I had incredibly dark dreams and did not sleep well, so many people I know have cancer, a fucking AI data center just got approved right near me, and one of the baby goat litters is not doing well. Today is hard.
A couple of these things I can do nothing about. Some I can.
One I need help with from you: in a few days I'm giving a talk on the environmental consequences of AI data centres (with a focus on orbit, but starting with ground-based).
So, fediverse! Please send me your favourite statistic (with citation please) on exactly how bad AI data centres are for the environment. I'm looking for: comparisons on CO2 emissions per centre, water usage per slop-video made, stuff like that.
This graph is ludicrous. It shows the requests for power to all providers in ERCOT - the growth in the right bars is driven almost entirely by datacenters (particularly in DFW).
Yes, they're requesting Texas *triple* its power generation over the next six years.
In the digital age, more computing power is needed. Especially with the rise of artificial intelligence, the demand for energy is rapidly increasing. As a result, more AI data centers are being establ...
And there's a lot more you can find about the hardware side. I started my career by working in the first megadatacenters. I can tell you also that investment in hardware is not one-time. We don't think of it this way, but computers wear down the same way cars or anything else do, and these machines are being pushed to their limits, and the amount of e-waste for churning through parts is huge.
Neighbors say Northern Virginia data centers emit a noise they just can't tune out. We took to the streets–and dove in to the science–to figure out why.
But on the other hand, from the same article, 10% of new growth was expected to be data centers.
And the problem is: much of the new data center power usage coming online is setting up *new* non-renewable power consumption, especially the gas generators built specifically for new data centers
Join me in another depressing adventure in science and technology. [Research paper from the experiment is a WIP]💗 Support this channel and join an amazing c...
@cwebber @mayintoronto We closely manage the lifecycle of all our infrastructure. I'm mostly familiar with our HPC environments where we only have 1 or 2 GPU Compute Nodes. Most components are leased for 3 years. If we purchase them it's 4 years. For large environments we rotate ½ of it every 2 years as long as things are compatible
The leasing company we use in North America is very good at selling the parts that roll out of service
Rhetorically it’s interesting to start with the ground-based issues, as on-orbit proponents would presumably argue that they solve many of those problems (power, CO2, water).
@michaelgemar Yep. That's my point - they only "solve" those problems if you ignore the environmental costs of mining and building and launching and burning them up.
My computer science background stops me at the O(N⁶) training time and O(N²) running time for LLM type AI. Increase their training data by 10, their demand for hardware, energy and time goes up by about a million. If the resulting model is 10 times bigger, then it will cost about 100 times more hardware, energy and time to run.
These aren't things we can fix by "nerding harder". These factors are baked into the algorithms and hardware of almost all of the AI that is being pushed on us.
Nobody can build O(N⁶) computers, nobody can provide them power and water, and it will never do what the promoters are telling us they can.
(Kevin O'Leary's work on Reader Rabbit does not give him credibility on his data center projects.)
Ed Zitron gets it right (I enjoy his "geek-out" brain dump style, I know it isn't everyone's cup of tea).
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@TallSimon Thank you, this is really helpful for trying to distinguish at what scale data centres start to become really problematic (and I absolutely realize this is a huge oversimplification, looking forward to reading this)
A WIRED review of permits for data center projects using natural gas and linked to OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, and xAI shows they could emit more than 129 million tons of greenhouse gases per year.
Stats are good (and perhaps more what you need for your purposes), but to those who parade misleading stats as a "see, it's not that bad" message, I think it's useful to ask "If it's not that bad, why are these terrible local effects happening at all?"
The short answer is: even though some of the per-query costs don't seem unreasonable, the same companies selling queries have made it their mission to exponentially explode the number of queries used, which is why the net impact is power- and water-starved communities.
A community near Santiago, Chile, operated a human-powered chatbot for 12 hours to draw attention to the significant water and energy consumption of AI data centres in their drought-stricken region.
Here in Oregon: "Google built its first data center in The Dalles in 2006. In 2012, the tech giant used 12% of The Dalles water supply. By 2024, a third of The Dalles’ water went to Google’s three local data center sites."
I don't have any citations/stats at the moment, but I do wonder what numbers the businesspeople are looking at that gives them such a [redacted: crass euphemism for overexcited hyperfocal myopia] for such a stupid and short-sighted (in SO MANY ways) plan.
