30 ms·

Stop focusing on energy usage and start focusing on energy generation. It doesn't matter how much energy we consume if it comes from renewables.

by stavros 5mo ago

mathgeek 5mo ago
It does matter because of the side effects (pollution, etc.). The environment and how it affects humanity is a complex system with many variables. Both generation and consumption are in there.
- stavros 5mo ago
  We're talking about global warming specifically here, though. Cars and planes should be a much bigger worry than AI power usage.
  - ajuc 5mo ago
    There's an easy 19th century solution to cars and planes - public transport. It could reduce the usage significantly, save people lots of time, reduce pollution, make people healthier through making the environment more walkable, reduce crime. We don't do it not because the technology isn't there, but because it's more profitable for people to induce consumption by planning our cities and suburbs around cars. There's lots of rotting low hanging fruits ignored for decades because politicians are paid by the ladder-sellers.
    - dpark 5mo ago
      > save people lots of time Public transit is rarely a time saver for people who give up their cars in favor of public transit. > reduce crime In what way? Car break-ins presumably go down when there when fewer cars, but does overall crime drop? Doubtful.
      - ajuc 5mo ago
        > Public transit is rarely a time saver for people who give up their cars in favor of public transit. It saves time when you don't put 10-lane motorways and in your cities nor turn them into parking lot wasteland. > In what way? Car break-ins presumably go down when there when fewer cars, but does overall crime drop? Public transport reduces inequality, which is the main cause of crime. If you have whole groups in society that cannot get what they need working within the system - some of them will work outside the system. Public transport makes working within the system easier (barrier to entry to work/study in the good places gets lower). It also smooths around the strict urban class divisions (it makes sense for rich people to live in the city, which makes the elites more likely to invest in the city, which makes it more likely for non-elites to be able to work with the system). The opposite is car-dependand suburbs + crime-ridden inner cities with no way out other than crime.
        dpark 5mo ago
        > It saves time when you don't put 10-lane motorways and in your cities nor turn them into parking lot wasteland. I missed the part where this has anything to do with saving time. I’m not saying that public transit doesn’t have major benefits. I’m totally in favor of strong public transit, but saving time is generally not one of those benefits. > Public transport reduces inequality, which is the main cause of crime. If feels like a big stretch to say public transit reduces crime. I wonder if there’s actual data to support this notion.
        ajuc 5mo ago
        > I missed the part where this has anything to do with saving time. If you make cities more concentrated without balooning them with parking lots - everything's closer. If you restrict cars - there's less traffic jams, which makes commute faster. > If feels like a big stretch to say public transit reduces crime. I wonder if there’s actual data to support this notion. US has much higher crime levels than other developed nations. It's also the most car-dependant of them. People often think public transport creates crime, because criminals use it to move (like everybody else). But public transport mainly lets non-criminal people to move, which reduces the number of criminals overall.
  - breakyerself 5mo ago
    Not when AI is directly resulting in increased greenhouse gas pollution. It's all of the above. Any source of greenhouse gas pollution is bad. Cars, planes, ships, AI data centers running on fossil fuel energy. It's all bad.
    - stavros 5mo ago
      No. This is disingenuous. Something that consumes electricity doesn't care where the electricity comes from. Fix the power source, and you automatically fix every single consumer in existence at once.
      - mistrial9 5mo ago
        narrowing the topic, that is exactly the quality that energy transition theorists are leaning on. The electrical grid is uniquely able to maintain a stable engineered and market place while inputs and loads change quite a bit.
      - discreteevent 5mo ago
        I think your comment is the disingenuous one. We have no time left and "Fix the power source" is happening way too slowly in the real non-theoretical world. But what can happen in zero time is to not build another data center for something that nobody really needs.
  - Cthulhu_ 5mo ago
    While you're not wrong, it's also not an either / or. But yes, any concerns about AI resource usage should be fairly compared against others.
simgt 5mo ago
It does matter because for now renewables are manufactured mostly with coal and oil EDIT: I'm not a renewable skeptic, answers bellow
- stavros 5mo ago
  Which is a tiny CO2 spend compared to the benefit, unless you dishonestly factor in manufacturing energy costs as coming from oil.
- speed_spread 5mo ago
  They're manufactured once and then generate way more energy than was used to make them.
  - simgt 5mo ago
    Of course, but pretending consumption doesn't matter in that situation is just silly
- michaelbuckbee 5mo ago
