Current datacenters are much more concerning environmentally for their electricity usage. The previous 20 years before the current LLM boom, their electrical usage was more or less flat. In the US, it's now estimated to go from 5% of the US electrical demand to 15% in the next few years and is delaying fossil fuel plant closures
The water usage is concerning in some local situations (often more so from pollution from poor construction) for various data centers, but agriculture and especially animal agriculture really does dominate water usage in water scarce areas and is enormously wasteful with water. For instance, in the American West, it's mostly all going to animal feed where plants for human consumption use significantly less
This is not to say it's good that it's using this water. Just that we really should actually also be very much concerned about the agricultural impact because it's horribly inefficient. Producing animal products is massively inefficient
It's around 15% exported in the American west and 4% nation wide. That's not nothing, but it's mostly for domestic consumption, the headlines about it are kind of misleading by making it sound like a majority
Alfalfa is the third largest economic product in the US, but only 4% is exported annually. In the western states, however, which are high producers close to shipping ports to major export markets like China, Saudi Arabia and Japan, about 15% is exported each year
Missing context: Humans have the best health outcomes on a plant based diet and it takes nearly 10 times more water to get an equivalent amount of calories out of animal sources compared to plants.
You should care about environmental costs in general, not just when it's a convenient data point for hating on AI. I mean, you should hate on generative AI, it's garbage, but don't stop there. Animal agriculture is an environmental disaster of outlandish proportions and it's easy (with a tiny bit of education) to eat plants instead of animals and stop being a part of the problem.
It would be hypocritical to advocate against AI but also give them your money 3 times a day, wouldn't it?
Not who are replying to, but I've got some good news, moving to plant-based diets is also better for wild animals too
Livestock farmers often claim that their grazing systems “mimic nature”. If so, the mimicry is a crude caricature. A review of evidence from over 100 studies found that when livestock are removed from the land, the abundance and diversity of almost all groups of wild animals increases
And not only that but fewer crops are needed for animal feed so less disruption overall from that end too
If everyone shifted to a plant-based diet we would reduce global land use for agriculture by 75%. This large reduction of agricultural land use would be possible thanks to a reduction in land used for grazing and a smaller need for land to grow crops.
Corn is about evenly split between ethanol and animal feed in the US. That's also based on USDA numbers that under count the amount going to animal feed by excluding exports and excluding more indirect ways corn go to animal feed
Today’s corn crop is mainly used for biofuels (roughly 40 percent of U.S. corn is used for ethanol) and as animal feed (roughly 36 percent of U.S. corn. [...] Only a tiny fraction of the national corn crop is directly used for food for Americans, much of that for high-fructose corn syrup.
13 Comments
usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml · 13 pts · 97d
Current datacenters are much more concerning environmentally for their electricity usage. The previous 20 years before the current LLM boom, their electrical usage was more or less flat. In the US, it's now estimated to go from 5% of the US electrical demand to 15% in the next few years and is delaying fossil fuel plant closures
The water usage is concerning in some local situations (often more so from pollution from poor construction) for various data centers, but agriculture and especially animal agriculture really does dominate water usage in water scarce areas and is enormously wasteful with water. For instance, in the American West, it's mostly all going to animal feed where plants for human consumption use significantly less
https://archive.is/GnPy9
This is not to say it's good that it's using this water. Just that we really should actually also be very much concerned about the agricultural impact because it's horribly inefficient. Producing animal products is massively inefficient
stopdropandprole@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 97d
great graphs and summary. ty for sharing
Rooster326@programming.dev · 1 pts · 97d
usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 97d
It's around 15% exported in the American west and 4% nation wide. That's not nothing, but it's mostly for domestic consumption, the headlines about it are kind of misleading by making it sound like a majority
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/25/california-water-drought-scarce-saudi-arabia
o1011o@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 97d
Missing context: Humans have the best health outcomes on a plant based diet and it takes nearly 10 times more water to get an equivalent amount of calories out of animal sources compared to plants.
You should care about environmental costs in general, not just when it's a convenient data point for hating on AI. I mean, you should hate on generative AI, it's garbage, but don't stop there. Animal agriculture is an environmental disaster of outlandish proportions and it's easy (with a tiny bit of education) to eat plants instead of animals and stop being a part of the problem.
It would be hypocritical to advocate against AI but also give them your money 3 times a day, wouldn't it?
iocase@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 97d
All my homies love trophic layers
Inucune@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 97d
So we should only preserve plants and let any animal not related to food production fight for it's existence. Gg no re
queermunist@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 97d
How is this different from what we're doing right now?
usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml · 0 pts · 97d
Not who are replying to, but I've got some good news, moving to plant-based diets is also better for wild animals too
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/16/most-damaging-farm-products-organic-pasture-fed-beef-lamb
And not only that but fewer crops are needed for animal feed so less disruption overall from that end too
https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
Luisp@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 5 pts · 97d
99% of that waste are cows
Artisian@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 97d
That's actually too generous. A large amount of water goes to corn, which we turn
primarilymuch of into corn ethanol to burn in our cars.usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 96d
Corn is about evenly split between ethanol and animal feed in the US. That's also based on USDA numbers that under count the amount going to animal feed by excluding exports and excluding more indirect ways corn go to animal feed
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/time-to-rethink-corn/
Artisian@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 96d
Corrected! Thank you.
dan69@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 97d
Wait till they find out how of their body is made up of.