Part of me thinks they are only looking at how much investment they can raise, with not a single glance at actually following through.
@Francis_Bee Or at least drastically curtail the amount of cloud stuff we do.
I for one have reverted to paper agenda. And I avoid cloud services generally. And try not to use credit card. (When I use it, I have to make a special effort to remember to go pay it off, I go months without using it.)
If we all did this, the oligarchs would take quite a hit, and local economy might do better (with careful local spending).
arstechnica.com/ai/2026/04/gre… has some statistics, though at a quick glance there are no links to peer-reviewed literature. And be well—serious illness is no joke (too many people I know are coping with too many serious medical issues), and do what you can to seek relaxation and relief, e.g., goats (or for that matter, actual astronomy).
Join me in another depressing adventure in science and technology. [Research paper from the experiment is a WIP]💗 Support this channel and join an amazing c...
How about 55? That is the number of data centers here in Santa Clara, a year ago… localnewsmatters.org/2025/06/0… I ride by many of these several times a week. And more are coming.
Why? Because we have a city owned utility and our rates are about half what PG&E charges.
SANTA CLARA LEADERS ARE RAISING concerns about how the city’s dozens of data centers affect residents and the environment. Santa Clara has more standalone
They are not huge, like the ones people are protesting, perhaps that is how they snuck in, or perhaps my neighbors just don't care (they did vote to approve the NFL stadium the city is on the hook for, so not caring is probably part of it for sure).
The idea of orbiting datacentres is so transparently a scam, that there's no reason to focus on it, it distracts from the actual problems we face on earth.
I'm legitimately disappointed that members of the press, tech bros, and even scientific community seem to be taking it seriously, but anyone remotely involved with space and computing can see with perfect clarity that this is not a real thing.
@danbrotherston So I should just ignore it and hope it goes away? That seems like a bad strategy. (A lot of astronomers and others did that with Starlink, and now look at the mess in orbit)
Starlink is different, it isn't a scam, it's a real service. Problematic, maybe, but not a scam.
The point of it being a scam is that it isn't going to happen at any meaningful scale. Maybe one or two test satellites get sent up to dupe some investors, but nothing remotely at scale will ever be deployed. There is no risk of harm from that.
In fact, one of the reason for the space datacenter scam is to distract people from the problems DCs are facing on earth. By focusing on it, we give the tech executives exactly what they want.
@Prof. Sam Lawler If I had to tell each nightmare daily here I'd start a blog about it but bad things in dreams are good what you visioned and good is bad
Hey for the data center stuff, work with your water district to ensure your (and everyone's farms) are not getting impinged upon. Make sure they know how much static water storage the data center requires (usually a lot) and talk to the neighbor who is down stream, so to speak, of the data center in case their storage fails and they get flooded.
Make sure the people within the power district understand how much of a drain this thing will be and how that will drive rates. Make sure the power entity understands how much of a load this will be and that they will have to supply it.
I am sorry you have to fight more billionaires and their bullshit profiteering, it isn't cool at all. But I am here to tell you it is possible to fight back and I know you have that fight in you!
Also, if they can't get fiber connectivity to the data center in the first place, no point in having it.. That happens through easements and right of way (in the USA anyway) and maybe that is a point you can break their plans too..
Good luck! I hope some of that was informative or helpful! Sometimes just delaying civil or construction start is enough to kill big things like this. It sure won't bring money into your area, just extract natural resources..
Thomas Lobig
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •Sensitive content
dani
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •Sensitive content
Prof. Sam Lawler
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •A couple of these things I can do nothing about. Some I can.
One I need help with from you: in a few days I'm giving a talk on the environmental consequences of AI data centres (with a focus on orbit, but starting with ground-based).
So, fediverse! Please send me your favourite statistic (with citation please) on exactly how bad AI data centres are for the environment. I'm looking for: comparisons on CO2 emissions per centre, water usage per slop-video made, stuff like that.
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John T
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •ERCOT is (politely and wonkishly) ringing alarm bells in Texas. ercot.com/news/release/0415202…
This graph is ludicrous. It shows the requests for power to all providers in ERCOT - the growth in the right bars is driven almost entirely by datacenters (particularly in DFW).
Yes, they're requesting Texas *triple* its power generation over the next six years.
