Microsoft claims timber-built datacenters can reduce its carbon footprint by up to 65%
Posted by imaginary_num6er@reddit | hardware | View on Reddit | 191 comments
imaginary_num6er@reddit (OP)
Fatigue-Error@reddit
I do love the return of nuclear power, will help us cut greenhouse gases even more.
barc0debaby@reddit
I just wish it was for something more useful to society than powering AI.
Gunmetal_61@reddit
The way I see it, if Microsoft wants to spend its own money to restart a reactor instead of putting more demand on conventional generation, well, there are definitely worse outcomes.
Prestigious_Sir_748@reddit
maybe come up with a long term storage solution first, though
drvgacc@reddit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository
ok
Prestigious_Sir_748@reddit
That's not for the US though, where Microsoft is based.
drvgacc@reddit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Isolation_Pilot_Plant
ok
MBILC@reddit
I believe one article had noted MS will also be looking for tax payer funds to be part of this project...
skippyalpha@reddit
How do you know AI won't be the most useful thing humans have ever invented?
gartenriese@reddit
We don't know, but looking at what it's used for now, it's hard to imagine. "Profit driven" and "good for humans" doesn't really fit.
Proud_Inside819@reddit
War and "profit driven" are the main reasons you're not living in a cave with no internet to post stupid things on Reddit.
Ok_Repeat_2345@reddit
Do not try to have a rational discussion with redditors especially about this topic.
SevenandForty@reddit
If/when the AI boom dies down, though, it might end up leaving them available for regular grid use
youreblockingmyshot@reddit
Well seeing as they’d build them either way I’m fine with it. Data centers are power hungry and if we can mainstream nuclear again because of it then so be it. There are things that we don’t do because the power generation factor is either too much or the electricity would cost too much. If we start building reactors more regularly and the stigma goes away the cost would come down.
Prestigious_Sir_748@reddit
In this case, it isn't helping us cut anything, merely serving to offset brand new demands we've created.
Fatigue-Error@reddit
It gets a nuclear power plant back online. Hopefully it gets people used to the idea of nuclear power as a part of the mix, gets them used to bringing more plants on line. Maybe we can even start new build.
Prestigious_Sir_748@reddit
maybe we could find a long term storage solution.
_Lucille_@reddit
The fear of nuclear power has really set us back quite a bit when it comes to energy generation. The reactor designs we have today are far safer and efficient than designs which were involved in the major incidents.
Shotty_Time@reddit
Especially Three mile island.
III-V@reddit
Which is sad because it proved that our reactors are pretty safe, even if they meltdown. There was hardly any radiation release.
zootii@reddit
Yeah it’s just fun (for some) to scare people with stories about it and the “fallout” on the island that affected the flora and fauna. Also the whole “demon core” sounds spooky and everything but it literally affected the three people in the room and that’s it IIRC
Guysmiley777@reddit
Back in the 80s the coal and gas industry funded "green" activist groups that ran pro-solar, anti-nuclear newspaper ad campaigns because the execs knew solar could never compete with fossil fuels but nuclear was a real threat to them.
Strazdas1@reddit
they werent even hiding it. if you look at those papers they usually state thatt the article was funded by X and when you look at X its owned by an oil company every time.
Guysmiley777@reddit
Of course back in thoooooose dayyyyyys you couldn't just google "Sunny Skies Coalition" (or whatever front name they used for a particular campaign) and find out who was behind it.
We also tied an onion to our belts, which was the style at the time.
Strazdas1@reddit
Yeah, it was much harder to follow the money back then.
Im from eastern europe and we did not have such traditions here. whats the story behind it?
Guysmiley777@reddit
It's a Simpsons reference.
zootii@reddit
I believe it. As much as they try to do to sabotage any progress in energy even knowing coal and fossil fuels can’t support new developments in tech and other industries
Jiopaba@reddit
Using the Demon Core as an example of anything is a riot anyway. It's like if they invented pistols today and they found out that if you put your thumb in the right spot you can stop the striker from actually contacting the bullet and firing. So they then demonstrate how cool pistols are by pointing them at their heads and pulling the trigger to make it loudly click five times a day, and then everyone acts confused and uses it as an example of the dangers of the technology when one of those times it blows someone's head off.
Words like "sanity" never entered into it, forget about "safety."
Strazdas1@reddit
There was no radiation release whatsoever. Everyone returned to work a few hours later.
IglooDweller@reddit
Even more mind-boggling is the fact that the design used at Three Mile Island is something that was conceived roughly 25 years after the first man-made sustained nuclear reaction 1942) which is the first proof of concept. The science was still in its infancy.
A modern design would inherently be much safer as a lot has been learned. The actual field of science is about 3 times as old.
benjiro3000@reddit
A modern reactor will also be 3x more expensive then those old unsafe reactors, because of all the added safety features. That is one of the reasons why almost nobody in the west have build a reactor in like the last 20+ years. Its amazing to see how old most reactors in operations today, actually are.
The issue is that big boom = big reaction, lots of small boom = nobody cares.
When millions die because of pollutions, plastics or whatever, nobody cares because they can not see this effect instantly. When a aircraft crashes, and 200 people die, there is big investigations, reconstructions, committees, ... when 200 people die in car crashes on the same day, but spread out everywhere, ... do you see big investigations? No, its reported as facts of life on the news.
That is the real issue with nuclear reactors...
