Google soars 48% (emissions). The sky’s the limit?

https://preview.redd.it/g97p4pvz1iad1.jpg?width=768&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=682a572e30447c575ad4cf8714c21bd3c8ca28c4

***Photo above*** *- AI generated rendition of a planned data center for the Philippines, which could be the largest in the world. Which is a natural fit, since they already host so many spam call centers.*

You can’t put a price tag on good health. But you CAN put a price tag on global warming. It’s REALLY big. Hurricanes. Cities inundated by record tidal surges. Ocean fish stocks imperiled. Desertification of farmland. I googled a couple of these sites, then gave up. The cost is somewhere between $1 Trillion per year and infinity.

I stopped googling for answers, because Google is a big part of the problem. Their data centers emit 50% more CO2 than they did in 2020. Because people are googling for answers. And using AI chatbots. Those are the claimed culprits. See link below.

I think the people predicting an AI apocalypse are missing the biggest piece of the puzzle. Some 8th grader asking ChatGPT to write a 2 page homework assignment on the battle of Gettysburg is NOT what’s going to put New York City 6 feet under water. (NASA’s James Hansen said this was supposed to have happened by now, due to pickup trucks.) What most of AI is devoted to is spam, popups, plagiarized new, and possibly deep fake porn. In the course of clicking on the BBC article I was fed a dozen curated ads by Microsoft Copilot. Here’s a smattering of what I was told to buy this morning: “Petal Lush Clothing”. “Self publish your book on Amazon”. “Top deals on Anime’ movies”. “Gutter Guards”. “Huge Deals on new Hyundai cars”. And so much more.

This, of course is in addition to AI written articles which BING thought I’d be interested in, from my recent browsing history: “All the poisonous snakes on the US east coast”. “Michelle Obama would beat Trump”. “Kamala Harris would lose to Trump”. And “14 things never to ask a Muslim” . . . (I’d ask: how would your life be different without Google?)

I get about 50 emails a day. Hitting the spam button and “unsubscribe” doesn’t help. Cabela’s and Facebook inundate all 3 of my Gmail inboxes simultaneously on a daily basis (Primary, promotions, and social). Sometimes multiple times a day. Amazon is telling me what I left in my shopping cart. But my local government doesn’t tell me what the trash pickup schedule is for this holiday week.

AI might possibly make the world better some day. But right now it’s making it worse. All these carbon emissions are directly related to advertising, spam, and AI plagiarized “news”. Google has said it is “committed” to going carbon neutral in a decade or so. That prediction was probably written by an AI bot too.

The polar ice caps ARE going to melt, because the ice age which peaked 20,000 years ago is ending. No amount of Tesla’s, setting the air conditioning at 78, and using Amazon instead of stopping by the store on the way home from work is going to prevent that. In the meantime, AI is just making it worse.

I’m just sayin’ . . .

[~AI means Google’s greenhouse gas emissions up 48% in 5 years (bbc.com)~](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c51yvz51k2xo)

Source: baltimore-aureole