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Amazon Is Creating the Biggest Pollution Source in the Country

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Re: Amazon Is Creating the Biggest Pollution Source in the Country

#121

Post by kristianp »

rgmerk wrote: post #103

Some thoughts: * you can run data centres on grid electricity, which can come from mostly-renewable sources (in short, you need gas mainly as as an occasional backup). * running things off-grid is dumb, and they’re only doing it because they’re desperate to get their data centres up and running yesterday so that they’re the ones who get to the singularity first (or some approximation thereof). * the US electricity gr…

> you can run data centres on grid electricity

The reason they're not doing that is because grid providers can't grow their supply fast enough to support new AI data centres.

Re: Amazon Is Creating the Biggest Pollution Source in the Country

#122

Post by psolidgold »

noosphr wrote: post #92
deepsun wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't understand why. AI training can be run during the sunny days. Could be a good PR opportunity for Musk, I'm surprised he doesn't take it. Especially if he buys from his own company.

Hospitals can also just run on the sunny days. Renewable energy only makes sense in a society that is agrarian. The second you have to make anything industrial you need baseload. That baseload can either be coal or nuclear.

Comparing 24/7 AI training to operating hospitals 24/7 is a bit of a false equivalency, don't you think?

Besides, hydroelectric is commonly used as baseload where available. Additionally, there are big strides happening in power storage options to smooth the effective baseload of solar and wind.

I would argue that coal energy only makes sense in an anachronistic society doomed to fail.

Re: Amazon Is Creating the Biggest Pollution Source in the Country

#123

Post by throwaway473825 »

sylos wrote: post #110
legulere wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that the grid can’t get built out fast enough. You’ll probably see most AI data centers switch to grid power in the coming years using mostly wind and solar because it’s simply cheaper as well

Remember when they said they couldnzt electrify the grid for ev's so they opted to just not do anything with ev's. Now datacenters are getting rushed in so fast and breaking the grids so hard they can illegally running generators

EVs aren't popular in the US due to the Republicans being beholden to oil and gas interests and the Democrats to unions. The grid was just an excuse.

Re: Amazon Is Creating the Biggest Pollution Source in the Country

#124

Post by dathinab »

measurablefunc wrote: post #64
calgoo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please, yea it can, it just takes a full investment and outlawing of the fossil fuel industry that bribe everyone to say that its impossible.

The average grocery store food item travels more than 3k miles to reach its destination from the source. Let me know how you're going to make that work w/o diesel.

is that a serious quest?

like

- electric trains

- electric cars

outside of the US most trains try to run electric when they can as it's just plain better (cheaper, more convenient too). Yes bunch of fright trains still run diesel, but that is mostly due to historic reasons and them often going to niche side tracks which have not been electrified. Fun fact a supper heavy mining fright train in Austrailia doesn't just run electric but basically 0-cost. It gets loaded in the mountains uses mostly gravity to run to the sea charging batteries while breaking and then when empty goes back up using the charges gained from breaking.

And electric trucks exist and work, too.

You don't even need latest battery tech as e.g. Swiss/Zürich hybrid bus/trams have been showing since some decades.

As another fun fact Beelitz-Heilstätten only allowed electric car around 1900!! (because it was healing lung issues and even way over 100 years ago it was well understood that air pollution from cars makes that worse).

Like, this was never about weather it's technical doable. But all about gigantic well established industries doing everything in their power to sabotage forced changes as such changes would make them obsolete. So a technical working solution isn't sufficient it must be noticeable cheaper or better so that it can disrupt the industry in a more "capitalist" way.

Re: Amazon Is Creating the Biggest Pollution Source in the Country

#125

Post by skywhopper »

kristianp wrote: post #121
rgmerk wrote: post #103

Some thoughts: * you can run data centres on grid electricity, which can come from mostly-renewable sources (in short, you need gas mainly as as an occasional backup). * running things off-grid is dumb, and they’re only doing it because they’re desperate to get their data centres up and running yesterday so that they’re the ones who get to the singularity first (or some approximation thereof). * the US electricity gr…

> you can run data centres on grid electricity The reason they're not doing that is because grid providers can't grow their supply fast enough to support new AI data centres.

Yes, they said that.

Re: Amazon Is Creating the Biggest Pollution Source in the Country

#126

Post by podocarp »

culi wrote: post #96
zepearl wrote: post #27

Let's add as well "SpaceX’s Terafab will rely on natural gas power plants, not Tesla solar panels" to the mix :o( https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/07/spacexs-terafab-will-rely-...

Also an important part that keeps getting left out for some reason: they're doing so illegally . They are running unpermitted turbines. They claimed the turbines were off and journalists had to use thermal cameras mounted on drones to prove that they are indeed running. Then a non-profit had to sue them to get them to agree to turn off the turbines by 2027... That's how bad our system is at giving any consequences to…

No, there are extreme consequences only when toes are stepped on. For example SBF... If it was run by Musk or Trump you can be sure there would be no sentence. I'm not arguing what SBF did isn't a crime. I'm saying if that deserves 20 years, then everything else should also be equally punished.

Re: Amazon Is Creating the Biggest Pollution Source in the Country

#127

Post by skywhopper »

cbmuser wrote: post #78
deepsun wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't understand why. AI training can be run during the sunny days. Could be a good PR opportunity for Musk, I'm surprised he doesn't take it. Especially if he buys from his own company.

»Don't understand why.« Because you cannot turn a large datacenter with thousands of aggregates, power supplies and so on off and on like a toaster.

Batteries exist, and are getting better all the time.

Re: Amazon Is Creating the Biggest Pollution Source in the Country

#128

Post by skywhopper »

legulere wrote: post #42
deepsun wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't understand why. AI training can be run during the sunny days. Could be a good PR opportunity for Musk, I'm surprised he doesn't take it. Especially if he buys from his own company.

The problem is that the grid can’t get built out fast enough. You’ll probably see most AI data centers switch to grid power in the coming years using mostly wind and solar because it’s simply cheaper as well

They could (and should be required to) build out their own solar/wind/battery infra as part of standing up a new datacenter. So much money is being wasted on poisoning our air and further enriching the richest companies in the history of the world.

Re: Amazon Is Creating the Biggest Pollution Source in the Country

#129

Post by skywhopper »

jiggawatts wrote: post #83
deepsun wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't understand why. AI training can be run during the sunny days. Could be a good PR opportunity for Musk, I'm surprised he doesn't take it. Especially if he buys from his own company.

The reasons are: - Running billions of dollars worth of GPUs only 30-50% of the time insanely wasteful. Everyone else is running them at 99% duty cycle or close to it. - Solar is big and generally has to be built far from where the data centres are. Transmission is already a bottleneck in many states. Adding tens of gigawatts requires non-trivial large scale infrastructure investment by… the utility companies, not Sp…

I hope you get paid for apologizing for the worst people in the world.

Re: Amazon Is Creating the Biggest Pollution Source in the Country

#130

Post by podocarp »

cbmuser wrote: post #78
deepsun wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't understand why. AI training can be run during the sunny days. Could be a good PR opportunity for Musk, I'm surprised he doesn't take it. Especially if he buys from his own company.

»Don't understand why.« Because you cannot turn a large datacenter with thousands of aggregates, power supplies and so on off and on like a toaster.

You totally can. I've seen cases a rat gnawed a circuit breaker and blacked out a DC. Fires too. It's not an industrial manufacturing facility. Computers can just be shut off and on. There's also nothing needed to bootstrap the other parts like cooling etc.
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