Hell, we all talk about the a-bomb and are ultra scared of nukes. But people forget about the firebombing of multiple German cities that kills easily as much as the nukes but because it was again, ... not something "big", .... people can imagine 100's of aircraft, dropping 100's of bombs each, and the resulting fires (as people have seen fires and how devastating a single one can be). Thus people accept this, yet, something small going boom beyond its size, that scares people. Its often the sense of scale that trips people.
It also did not help that Chernobyl and the exclusion zone, really pushed how devastation a actual nuclear catastrophe can be, making entire zones uninhabitable. So from a political aspect, investing tons in smaller generation options, even if they actually pollute more = safe carrier for the politician. But talking about new reactors, is bad for that same carrier.
Strazdas1@reddit
the firepower used was multiple times that of a nuclear explosion. Just it was divided into many smaller bombs.
Strazdas1@reddit
Three Mile Island was really interesting to learn about because it showed that the automatic control system worked as intended. A human fucked things up, reactor automatically fixed it. a human fucked it up again, system automatically fixed it again and third time a human was told not to fuck it up and everyone went back to work, the same day.
BlackBlizzard@reddit
Yeah no deaths have been claimed from the Three Mile Island accident
KingSuperChimbo@reddit
And Godzilla
JL3Eleven@reddit
Fuck a fake monster The US and Russia have had UFO interfere with our nuclear weapons on several occasions. It's really not a joke anymore.
Malstrom AFB ufos. https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a43033115/pentagon-investigating-ufos-nuclear-warheads/. In Russia the did the opposite and turned them ON.
Strazdas1@reddit
Incident. Singular. There was only 1 major incident in nuclear history.
panckage@reddit
Ok Chernobyl. You don't count Fukushima? Making a large swath of land uninhabitable for 10+ years doesn't seem minor to me
Strazdas1@reddit
Why would i count fukushima? Zero emissions over land, irrelevant emissions of slightly irradiated coolant into water. Incompetent criminal evacuation efforts. ANd no, the land is not uninhabitable, in fact the land has recieved absolutely zero radiation. the government who organized that evacuation should be tried for it as it was absolutely criminal what they did and resulted in thousands of people death from the panic caused.
Stahlreck@reddit
For a lot of countries the fear is more about the waste and dependencies. Nobody wants to buy uranium from other countries as that makes one just quite dependent.
Afaik though the US can just mine their own stuff so should be good to go. Not everyone has this luxury sadly.
Also in many places it seems that nuclear currently just isn't economically viable. Building plants takes forever and is expensive and you still gotta make money with them. If these huge companies pay for their own stuff however...pretty good.
Strazdas1@reddit
The total waste of all nuclear plants in all nuclear history fits in a football stadium. And 96% of it can be used as fuel in modern reactors. thats how irrelevant waste is.
As far as buying goes, there is uranium in every continent and Thorium even more widespread.
BeefistPrime@reddit
And even the major incidents in the west were a drop in the bucket compared to the environmental damage done by the normal operation of fossil fuel energy. We could've had 100 chernobyls and still not done nearly as much damage to the world as coal does without any accidents.
The "environmental" movement being the ones who effectively shut down nuclear power is one of the biggest mistakes in history and they still won't admit it.
EmergencyCucumber905@reddit
It's estimated that fossil fuels are responsible for 4 million deaths annually. Fossil fuels have killed more people than nuclear energy ever has.
Strazdas1@reddit
Based on the WHO report, less than 50 deaths can be attribured to Chernobyl and 0 to other incidents. More people die falling of roofs installing solar panels than from nuclear power in its entirety.
DR_van_N0strand@reddit
Yeah, but the difference is fossil fuels are dangerous in a slow manner you don’t really notice compared to if you had a Chernobyl type fiasco near a major US city.
I know that our shit is safer, especially modern plants and yadda yadda, but all that really matters is how it’s perceived by the dumbest people who cast votes. Also there’s not a nuclear lobby spending the same type of money as the oil lobby.
But you can’t really yadda yadda over how badly Chernobyl and Three Mile Island affected public perception. Also people are idiots and 99% of their knowledge of nuclear power plants comes from The Simpsons.
Everyone just pictures Homer running Chernobyl in a major US city when it comes to public perception.
The tides will change I think as the older generations (finally) make their grand exit off our mortal stage and we can go back to trying to move forward.
chx_@reddit
The problem really is nuclear waste. We don't quite have a good solution for that.
anival024@reddit
Nuclear waste is not a problem at all.
We're not tossing highly-radioactive material around. That material is used in the reactor (or breeder reactors).
Other irradiated material can be stored quite safely and indefinitely. Even if it's released it's not a major concern. You get more damage just breathing the air in a city than any accidental release of nuclear waste would do to you or the environment.
Perudur1984@reddit
Really? So there should be no problem cleaning up Sellafield in the UK then or the Hanford site in the US. Oh wait....
_Lucille_@reddit
Nuclear waste is something we have experience in handling. It's not as if renewables have no waste: the disposal of panels and batteries are still problems we face (lithium recycling is expensive for example).
It is also simply impossible for renewables to outperform nuclear: we know how much power the sun and wind can generate. Things like cloud, snow, and the night are still a thing.
