Do data centers only seem bad for the climate because we can see them?

A more useful comparison would be the share of new emissions that data centers represent, and a comparison of the growth rates of various sources of marginal new emissions (eg, from cement, or ammonia). Besides their visibility, the reason that people focus on AI data centers is that they are a new source, on top of whatever organic growth there is in existing industries. And marginal growth in CO2 emissions is important because climate models bake in certain assumptions about growth. If a wildcard source suddenly appears with exponential growth, the projections on which public policy is based can be affected non-linearly. This article uses data only up to 2024; 18 months of exponential growth can change the picture quite a bit.

All the big tech companies had climate goals before the AI building craze.

All the big tech companies have now quietly removed their climate goals. You don’t need to know anything else.

I had similar thoughts[1] yesterday, and directionally agree with the author, but the national microwave analogy doesn't really work. Without a microwave, you'd still need to cook food, and microwave is probably actually more efficient than whatever it replaced. In other words, a national microwave would be a net negative on energy consumption, even if it's very visible. The same can't be said for datacenters, which if AI didn't exist, the energy wouldn't have been expended in the first place.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48914683

> The average person on Earth spends 6 hours and 40 minutes every day on the internet

thats not what the provided link says