ERCOT Releases Preliminary Long-Term Load Forecast for Years 2026–2032 for PUCT Discussion
www.ercot.comLazarou Monkey Terror 🚀💙🌈 reshared this.
May Likes Toronto
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •AI data centres create localized heat islands, with temperatures going up by several degrees.
arxiv.org/pdf/2603.20897
News article: uk.news.yahoo.com/ai-data-cent…
AI Data Centers Significantly Heat Up the Air
Woon-Mo Sung (Yahoo News)Christine Lemmer-Webber
in reply to May Likes Toronto • • •@mayintoronto They also make a constant humming/whirring noise eesi.org/articles/view/communi…
youtube.com/watch?v=JflFFqbZ1X…
And there's a lot more you can find about the hardware side. I started my career by working in the first megadatacenters. I can tell you also that investment in hardware is not one-time. We don't think of it this way, but computers wear down the same way cars or anything else do, and these machines are being pushed to their limits, and the amount of e-waste for churning through parts is huge.
Science of data center noise | VERIFY
WUSA9 (YouTube)Christine Lemmer-Webber
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Christine Lemmer-Webber
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •@mayintoronto Here are two good articles from Carbon Brief
On the one hand, in 2024 data centers were estimated to only use 1% of global electricity carbonbrief.org/ai-five-charts…
But on the other hand, from the same article, 10% of new growth was expected to be data centers.
And the problem is: much of the new data center power usage coming online is setting up *new* non-renewable power consumption, especially the gas generators built specifically for new data centers
Which leads to:
Analysis: CO2 from UK data centres could be ‘hundreds of times’ higher than thought carbonbrief.org/analysis-co2-f…
Analysis: CO2 from UK data centres could be ‘hundreds of times’ higher than thought - Carbon Brief
Josh Gabbatiss (Carbon Brief)Bonnie
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Datacenters Behaving Like Acoustic Weapons
Benn Jordan (YouTube)m4963
in reply to Bonnie • • •I'm just throwing this out here, but firsthand it looks well researched (I haven't yet read all of it): blog.andymasley.com/p/contra-b…
The author was mentioned in this video I'd recommend watching: youtu.be/faOD7v0Opq8
And here are some other (maybe useful) posts by him, like "Using ChatGPT Is Not Bad for the Environment":
– blog.andymasley.com/p/a-cheat-…
– blog.andymasley.com/p/the-ai-w…
The AI water issue is fake
Andy MasleyDonatellaInCali
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •@cwebber @mayintoronto
We closely manage the lifecycle of all our infrastructure. I'm mostly familiar with our HPC environments where we only have 1 or 2 GPU Compute Nodes. Most components are leased for 3 years. If we purchase them it's 4 years. For large environments we rotate ½ of it every 2 years as long as things are compatible
The leasing company we use in North America is very good at selling the parts that roll out of service
But once things get old enough, ewaste
Michael Gemar
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •Rhetorically it’s interesting to start with the ground-based issues, as on-orbit proponents would presumably argue that they solve many of those problems (power, CO2, water).
Of course, they’re disastrous for other reasons…
Prof. Sam Lawler
in reply to Michael Gemar • • •Tall Simon
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •Sending hopeful and sympathetic thoughts.
My computer science background stops me at the O(N⁶) training time and O(N²) running time for LLM type AI. Increase their training data by 10, their demand for hardware, energy and time goes up by
about a million. If the resulting model is 10 times bigger, then it will cost about 100 times more hardware, energy and time to run.
These aren't things we can fix by "nerding harder". These factors are baked into the algorithms and hardware of almost all of the AI that is being pushed on us.
Nobody can build O(N⁶) computers, nobody can provide them power and water, and it will never do what the promoters are telling us they can.
(Kevin O'Leary's work on Reader Rabbit does not give him credibility on his data center projects.)
Ed Zitron gets it right (I enjoy his "geek-out" brain dump style, I know it isn't everyone's cup of tea).
wheresyoured.at/how-to-argue-w…
How To Argue With An AI Booster
Ed Zitron (Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At)Prof. Sam Lawler
in reply to Tall Simon • • •Turre
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •Just bumped into this: "New Gas-Powered Data Centers Could Emit More Greenhouse Gases Than Entire Nations"
The full article is behind a paywall though:
wired.com/story/new-gas-powere…
New Gas-Powered Data Centers Could Emit More Greenhouse Gases Than Entire Nations
Molly Taft (WIRED)Tiota Sram
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •a good article with lots of citations about why narrow stats can be misleading here:
ketanjoshi.co/2025/08/23/big-t…
This pairs well with articles like these:
datacenterdynamics.com/en/news…
capitalbnews.org/musk-xai-memp…
britbrief.co.uk/environment/cl…
Stats are good (and perhaps more what you need for your purposes), but to those who parade misleading stats as a "see, it's not that bad" message, I think it's useful to ask "If it's not that bad, why are these terrible local effects happening at all?"
