It couldn't happen to a nicer guy ...
"Protesters in Venice are claiming an "enormous victory" after US tech billionaire Jeff Bezos and his wedding guests were forced to "run away" from the city centre, moving their main celebration to another location."
Bitcoin mining consumes more energy on a yearly basis than used by Finland. But does that matter?
Humans are wiping out life on earth. But does that matter?
And all for a few bitcoins more and some dope AI. What a species.
Bitcoin is pure evil
“From mid-2022 to mid-2023, the 34 mines consumed 32.3 terawatt-hours of electricity—33% more than Los Angeles—85% of which came from fossil fuels. We estimated that 1.9 million Americans were exposed to ≥0.1 μg/m3 of additional PM2.5 pollution from Bitcoin mines, often hundreds of miles away from the communities they affected.”
"AI is burning energy in ever-increasing quantities. Every 100 days, it’s doubling the amount of juice it’s using. Pretty soon AI will be swallowing up more electricity than Iceland. Then it will be Norway, Denmark, Sweden… When I went online to try to find out why no one is really talking about this, I couldn’t get any clear answers."
https://aurora.dawn.com/news/1145337/ai-is-on-an-energy-bender
MAGAs are banning any mention of AI energy use. So, has it always been. History is written by the exterminator.
During freshwater global crisis, Google's water surge
"Google’s data centers worldwide consumed nearly 6 billion gallons (22.7 billion liters) of water in 2024. The company’s “2024 Environmental Report” showed an 8% annual increase in water consumption, driven by advancements in search functions, artificial intelligence (AI), and other projects. AI remains the primary factor behind the surge, with Google’s water consumption having jumped 20% in 2022."
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/world/google-data-centers-used-nearly-6b-gallons-of-water-in-2024/3478721#
"Tech giants and fossil fuel companies are planning to build new gas power plants and pipelines that directly supply data centers. And they increasingly propose keeping those projects separate from the grid, fast tracking gas infrastructure at a speed that can’t be matched by renewables or nuclear."
https://heated.world/p/ai-is-guzzling-gas
Big Tech is creating it own electricity and water infrastructure so that when the disasters come, citizens will suffer but the data centers will keep running. Is that ok?
Investors just can't pull the plug despite datacenters facing AI power crunch
Even if 98% say they're worried about energy availability and reliability
"Utilities are requiring large upfront non-refundable payments from investors in such sites, plus a commitment to use that power. It also claims utilities are getting developers to pay upfront for critical infrastructure such as substations that are needed to bring power to the site."
https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2024/11/27/investor_datacenter_energy_concern/
"Continual growth in the use of materials and energy would lead fairly quickly to absurdly high numbers that could never be sustained in the real world. In the last couple of centuries, humanity’s usage of energy grew at about 3% a year. If that rate of growth continues, regardless energy sources used, planet’s surface would reach boiling temperature in about 400 years—not due to CO2, but to the simple thermodynamic impacts of so much energy being transferred."
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2024-10-31/to-grow-or-not-to-grow-that-isnt-the-question/
Electric vehicles are often presented as a key technology for drastically reducing greenhouse gas emissions, thus helping curb climate change.
But manufacturing electric cars requires the mining of critical minerals for batteries, like lithium and cobalt, that are largely sourced in developing countries. Local traditional and Indigenous communities say the mining is already harming their way of life, damaging biodiversity, and polluting.
https://news.mongabay.com/2024/05/green-credentials-of-electric-vehicles-come-under-fire/
Data centers "consumed 17 gigawatts of electricity in 2022, or about 4 percent of total U.S. consumption. This is projected to double to 35 gigawatts by 2030."
“But now your data center for AI applications is no longer a hog, it’s an elephant and it’s living in your backyard,” Eric Woodell, an expert in data centers, stated.
"A mere 10-foot-square space within the average data center consumes about 10 times as much electricity as the average home."
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/how-big-tech-consuming-americas-electricity-and-water
"That’s why Metroc turned to prison labor. The company gets cheap, Finnish-speaking workers, while the prison system can offer inmates employment that, it says, prepares them for the digital world of work after their release. Using prisoners to train AI creates uneasy parallels with the kind of low-paid and sometimes exploitive labor that has often existed downstream in technology. "
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/prisoners-training-ai-finland
Over 2 percent of the US’s electricity generation now goes to bitcoin
Bitcoin is a true evil, destructive force, the pure expression of unbounded greed. And bitcoin is a good mirror of what Big Tech actually is, a greedfest of hype cycles, churning out one grift after another, the latest being AI.
The only difference between Silicon Valley and Las Vegas is in the chips they use.
We have a global freshwater crisis and it going to get much, much worse
What's the solution?
AI and more data say the tech visionaries and innovators
Doesn't AI consume vast quantities of water itself?
Globally, data centers are forecast to consume 450m gallons of water daily by 2030, up from ~205m in 2016, according to data reviewed by Bloomberg.
https://thehustle.co/big-tech-s-thirst-for-ai-dominance-may-bring-literal-thirst-for-everyone-else/
Ireland is the 13th worst country in the world for biodiversity. It’s an ecological desert. And the Irish State plans to devastate the environment even more, turning Ireland into the mining capital of the world. Hear the voices of brave and determined environmental protectors who despite receiving death threats, and all sorts of other intimidation, are determined to protect the environment. They need your help.
www.afterthegoldrushpodcast.com
Welcome to the Growth Death Cult. Sustainable capitalism is not sustainable because it depends on a planned obsolescence, linear economy.
"We live in an era of consuming and discarding, and when we are done using these devices, instead of looking for a new way to put them to use or recycling them, we just throw them away. The infamous planned obsolescence, paired with the obsession with always having the latest model of everything, only make things worse."
nostr:npub1u2hl9r48emg8eq82nh8zwadl3xr93u7vkk37qavfcg7cu3dmrrzqe4z4d7 only at beginning of its potential harm. We don’t need AI to figure out what to do. We need wisdom. We need degrowth. We will either manage degrowth or Nature will degrow us.
Only about 1% of rare earth elements in old products are recycled.
The reason is planned obsolescence. Most products are designed for waste.
Also, rare earths are often in such micro quantities in products, it’s almost impossible to recycle them.
What that means is that they are essentially lost to future use.
But that’s ok. We’ll just mine more for our “Green” Transition, our “Clean” energy.
"There are more than 440 nuclear reactors around the world, and each is a disaster waiting to happen. Nuclear reactors are most dangerous in two situations: first, as at Fukushima, when direct physical damage to the plant disables back-up generators and other safety equipment. And second, as at Chernobyl, when design flaws combine with user error to create a catastrophic failure."
"Education systems struggle to adapt to the fast pace of change in technology. The turnover of education technology products is three years on average, but curriculum reform takes place every ten years. This means countries cannot expect to react to every new device on the market. They must map out and prioritize the digital skills they want to teach learners and teachers that will stand the test of time. "
https://www.unesco.org/gem-report/en/articles/four-questions-ask-choosing-technology-education
Google has proven to be particularly thirsty in this regard, not to mention secretive.
2022: Google's water use in The Dalles had almost tripled over five years. The increased usage was enabled, in no small part, because of increased access to the municipal water supply in return for an upgrade to the water supply and a transfer of certain water rights. Since establishing the first data centre in The Dalles in 2005, Google has also received tax breaks worth $260 million
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2308/S00011/water-wars-cooling-the-data-centres.htm