  All of the cradle-to-grave studies I've seen about greenhouse gas emissions for renewables versus coal/oil still indicate massive improvements. This government meta study of 3,000 such studies puts PV solar at roughly 20x less emissions than coal. https://docs.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/80580.pdf https://docs.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/80580.pdf
  - simgt 5mo ago
    Yes, but you're missing the point, I'm not debating that. Renewables aren't free, we should care about consumption just as much as production, and we don't know (yet) how to sustain the current consumption with renewables only, that includes being able to manufacture renewables.
    - michaelbuckbee 5mo ago
      That's fair and fwiw something I'm in firm agreement with you, but also just not what I took from your comment.
agilob 5mo ago
What good does PV generated energy make if all that energy is used to generate heat and evaporating water?
- jfengel 5mo ago
  Those are less of a problem. The heat was coming from the sun anyway. The water condenses out, so long as you haven't also increased the overall temperature in other ways. The CO2, by contrast, is the gift that keeps on giving. It absorbs extra heat every day and hangs onto it. It doesn't condense or break down. If that PV went to displacing sources of greenhouse gas, it would be a benefit. If all it's doing is running the plagiarism machine while we burn more and more "clean" coal, then we are in deep, deep trouble.
  - goda90 5mo ago
    Not all heat from the sun stays in the atmosphere though. How much does photovoltaic impact albedo and radiance through the atmosphere compared to natural landscapes? Of course that's infinitely better than GHG emissions and we have a lot of opportunity to put PV over asphalt and such, but it should give us pause in the pursuit of more and more consumption.
- api 5mo ago
  That’s what solar energy does when it hits the ground or the oceans. It turns into heat or evaporated water. The latter is why it rains. Harnessing it and piping it through extra steps only to end up as heat does nothing to the planet’s heat balance. All human energy use is tiny compared to total global solar flux. Like not even 1%. The data center water issue is a municipal management problem. The problem is that evaporative cooling is cheaper. If data centers are using too much water to the point that it’s causing problems for homes or agriculture, it means they are not being charged enough for that water. Charge them more and they will suddenly shift toward more closed loop cooling.
  - ajuc 5mo ago
    https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008EO280001 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008EO28... Waste heat from human energy use is a real problem, it does influence Earth's temperature, minimally for now, but it will only grow. And it will be MUCH harder to solve than global warming.
jfengel 5mo ago
Which is why we have just paid billions of dollars to cancel a renewable power project. And are imposing extra fees on cars that can be driven on renewable energy. So, now I'm focused. I'm very focused.
- api 5mo ago
  OP did not say this is what we were doing. Said this is what we should do. What we are doing is attempting to hold back progress on generation while subsidizing demand, which is literally the absolute dumbest possible thing. Unless you are the fossil fuel industry. Then it’s great.
  - jfengel 5mo ago
    It's also great if boiling the planet is your actual goal. I wouldn't have thought that it would be so popular, but apparently it is, and people can't get t done fast enough. I'm kind of a misanthrope so philosophically I'm good with working on wiping ourselves out. The fact that we're doing it in the dumbest possible way should feel poetic. Instead it's just kind of embarrassing.
    - stego-tech 5mo ago
      I mean, it's not a hard conspiracy theory to fabricate that space-focused billionaires like Elmo and Butthead would want Earth to become increasingly uninhabitable to justify more outside investment in their "solutions" of space race-ing to Mars or colonies that they can then rule over. It's a conspiracy theory, but the best ones are always rooted in some morsel of truth (Elon/Bezos wanting more investment in their space firms).
    - surgical_fire 5mo ago
      > I'm kind of a misanthrope so philosophically I'm good with working on wiping ourselves out. The fact that we're doing it in the dumbest possible way should feel poetic. Instead it's just kind of embarrassing. There is something tragic about the human potential being wasted in the most retarded of endeavors, but I wouldn't be able to imagine of a more apt way for the horde of morons that inhabit this planet to go extinct.
goda90 5mo ago
Renewables are not without impact. We shouldn't consume mindlessly just because we might eliminate fossil fuels some day.
dopesoap 5mo ago
[dead]
Cthulhu_ 5mo ago
This is an issue though. Netherlands is / has invested heavily in e.g. offshore wind parks, but their capacity has been bought up by datacenters (= new energy consumers) immediately. My point is that if demand only increases, then they won't be able to shut down carbon-emitting power plants. The first objective should be to replace non-renewables with renewables, and only then scale production up. Granted, there will likely always be non-renewable power generators running to maintain a baseline / frequency / etc, at least until very-large-scale power storage is a thing.

