Aesthesiaphilia

The carbon tax is supposed to (partially) go towards credits for EVs

All the IPCC models assume massive amounts of sequestration, I believe

It's a necessity at this point, even if all fossil fuel use stops globally tomorrow

If the overall goal is to increase the human population, it actually makes total sense

If the goal is to prevent murders, then no, it doesn't make sense

There's plenty of EVs with 300+ miles of range now. Shouldn't be an issue.

carbon sequestration is not ever going to work

I don't know what you're talking about, it's a thing that is currently being done. Not some future hypothetical tech.

But yes it is too expensive for now. Costs are coming down hopefully that continues to be the case.

And yes, the best, cheapest, most efficient way to reduce ghg is to eliminate fossil fuels.

Instead of offsets, companies should be pursuing direct carbon sequestration like with https://climeworks.com/

No estimates, no accounting magic. Just a direct measure of physical, measurable tons of carbon directly removed from the atmosphere.

Yeah and they all say similar to this:

A new report by the French Environment and Energy Management Agency (Ademe) shows that rare earth minerals are not widely used in solar energy and battery storage technologies. And despite their name, they aren't actually that rare at all.

“Their criticality is mainly related to the current virtual monopoly of China for extraction and processing,” the agency said, noting that the country accounted for 86% of the world's production of rare earth minerals in 2017.

The extraction of rare earths has a significant toxicological impact on the environment, depending on the nature of the reserves. Ademe said the presence of thorium and uranium in deposits can mean that rare earths create a type of radioactive pollution that is different from other types of waste. However, the agency ultimately concluded that the renewable energy sector actually barely uses such materials.

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2019/11/28/are-rare-earths-used-in-solar-panels/

Besides, remember that you're comparing localized pollution with globalized pollution:

Cumulative CO2 emissions related to materials for [future, 100% decarbonized] electricity infrastructure may be substantial (4–29 Gt CO2eq in 1.5°C scenarios) but consume only a minor share of global carbon budgets (1%–9% of a 320 Gt CO2eq 1.5°C 66% avoidance budget).

https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(23)00001-6

Even in a worst-case scenario, polluting one area to save the planet is a no-brainer tradeoff.

Surveillance state.

For California at least, residential use is about 10% of all water usage iirc. So if data centers are dwarfed by that...not a big concern in the big picture.

The issue I guess is when data center usage sucks up all the local supply. State and region wide they don't use much but they do use a lot in one small area.

Water is extremely important in most large scale cooling systems, whether it be swamp coolers (aka evaporative cooling) or traditional HVAC (aka chillers).

Not to mention a much higher carbon footprint.

The reason evaporative coolers are cheap is because they use a fraction of the electricity that chillers do.

And note that the majority of data center water usage is indirect via power generation, so using less water on site but more indirectly by consuming more power is both more expensive and less efficient.

Unfortunately, evaporative coolers are the best way to go, for now.

Screw data centers, I want to see desalination combined with nuclear power plants. They literally generate power by boiling water, it's a match made in heaven.

We just need a few more advances in technology to remove impurities from brine and we'd also corner the table salt market.