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Climate goals go up in smoke as US datacenters turn to coal
- pewpewp 1y agoMore reason to ditch big companies and self-host
- jairuhme 1y agoHow does self hosting change the power consumption? Don't you still need to power those devices? If you're running fully on renewable, sure you have a point. But if everyone self hosts, the power companies still have to fill the energy gap, right?
- zahlman 1y agoFor one thing, if you switch from cloud to local storage, that avoids the need for the actual bandwidth, which requires energy.
- imoverclocked 1y agoMy usage of stuff often correlates to the sun being in the sky; By hosting things at my house my power consumption roughly maps to my solar output. I can also get away with no powered cooling for my gear. ie: I need cooling well before my gear does.
- zahlman 1y ago> I need cooling well before my gear does. Well, that does make sense with your username.... (And it's been pointed out to me before that there's a "Zalman" company making computer cooling equipment! What a coincidence.)
- cyberax 1y agoThe new datacenter spending is not for hosting. It's almost exclusively for AI.
- PaulKeeble 1y agoWe just passed 1.5C, we will almost certainly pass 2C by about 2035 and its going to be catastrophic. Far from decreasing CO2 emissions we are not only continuing to increase but doing so at an increasing rate. We will be extinct a large number of species on the planet at this rate, likely 50% or more and we run the real risk of collapsing civilisation if we don't change urgently. But we sure did make a great profit on those datacentres so worth it to destroy the planets habitats.
- helpisavailable 1y ago[dead]
- levocardia 1y agoI would bet a very large amount of money that we will not have climate change induced civilizational collapse by 2050. Or 2100, if I'm around to see it.
- Analemma_ 1y agoThere are a bunch of confident predictions like yours that I feel ignore higher-order effects. Climate change won't make the earth uninhabitable, but it will cause more frequent droughts and other disasters, driving up food prices and causing a lot more climate migration from poor countries, which is already causing fatal societal autoimmune reactions in much of the first world. Additionally, for a while I thought the stories about people deciding not to have children because of climate change were an exaggeration, but it's now widespread enough that it's clearly a real trend which will probably accelerate as climate change drives CoL up further, which in turn is a huge headwind on civilization. I think I would take the opposite side of your bet, maybe not at even odds but not at terrible ones either.
- eldaisfish 1y agowho is and where are "we"? This is an incredibly short sighted and ignorant view. If you live close to the equator, the climate is visibly changing and is becoming borderline deadly.
- testaburger 1y agobeing realistic given the current administration, the best avenue for those that care about climate change would be to lobby their representatives for nuclear and specially coal to nuclear transitions (https://www.energy.gov/ne/coal-nuclear-transitions https://www.energy.gov/ne/coal-nuclear-transitions) and lobby for more government funding directed to accelerate this. This would be palatable to the current administration while also supporting the goal of less c02 and other emissions. Heck this also takes away any incentive to restart the coal plants by private companies if they are being financially supported and already in the process of converting them to nuclear, and it takes away an incentive to build more long-term because each nuclear plant provides a lot more power on average. Another thing to lobby for would be for more SMRs funding and less regulation overall in nuclear (it's insane how overly regulated nuclear is based on one soviet fuck up of a crappy underfunded/flawed powerplant (chernobyl). Fukushima plants (commissioned in 1971!) were hit with a once in a lifetime 9.5 magnitude earthquake and tsunami on top despite being less than 100 miles from the epicenter even with regulatory lapses and no direct deaths.
- hunter-gatherer 1y agoEh. This is less of a US political party problem. We aren't the only consumers and emitters. Even if we were, I don't think this _really_ is democrat vs republican. Silicon Valley types vote left. Also pushed gaming, cryptocurrency, AI, internet marketing, and everything else that helps us consume more dumbshit.
- nerdponx 1y ago> Silicon Valley types vote left Citation needed. The famous SV names are all dumping money into right wing authoritarian political causes.
- zahlman 1y ago"The famous SV names" you have in mind are a tiny, elite fringe. The culture among typical workers is obvious. Consider https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/company-news/2025/08/20/microsoft-employee-protests-lead-to-18-arrests-as-company-reviews-its-work-with-israels-military/ https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/company-news/2025/08/20... for example.
- filloooo 1y agoDirt cheap US natural gas is running out in a decade or so, the dirt cheap "clean energy" produced from it needs a substitute.
- justin66 1y agoSolar is cheaper still, although that’s currently complicated by the US trade war, and our unwillingness to build solar out.
