@andrewhinton I hear you. I'd argue that numbers for individual use can be misleading and talking points being thrown around like "a bottle of water for each query" are rarely helpful.
What's more interesting to look at are the scaling effects and what's already happening; how all big tech companies have abandoned their carbon goals and are back to increasing their footprints in a big way. That is the real story for me.
Generative AI is an obvious culprit driving those devastating setbacks.
It's also hard to ignore local communities in proximity to data centres bearing witness to how they are negatively affected, with regards to water use, energy use and noise pollution. Not in the future but already now, today.
And the establishment of new data centres is predicted by everyone(!) to happen at alarming rates in the next ten years.
Someone I always recommend following on this is Sasha Luccioni, Climate Lead at Hugging Face: https://www.sashaluccioni.com