The Staggering #Ecological Impacts of Computation and the #Cloud
Anthropologist Steven Gonzalez illustrates some of the diverse #environmental impacts of data storage.
by Steven Gonzalez Monserrate
Excerpt: "#TheCloud now has a greater #CarbonFootprint than the airline industry. A single #DataCenter can consume the equivalent electricity of 50,000 homes. At 200 terawatt hours (TWh) annually, data centers collectively devour more energy than some nation-states. Today, the electricity utilized by data centers accounts for 0.3 percent of overall #CarbonEmissions, and if we extend our accounting to include networked devices like laptops, smartphones, and tablets, the total shifts to 2 percent of global carbon emissions.
"Why so much energy? Beyond cooling, the energy requirements of data centers are vast. To meet the pledge to customers that their data and cloud services will be available anytime, anywhere, data centers are designed to be hyper-redundant: If one system fails, another is ready to take its place at a moment’s notice, to prevent a disruption in user experiences. Like Tom’s air conditioners idling in a low-power state, ready to rev up when things get too hot, the data center is a Russian doll of redundancies: redundant power systems like diesel generators, redundant servers ready to take over computational processes should others become unexpectedly unavailable, and so forth. In some cases, only 6 to 12 percent of energy consumed is devoted to active computational processes. The remainder is allocated to cooling and maintaining chains upon chains of redundant fail-safes to prevent costly downtime."
Read more:
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-staggering-ecological-impacts-of-computation-and-the-cloud?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
#NoNukesForAI #RethinkNotRestart #NoNukesForDatacenters #AI #LMs #Datacenters #WaterIsLife
Global power consumption of data centers (excluding crypto)
AI data center power consumption
