Computers are killing the planet

Surprise, surprise, the experts and the media suddenly discover that the internet age and the rise of Artificial Intelligence requires a lot of energy and other natural resources, contributing to global warming and threatening the environment.

It’s a common trope in science fiction, one that needs no introduction to anyone familiar with the genre:  Computers rise up to overthrow their human masters, taking over the world either by enslaving humanity or exterminating it.  Some claim we are in danger of this right now, or at least in the immediate future. Little did we know their plan would be so insidious it’s already well underway, and relying on global warming to do it, or at least that’s what the so-called experts are suddenly claiming.  As ABC News reported late last month, the data centers we rely on to communicate and process information, fueling Artificial Intelligence, cryptocurrency and everything else, “could threaten the climate, experts say.”  The problem is that “Artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency and remote work – all of these buzzy trends depend on processing power delivered by a sprawling worldwide network of data centers.  As demand surges for the power-intensive complexes, which typically span 100,000 square feet, the increased energy usage could jeopardize the fight to reduce carbon emissions and address climate change.”  Two years ago, data centers consumed approximately 4% of the total energy in the United States, a figure that is expected to climb to 6% over the next two years according to the International Energy Agency as the number of centers continues to expand.  The rise of Artificial Intelligence, which generally uses more power hungry processors, and expansion of cryptocurrency are expected to cause the increase in consumption to accelerate even further, a process likely to repeat as computers do more and more everything is computerized and connected.  AI alone, for example, is believed to require ten times as much energy in 2026 as it did just last year, when services like ChatGPT officially went mainstream.  “The growth trend is super-fast,” explained Fengqi You, an energy engineering professor at Cornell University. “This is something I’m concerned about.”  Existing data centers generally use 10 to 14 kilowatts per rack while more advanced processors require 40 to 60, a significant increase.  As of today, data centers run on electricity and much of that electricity, about half in the United States alone, is produced by burning fossil fuels.  The information technology sector as a whole is estimated to be responsible for around 3% of global carbon emissions, about the same as aviation.  A figure the experts, including Tevfik Kosar, a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Buffalo, described as “not so small.” 

“Fundamentally, supporting accelerating AI/ML adoption requires more power and cooling than much of the existing data center inventory can accommodate,” a report from Newmark found earlier this year, echoing some of the same claims. “Not all existing data centers lend themselves to retrofitting, catalyzing demand for new product in both existing and emerging markets.”  Keeping these power hungry servers cool is almost as much of a challenge as the electricity, requiring tremendous amounts of water, approximately 1.8 liters per kilowatt hour.  As The Washington Post reported last year, internet usage in general has become a “new front in the water wars,” especially in the relatively arid south and west of the United States.  “For years, data centers have come under scrutiny for their carbon emissions. But now, as a ‘megadrought’ continues to ravage the Southwest and the Colorado River dwindles, some communities charge that the centers are also draining local water supplies.”  In Oregon, for example, a single Google data center in a small city uses over a quarter of the total water.  Perhaps needless to say, environmentalists have begun claiming data centers are “taking away precious water that could be used to support nearby wetlands and rivers.”  “It’s an already difficult situation where too much water is promised to too many interests,” John Devoe, an adviser to WaterWatch Oregon claimed. “And now you have a new use coming in and saying, ‘Hey, we want our share too.’”  While companies can use traditional air conditioning, that would increase both power consumption and expenses, resulting in water being the preferred cooling methodology, a lot of it.  A large data center can use between “1 million and 5 million gallons of water a day — as much as a town of 10,000 to 50,000 people,” according to research cited by the Post.  Virginia Tech found this places data centers in the top ten water-consuming commercial industries in the United States, using around 513 million cubic meters of water even way back in 2018.  Adding to the challenge is a current trade off between emissions and cooling.  Tech companies prefer to locate their servers in less populated areas where they can leverage wind and solar, at least in principle to reduce carbon emissions, but those areas also tend to suffer from potential water shortages. “You have to think about how much of the western United States is water-stressed,” explained Landon Marston, a professor of water resources engineering at Virginia Tech who worked on the study. To cite two examples, California boasts around 240 data centers while even dryer Arizona has about 50.  

The reality that efficiency at all levels of the computer industry has increased dramatically in recent years has not prevented the various experts from making these claims.  As even the Post noted, in the mid-200s, “researchers projected that data center electricity use would expand to take up huge proportions of the world’s electricity demand. But while data centers’ workloads increased fivefold between 2010 and 2018, their electricity consumption only increased 6 percent.”  While some are pointing the finger at Nvidia, the current leader in the AI-chip market, whose revenue has soared 265% over the past year, for driving the increase in energy consumption and hence water consumption, the company itself – along with other tech companies – believe that improvements in efficiency will continue.  “If Nvidia keeps growing in the way they’re hoping they’ll grow and keeps selling in the way they’re planning to, that’s a fairly large increase in energy usage,” Arman Shehabi, a staff scientist in energy technologies at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, said.  A spokesperson from Nvidia rejected this claim because their more specialized chips do more with less power than older, more traditional models.  “Replacing conventional servers with GPU-accelerated systems will reduce, not increase, energy use in data centers,” the spokesperson said. “For example, a single GPU-accelerated server can replace hundreds of conventional servers to accomplish the same workload. And our GPUs enable AI-enhanced systems that will be more energy efficient across all industries, including transportation, manufacturing, logistics, and energy, among others.” 

However this ultimately plays out – and to be sure, we can certainly expect more studies on how computers are killing the planet in the future – it’s an object lesson in the reality that the future isn’t free.  Civilization requires energy.  Indeed there is an argument to be made that civilization was founded on the improved manipulation and extraction of energy sources, allowing humans to build farms, then towns, then cities.  The more advanced the civilization, the more energy required.  Efficiency is important, but societies do not grow, thrive, explore, build, invent, and expand without consuming more and more energy.  You cannot reach for the stars without something to power your rockets.  The expert class, however, has been variously confused about this simple fact for decades.  Energy, for them, is a target, something to be controlled supposedly to save the planet and if there is one underlying principle of all their schemes, it’s simply that we use too much.  Consider that while they’re simultaneously railing about the impact of the data centers that connect the modern world on our electric consumption, they are also advocating for a massive increase in that same consumption by mandating a rapid phase out of traditional gas-powered cars for fully electric models.  What do they think that will do to our electricity demands?  How do they account for the extraction of minerals and everything required to make these electric vehicles?  Further, their goals frequently conflict with one another.  Data centers are located primarily in the Southwest because of the space available for renewable energy to reduce carbon emissions, but those locations have limited water supplies.  If they were to move the centers to areas not generally subject to drought like the Northeast, they could solve the water problem, but would have to rely on electricity provided by fossil fuels.  Right now they are prioritizing emissions.  The experts want them to prioritize both.  Perhaps even worse, many of these experts seem rather uneducated when it comes to basic earth science.  Newsha Ajami, a researcher at Stanford University’s Water in the West center and a so-called water expert at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, actually told The Washington Post, “We have really limited amounts of water.  Every drop counts.”  While this may be true in the Southwest in a practical sense, water used is not water destroyed.  There is no limited amount, save what exists on this planet as a whole and what we can transport to areas that needed, as has been done since the Roman Empire.  Some resources are finite, but water and to a large extent energy, at least in human terms and especially if you include nuclear, are not.  The underlying issue is not a failure of resources.  It’s one of imagination, wherein the expert class cannot imagine a society that continues to grow and thrive.  Instead, they fear it and find issues with it everywhere.  There solution will always be the same:  You and your family should do without, and if necessary, they will mandate that be the case.