Comment on China's rare earth export restrictions threaten global chipmaking supply chains
9tr6gyp3@lemmy.world 1 day agoI am not going to lie, i just don’t have the energy to put together all the research that has been done on the energy consumption of AI neural networks for you. They are consuming more energy entire States in the USA use. Then theres cryptocurrency. Then there is the fact that we have global storefronts, distributers, resellers, supermarkets, and food production that is designed around creating hyper capitalist worlds of consumerism that only exists because it is so god damn easy to add to cart and have one of everything.
You will never need one of everything. We don’t need to produce just to produce. We aren’t sharing. We are hoarding. We are stashing. Products are assembled and put on store shelves at such an unsustainable rate that there isn’t enough time or energy to figure out how to properly reuse or recycle them or their byproducts. The lowest quality, most pollutive products pile up. They pile up in landfills, along roads, and in oceans. Hell, there are microplastics in the most remote regions planet earth. Its filthy and disgusting. You cant even find clean water in the wild anymore.
All because we have a way to tap 3 buttons and get delivered something new to consume.
Hyper fucking capitalism only becomes more hyper thanks to rare earth metals (which also are just tossed in the trash once their use is up).
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I did all that before i answered you because I wanted to make sure my thinking was accurate.
Total electricity (not energy, because energy is oil, gas, coal, etc, tool, just talking electricity here) used by all data centers in the USA for all computing is about 5% of the total USA electricity consumption. source.
True, but I’m not sure what relevance that has. Lots and LOTS of industries use way WAY more electricity:
“The industrial sector accounts for 33% of all the electricity used in the world (the largest sector for energy consumption is residential housing, followed by commercial businesses). According to the U.S Energy Information Administration, in the United States, 77% of all industrial electricity goes to manufacturing, 12% to mining, 7% to construction, and 5% to agriculture. From the list of high energy consumption industries in manufacturing, chemicals account for 37%, followed by petroleum and coal products at 22%, paper and paper products at 11%, primary metals 8% and the remainder is made up of food, non-metallic metals and all other categories.”
source
I’ll agree its a waste, but of the 4.4% used by ALL datacenters 1.5% of that is crypto.
AI, by itself, last year was about 1% of the 4.4%.
If you’re rationally focused on CO2 reduction, all of compute is a drop in the bucket compared to a number of heavy industries. Again, my numbers here was only about electricity, which does have CO2 concerns, but lots of those other industries use way more electricity in addition to other CO2 producing energy sources (like natural gas/coal/oil, etc).
So if your true goal and concern is CO2 reduction, your priorities should be going after the much bigger fish.
9tr6gyp3@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Thats the thing. Compute ENABLES all of that industry. Compute ENABLES all that residential energy usage. Compute ENABLES commercial businesses to operate.
Those sources are referring to direct energy usage, but isn’t accounting for indirect production enabled by that technology.
Im not saying there aren’t other fights to battle. All im saying is halt this nonsense until we can figure out how to clean planet Earth of all the crap we have already produced. Piling on isn’t helping at all. Leave those rare earth metals in the ground and figure out how to recycle them ones we have already mined. Figure out how to pull from landfills all that forgotten ewaste.
Its going to take time and effort. Its not going to be profitable. Its not going to fast.
Personally, I believe every company who produces a product must also provide a way to reuse, recycle, or return each and every product they sell. Phone manufacturers, solar panel fabricators, and wind turbine manufacturers should be the ones leading the charge on this. It shouldn’t be up to any third party service, government, or country to have that burden.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I agree with this, but this is why I asked you the second question in my original post to you. That question was “And all the services you consume that use these?”
So if you’re saying “yes” to that too, then you’re essentially wanting to roll the clock back to life back in 1940 or so. The consequences on human life will be devastating if we do that. It may be cutting the human population on Earth in half. A good chunk of what compute enables is human life.
9tr6gyp3@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Its not rolling back the clock imo. We have already pulled out those resources. They are in our possession. We don’t need to mine fresh rare earth metals.