Stop focusing on energy usage and start focusing on energy generation. It doesn't matter how much energy we consume if it comes from renewables.

by stavros 5mo ago

Stop focusing on energy usage and start focusing on energy generation. It doesn't matter how much energy we consume if it comes from renewables.

mathgeek 5mo ago

It does matter because of the side effects (pollution, etc.). The environment and how it affects humanity is a complex system with many variables. Both generation and consumption are in there.

stavros 5mo ago
We're talking about global warming specifically here, though. Cars and planes should be a much bigger worry than AI power usage.
- ajuc 5mo ago
  There's an easy 19th century solution to cars and planes - public transport. It could reduce the usage significantly, save people lots of time, reduce pollution, make people healthier through making the environment more walkable, reduce crime. We don't do it not because the technology isn't there, but because it's more profitable for people to induce consumption by planning our cities and suburbs around cars. There's lots of rotting low hanging fruits ignored for decades because politicians are paid by the ladder-sellers.
  - dpark 5mo ago
    > save people lots of time Public transit is rarely a time saver for people who give up their cars in favor of public transit. > reduce crime In what way? Car break-ins presumably go down when there when fewer cars, but does overall crime drop? Doubtful.
    - ajuc 5mo ago
      > Public transit is rarely a time saver for people who give up their cars in favor of public transit. It saves time when you don't put 10-lane motorways and in your cities nor turn them into parking lot wasteland. > In what way? Car break-ins presumably go down when there when fewer cars, but does overall crime drop? Public transport reduces inequality, which is the main cause of crime. If you have whole groups in society that cannot get what they need working within the system - some of them will work outside the system. Public transport makes working within the system easier (barrier to entry to work/study in the good places gets lower). It also smooths around the strict urban class divisions (it makes sense for rich people to live in the city, which makes the elites more likely to invest in the city, which makes it more likely for non-elites to be able to work with the system). The opposite is car-dependand suburbs + crime-ridden inner cities with no way out other than crime.
      - dpark 5mo ago
        > It saves time when you don't put 10-lane motorways and in your cities nor turn them into parking lot wasteland. I missed the part where this has anything to do with saving time. I’m not saying that public transit doesn’t have major benefits. I’m totally in favor of strong public transit, but saving time is generally not one of those benefits. > Public transport reduces inequality, which is the main cause of crime. If feels like a big stretch to say public transit reduces crime. I wonder if there’s actual data to support this notion.
        ajuc 5mo ago
        > I missed the part where this has anything to do with saving time. If you make cities more concentrated without balooning them with parking lots - everything's closer. If you restrict cars - there's less traffic jams, which makes commute faster. > If feels like a big stretch to say public transit reduces crime. I wonder if there’s actual data to support this notion. US has much higher crime levels than other developed nations. It's also the most car-dependant of them. People often think public transport creates crime, because criminals use it to move (like everybody else). But public transport mainly lets non-criminal people to move, which reduces the number of criminals overall.
- breakyerself 5mo ago
  Not when AI is directly resulting in increased greenhouse gas pollution. It's all of the above. Any source of greenhouse gas pollution is bad. Cars, planes, ships, AI data centers running on fossil fuel energy. It's all bad.
  - stavros 5mo ago
    No. This is disingenuous. Something that consumes electricity doesn't care where the electricity comes from. Fix the power source, and you automatically fix every single consumer in existence at once.
    - mistrial9 5mo ago
      narrowing the topic, that is exactly the quality that energy transition theorists are leaning on. The electrical grid is uniquely able to maintain a stable engineered and market place while inputs and loads change quite a bit.
    - discreteevent 5mo ago
      I think your comment is the disingenuous one. We have no time left and "Fix the power source" is happening way too slowly in the real non-theoretical world. But what can happen in zero time is to not build another data center for something that nobody really needs.
- Cthulhu_ 5mo ago
  While you're not wrong, it's also not an either / or. But yes, any concerns about AI resource usage should be fairly compared against others.