Simply having nuclear handle the base load and renewables handle the rest would probably be ideal.
chx_@reddit
We really don't, we can't, it hasn't been around for long enough to have experience over the many centuries it takes
And energy storage is a thing
dern_the_hermit@reddit
When we have a robust, powerful, and clean electrical generating grid, packed with nuclear and solar and wind and geothermal and various options for energy storage, during summer months when our solar excess is generating bazillions of watts of excess energy, we can just tap some of it to blast nuclear waste with lasers to transmute it into comparatively harmless stuff.
Solar and nuclear can have a very mutually beneficial relationship.
BeefistPrime@reddit
Of course we can. We bury it under a geologically stable mountain in the middle of nowhere. The odds that it will be a future problem are very slim and in fact it's far more likely that future people will mine the waste to refine/reprocess it into useful fuels.
All the nuclear waste ever produced would fit into the size of a small stadium. We can absolutely solve the issue. It's just that NIMBYism and irrational fears keep us from doing so.
And don't give me "but what if people 10,000 years in the future wander in and don't understand what they're seeing" bullshit. 1) If they're technological enough to dig deep under a mountain, they're not cave men. 2) Humans are smart - they don't think "hmm someone took some care to isolate and store this stuff... let's swim in it and put it in our water!" 3) and most importantly, if you were a human 1000 or 10000 years from now, you're certainly not going to thank us for leaving you with a destroyed environment unsuitable for human civilization in favor of not leaving some steel casks under a mountain somewhere.
chx_@reddit
As far as I am aware there's not a single deep geological repository for nuclear waste is operational currently. Onkalo is furthest along but even that facility has an expected lifetime of less than 80 years.
Repositories for centuries are still theoretical and no one expects them to become operational for decades yet.
As per this the World Nuclear Association "about 400,000 tonnes of used fuel has been discharged from reactors worldwide, with about one-third having been reprocessed" not sure how does that figure relate to stadiums -- or caves under mountains for that matter.
BeefistPrime@reddit
Sure, when people stop perfectly good solutions, there are no solutions available. That's self-fulfilling prophecy, not a lack of solutions available.
chx_@reddit
We will solve it somehow because we already made nuclear waste.
I am just sayin' once again: if we are placing multitrillion dollar bets on future tech what about betting on renewables?
BeefistPrime@reddit
We are going full bore on renewables and that's great. But it's not enough. Renewable growth has not even offset the new growing energy demand from year to year, let alone cutting into the old growth. We're burning more fossil fuels every year. Every year is the most carbon we've ever released into the atmosphere.
This is the most dire problem humanity has ever faced aside from the possibility of nuclear war. But that could be avoided, and this is going to happen. We shouldn't be choosing one solution to the problem, we should be choosing all the solutions to the problem.
katt2002@reddit
Played SimCity, can confirm.
BeefistPrime@reddit
It's much harder to replace a grid that's mostly 24/7 power with a grid that's intermittent power 100%. You need massive geo-engineering scale energy storage projects and energy grid upgrades. Which we should do, but it's much easier to replace coal and natural gas plants with nuclear and add as many renewables as we have -- having a mix of constant-on power simplifies things greatly.
More importantly, there's no reason we can't be building nuclear and renewables. They don't share the same resources or production lines. The world is at stake, we shouldn't be picking one solution, we should be picking all of them.
chx_@reddit
My argument was against building new reactors. That takes 10-15 years and then it runs for 30-80 years and it's basically a staggering expensive bet against progress in all things renewables.
So right now I would say due to the lack of long term nuclear waste storage options we shouldn't use nuclear.
Fusion would be nice.
BeefistPrime@reddit
10-15 years ago, we should've gone balls out on nuclear, that's obvious now. And in 10-15 years from now, it should be obvious we should've gone balls out on nuclear, too. The problem doesn't go away. Renewables are great and I want to build as many as we can, but people think they're saving the world but the reality is that they're not even covering the new energy demand of an increasing world, let alone cutting into the old demand. Every year we still set a new record on carbon released into the atmosphere. As great as renewables are, they are not winning the battle like everyone thinks they are.
MBILC@reddit
That is assuming they do not cut corners to save on costs, which is often the case of why even older one's failed...
Flameancer@reddit
I’m a 30min drive from a nuclear power station. As a matter of fact as a kid in Boy Scouts they let us do a camping night and merit badge classes on grounds in a public area they had design for similar events onsite.
The premise of the green goo in barrels really set us back a few decades energy wise imo.
zGoDLiiKe@reddit
Left right center shouldn’t matter, nuclear is good for the future
RainforestNerdNW@reddit
No it won't, it's actually slowing down decarbonization. The only one of these deals that makes financial and environment sense is repairing and restarting TMI.
building new nuclear is literally more expensive than building renewables+storage that generate more power - significantly more.
here is a breakdown of this that cites industry professionals, real world data, etc: https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1dhtutk/us_as_many_as_15_years_behind_china_on_nuclear/l918h1i/
Strazdas1@reddit
Why does this myth keep coming up. Its based on a shitty study that thinks 30 minute of battery storage is enough to solve issues of weeks when renewable dont work.
RainforestNerdNW@reddit
Because it's neither a myth nor is it based on "a shitty study". You should follow the link and actually learn something
Strazdas1@reddit
Considering that germany electricity prices are higher than mine and i know for a fact that the prices here are significantly higher than nuclear production prices i would say this statement is completely full of shit.
