Essay by Eric Worrall
Will anyone still believe big tech claims they care about the environment?
Big Tech is betting billions on AI — but can climate promises keep up?
The technology’s breakneck growth is testing tech giants’ climate credentials.
JON GOLDBERG
AUGUST 22, 2025Artificial intelligence is sparking a once-in-a-generation economic opportunity. Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta are together projected to invest more than $300 billion in AI and data center infrastructure in 2025, and AI is expected to add more than $15 trillion to the global economy by 2030.
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A cynical narrative has emerged that chasing AI’s promise means abandoning decarbonization. Recent trends give some credence to this view. Google’s emissions jumped 48% from 2019 to 2023 and Microsoft’s emissions rose 30% since 2019 due to AI-supported data center expansion. Amazon’s emissions also increased in 2024, partially driven by new data center construction.
The reality, however, is more nuanced. Near-term emissions are increasing, but leading hyperscalers are doubling down on clean energy and decarbonization, simply because their AI ambitions depend on it.
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Read more: https://www.latitudemedia.com/news/big-tech-is-betting-billions-on-ai-but-can-climate-promises-keep-up/
Time Magazine also focuses on Google;
AUG 22, 2025 11:51 PM AET
What To Know About Google’s AI Climate Footprint
by Justin Worland
SENIOR CORRESPONDENTFor the climate concerned, the rise of the AI-reliant internet query is a cause for alarm. Many people have turned to ChatGPT and other services for simple questions. And even basic Google searches include an AI-derived result.
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Google’s progress boils down to two levers: cleaner power and more efficient chips and query crunching.
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But then there’s the company’s efficiency measures. In energy circles, efficiency tends to refer to simply using less energy and making energy hardware run more productively—think of climate control or better insulation. While Google has done some of that, the most impressive efficiency gains have come through the AI ecosystem rather than the energy system. The company has created its own chips—which it calls TPUs, as opposed to broadly used GPUs. Those chips have become more efficient over time—some 30 times more efficient since 2018, according to Google’s sustainability report. The company has also improved the efficiency of its models using techniques that crunch queries differently, thereby reducing the needed compute power. And a few weeks ago the company announced a program to shift data center demand to times when the electricity grid is less stressed.
Read more: https://time.com/7311600/google-ai-climate-impact/
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The problem with these claims are they implicitly suggest AI is a fixed quantity – if the chips are 30x more efficient, that means you need 30x less power right?
Only if AI use has peaked – which seems unlikely. More likely, any efficiency gains just mean you don’t have to divert as much fossil fuel power plant electricity to the cooling system.
I’ve no doubt the current AI boom contains a lot of bubble, but AI is here to stay. I’m using increasing amounts of AI in my daily work, as are a lot of people. The image at the top of this article was generated using AI. That AI summary at the top of your search results is starting to become useful.
Given soaring tech giant carbon footprints, do you believe tech giant claims they’re suddenly going to decarbonise it all away? Or is it more likely they’ll continue to swill cheap energy like pigs in the trough, while their PR departments work overtime trying to maintain a facade of green caring and sharing?
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Currently ‘Artificial Intelligence’ is little more than language processing. It can only work with information it can find, through internet search engines, and pre-programmed rules. Both are full of intentional and unintentional bias, making it inherently biased at source.
Artificial Idiocy is a better term, and we already have enough natural ones to not need artificial ones.
This is going to be so much more explosive than the dot com bubble! My investments already steer well clear of any AI, just like Renewable Energy, now. The server farms for increasing data storage and processing are good investments, however.
There’s more to AI than that, the following article contains a working AI which can run in your web page, and I guarantee no language processing.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/11/15/artificial-intelligence-a-working-demonstration-and-why-big-tech-ditched-big-green/
That is what ‘AI’ really is, and it’s still in its infancy. It hasn’t progressed much since I programmed neural networks in the 90s, which is stunning given the advances in computing power and storage space. Learning is still hit and miss, because it depends wholly on the data provided. Even then, its internal processing is too opaque for us to judge its validity except by results. This is prone to wild errors of logic.
Currently popular use of ‘AI’ is nothing like this. It does not make decisions or actually learn. It manipulates words, or even images, but little if any actual learning.
I’ve been coding with “AI” for a couple of months now. You’re right that it doesn’t learn anything that I want it to, such as remembering my preferences regarding coding approaches, language used, etc. But, it is very good at churning out working code.
Although, there are times where we’ll hit a dead end, but it won’t recognize that it’s a dead end. It will keep throwing new code at me to try and break down a wall. I have to tell it to step back, take a different approach, and then we can make progress.
When I code with AI enhanced IDEs about 30% of the time the AI suggestion is useful, which still represents a substantial productivity gain. And the answers I get from Google when I look up technical information are a lot higher quality even than a year ago.
