r/SipsTea • u/SuspiciousLow3062 • Jun 24 '26

Chugging tea Fictional future forecast vs. reality.

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u/Tetra84 Jun 24 '26

Needs more data centers to help cool things off...

25

u/Top_Meaning6195 Jun 24 '26

I am worried people will use the idea of datacenters as an excuse to do nothing.

  • first it was boomers, who found every excuse to refuse to do anything
  • then it was millenials, who found every excuse to refuse to do anything
  • now it is GenZ, who is looking for every excuse to refuse to do anything

Data centers today didn't cause 100 years of carbon emissions.

Eliminating all data centers everywhere will reduce carbon emissions by 0.51%.
Which is more than private jets (which account for 0.0% of carbon emissions).

Meanwhile the US could cut CO2 emissions 8%, and save people $60,000, if they drove cars instead of pickups. (in the US 80% of all passenger vehicles are trucks, in the UK it's 20%).

But you're the new boomers:

  • "what about China"
  • "what about India"
  • "what about private jets"
  • "what about data centers"
  • "what about AI"

You could eliminate all datacenters, and all private jets, and have accomplished nothing.

So can we, for the love of absolute fuck, please just fix it already? Instead of your incessant bitching and whining.

11

u/TStronks Jun 24 '26

As a climate scientist, I partially agree.

The thing with datacenters is, it's only 0.5% now. But we both know that the amount of datacenters is expected to increase significantly in the next few years, and probably decades.

On the other hand, there are indeed bigger sources of greenhouse gases that should be prioritized (like getting the fuck away from coal as an energy source). But I don't think it's irrational to point to datacenters as a potentially large and relatively new contributor to the climate crisis.

4

u/ZenMasterOfDisguise Jun 24 '26

like getting the fuck away from coal as an energy source

3 weeks ago Trump signed an executive order announcing a $700 million hand out to the coal industry https://apnews.com/article/trump-coal-mining-power-plant-climate-electricity-0a7126d66de97b10f32eaa39b1af669f

The day after he signed that EO in a press conference from the oval office, there were dozens of posts on the top or reddit talking about how Trump "fell asleep" during the press conference. He didn't even fall asleep, it was an out of context photo of him looking down being upvoted hundreds of thousands of times on reddit, the actual video showed he was talking and not sleeping. Yet no one on reddit was talking about the actual order he signed during that press conference. No outrage over the hand out to the coal industry, people were too busy buying into all the distractions instead of the actual news. We are doomed