RainforestNerdNW@reddit
The only person here who is full of shit is you, and i'm sick and tired of you failing to actually read the primary sources. Your not just slightly wrong, you're outright disinformation levels of wrong.
since you're either too lazy, too dishonest or too cowardly to bother to actually read the post i originally linked here is one of the direct primary sources i linked there
screencap from Lazards LCOE+ 2024: https://i.imgur.com/5jEKLNE.png
which lines right up with what the US DOE finds too.
If you're going to talk on /r/hardware, let alone the entire internet or real life, you really need to not be full of crap.
thachamp05@reddit
except it will all be used on these datacenters.... your house will still run on coal/gas.. unless u have solar
BeefistPrime@reddit
It's still better than those data centers being run on coal/gas. Every bit helps.
PeakBrave8235@reddit
Then why not solar/wind/hydro lol? You’re acting like it’s nuclear energy or nothing
BeefistPrime@reddit
Because those things are already being built out as fast as we can. We should be throwing everything we can at decarbonizing. Renewables + nuclear decarbonizes way faster than just renewables, so why wouldn't we do that?
PeakBrave8235@reddit
Lol, no they are not being built as fast as they can. China has shown you can build GW’s worth of renewable energy in a year. There’s no reason $10 trillion worth of tech companies, google Microsoft and Amazon can’t do the same thing
BeefistPrime@reddit
Either way, renewables + nuclear is better than just renewables. They use different resources to construct, so we don't have to choose one or the other, and they synergize better together because creating intermittent (renewable power) for a high percentage of your grid is a huge problem to overcome, and nuclear smooths that over by providing 24/7 baseload. There's no reason not to do them both.
Nuclear people aren't anti-renewables, renewables people are often anti-nuclear.
WhyIsSocialMedia@reddit
We're still going to be building an entire new generation of them, and with scalability and private economics built in (modern fission is a failure simply because it's too expensive, takes too long to build, etc - some of these will definitely help by the private market driven nature of Google etc).
Also if these models keep growing in capability at the same rate we've seen, it's possible they can be used to fill in gaps in other research, running management in certain areas, etc. I'm purposely ignoring the potential of AGI here, and just scaling out modern networks a bit more. Imagine if we could get them to do all of the basic missed fusion research, grant management, etc - just doing that alone could really potentially bring fusion back into the race as a backup plan. Because at the moment fusion is dead when it comes to climate change solutions. Or similarly think of all the issues around aging grids, conversion of existing energy infrastructure to renewable, etc. That's all stuff that could potentially be reduced in time by the models themselves.
Plus if the models don't ever get there economically, then we're still going to be left with all the fission reactors and the new fission research itself... If it doesn't collapse then that likely means the models are going to progress significantly.
And even if both fail somehow - hopefully this shows that companies like Google can be forced to search for their power needs by building them themselves... If they manage to do it here and get modern fission to be economically viable, then suddenly there's more political will to forcing them to build to cover their power increases in general... And of course there's going to be more chance companies like Google etc will accept that (maybe even lobby for it if their savings end up being significant).
JakeTappersCat@reddit
The fuel for nuclear power plants has to be mined, processed, and eventually re-deposited in "safe" sites due to its basically perpetual toxicity to all life, all of which requires tons of fossil fuels. Nuclear power is better than fossil fuels but not to the degree that proponents of its use try to represent.
Solar and combined lithium battery storage (yes I know these require minerals too) are cheaper, MUCH faster to build and have lower pollution over their lifetime plus avoid the problem of both nuclear weapon proliferation and nuclear waste disposal and mining.
Pugs-r-cool@reddit
It’s true, nuclear sounds cool but we’d quickly run out of easy to obtain uranium if the whole world switched over, even considering that over 80% of nuclear waste is recycled and used to generate more energy, and not that much needs to be put into storage each year.
The biggest issue with nuclear is that it’s kind of too late for it. We need to stop using non renewables today, but a nuclear power plant would take well over a decade to build, meanwhile a solar or wind farm can be built in a matter of months.
BeefistPrime@reddit
Maybe China? Even then I don't think so Certainly not the US, Russia, France, or GB given that we're 1) not building new nuclear weapons and 2) the sort of enrichment needed for plutonium weapons does not come from commercial nuclear reactors.
JimmyBiscuit@reddit
Shhh, don't tell them how horrifically expensive the cleanup is
crispAndTender@reddit
Water usage is a big problem
luquoo@reddit
We can only hope, but the Jevins paradox effect is pretty concerning.
TheAgentOfTheNine@reddit
"Am I a joke to you?"
-PV
noxx1234567@reddit
As of now it's too expensive to balance the grid purely on solar
Nuclear is the greenest base load power
TheAgentOfTheNine@reddit
greenest, ok. But it's a firepit of money, unless you revive a facility that is almost ready to function again.
Strazdas1@reddit
Its not. Building a new reactor would result in produced electricity costs half that of what eastern europe is paying now.
BeefistPrime@reddit
It has always been a little funny to me how environmentalists want to spare no expense to save the environment (which is fair) but when nuclear is mentioned suddenly they're extremely concerned about costs.
The reality is that nuclear only looks expensive if you consider damaging the Earth to be "free" -- the effects of fossil fuels on the environment are many trillions per year that neither the fossil fuel companies or their consumers directly pay. Instead, we all indirectly pay it.
pt-guzzardo@reddit
It could be cheaper if the regulatory framework wasn't specifically designed to make it as expensive as possible, presumably with the goal of sabotaging nuclear energy.
