The United States experienced the warmest summer on record. Yep, it was even warmer than 1936. “The average temperature for meteorological summer (June–August) 2026 was the warmest for the contiguous United States (CONUS) in the 132-year record, exceeding the previous records, set in 1936 and 2021, by 0.4°F,” according to NOAA." For the planet, August was tied for the hottest month on record. As of September 1, drought covered nearly 60% of the continental U.S. while Hawaii experienced its wettest first half of a year on record and a parade of hurricanes. Our naturally-varying climate system has a “human steroid” sitting on top of it, and some people worry that frivolous AI usage is further amplifying the challenge. Let’s explore the premise.

Environmental Impacts Of AI

To be clear, I use AI. I am not a person that defaults to the perspective that technological advancement is bad, and the “good ole days” were better. In some of my graduate work at Florida State University in the early nineties, I actually explored the use of machine-learning techniques to develop algorithms to track hurricanes. AI can increase productivity, efficiency, and provide breakthroughs beneficial to society. It is also quite useful for mundane tasks like summarizing message threads, organizing thoughts and some aspects of report generation.

Even with these value-added propositions, there is appropriate concern about the ethics of AI, hallucinations, biases, reduction of critical thinking skills, loss of human engagement, and workforce implications. These were among the “bad” in a recent article published in Virginia Tech Engineer . Walid Saad is a computer and electrical engineer at the university. “Unfortunately, AI may have its own carbon footprint and negative environmental impact because it relies heavily on computing at data centers," he told the writers. “Those data centers consume a large amount of electricity, and also require a significant amount of water for cooling purposes," He went on to say. This concern increasingly worries me also in the face of climate change, stressed water supply, and intensifying weather extremes.

Saad noted that sustainable, green infrastructure and AI algorithms are likely on the horizon, but we are not there. Just this week, students in my urban climate class at the University of Georgia read an essay discussing the IPAT equation which was developed by John Holdren, Paul Ehrlich, and Barry Commoner. The equation is simple: I = P × A × T, where I represents our impact on the environment. The other parts of the equation are population (P), affluence (A) and technology (T). The evolution of AI and data centers is at the heart of the IPAT equation. I challenged my students to think about the independent and interconnected aspects of the equation.

“According to a new study from UN University (UNU), AI-related water consumption could equal the basic annual domestic needs of 1.3 billion people by the end of the decade, while its land footprint may exceed 14,500 square kilometres — roughly twice the size of the Jakarta metropolitan area,” according to a recent United Nations press release . “Public debate has largely centred on the energy required to train advanced AI models, but the study finds that day-to-day usage accounts for roughly 80 to 90 per cent of total energy demand,” The report went on to say. They documented that a particularly popular AI service likely produces nearly 2.5 billion prompts every day. That is equivalent to hundreds of gigawatt-hours of electricity annually.

Frivolous Social Media AI Usage

That leads me to my observations on social media. People enjoy making cute profile pictures, job-related caricatures, and really bad flyers. “Generating a single AI image can require more than a thousand times the energy of simple text classification, while video generation demands even greater resources,” The UN press release continued.

AI “slop” is fueling energy and water consumption, spreading misinformation about real topics, and accelerating what some experts refer to as brain rot. What fuels the desire to make a cute little caricature to post on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok? Scholars attribute easy access to “novelty”, the psychological enticement of clicks, likes, flattery and shares on social media, personal validation, and what the younger generation calls FOMO or “fear of missing out.” There is a great You Tube discussion by the ToonHeadz YouTube Channel.

Selina Bets is a conservation biologist that clearly is not concerned about FOMO. “Its been really disappointing seeing so many people jump on this trend. Especially those who should know better. It isn’t a trend. It’s a data mining exercise….," She wrote on Instagram. “This has so many knock-on effects...ecological + environmental with increasing electricity costs and drinking water consumption, infringement of data privacy laws ON TOP of COUNTLESS copyright infringements issues from artists whose work is being stolen from by the AI to make these images,” she went on to say.

I will close by stating that AI is out of the box. It’s not going away. In my professional field, I am watching AI change the game in terms of data analysis, coding, and weather forecast skill, particularly with hurricane prediction . AI is more than just the large-language models or LLMs on your phone, but that’s what most people know about. People think all meteorologists are on TV, but I usually have to explain that it is a small percentage of our field. Likewise, AI is a much broader world than Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or CoPilot. Like anything, it can have value if used responsibly or be shamelessly trivialized.