Just announced: OpenAI plans to lease a 9.2 gigawatt 100% fossil-fuelled data centre on Ohio.
Its emissions will be between 20 - 37 MTCO2-e - somewhere between the total grid emissions of France -> Netherlands
As much GHGs as 9.5 average coal plants. Will raise US total emissions by 0.5%
It makes me really sad.
Used to be, if someone wrote about a super-niche topic, it would because they cared—a lot. Their personal viewpoint would be interesting even if not entirely accurate. Now so much of it is meaningless digital effluent.
Doing to fountain pens is just a twist of the knife.
