Environmentalists have targeted various technologies in recent years, but during the past 24 months, they’ve focused a lot of attention on bitcoin mining. The insatiable desire to reduce carbon footprints has now been directed at artificial intelligence (AI), a trend that is taking the world by storm.
It’s clear that AI is a very popular technology in 2023. Openai’s Chatgpt and other innovative software have been released. But several articles and academic papers have claimed that AI consumes a huge amount of energy, and has a large carbon footprint.
Bloomberg published a article stating that ‘AI consumes more energy than any other form of computing. According to the article, media members use a trick to make it appear that machines are stealing energy from humans.
Josh Saul, Dina Bass and Bloomberg claim that training a single [AI] can consume more energy than 100 U.S. households use in a year. The report notes that although researchers have calculated a total for how much energy it takes to create an AI model, there is still no estimate of the total power used by the technology.
Academic Paper Published by Students from the University of Colorado Riverside, and University of Texas Arlington, claims that Chatgpt not only uses a lot of energy, but also utilizes water to cool data centers.
The paper states that Microsoft’s AI facilities in the United States use so much water that it could cool ‘370 BMW cars, or 320 Tesla electric vehicle’. The paper claims that the GPT-3 training model used 185,000 gallons.
Mark Labbe is an author for techtarget.com. insists ‘data centres and large AI models are harmful to the environmental.’ A article on numenta.com claims that AI is also ‘harming’ our planet. The author says the trend will accelerate climate change if it’s not addressed.
Many people do not agree with the alarming headlines and studies, believing that the so-called “climate crisis” is a falsehood. A report by the Gatestone Institute, for example, claims that climate alarmism harms the West.
Drieu G. Godefridi is the author of the Gatestone Institute. He says, “Future generations are going to judge us harshly because we allowed extremist environmental activism infeeble the West.” John Shewchuk, a meteorologist at the Gatestone Institute, insists climate alarmism has no basis.
Shewchuk Tweeted on 16 April: “Climate alarmism is not a substitute for facts.” Our primate ancestors developed when temperatures were 20 degrees F higher than they are today. There were also no polar glaciers. Earth is relatively cold and getting colder climatologically.
Climate activists insist that the science is settled.
Climate alarmists do not only target bitcoin mining or artificial intelligence. Recent AFP report has been criticized for blaming the rice farming industry for significant CO2 emission. AFP report states that scientists say rice is a necessity if we want to reduce greenhouse gas emission.
AFP’s Sunday tweet was criticized for claiming that rice farming is responsible for CO2 emissions. ‘What cannot be ignored is that rice is literally a top food source for millions of people’, responded on the AFP twitter account. ‘Eliminating the rice crop would cause millions to starve… and people like you [AFP] don’t mind.’
Thomas Massie also criticized AFP for its video tweet. Massie said, ‘The fact climate wokes are going to rice shows how illogical and irrational they are.’ “Mature trees release large quantities of methane.” Methane is released by ponds and lakes.
He added that methane is released when organic matter decomposes in the absence oxygen, or in the stomachs of termites and herbivores. Truthfully, people think that arbitrary opinions and subjective evaluations of what’s good for the environment and what’s not should be investigated.
While bitcoin is a currency that can be used without censorship, others argue it should also address concerns about climate change. The environmental impact of artificial intelligent and rice farming have also been scrutinized. Many people follow the rules set out by climate experts and bureaucrats. However, some hold contrary views. They argue that science has not been settled.