Amongst all this, global markets are getting euphoric about AI, which is most likely only to make things worse because of the enormous energy and water demands that it will create, which canno0t be met in a world where the reality of finite resources is becoming ever more apparent.
Clearly, we must smash the looms as there’s no possibility of growing enough silk or cotton to feed those mechanical monsters.
Energy cannot be created or destroyed and every molecule of water we use is recycled.
He has a point, though.
Our wise leaders are busy trashing UK power generation and the Grid whilst simultaneously insisting that the UK’s future depends on the construction of shitloads of data centres.
I don’t get it. Why aren’t these data centres being built in Iceland? Free geothermal power and environmental cooling? All you need to access them is a long wire, and that can’t be too difficult.
Already happenibg for various reasons
https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/06/18/134902/icelands-data-centers-are-booming-heres-why-thats-a-problem/
“Iceland’s data centers are booming—here’s why that’s a problem”
People living on a largely barren slab of volcanic rock near the Arctic Circle have discovered a way to make money – here’s why that’s a problem.
“Why aren’t these data centres being built in Iceland?”
They haven’t invented magma-proof and earthquake-proof foundations yet.
“Until then, companies that don’t rely just on sheer computing power, but also on information being transferred quickly, may opt to keep investing elsewhere.”
See, this is one of the reasons why people do crypto mining in weird out of the way places with a surfeit of clean energy.
Fossil fuels? Not worth it for crypto. Put it in a tanker, sell it for people’s cars. A hydro dam in Wales? There’s plenty of households nearby who want it. But some hydro that was powering a silver mine up in the alps that has closed down and is now only powering a tiny village? It’s basically worthless. You can’t even use it for powering websites because the comms are almost non-existent.
And the nature of crypto mining is that it’s not connected. It’s a computer running days and days of maths and now and again, it pops out a string of numbers. You don’t need cheap, reliable networking. Someone can just go up the alp every week and see what popped up, or connect it to a sat phone and get it sending them a message.
The great thing about data centres consuming lots of power is that the big IT firms are now investing in small modular nuclear power generators to supply them. Water is not really an issue for data centres if power is cheap.
GPUs/CPUs just do not use much energy, compared to transportation, heating, laundry. Almost anywhere you can apply a bit of computing to cut energy use of the latter is worth it. Like I know a delivery driver app which optimises all their deliveries and keeps doing so during the day. They drop a thing off and have to wait and that now means it’s better to go another route to avoid traffic, it recalculates it all. Uses a ton of calculations, but a few million instructions is a big fat nothing compared to sitting in traffic.
AndyF,
Yup, The politicians are all sitting on their arse about it, while Oracle, Amazon and Microsoft are doing it.
And what happens if they start to get good at it? Amazon didn’t create AWS for everyone else, it was to manage their own demands. Then they figured they could flog it to everyone else. You get good at the nuclear power thing you get Amazon Clean Energy.
That said, letting Larry Ellison near a nuclear reactor worries me.
Data farms consume lots of electricity. The cost of leccy in the UK is about the highest in the world.
The data farms could be sited nearly anywhere. So they won’t be built in the UK.
Although if the taxpayer is forced to subsidise them, some data cultivation might be done, along with the grift.
@Western Bloke
I wouldn’t worry too much about Amazon Clean Energy. If it works to the same place as Blue Origin, we will get fusion power about the same time.
AI and Quantum computing are being hyped because the industry is looking for a way to keep the delivery of above average returns. I have a degree in computer science. People are promising things that I know will not be delivered.
AFAICR a microsoft data centre and a steel works have both ordered fusion reactors from Helion energy, which plans to demonstrate commercial fusion this year and has a production facility. Sems like this time it just might result in something. Or not, it’s easy to be cynical in the fusion world.
Of course if this was the UK there is no chance at all of solving your business’s energy problem by generating your own via fusion. The eco-warriors would have a fit if faced with anyone having access to cheap clean energy..
“If you ask me, it’d be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it.” – Amory Lovins, 1970
Also:
“Giving society cheap, abundant energy at this point would be the moral equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun. With cheap, abundant energy, the attempt clearly would be made to pave, develop, industrialise, and exploit every last bit of the planet”. – Paul Ehrlich, 1975.
If you’ve always wondered why greenies are agin’ nuclear power in any form, now you know. It has nothing to do with waste, a problem which has now largely been solved, apart from the really old stuff like at Sellafield.
Microsoft is re- starting Three Mile Island.
SMR’s are an easy solution to CO2 (‘if’ you believe the ‘CO2 is dangerous’ load of bollocks) but the left have such an inbuilt aversion to nuclear energy they will never accept it for you and I.
But what happens if if the proles see TMI and Small Modular Reactors (Saskatchewan) work OK with no problems ……. How long would they put up with blackouts?
Whatever happened to molten salt? I did find this presentation quite convincing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oB1IrzDDI9g
Perhaps this is the reason:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power
No good for bombs.
A few years back the price of thorium flipped from negative (it’s v mildly radioactive, which means it’s a problem) to positive. The only possible reason was that someone was filling a thorium salt reactor. Which the Chinese were….
One does wonder whether Dutton here in Oz will succeed in his program to introduce nuclear power.
As he points out, it’s really the only way to produce the CO2-free energy that the left claim to love so much.