The short answer is: even though some of the per-query costs don't seem unreasonable, the same companies selling queries have made it their mission to exponentially explode the number of queries used, which is why the net impact is power- and water-starved communities.
Human vs. Machine: Chilean Activists Use Chatbot to Protest AI's Water Footprint
British Briefhandmade ghost
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •Here in Oregon: "Google built its first data center in The Dalles in 2006. In 2012, the tech giant used 12% of The Dalles water supply. By 2024, a third of The Dalles’ water went to Google’s three local data center sites."
More context and data here: opb.org/article/2026/01/15/as-…
As Google’s water demands grow, The Dalles aims to pull more from Mount Hood forest
April Ehrlich (opb)reshared this
RiaResists and Barbara Monaco reshared this.
Sylvia Wenmackers 🦉🍀
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •Prof. Sam Lawler
in reply to Sylvia Wenmackers 🦉🍀 • • •Marleen Stikker
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •AI is about to make the global e-waste crisis much worse
Ananya Bhattacharya (Rest of World)Kevin Boyd (he/him) 🇨🇦
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •I don't have any citations/stats at the moment, but I do wonder what numbers the businesspeople are looking at that gives them such a [redacted: crass euphemism for overexcited hyperfocal myopia] for such a stupid and short-sighted (in SO MANY ways) plan.
Part of me thinks they are only looking at how much investment they can raise, with not a single glance at actually following through.
But that can't be true for all of them. Can it?
Prof. Sam Lawler
in reply to Kevin Boyd (he/him) 🇨🇦 • • •That’s a moray
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •Francis Bee
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •bjb
in reply to Francis Bee • • •@Francis_Bee
Or at least drastically curtail the amount of cloud stuff we do.
I for one have reverted to paper agenda. And I avoid cloud services generally. And try not to use credit card. (When I use it, I have to make a special effort to remember to go pay it off, I go months without using it.)
If we all did this, the oligarchs would take quite a hit, and local economy might do better (with careful local spending).
Anne Pasek
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •Prof. Sam Lawler
in reply to Anne Pasek • • •Leo Ré Jorge
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •How Much Power is 1 Gigawatt?
Energy.govSteve Bellovin
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •And be well—serious illness is no joke (too many people I know are coping with too many serious medical issues), and do what you can to seek relaxation and relief, e.g., goats (or for that matter, actual astronomy).
Greenhouse gases from data center boom could outpace entire nations
WIRED (Ars Technica)szakib
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •you need to talk to Benn Jordan. He has papers published about this.
youtube.com/watch?v=_bP80DEAbu…
Datacenters Behaving Like Acoustic Weapons
Benn Jordan (YouTube)rand ❌👑
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •How about 55? That is the number of data centers here in Santa Clara, a year ago… localnewsmatters.org/2025/06/0… I ride by many of these several times a week. And more are coming.
Why? Because we have a city owned utility and our rates are about half what PG&E charges.
As data centers multiply, Santa Clara leaders, residents question its environmental impacts - Local News Matters
B. Sakura Cannestra, San Jose Spotlight (Local News Matters)Prof. Sam Lawler
in reply to rand ❌👑 • • •rand ❌👑
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •Albert Cardona
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •See also:
"How to Stop A Data Center in Your Backyard"
lataco.com/stop-sgv-data-cente…
How to Stop A Data Center in Your Backyard ~ L.A. TACO
Nik Venet (L.A. TACO)Dragofix
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •Here is something I've posted here earlier.
