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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

#131

Post by podocarp »

XorNot wrote: post #94
cbmuser wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

»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.

Datacenters literally have UPS power supplies to let them gracefully shutdown and start up. A 4 hour grid battery and a weather forecast would easily let a training run follow energy availability.

Are the UPSes actual batteries or just backup generators? If they're generators then that defeats the point. If they're batteries then it's kinda just regular solar then?

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

#132

Post by BurningFrog »

BurningFrog wrote: post #11
bethekidyouwant wrote: post #3

Co2 is pollution now?

Sure, but it's only damaging globally. It's no more damaging to the local environment than to anywhere else on the planet.

This is indisputably true, but downvoted without comment...

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

#133

Post by noosphr »

psolidgold wrote: post #122
noosphr wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Where available is limited to Norway. Building enough mountains per capita in the rest of the world is somewhat difficult.

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

#134

Post by khimaros »

wat10000 wrote: post #23
khimaros wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sometime in the energy sector once told me "the solution to pollution is dilution"

Which is nonsense. There's plenty of pollution that's been diluted as much as it possibly can be and is still problematic. CO2 is an obvious example. Or consider leaded gasoline or mercury. You have to be careful not to eat too much fish or you'll have trouble with the mercury in it. That's been diluted by the entire ocean and that didn't solve it.

*someone in the energy sector

also, i don't necessarily mean to endorse this worldview in terms of its potential impact on policy, though there may be some truth to it, technically speaking.

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

#135

Post by psolidgold »

noosphr wrote: post #133
psolidgold wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Where available is limited to Norway. Building enough mountains per capita in the rest of the world is somewhat difficult.

You've been confidently wrong a couple times now - or maybe intentionally misrepresenting the facts?

In the US there are several states where hydro is the majority source of baseload electricity: Washington, Idaho, Vermont, Oregon, etc.

Outside of the US there are several countries that source more than 90% of their electricity from hydro - at higher percentages than Norway even: Paraguay, Albania, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nepal, Namibia, Zambia, Tajikistan.

You also don't have to build mountains to utilize hydro. There are areas that are utilizing pumped hydro to store the kinetic energy to smooth the baseline.

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

#136

Post by noosphr »

psolidgold wrote: post #135
noosphr wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where available is limited to Norway. Building enough mountains per capita in the rest of the world is somewhat difficult.

You've been confidently wrong a couple times now - or maybe intentionally misrepresenting the facts? In the US there are several states where hydro is the majority source of baseload electricity: Washington, Idaho, Vermont, Oregon, etc. Outside of the US there are several countries that source more than 90% of their electricity from hydro - at higher percentages than Norway even: Paraguay, Albania, Democratic Republi…

I've worked in energy and ran the numbers. Renewables only make sense for a pre industrial or deindustrializing society. When you need power to make shit they are useless. Which is why the industrial revolution moved from water to coal in the first place.

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

#137

Post by XorNot »

podocarp wrote: post #131
XorNot wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Datacenters literally have UPS power supplies to let them gracefully shutdown and start up. A 4 hour grid battery and a weather forecast would easily let a training run follow energy availability.

Are the UPSes actual batteries or just backup generators? If they're generators then that defeats the point. If they're batteries then it's kinda just regular solar then?

But that's the point. It's not like a solar DC would suddenly lose power because of cloud cover. Large scale batteries can provide amble ride through inclement weather to allow a graceful shutdown, and weather forecasts at that scale are accurate enough to predictively model your energy availability.

AI training is unique because it's not interactive workload serving.

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

#138

Post by psolidgold »

noosphr wrote: post #136
psolidgold wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've been confidently wrong a couple times now - or maybe intentionally misrepresenting the facts? In the US there are several states where hydro is the majority source of baseload electricity: Washington, Idaho, Vermont, Oregon, etc. Outside of the US there are several countries that source more than 90% of their electricity from hydro - at higher percentages than Norway even: Paraguay, Albania, Democratic Republi…

I've worked in energy and ran the numbers. Renewables only make sense for a pre industrial or deindustrializing society. When you need power to make shit they are useless. Which is why the industrial revolution moved from water to coal in the first place.

Oh you ran the numbers!? If only you had led with that.

Even China has seen a stark reduction in the percentage of electricity generated from coal plants over the past decade. Are they deindustrializing?

Everyone knows coal is a dead end. Maybe you should run the numbers again.

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

#139

Post by acdha »

api wrote: post #112
measurablefunc wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Oh nonsense. Energy is energy. It would be hard to decarbonize long haul trucking and aviation, which together account for less than ten percent of global oil use. Almost everything else can be powered by other things. Might have been true thirty or forty years ago, but even back then France had almost completely decarbonized the grid. My guess would be a giant gas plant for a data center in Texas is part of the deal…

Even long-haul trucking can shrink rapidly between electric trucks (Australia is using those successfully - they’re cheaper and faster on hilly routes) on the shorter routes and electric trains (mature technology for a century) for many longer routes. Businesses would adjust but I think it’s really only aviation which is completely without a path until synthetic fuels arrive.

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

#140

Post by acdha »

cbmuser wrote: post #81
conception wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for that largest polluter in the country part. Our children and their children’s children and so on will curse our generation for what we did to them.

I agree, America should finally build more nuclear power plants. China is currently building 37 reactors simultaneously [1]. > [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/513671/number-of-under-c...

Yes, but those are a priority below massive solar and wind deployment because nuclear is another way to say emissions will rise for decades before the plants come online and start displacing fossil fuels. There are a few edge cases where nuclear might be necessary but there is an enormous amount of fossil fuel usage which could easily be replaced except for political capture by the oil and coal industries.
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