Pugs-r-cool@reddit
just fyi ‘base load’ isn’t really a thing anymore, well it’s complicated but the grid doesn’t rely on base load power sources like it used to and it’s not helpful to continue thinking in that old framework.
Strazdas1@reddit
Nuclear reacts to ramp up-down faster than fossil reactors.
Prestigious_Sir_748@reddit
So green it glows
DerpSenpai@reddit
Yes, to balance PV, Hidro and Bateries can be used to store PV energy but Batteries will take another decade or so before they are dirt cheap for this type of projects
Floppie7th@reddit
"Yes"
COMPUTER1313@reddit
The only way I can see an electrical grid running purely off of solar and wind is to:
Use massive banks of batteries and capacitors.
Expand existing electrical grids to the point where a solar farm in California in theory can send gigawatts all the way to Montreal and Boston. Or having trans-Atlantic power lines to connect two continents.
AntLive9218@reddit
Pure solar and wind is the pipe dream that makes people blind to smaller steps towards a more realistic goal.
Some of the load could be matched with the production, there just aren't good incentives to make that happen, and the closest to that is crude approaches of electric companies taking control of heating/cooling systems for lower prices.
As a first step, many devices could just expose the already existing power controls. Air conditioners are the most obvious targets which need to work harder with direct sunlight anyway (because getting rid of trees is a great idea), and they are also more efficient at lower power levels, so the current approach of black boxes hiding power controls is really wasteful when they could be controlled externally based on the output of the solar inverter.
Other devices have their unique issues, but water heaters still stand out as batteries. Instead of guzzling up to 4 kW unconditionally, a lot of excess energy could be dumped there by controlling heating based once again on the output of the inverter. While it's a more complex problem, air conditioners can be also used the same way, a lot of homes are just not really ready for that, but it's really not a novel idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_storage_air_conditioning
Electrical grid improvements are still a good idea, it would be really optimal to take advantage of distant solar power during late afternoon / evening peak, but the idea of letting electrical devices just guzzle power with no exposed power controls, and expecting batteries to just deal with the demand is still pipe dream territory.
StarbeamII@reddit
California is just spamming lithium batteries, and it’s working great for them. In just 5 years from 2019 to 2024, they expanded their batteries connected to the grid by 15x, from 770MW to 13,391MW worth of battery power (3,080MWh to 53,564MWh worth of capacity assuming a typical 4 hour eating). Batteries charge from abundant and cheap daytime solar, and now provide a quarter of the entire grid’s evening peak power.
anival024@reddit
Wildfires that destroy entire towns + lithium batteries everywhere.
A true recipe for success!
COMPUTER1313@reddit
It's usually the electrical lines that are the problem in wildfires.
PG&E and Hawaiian Electric: "So we accidentally ignited massive wildfires..."
StarbeamII@reddit
How many lithium batteries are in your very flammable home?
StarbeamII@reddit
California is just spamming lithium batteries, and it’s working great for them. From 2019 to 2024 they went from 770MW to 13,391MW worth of battery power(from 3,080MWh to 53,564MWh of capacity). Batteries now provide a quarter of the evening peak power.
TheAgentOfTheNine@reddit
Time to disconnect from the grid and make a minigrid with my neighbours.
DoTheThing_Again@reddit
Yes
MBILC@reddit
And MS wants tax payer to foot part of the bill for it as well... I am sure that local residents will then get cheaper power...right..right?
boobeepbobeepbop@reddit
Greenwashing at its finest. What a joke.
DerpSenpai@reddit
It's not greenwashing if they are replacing steel which takes a lot of energy to mold and to use and use timber instead.
Also they have made a contract for 0 carbon energy so they are actively reducing emissions in their datacenter usage/build
BlackenedGem@reddit
It's greenwashing because the comparison is against not building any data centres in the first place. They're horrible things that suck up resources for next to no local benefit. Unless you're a security guard or one of the three employees replacing hardware on the racks.
The investment in zero carbon energy can be done without building a data centre and increasing the load on the grid.
Prince_Uncharming@reddit
Those data centers are going to be built anyways.
It isn’t greenwashing to find more efficient ways of building them. By that logic we shouldn’t build anything at all, we should go back to exclusively stone tools and direct-drive waterwheels.
Strazdas1@reddit
Then they arent going to make their 0 carbon emission goal.
Prince_Uncharming@reddit
OK yeah they should build nothing. Actually they should test everything down and close up shop!
Strazdas1@reddit
No, the opposite. They should stop pretending they are going for zero emissions when they very clearly dont.
Voultapher@reddit
Going back to stone tools and waterwheels might not be sustainable as well. I can recommend this article https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2024/02/unsustainable-goose-chases/ on the topic, some of the ideas might seem alien at first, but given a little more thought, I find they are the inevitable conclusion one has to draw when looking at our current way of life.
Logseman@reddit
The author should get on with what he really wants to say and tell us who he thinks should die.
Voultapher@reddit
If you'd cared to read the conclusion:
I fail to see how the author is advocating for genocide. As a comparison if you'd be looking at a petri dish filled with a slime mold that has grown to a size unsustainable by the nutrients in the dish, predicting that it's growth will inevitably hit an end isn't advocating for the death of the slime mold, it's a prediction based on observation. And with slime molds in petri dishes or usually most other kinds of explosive exponential growth the curve doesn't flatten out but goes down after it hits a peak, the slime mold grows ever faster and then perishes. Whether or not comparing human population growth to a slime mold is a sensible thing to do is up to you to decide. But one thing is pretty clear, your are conflating an observation - as uncomfortable as it may be - with a call to action.