A rising tide of e-waste, made worse by AI, threatens health, the environment and the economy phys.org/news/2024-11-tide-wor…
Generative AI: Uncovering its environmental and social costs phys.org/news/2025-01-generati…
Advocates raise alarm over Pfas pollution from datacenters amid AI boom theguardian.com/environment/20…
Google to tap into gas plant for AI datacenter in sharp turn from climate goals theguardian.com/technology/202…
AI infrastructure growth threatens water-stressed Thai regions news.mongabay.com/short-articl…
AI infrastructure growth threatens water-stressed Thai regions
Naina Rao (Mongabay Environmental News)KellyAnn Romanych (she/her)
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •2024 paper: US data centers produced 105 million tons CO2e in the past year with
a carbon intensity 48% higher than the national average.
arxiv.org/pdf/2411.09786
https://freeradical.zone/users/floris
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •Greenhouse gases from data center boom could outpace entire nations
WIRED (Ars Technica)James Tweedie
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •ai-emit-136000pc-more-carbon-than-thought-ministers
www.telegraph.co.ukDavid Penfold
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •Does this help? Power estimates for UK data centres were nearly 100 times too low.
theguardian.com/technology/202…
Officials hugely underestimated impact of AI datacentres on UK carbon emissions
Damien Gayle (the Guardian)Daniel Brotherston
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •I don't know why the focus is on orbit...
The idea of orbiting datacentres is so transparently a scam, that there's no reason to focus on it, it distracts from the actual problems we face on earth.
I'm legitimately disappointed that members of the press, tech bros, and even scientific community seem to be taking it seriously, but anyone remotely involved with space and computing can see with perfect clarity that this is not a real thing.
Prof. Sam Lawler
in reply to Daniel Brotherston • • •Daniel Brotherston
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •Starlink is different, it isn't a scam, it's a real service. Problematic, maybe, but not a scam.
The point of it being a scam is that it isn't going to happen at any meaningful scale. Maybe one or two test satellites get sent up to dupe some investors, but nothing remotely at scale will ever be deployed. There is no risk of harm from that.
In fact, one of the reason for the space datacenter scam is to distract people from the problems DCs are facing on earth. By focusing on it, we give the tech executives exactly what they want.
Prof. Sam Lawler
in reply to Daniel Brotherston • • •Lyle Solla-Yates
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •ÓsQar🔻🇵🇸
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •Ciara
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •Andrew
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •This how thread has fantastic resources.
(Yes, I use data centres, no I don't have to like the ones which are pillaging their local environments.)
Tu nube seca mi río 🐌
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •You can find interesting stuff in our webpage or reports
tunubesecamirio.com/
Tu Nube Seca Mi Río – Impacto ecosocial de los Centros De Datos
tunubesecamirio.comhttps://mastodon.scot/users/soren
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •UK government underestimate AI carbon emissions by factor 100:
hachyderm.io/@inthehands/11647…
Paul Cantrell
2026-04-27 14:52:14
Mr.Mark "The Sharpie King"
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •Mason Loring Bliss
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •Sensitive content
https://infosec.exchange/users/john380
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •Sensitive content
Steve Gisselbrecht
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •Sensitive content
Oh god I'm sorry.
You work so hard and do so much. The world could cut you some fucking slack already.
Joel LeBlanc
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •Sensitive content
Karolina
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •Sensitive content
Ambivalena
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •Sensitive content
Simon
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •Sensitive content
In Wales we give cwtches (hugs or cuddles in other cultures).
Sending a great big virtual cwtch your way.
GinevraCat
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •Sensitive content
Jeffrey Bouter
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •Sensitive content
Plan-A̵̛͈̬̥̿͋̓͛̕
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • •The Ghost of Toots Passed
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •Hey for the data center stuff, work with your water district to ensure your (and everyone's farms) are not getting impinged upon. Make sure they know how much static water storage the data center requires (usually a lot) and talk to the neighbor who is down stream, so to speak, of the data center in case their storage fails and they get flooded.
Make sure the people within the power district understand how much of a drain this thing will be and how that will drive rates. Make sure the power entity understands how much of a load this will be and that they will have to supply it.
I am sorry you have to fight more billionaires and their bullshit profiteering, it isn't cool at all. But I am here to tell you it is possible to fight back and I know you have that fight in you!
Also, if they can't get fiber connectivity to the data center in the first place, no point in having it.. That happens through easements and right of way (in the USA anyway) and maybe that is a point you can break their plans too..
Good luck! I hope some of that was informative or helpful! Sometimes just delaying civil or construction start is enough to kill big things like this. It sure won't bring money into your area, just extract natural resources..