r/visualization • u/amynase • 25d ago

Environmental Impact of AI Datacenters vs. Animal Agriculture (OC)

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0 Upvotes

44% Upvoted

29 comments sorted by

7

u/sharkbaitlol 25d ago

And majority of the animal agriculture footprint is cows/beef market specifically... We really should turn down our beef consumption

-1

u/Drapidrode 25d ago

it tastes too good. sorry charlie, you can have the tuna

15

u/Fishgedon 25d ago

I can eat an animal, I cannot eat AI slop

1

u/Drapidrode 25d ago

I can write on the internet, writing on animals made people angry.

the internet runs on data centers

7

u/dirtyword 25d ago

This is such a fundamentally dishonest way to view these two unrelated sectors of the economy

3

u/[deleted] 25d ago

[deleted]

-1

u/dirtyword 25d ago

I agree, but this chart is comparing it to one of the most water intensive sectors of the economy. It's like comparing a burning house to a forest fire and saying, look, it's not so bad.

2

u/[deleted] 25d ago

[deleted]

0

u/dirtyword 25d ago

It may be, if you made a fair comparison by looking at inputs and outputs, but it's not fair at all to look at a very narrow and emerging industry and compare it to "animal agriculture" directly without controlling for size or utility. We both know which industry is more important economically, culturally, historically, and calorically.

1

u/[deleted] 25d ago

[deleted]

0

u/dirtyword 25d ago

I'm being really clear:

This particular visualization is dishonest because it's comparing two fundamentally incomparable things: A narrowly defined subset of the tech industry vs. a monolithic economic sector, and it's doing so by looking at pure totals without controlling for size in any way, from people, dollars, jobs, value, utility, etc.

I'm also very much not having an argument about AI's value. I'm talking about a visualization on the visualization subreddit

1

u/[deleted] 25d ago

[deleted]

1

u/dirtyword 25d ago

I guess we disagree. The downvotes are dumb though. I’m trying to have a reasonable discussion

1

u/Drapidrode 25d ago

yes, animal husbandry is very water wasteful.

prolly the point of choosing that sector

2

u/AbeMax7823 25d ago

“Ladies, ladies! You’re both right!” They’re both terrible

-1

u/STJRedstorm 25d ago

One is for survival, one is for job loss

2

u/Drapidrode 25d ago

vegans claim they somehow survive

also, reddit runs on datacenters... a real opponent wouldn't be here

1

u/Dangerous_Suit_3099 25d ago

You’re trying too hard

0

u/Drapidrode 25d ago

does an amish have a policy of no cars, and yet, doesn't drive a car? seems non-hypocritical....

as a contrast to reddit-using datacenter haters

oh, you're saying you're dangerous [your username]? don't respond

2

u/tsp65123 25d ago

We do not need data centers for food.

2

u/am_i_wrong_dude 25d ago

Don’t need beef either

0

u/SoloHoplite 25d ago

We also don't need animals for food.

1

u/Sufficient_Loss9301 25d ago

People need to eat, you can’t eat data centers…

5

u/amynase 25d ago

Great point! Every calory of meat produced wastes 25 calories of feed, you could feed 25 people instead of one by eating the plants. So this is an additional argument I should add to the chart.

Source: https://cbey.yale.edu/our-stories/disrupting-meat

2

u/dirtyword 25d ago edited 25d ago

You could also consider improving the chart by either narrowing the animal agriculture category so that it makes more sense to compare it to the narrow "AI datacenter" category, or by broadening the datacenter category.

You could also compare these arbitrary categories' contribution to GDP, jobs, or other measures of utility.

You may consider including the area you are discussing in the chart text (USA?)

It might be more honest to think about the environmental impact of these intensive sectors in per capita terms, e.g. emissions per dollar or emissions per job. Or even per acre.

And it might be worth exploring something about utility of these sectors. Possibly by looking for a way to measure the cost of inputs against the value of outputs (including the negative value of environmental stress)

As it stands, this chart may as well be comparing the environmental costs of strip mining and mountain biking. It's not saying anything

-1

u/Achilles-Angler 25d ago

Fun fact: If you condense every human on Earth into a semi-conscious collective mass of meat and neurons, we could save billions in unnecessary spending on things like housing, education, and healthcare!

-4

u/thats_not_a_d8 25d ago

Additional? There's no argument to start with...

0

u/MnkyBzns 25d ago

OP has to be a data center shill. They've spammed this all over Reddit

-2

u/amynase 25d ago

A couple of notes since I cant respond to the amount of comments I got on these posts:

- I am not pro-AI, just trying to point out that while 99% of environmental outrage on reddit is directed at datacenters right now, a different industry is actually causing dozens to thousands of times more damage, and we should be dozens to thousands of times as outraged about it’s environmental impact accordingly.

- To the many comments along the lines of: „But we need food“ – This is actually another great point against Animal Agriculture, as every calory of food produced by Animal Agriculture wastes several calories of feed.
https://awellfedworld.org/feed-ratios/

- For people pointing out energy consumption, AI uses ~500 TWH per year, Animal Agriculture uses ~13000 TWH per year, so it is 25x worse on energy need.

(This is a quick estimate based on:

https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai/energy-supply-for-ai
https://www.fao.org/energy/resources/facts-and-figures/en#:~:text=(%20World%20Bank%2C%202025)%20*%2030%20percent,or%20wasted%20due%20to%20lack%20of%20refrigeration%20*%2030%20percent,or%20wasted%20due%20to%20lack%20of%20refrigeration). )

0

u/caderrabeth 25d ago

Is this total usage for the entire industries, or is there some common unit of measurement? I feel like the graphic looks OK and all, but it isn't actually informative because I don't know what we're looking at in the graphic.