miles of natural gas pipelines. This wouldn’t be LNG.
Of course natural gas pipelines also may have leaks and methane is much worse for climate change than CO2 (but for shorter time). However we have been making progress on monitoring and repairs
Predictably increased power usage may also drive investment in renewable energy, shortening the life of polluting power. Regardless, AI is likely much less polluting than say cement or steel production