Yes, obviously AI is emitting way too much. It shouldn’t even be producing 0.2% of global emissions, let alone 2%. My main grievance is that no one ever talks about improving industrial and agricultural processes even though they produce around 29% of emissions and 20% of emissions respectively.
Also, the food I eat was already in the carbon cycle. The food (energy) datacenters eat is mostly sequestered carbon, not all emissions are the same. Hell, if we want to get into it fucking water vapor is a greenhouse gas.
A lot of the emissions from food are not things that are already in the carbon cycle.
Deforestation to turn forest into farmland.
Fossil fuels for equipment and to manufacture fertiliser.
Methane from animals is significantly more potent than if that same carbon was released as CO2.
This is why I say emissions are not a cover-all and I’m tired of them being compared equally
But all of those are net emissions?
Can I ask how methane is a net emission with water and carbon dioxide? They all affect the planet differently while also being “GHG emissions”
I’d also like to add after thinking about it how the location of these emissions also matters. Jet planes have a larger impact with their emissions over other travel in part because the higher altitude increases the greenhouse potential of its emissions. So again, if we just count “GHG emissions” as if the tons of GHG emitted is the only factor not the duration the gas exists in the atmosphere, the location of emission, or if it is dumping sequestered carbon.
Because if we look at how cows produce methane, it’s the bacteria in the Cow’s stomach that produces that methane, bacteria that would produce methane on rotting biomass as well. What’s the actual net difference between natural decay and accelerated cow digestion. There’s lots of agricultural produce like bananas where a meaningful amount of production goes to waste and decays. Is this waste and the emissions that happen from the waste accounted in the “GHG emissions” of eating bananas?
This is all before getting into weird GHGs like sulfur hexafluoride as it has a global warming potential 23 thousand times higher than carbon dioxide. So are we counting it by the ton as if it is the same as carbon dioxide by the ton?
Anaerobic bacteria produce methane. When oxygen is present, the aerobic pathway outcompetes anaerobic because more energy is available, producing CO2 instead.
GHG are usually measured in tonnes of CO2 equivalent (GWP) where methane is about 80x as much warming as the same mass of CO2 over a 20 year period, or about 25x as much warming over a 100 year period.
This is also what’s going on in the steady replacement of various refrigerants with lower-GWP alternatives.
How is CO2 equivalent measured based on altitude and since methane will eventually degrade to CO2?
This seems really problematic for comparing different types of GHG emissions and gauging what type has the most contribution to global warming.