simgt 5mo ago

It does matter because for now renewables are manufactured mostly with coal and oil EDIT: I'm not a renewable skeptic, answers bellow

stavros 5mo ago
Which is a tiny CO2 spend compared to the benefit, unless you dishonestly factor in manufacturing energy costs as coming from oil.
speed_spread 5mo ago
They're manufactured once and then generate way more energy than was used to make them.
- simgt 5mo ago
  Of course, but pretending consumption doesn't matter in that situation is just silly
michaelbuckbee 5mo ago
All of the cradle-to-grave studies I've seen about greenhouse gas emissions for renewables versus coal/oil still indicate massive improvements. This government meta study of 3,000 such studies puts PV solar at roughly 20x less emissions than coal. https://docs.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/80580.pdf https://docs.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/80580.pdf
- simgt 5mo ago
  Yes, but you're missing the point, I'm not debating that. Renewables aren't free, we should care about consumption just as much as production, and we don't know (yet) how to sustain the current consumption with renewables only, that includes being able to manufacture renewables.
  - michaelbuckbee 5mo ago
    That's fair and fwiw something I'm in firm agreement with you, but also just not what I took from your comment.

agilob 5mo ago

What good does PV generated energy make if all that energy is used to generate heat and evaporating water?

jfengel 5mo ago
Those are less of a problem. The heat was coming from the sun anyway. The water condenses out, so long as you haven't also increased the overall temperature in other ways. The CO2, by contrast, is the gift that keeps on giving. It absorbs extra heat every day and hangs onto it. It doesn't condense or break down. If that PV went to displacing sources of greenhouse gas, it would be a benefit. If all it's doing is running the plagiarism machine while we burn more and more "clean" coal, then we are in deep, deep trouble.
- goda90 5mo ago
  Not all heat from the sun stays in the atmosphere though. How much does photovoltaic impact albedo and radiance through the atmosphere compared to natural landscapes? Of course that's infinitely better than GHG emissions and we have a lot of opportunity to put PV over asphalt and such, but it should give us pause in the pursuit of more and more consumption.
api 5mo ago
That’s what solar energy does when it hits the ground or the oceans. It turns into heat or evaporated water. The latter is why it rains. Harnessing it and piping it through extra steps only to end up as heat does nothing to the planet’s heat balance. All human energy use is tiny compared to total global solar flux. Like not even 1%. The data center water issue is a municipal management problem. The problem is that evaporative cooling is cheaper. If data centers are using too much water to the point that it’s causing problems for homes or agriculture, it means they are not being charged enough for that water. Charge them more and they will suddenly shift toward more closed loop cooling.
- ajuc 5mo ago
  https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008EO280001 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008EO28... Waste heat from human energy use is a real problem, it does influence Earth's temperature, minimally for now, but it will only grow. And it will be MUCH harder to solve than global warming.

jfengel 5mo ago

Which is why we have just paid billions of dollars to cancel a renewable power project. And are imposing extra fees on cars that can be driven on renewable energy. So, now I'm focused. I'm very focused.

api 5mo ago
OP did not say this is what we were doing. Said this is what we should do. What we are doing is attempting to hold back progress on generation while subsidizing demand, which is literally the absolute dumbest possible thing. Unless you are the fossil fuel industry. Then it’s great.
- jfengel 5mo ago
  It's also great if boiling the planet is your actual goal. I wouldn't have thought that it would be so popular, but apparently it is, and people can't get t done fast enough. I'm kind of a misanthrope so philosophically I'm good with working on wiping ourselves out. The fact that we're doing it in the dumbest possible way should feel poetic. Instead it's just kind of embarrassing.
  - stego-tech 5mo ago
    I mean, it's not a hard conspiracy theory to fabricate that space-focused billionaires like Elmo and Butthead would want Earth to become increasingly uninhabitable to justify more outside investment in their "solutions" of space race-ing to Mars or colonies that they can then rule over. It's a conspiracy theory, but the best ones are always rooted in some morsel of truth (Elon/Bezos wanting more investment in their space firms).
  - surgical_fire 5mo ago
    > I'm kind of a misanthrope so philosophically I'm good with working on wiping ourselves out. The fact that we're doing it in the dumbest possible way should feel poetic. Instead it's just kind of embarrassing. There is something tragic about the human potential being wasted in the most retarded of endeavors, but I wouldn't be able to imagine of a more apt way for the horde of morons that inhabit this planet to go extinct.

goda90 5mo ago

Renewables are not without impact. We shouldn't consume mindlessly just because we might eliminate fossil fuels some day.

dopesoap 5mo ago

[dead]

Cthulhu_ 5mo ago

This is an issue though. Netherlands is / has invested heavily in e.g. offshore wind parks, but their capacity has been bought up by datacenters (= new energy consumers) immediately. My point is that if demand only increases, then they won't be able to shut down carbon-emitting power plants. The first objective should be to replace non-renewables with renewables, and only then scale production up. Granted, there will likely always be non-renewable power generators running to maintain a baseline / frequency / etc, at least until very-large-scale power storage is a thing.