Logseman@reddit
The author is condemning the current lifestyle of the current Earth dwellers as unsustainable, while he says that the hunter gatherer lifestyle that supported at most a few million people at its peak is sustainable.
As such, it follows that everyone other than the few millions that would be able to live in a hunter-gatherer society are superfluous. Malthusian-inspired thought will always lead to that point: if resources are limited, and not everyone can live off them, then we have to make choices on who is surplus and who isn't.
The author is not directly advocating for genocide: the call follows from his train of thought, just like it followed from Malthus and everyone who accepted Malthusianism.
Strazdas1@reddit
No. The choices will end up occuring naturaly through famine and disease. Just like we see in every other population cycle in nature.
Genocide is attempting to remove a specific (real or percieved) genetic trait. There is no scenario where 96% of people on earth would be a specific trait.
Voultapher@reddit
There is a trend of extreme weather events occurring more frequently than in the past. Say in one of the many densely habited costal regions, one not used to hurricanes, suddenly hurricanes start showing up, and they don't show up every couple years, you get 4-5 within a couple month. The first one was devastating, destroying swaths of infrastructure not built with hurricanes in mind. Thousands of people die, mostly from the direct effects. But the second and third ones, were simply .. brutal. Already stressed supply lines, first responders and other essential utilities, such as hospital backup generators are stressed to the point of breaking, and so is the power grid. Hundreds of thousands of people perish. By the fifth hurricane you either fled the region, if you haven't there is no-one left to help you or supply you with food.
Genuine question, who chose that these people should die? The past or maybe current politicians that reneged on climate pledges? The people that voted for them? Maybe the think tanks that pushed climate denial for decades? The people that payed them? The people that watched and did nothing? You, because you took a plane ride to a vacation? No-one because we are children in a roller coaster that has a little steering wheel, selling us on the fantasy that we are in control when we might not be? I think saying no-one is at fault because it's not obvious who is, is a cop out answer. I'd argue some groups of people are much more directly responsible for the situation we are in right now.
My point is, you don't need to chose to kill millions if not billions of people for them to die as a consequence of systems collapse. Our modern cities only sustain human life thanks to very complex and - as covid has shown us - very delicate webs of dependencies.
The author of the article Tom Murphy tells us we are sitting in plane and are headed straight for a crash. Now most people don't care and spend their time fighting each other for spots in the first class. I refute your argument that pointing out the inevitable crash implies a choice of who gets to live. We all die.
Strazdas1@reddit
Hunter gatherer is not sustainable. If everyone on earth became hunter gathered and we hunted 100% of animal mass on the planet, we would have enough food for 30 minutes. There is way too many people for hunter-gatherer to be anything but fantasy.
Prince_Uncharming@reddit
Absolutely fucking laughable. Might as well all kill ourselves then, that’s sustainable!
DerpSenpai@reddit
So the green idea is not to build anything and live off the land? lmao
Floppie7th@reddit
No, it isn't? The comparison is against building them using more concrete and steel.
Voultapher@reddit
But who gets to decide that comparison? Say for the sake of argument the headline says "Microsoft is building internment camps that will keep prisoner alive 60% longer". If we focus solely on the metric how long do prisoners live, sure it's an upgrade. But who gets to decide what we focus on and whether or not we get to question the premise that Microsoft will or must build interment camps. I think in that scenario it's more than justified to question the premise that we need internment camps. Coming back to the actual headline, I think it's justified to question the premise that datacenters will or must be built. The concept of efficiency comes with a variety of conceptual pitfalls, I recommend this article on it https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/01/bedazzled-by-energy-efficiency. You don't have to agree on every point, but I'd implore you to give the thoughts expressed in it a chance.
LoofGoof@reddit
If you truly believe that why do you use Reddit or sites that host any media for that matter?
josh_is_lame@reddit
"hmmm, you criticize society, yet you participate in it"
dumbass
RobotFolkSinger3@reddit
Yeah bud, that webcomic you read isn't a silver bullet to justify all hypocrisy. We're not talking about participating in capitalism so you don't starve to death. If you're a computer hardware enthusiast and yet you're complaining about the very against of datacenters, you're just a hypocrite.
gumol@reddit
why the personal insult?
BlackenedGem@reddit
It's not really Reddit or even media that's fuelling this latest boom. There is of course an 'ideal' amount of data centres and that number is greater than zero. But right now the AI trend is causing the amount of data centres to over double and is predicted to become 3-4% of the worlds power consumption. Where data centres are built it can impact local housebuilding and I'd much rather see a new apartment block than data centre.
If we're going to play purity politics then I will point out that the only AI I've used it that which I can't opt out of.
Karrtis@reddit
Do you use the Internet? Congratulations you use data centers. You used a data center making this comment.
ImThatMOTM@reddit
Yeah no you’re right it was way better for the environment when every company on the planet had independent standalone data centers.
kikimaru024@reddit
Hey now.
Most times it's 6 rack monkeys working in 2 shifts.
