{"id":878216,"date":"2026-10-11T04:58:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-11T04:58:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/878216\/"},"modified":"2026-10-11T04:58:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-11T04:58:13","slug":"ais-meet-cute-with-climate-denial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/878216\/","title":{"rendered":"AI\u2019s meet-cute with climate denial"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Dan Gearino for Inside Climate News<\/a><\/p>\n

On Sept. 21, President Donald Trump responded to rising public concerns about artificial intelligence with a post on Truth Social.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe same people that said, \u2018We\u2019ll all be dead in twelve years because of Global Warming,\u2019 a name since \u2018reborn\u2019 to Climate Change, because the Planet was cooling, not warming, and nobody was dead, are the people that are now saying that AI is going to kill us, that robots are going to attack us, and everything is a DISASTER,\u201d he wrote on Truth Social<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He then declared fear of AI \u201ca hoax.\u201d<\/p>\n

I found it notable that he injected climate denial into the discussion of AI, as if that would help his argument, and that he did so on the first day of Climate Week NYC.<\/p>\n

The annual event has included corporations touting how AI could help the climate. For example, the chip maker Nvidia highlighted how its AI products are being used to advance clean energy<\/a>, such as operational improvements at a nuclear power plant and energy-storage projects that utilize used batteries. Josh Parker, Nvidia\u2019s head of sustainability, expanded on this in an interview Wednesday<\/a> with The New York Times at Climate Week. He said AI could help reduce emissions reductions for transportation, manufacturing and buildings, with benefits that would outweigh AI\u2019s climate footprint.<\/p>\n

\"FILEA data center owned by Amazon Web Services, front right, is under construction next to the Susquehanna nuclear power plant in Berwick, Pennsylvania, in 2025.AP<\/p>\n

Looking at Trump\u2019s comments alongside some of the hopeful messages coming from Climate Week, I see an evolving AI discourse that mixes climate denial and techno-optimism, neither of which is helpful.<\/p>\n

Trump was touching on\u2014and dismissing\u2014concerns that AI would lead to superintelligent computers that would kill people. Yes, that\u2019s a reason to worry, but the more immediate concern is AI\u2019s vast need for water, electricity and investor dollars.<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s the reality? The most useful encapsulation of the peril and opportunity of this moment, in my view, was the paper<\/a> published in a Nature journal in August that finds the increase in carbon emissions from powering AI data centers and using AI to help optimize fossil fuel production is much more than the savings from using AI for end uses related to clean energy. (My colleague Arcelia Martin wrote about the paper<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The co-authors include Will Alpine and Holly Alpine, a couple who worked on AI at Microsoft before starting a nonprofit, the Enabled Emissions Campaign, which calls on technology companies to be accountable for how AI will boost fossil fuel use.<\/p>\n

Their paper\u2019s findings align with statements from organizations such as the International Energy Agency, which has said the potential climate benefits from AI-enabled systems are still on the horizon, while some concerning ramifications will come sooner, such as increased electricity demand for data centers.<\/p>\n

Related |\u00a0Americans\u2019 hatred of data centers is about so much more<\/a><\/p>\n

I asked Holly Alpine what she makes of the talk of AI at Climate Week.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing at Climate Week is a familiar pattern: companies spotlighting a handful of clean energy pilot projects while the overwhelming majority of AI\u2019s actual applications are aimed at increasing fossil fuel extraction and production,\u201d she said in an email. \u201cNvidia\u2019s post is a good example\u2014highlighting a renewable energy partnership is easy and photogenic, while conveniently omitting how much AI is being deployed to find, extract, and produce more oil and gas.\u201d<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t complicated. If AI were powered mostly by clean sources and its emissions-cutting uses outweighed its climate-harming uses, then there would be no need to mislead about the effects.<\/p>\n

Jonathan Koomey, an independent researcher who has been studying data centers for decades, is wary of companies describing AI as beneficial for the climate while not acknowledging the potential downsides.<\/p>\n

I spoke with him recently following a speech he gave in my city, Columbus, Ohio, about the challenges of accurately forecasting the scale of the data center boom\u2014 a particularly relevant topic in Columbus, one of the country\u2019s leading data center markets.<\/p>\n

\u201cProjecting short-term trends for even 10 or 12 years is a recipe for disaster, in my experience,\u201d he told me.<\/p>\n

\"FILE--InA pump jack is shown over an oil well along Interstate 25 near Dacono, Colorado, in 2018.AP<\/p>\n

Koomey\u2019s larger point is that the scale of the data center boom remains uncertain. One of the most harmful scenarios is that utility companies build new power plants to serve anticipated data centers, only for many, if not most, of those projects to never materialize. If that happens, households and businesses would be left to cover the costs through their utility bills. Regulators and lawmakers need to take steps to protect consumers, he said.<\/p>\n

For now, one of the most troubling aspects of the AI data center boom is how the rush to build as fast as possible has led developers to rely on some of the least efficient and most expensive power technologies, such as natural gas combustion turbines.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s madness,\u201d Koomey said, noting that many of the turbines are essentially jet engines, built for short-term use. \u201cNo sane [utility] would buy electricity from combustion turbines running 24-7. It just wouldn\u2019t happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

At some point, economic gravity will assert itself, he said. Data centers will need to recoup their development costs and determine how much customers are willing to pay.<\/p>\n

This reality doesn\u2019t mesh with Trump\u2019s all-caps defense of AI, and feels far removed from talk of how AI will help the climate. It portends an industry downturn that may be coming soon.<\/p>\n

One more thing: I didn\u2019t want to get waylaid by fact-checking Trump\u2019s statement, but one part demands some context.<\/p>\n

When he refers to people warning \u201cwe\u2019ll all be dead in twelve years,\u201d he\u2019s likely referring to the media coverage of a 2018 report by the United Nations\u2019 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that said the world had 12 years to reduce emissions enough to avoid a temperature threshold that would lead to severe heat and drought.<\/p>\n

My colleague Bob Berwyn covered the report<\/a> at the time and wrote a followup story<\/a> putting the timeline in context.<\/p>\n

No credible climate scientist has said we\u2019ll all be dead by 2030 because of climate change. To say otherwise is\u2014sorry\u2014a hoax.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Dan Gearino for Inside Climate News On Sept. 21, President Donald Trump responded to rising public concerns…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":878217,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,1687,369345,192,369346,74],"class_list":["post-878216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-climate","tag-datacenter","tag-environment","tag-fossilfuel","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=878216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/878217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=878216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=878216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=878216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}