To feed your food preferences:

AI: ~560–800 Billion Liters Annual usage

Beef: ~4,387 Trillion Liters (for feed alone)

AI: Minimal land use

Beef: 44% of global habitable land

AI: ~20,400 tons CO2 (per large model)

Beef: ~14.5% of all global emissions

AI: Electronic waste, local heat islands

Beef: Methane, manure runoff, “dead zones”

A single quarter-pound beef burger requires between 40 and 70 gallons of surface/groundwater

A heavy AI user (50 queries/day for a year) consumes roughly 14 to 48 gallons of water annually

Beef driven industrial agriculture is the #1 driver of global deforestation. In the Amazon, cattle ranching is responsible for at least 75% of forest loss. This is causing ecological collapse.

All this to torture cows. Fucking stop it. Stop it NOW.

  • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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    1 month ago

    AI gives workers PTSD by forcing them to review horrific images.

    Beef gives workers PTSD by forcing them to kill, over and over.

  • pineapple@lemmy.ml
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    1 month ago

    I just want people to stop caring about water usage as a metric for environmental destruction by just listing an amount in liters. Its so much more complicated than that. What water are they using? Is it ultra clean or brown water? Where are they sourcing the water from? Are they taking it from a pretine natural spring in a rainforest or are they taking it from the ocean?

    There are just so many veriables that its almost never an apples to apples comparison.

    Carbon emmissions, detriment to workers and other things like that are much better metrics. I just hate when people say “did you know you empty a kajillion olympic sized swimming pools with every ai queory?”

    • حمید پیام عباسی@crazypeople.onlineOP
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      30 days ago

      Water where I live is a non renewable resource and is being drained from ancient aquifers at an alarming rate. Once it is gone we essentially have to leave this entire region and it is being drained for ranching and growing alfalfa.

    • usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml
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      30 days ago

      Water usage for beef’s cattle feed in the US at least is quite often in water scarce areas

      Correspondingly, our hydrologic modelling reveals that cattle-feed irrigation is the leading driver of flow depletion in one-third of all western US sub-watersheds; cattle-feed irrigation accounts for an average of 75% of all consumptive use in these 369 sub-watersheds. During drought years (that is, the driest 10% of years), more than one-quarter of all rivers in the western US are depleted by more than 75% during summer months (Fig. 2 and Supplementary Fig. 2) and cattle-feed irrigation is the largest water use in more than half of these heavily depleted rivers

      https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1064&context=wffdocs

      • pineapple@lemmy.ml
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        30 days ago

        Thank you, that is an interesting point that actually shows the environmental destruction caused by beefs water usage.

    • Arcanepotato@crazypeople.online
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      30 days ago

      I want people to stop assuming that simplified framing of a complex issue is the whole story.

      Volume of water is an easy metric for people to understand. When people talk about wasting water they might mean literally moving water out of its water shed, like groundwater wells being pumped dry or they might also be thinking of the massive amounts of energy required to move and potentially treat that water and the (heat, nutrient) pollution the used water carries.

      These impacts are not universal and which ones apply in which locations, and the impact they have will vary widely. So volume of water is an easy way to make it easier to understand and ‘smooth’ out the variations.

    • stabby_cicada@slrpnk.net
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      1 month ago

      How so?

      Besides all the vegans, vegetarians, and people who can’t afford or don’t have access to beef, there are roughly 1.2 billion Hindus in the world, most of whom don’t eat beef for religious reasons.

      I don’t see how beef can be irreplaceable when literally billions of people don’t eat beef and are perfectly healthy without it.

      • lobut@lemmy.ca
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        1 month ago

        We have many alternatives to meat that are delicious and satiating. It’s one of the best things we can do for the planet. It’s not easy for everyone to easily cut themselves off from eating meat but it would be great if people start reducing it.

      • Logi@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        We can’t digest the grasses that cows do with their 4 stomachs and rumination, so that argument is bull. But of course you’re right that beef can replaced. We’ll just have to hit the legumes and plants that we can actually digest.

        • Hazel@piefed.blahaj.zone
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          1 month ago

          If only there was some other way of preparing food making it more digestible and its nutrients more available without us needing 4 stomachs 🤔

          • Logi@lemmy.world
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            28 days ago

            Of course there is. I’m just saying that the existence of cows doesn’t prove anything, since they are a different organism from us with different capabilities, like digesting things that we can’t. Using bullshit arguments doesn’t help whatever cause you think you’re helping.

            • Hazel@piefed.blahaj.zone
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              29 days ago

              My point was more about the plants than the cows, any nutrient in beef being ultimately derived from plants. And we may not have 4 stomachs but have other ways of accessing those nutrients. Maybe that clarifies somewhat 🤷🏼

    • Midnitte@beehaw.org
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      1 month ago

      Conversely, no one needs AI. That could be stopped without any modification to people’s diet and the logistical changes that would require.

      Its a “low hanging fruit”

  • NahMarcas@lemmy.ml
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    1 month ago

    This make me almost feel good with AI

    Now seriously leaving meat is all advantages with general health

  • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
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    29 days ago

    The amount of land use is staggering also:

    I have a ton of similar vegan infographics. If you want I could make a vegan_infographics community on your server.