AttonJRand@reddit
It is when they are massively increasing energy use for AI slop nobody wants, and running PR campaigns like this against the slew of headlines pointing out the absurd energy usage for awful looking images.
chasteeny@reddit
I get it, AI is easy and fun to hate on, but just because you don't understand it's potential doesn't mean others miss it too
Strazdas1@reddit
AI is great. Microsoft AI is not.
chasteeny@reddit
So what, they give up on it? Or iterate? Might be able to improve it with some hardware and training. Like say, if they built out some data center capacity
Strazdas1@reddit
Sure, but that solution is the opposite of being ecological.
chasteeny@reddit
Almost everything in commerce is the opposite of being ecological. How else do you propose these models improve? Good will and a robust spirit?
Strazdas1@reddit
I propose to stop greenwashing and pretending you are reaching zero carbon.
DerpSenpai@reddit
It's a matter of time till AI Slop is put into smartphones and PCs using local resources. Also AI slop is an actual useful producitivy feature that will lift productivity and in turn wages and salaries.
Yebi@reddit
Did you just wake up from a 60-year coma? Because that's roughly how long it's been since the last time productivity had anything to do with salaries
Charganium@reddit
0 chance.
Strazdas1@reddit
So they are shutting down the datacenters? Or is this another one of those "ill buy carbon credits and pretend im neutral" scams?
Cicero912@reddit
How is literally reducing the carbon footprint of somrthing greenwashing
Strazdas1@reddit
If i reduce the carbon footprints of my home by 10% but continue to heat it by burning coal then i have done effectively nothing.
kundun@reddit
It is greenwashing when a company makes exaggerated or misleading claims about the environmental friendliness of it't products.
In this case you could at least argue that the title of this article is a form of greenwashing. The title makes it look like it reduces the total carbon footprint of a datacenter by 65%. The carbon footprint reduction only applies to the building itself. While the largest share of the carbon footprint comes from IT equipment that is housed inside the building.
ProfessionalPrincipa@reddit
It is when the only reason resources are being used to build this shit is because of "AI" of dubious value.
RobotFolkSinger3@reddit
Any action to reduce the environmental impact of anything is greenwashing, according to redditors. Just like any criticism of any behavior on moral grounds is virtue signaling.
Why attempt to make things even slightly better when you can just complain on the internet about how terrible everything is instead?
v12vanquish@reddit
It’s not reducing, they are building a new data center. They are adding more carbon, you don’t reduce by using more.
DerpSenpai@reddit
Datacenters are needed. to make this comment you used a datacenter. You can be a degrowther nutjob all you want but it's effectively reducing C02 emissions for the new datacenters and that is good. We should minimize C02 emissions in our economic activities to the max but it shouldn't stop us from doing them all together.
v12vanquish@reddit
No carbon was reduced in the situation you described, carbon increased.
You’re literally arguing that going out to a sale and buying something saves you money. No, you didn’t save by spending.
DerpSenpai@reddit
new datacenters are needed because more people/ more PC usage. you could make a datacenter tradicionally in concrete and steel and call it a day. Microsoft needs to make a new one because they have demand for it. So they are using wood to reduce emissions. If Microsoft doesn't create it, someone else will
v12vanquish@reddit
And once again, new data server means more carbon. You didn’t reduce carbon usage, you just increased by less.
Independent_Ad_2073@reddit
You reduced the amount of carbon usage in building the datacenter with the new material. That’s the reduction. Are you really having a hard time understanding the concept? Datacenters will be built, no matter what, building them by adding less carbon to the system is a net positive. They are still adding to the total, just at a less decreased rate.
v12vanquish@reddit
I’m glad we came to the conclusion that you just descreased the rate and not reduced co2.
Pugs-r-cool@reddit
I mean? Kind of? If your argument is that this is being used to power an AI data center, which doesn’t need to exist and the greenest thing you could do is not built it at all then yes I agree with you. But if they’re going to build it no matter what I don’t see how it’s a bad thing that they are genuinely reducing their embodied carbon needs.
hamatehllama@reddit
The tech giants are serious with their net zero pledges. They also have the profit margins to pay the up-front costs for more sustainable options.
Kat-but-SFW@reddit
https://blog.dshr.org/2024/10/15c-here-we-come.html
jen1980@reddit
Because it's the thin sheetmetal walls and few steel beams that are the problem, not all of the power for servers and AC.
DerpSenpai@reddit
the power is already 0 carbon, the only thing left is the building itself and chips/racks.
Strazdas1@reddit
the power is not 0 carbon.... that would be impossible.
kuddlesworth9419@reddit
I have been seeing more timber frame built high rise buildings coming up the past few years. It is pretty interesting, no idea if it's cheaper to build or as long lasting as concrete and steel though.
jmlinden7@reddit
It's basically the same price but it's easier to find labor so you can build faster. The CO2 impact is also pretty big, timber absorbs CO2 while concrete emits it.
Pugs-r-cool@reddit
It is more expensive than concrete but not massively more expensive. It doesn’t last quite as long however maintenance is much cheaper and easier, you can replace a wooden structure bit by bit but with concrete it’s usually cheaper to just tear the whole thing down and start over, so the effective life span once you include maintenance is longer. The big thing is the carbon impact, it takes about half as much co2 to build an equivalent building out of wood instead of concrete and steel.
ifq29311@reddit
untill the first time something shorts and sets everything on fire
Pugs-r-cool@reddit
None of the designers have thought of that yet! Quick run to microsoft and tell them, Im sure they’d appreciate your input.