I don’t use an IDE. I’m just getting straight PHP (or python or javascript) from Guthub’s Copilot, which is powered by ChatGPT5. Creating WordPress plugins for a couple of sites I run. I’ve already made about 12 plugins, and was able to replace paid plugins, saving me a few bucks a month. It’s pretty awesome, and fast.
The savings are in the more advanced areas. I was messing around with a new octo-core processor chipset and got it to build me a multicore RTOS scheduler with aging and tasks at highest level executing in round robin. It did it flawlessly in 10 min. I then asked it to add semaphores via queues and it added those in about 3min. It was all pretty impressive.
For me, the benefit is more basic. I don’t have to learn a language, or go through all the tedium of coding complex structures, and debugging them. If I were to attempt any of these projects on my own, they’d likely never get done. Or if they did, it would take years.
Environmentalism is not identical to caring about the environment. Currently, it is a secular cult with greenhouse gasses as Satan, with a socialist political base.
Wind and solar are fetishes, items of devotion, so the effects on birds, bats, and whales must be ignored. Historically, they are anti-nukes, and still believe cheap and unlimited power is like giving an idiot child a machine gun.
“Pigs in the trough?” Rather harsh language. EVs use electricity. My home computer, phone and cell phone use electricity as well as my HVAC system and those of all my neighbors. Are we all pigs in the trough?
It’s not the swilling which bothers me, it’s the hypocrisy. And that should bother you too.
How is it hypocritical to use AI tools?
Wow, talk about missing the point. The hypocrisy isn’t about using the tools, it’s about proclaiming a climate crisis due to CO2, then proceeding to ramp up your “carbon footprint” to make a buck from “AI”.
Zuck recently bought more Hawaiian island acreage….he’s gonna have his own tropical island environment….far away from yours.
You say that like it’s a bad thing
Considering that for the last 20 years or so, the Progressives in big tech have been integral in pushing the AGW agenda on us at every opportunity, I’d expect that push to disappear. In another 20 years, I expect that people will have forgotten all about it, just as everyone has forgotten about the ice age that was supposed have have killed us by now.
“That AI summary at the top of your search results is starting to become useful.”
Agreed, as a first-order answer, it is often all that is needed.
And increasingly all that is paid for you to receive. Don’t trust it. Pull information, don’t let it be pushed at you.
Fair point.
“A cynical narrative has emerged that chasing AI’s promise means abandoning decarbonization.”
Decarbonization shouldn’t even be on their radar. It is a dishonest fairytale.
Decarbonization is a bogus term used to resurrect images of smog blanketed cities.
We are carbon based life. Decarbonization, with the word properly used, if successful means the end of all life on earth.
Trusting AI output?
I remember being able to figure out the square root of a a number using pencil and paper.
Then I got a pocket calculator and didn’t need to remember how to that.
Then computers came along. People began to trust their output from the “internet”. (He’s a “French Model” kind of thing.)
Wikipedia. People trusted it. But there was a lot of “Editor” slanting on current issues.
I’d trust AI as much as my old pocket calculator. (It could probably give me more decimal places.)
But trust it on more current issues? Who were the programmers/editors?
Ha yes, whenever anyone suggests the world would be a much better place if an AI was in charge, I immediately volunteer to be chief programmer.
I don’t trust it for social, or even much for historical, issues. But for coding, there’s no reason not to trust it.
THAT is the danger. People blindly trusting a computer program, one programed by leftists.
It is likely to make many fewer typographical errors in the code.
Interesting dig into the AI output and what it took to get the AI program to finally acknowledge that its description of the issue was incorrect.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2025/08/grok-ai-mistakes-ukraine-for-gaza/
While AI is presented as a solution to “problems,” I believe it is just an”intellectual” placebo. Recall that these programs come from those same entities that worked to restrict perspectives that differed from the “approved” narrative. The marketing is the same as the happy folks dancing and singing because they can take a little pill that addresses their medical issues – with a mile long list of side effects that may follow. AI will just digest all of the data it can suck in and resell or use to refine product marketing.
Isn’t this all working toward the end goal of getting man to be merged with the machine?
Why don’t people focus on the real issue with AI: the desire of certain human beings to dehumanise the lives of billions of people by making them talk to computers instead of fellow human beings?
Some “certain human beings” maybe. Since knee surgery, I use a walking cane. The people who produced the walking cane aren’t trying to make me think I have three legs.
The model is cell phones coupled with social networks.
Given soaring tech giant carbon footprints, do you believe tech giant claims they’re suddenly going to decarbonise it all away?
Why would I care since I can’t control the climate and sea levels-
Family’s 7.1 metre ancient discovery on outback station sparks excitement: ‘Incredible’
“During the mid-Cretaceous, global sea levels were exceptionally high, likely 100 to 250 meters higher than they are today, largely due to increased mid-oceanic ridge volume.”
Since there is nothing wrong with the climate why are they wasting time talking about it?
Because they no longer want to talk about Madonna?
Well, have to admit, the old girl does lots of goofy stuff to keep tongues wagging. 😉