- focusgroup0 1y agoHow else is the US supposed to keep up with China? They are building new nuclear + coal plants every week. "There are no rich, low energy countries" https://x.com/Andercot/status/1895572458922795118/photo/1 https://x.com/Andercot/status/1895572458922795118/photo/1
- gpm 1y agoChina cut fossil fuel use 2% in H1 2025 (compared to H1 2024). It cut coal use 2% in H1 2025 (compared to H1 2024) [1]. The majority of new energy production is wind and solar, not nuclear, and certainly not coal. [1] Both numbers on page 14: https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2025/09/China-Energy-Transition-Review-2025.pdf https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2025/09/China-Energy-Tr...
- pastel8739 1y agoChina’s building tons of solar and wind, too. If we’re interested in keeping up with them, we could start by not cancelling already planned solar projects (https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/feds-appear-to-cancel-vegas-sized-solar-project-planned-in-rural-nevada https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/feds-appear-to-canc...). Besides, if the cost of keeping up with China is breathing deadly coal smoke, I’m not sure the decision is as obvious as you make it seem.
- sampo 1y agoAs of past 1.5 years, the use of fossil fuels for electricity generation in China seems to have reached a plateau. They are building new coal plants, more new plants than they are retiring old plants. But even with new coal plants, they have not been burning more coal. https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/global-electricity-mid-year-insights-2025/country-and-region-analysis/#china https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/global-electricity-... https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-why-china-is-still-building-new-coal-and-when-it-might-stop/ https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-why-china-is-still-bu...
- ViewTrick1002 1y agoThey are barely building any nuclear plants, so far zero finished in 2025. In terms of coal its usage has started to decrease in actual terms since the start of 2025. All demand growth and more is solved by new built renewables and storage.
- eucryphia 1y agoPresents a golden opportunity for you to start your own infrastructure supplier to sell wind/solar/battery powered products.
- justin66 1y agoThe US government and some of the states are actively hostile towards solar.
- ndsipa_pomu 1y agoWhich is bizarre considering the amount of land suitable for solar farms and the climate in southern states.
- justin66 1y agoLess bizarre when you consider we’ve effectively made corruption legal, and created a system where a wealthy incumbent has a lot more pull than a new player.
- aboardRat4 1y agoGreat news! When all the carbon frozen in the permafrost of Siberia is released back into the ecosystem, the Earth with once again look like a tropical paradise it once was, being able to sustain giant cold-blooded reptiles. (Well, not sure they actually were reptiles, but most likely cold-blooded.)
- oblio 1y agoApparently at least a chunk of dinosaurs were warm blooded.
- card_zero 1y agoBut this is about the Carboniferous, about 40 million years before the first dinosaurs.
- oblio 1y agoAh, my mistake. Do you happen to have a link to this? I didn't know about other giant reptiles, except for the dinosaurs.
- card_zero 1y agoWhat sort of a link would you like, perhaps this? https://archive.org/details/Vertebrate.Paleontology.Evolution/page/n168/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/Vertebrate.Paleontology.Evolutio... That's on chapter 9, "The Conquest of Land and the Radiation of Amphibians". Caution, this is a book from 1988, the Carboniferous era may have changed a lot since then. (Carboniferous = Mississippian + Pennsylvanian.) An image search for "Paleozoic and Mesozoic amphibians and reptiles" may also be gratifying. I'm fond of Moschops ("calf face"), though that's after the Carboniferous rainforest collapse.
- oblio 1y agoThose links work great, thank you! Turns out, life is weird and exciting and really old!
- pm90 1y agoDoubt this will happen. Coal production in the US has plummeted, coal mines and infrastructure is not coming back. At best they would import cheap coal (but maybe not with tarrifs?) but even that would require sizable capex in ports… its just not gonna happen.
- anigbrowl 1y agoA developer in the Bay Area just spent 10 years litigating for the right to build a coal terminal at the Port of Oakland, and having won the suit now intends to go ahead and build it, aiming to go into operation by 2028. So clearly some people with sizable capex at their disposal disagree with you. https://oaklandside.org/2025/09/22/oakland-coal-terminal-legal-battle-phil-tagami/ https://oaklandside.org/2025/09/22/oakland-coal-terminal-leg...
- jmclnx 1y agoWe started seeing the "smoke" when Reagan became President after Carter put Solar Panels on the White House. Each President (& Congress) since then kowtowed to the Fossil Fuel industry to varying degrees. The GOP was the leader but the Democrats added to it but pretended they cared. At least the GOP told the truth that they were out to destroy the Climate. We had almost 50 years to work on it, but people who could lead decided they wanted to keep their jobs and bribes instead of doing good for the US and the World. For this, I fully blame Reagan and his enablers.
- grosswait 1y agoThese were initiated by Nixon, removed late in the Reagan era when the roof was replaced, then new panels installed by Bush 2, followed by more under Obama.