Chipay@reddit
Did no one read the article? MS plans on replacing some of the traditional concrete flooring with CLT wood sandwiched between thinner layers of concrete. Since wood is lighter than concrete, they expect to need less steel for the same structural integrity.
They're not going to put plain wooden beams inside the server rooms, lol.
DerpSenpai@reddit
the datacenter itself is cheap to build, the expensive part is the hardware inside so yes, the carbon savings might have a part here bigger than you think.
account312@reddit
But isn't the hardware also energy intensive to produce? And it gets replaced a lot more frequently than the building itself.
Pugs-r-cool@reddit
Yeah microsoft still have some R&D work to do before they figure out how to use 20% wood in their computer hardware…
DerpSenpai@reddit
From another comment on r/AZURE
>Source: work at azure msp for the last 5 years. I’m not sure exactly how many new types of machine comes out each year but they tend to iterate a version each year or so the last few years. Eg when ARM came along we had d4s_v3 we’ve since had version 4 and version 5 machines added, across intel and AMD chips. It’s actually got faster for the same money in some ways (newer chip VMs are the same sort of price but benchmark better). In terms of how they deploy it they will pilot it at one region it seems then it will go wider and wider, until all regions have them. That can take a few months from what I have seen. The old machines continue to exist infact I think they’ve only retired a handful of machine types in the whole time I’ve been using Azure.
kermityfrog2@reddit
"Why not wooden servers?"
Prince_Uncharming@reddit
This is Reddit, the default assumption is “no”. Of course you have morons in this thread complaining about fire risk, as if the engineering experts at these companies didn’t consider that wood can burn.
COMPUTER1313@reddit
And sometimes even the TLDRs get ignored. I remember a while back where I posted a TLDR of an article and someone asked for a TLDR of my TLDR.
JuanElMinero@reddit
Please Sir, I must ask you to not disturb our blue headline discussion. There are more assumptions to be made!
sascharobi@reddit
My next case should be a timber ATX case.
im_making_woofles@reddit
Sure worked out great for OVH
Kemaro@reddit
This country needs to get back to nuclear if we want to compete with the rest of the world in the age of AI. No way around it.
wickedplayer494@reddit
Now how well will it hold up against a tornado strike?
SelectionDue4287@reddit
Engineered timber is actually very strong and resistant to bends, breaking and when it fails, it fails linearly - it won't disintegrate in an instant, which gives you a lot of time to evacuate or reinforce the structure.
Depending on the type, It's also pretty fire-resistant and burns predictably when it actually ignites. Good stuff overall. Just more expensive.
DeconFrost24@reddit
We’ll need metallic hydrogen based processors and we’ll speed up the creation of Skynet.
blazze_eternal@reddit
This sounds gimmicky. The bigger news in the article is their Nuclear deal. The company I work with uses data centers that use 100% renewable energy. They actually built their own solar farm in one location.
gumol@reddit
do they turn off the datacenter at night?
DerpSenpai@reddit
Batteries, ever heard of them?
gumol@reddit
You got enough batteries for 12-16 hours of datacenter power consumption?
DerpSenpai@reddit
Usually what these datacenters do is sell excess power to the grid and consume at night. Effectively they are reducing emissions to 0 because if they didn't sell that power, someone else would be using non 0 carbon energy instead.
They can also contract nuclear (Microsoft did this) and Wind Farms for night power to offset PV and it's batteries.
A datacenter ranges from 20MW-250MW. There's battery plants that hold enough energy for that amount of power if they wanted but most likely cost prohibitive.
tupseh@reddit
At night they send spaceships and mine solar rocks on the sun.
theQuandary@reddit
This idea seems pretty bad. You want large rooms in data centers. Glulam wood beams rated for those kinds of spans are going to be absolutely massive compared to steel beams complicating everything. The posts will also be comparably massive.
Most importantly, I don't know how you get it insured for a reasonable rate. You're piping megawatts of power into a wooden building. Even a 1% failure rate means you have loads of potential fires every year. The risk of something serious in a metal building is tiny. The risk inside a building full of super-dried wood is much higher.
DerpSenpai@reddit
Nowadays, we are doing even wooden wind turbines. There's a lot of R&D into using more sustainable resources and making them last lifetimes.
HippoLover85@reddit
Should write microsoft and let them know wood doesnt span as far as steel. Im sure they have overlooked the first thing anyone learns about material construction.
Zomunieo@reddit
Glulam has similar, in some tests better, fire resistance than concrete and steel.
Concrete may not catch fire, but the rebar inside it will lose strength in heat from fire and lead to collapse.
yarbas89@reddit
You can design glulam portal frames with drastically reduced rafter depths. However, steel portal frames are still going to be shallower.
Graywulff@reddit
This strikes me as remarkably stupid for all the above mentioned reasons.
I had a post and beam house and barn I grew up in, I worked at a company with servers in a large data center, I was told to be in and out, where the exits were, and basically you have a few minutes to get out, and then they remove the oxygen from the room.
This was a steel and concrete building with racks of storage, they didn’t allow your own batteries, but they had big ones, and generators, but I’m like that’s a lot of diesel fuel next to this high risk site.
Lalaland94292425@reddit
Egregious and shameless greenwashing by greed driven scum of the Earth.