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New Amazon Data Center Is Set to Have the Most Polluting Power Plant in the U.S.

nytimes.com

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Re: New Amazon Data Center Is Set to Have the Most Polluting Power Plant in the U.S.

#281

Post by surgical_fire »

vrganj wrote: post #276
ipaddr wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> The natives in Europe are white. This is such a silly way to out yourself as absolutely clueless. I would invite you to go to Croatia and explain to them how they're the same ethnicity as Serbians and they even speak the same goddamn language . Please stop making grand proclamations about how our continent should act when it's obvious you don't understand even the most basic conditions.

> I would invite you to go to Croatia and explain to them how they're the same ethnicity as Serbians and they even speak the same goddamn language.

Telling anyone in the balkans they are the same as their neighbors because they are white will always be a fun exercise.

Except Greeks of course, who are widely recognized to be north African.

Re: New Amazon Data Center Is Set to Have the Most Polluting Power Plant in the U.S.

#282

Post by s1artibartfast »

cwal37 wrote: post #269
s1artibartfast wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Texas leads the nation in solar installed and solar planned. How do you reconcile that with your theory?

*utility-scale solar, not solar overall

Utility scale, solar installs, and will be total solar by end of year.

Texas accounts for 40% of new solar capacity installed per year at this point.

It does lag behind an inefficient and expensive rooftop solar, and has no State mandate for homeowners to build it.

That said, I think this is enough to show that Texas doesn't hate solar, so there's probably a different reason for selecting gas to support the data center. If I were to Hazard I guess, it would be stability and demand curve

Re: New Amazon Data Center Is Set to Have the Most Polluting Power Plant in the U.S.

#283

Post by dh2022 »

gruez wrote: post #171
jurgenburgen wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t need a numerical advantage to dominate if you have a technological / organizational advantage. The British empire was outnumbered 10 to 1 and still managed to control a large portion of the world for a while. US government is working overtime to make sure legacy technologies stay around while the rest of the world is investing into the future.

>US government is working overtime to make sure legacy technologies stay around while the rest of the world is investing into the future. "Rest of the world"? Europe isn't even a player in the AI race. China might be better placed, but they also lag the US in terms of model development and capital deployed. They've been catching up, but that's not the same as "[American will] be in a similar place to Canada at best".…

AI is purely a virtual world play. It may (or may not) make it easier to write code, reply to emails or Slack messages or create PowerPoint presentations. In the real world what matters are energy, natural resources and making (manufacturing) things.

AI will not make it easier to build a house, to harvest a corn field, to assemble a car. AI will not improve weather forecasting accuracy- this is already pretty much 99.999% solved. So AI will not improve standards of living.

All this to conclude that China’s standards of living will improve while America’s will stagnate (or worse)

But sure, go ahead and enjoy those AI videos-some of them are even funny.

Re: New Amazon Data Center Is Set to Have the Most Polluting Power Plant in the U.S.

#284

Post by bigmadshoe »

tomComb wrote: post #44
embedding-shape wrote: post #8

So even when xAI (which is now Tesla? Or SpaceX maybe?) was "operating dozens of unregulated gas turbines that worsen the air quality in one of the most polluted parts of the country"[0] this didn't place them above this new Amazon not-even-built-yet data center? Are they competing who can destroy the earth the fastest or what's going on? - [0] https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/20/musks-xai-is-being-sued-ov...

It seems wrong that Amazon should get in trouble for this when it was XAI that began this new race to the bottom. Peoplecheered xAI on and admired how quickly they were able to move, without much regard to the methods or legality. IMO competitors had no choice but to respond in kind when they see XAI not just getting away with it, but also getting a pass on legal issues.

You think Amazon shouldn’t get in trouble for this because someone else did it first?

Re: New Amazon Data Center Is Set to Have the Most Polluting Power Plant in the U.S.

#285

Post by bigmadshoe »

roncesvalles wrote: post #243
DennisP wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible to have more than one existential risk at a time. We even have a third, since nuclear war doesn't seem completely impossible these days. We probably shouldn't ignore any of them.

Nuclear war is hardly an existential risk. An all-out global nuclear war (all nuclear nations landing 10% of their warheads in populated areas) would be a disruption comparable to COVID at best.

Can you elaborate on this? I’m not an expert at all but this seems so far from true I’m struggling to understand if you’re serious.

Wouldn’t we expect tens of millions of casualties, nuclear fallout rendering large swathes of countries uninhabitable, and ensuing total societal collapse once the globalized western world is separated from their foreign means of production?

Re: New Amazon Data Center Is Set to Have the Most Polluting Power Plant in the U.S.

#286

Post by simianwords »

vrganj wrote: post #264
simianwords wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But life expectancy is highest and stil increasing. Do you have any proof this trend would reverse?

That model assumes no major external factors changing. You think life expectancy will stay the same when forests burn down, we run out of water and crops, conflicts start everywhere, cities start flooding, we get more and more storms, energy crises because we have to shut down power plants etc etc? You're basing your read on wayyyy too simplistic a metric that compresses true life expectancy into something not accoun…

>You think life expectancy will stay the same when forests burn down, we run out of water and crops, conflicts start everywhere, cities start flooding, we get more and more storms, energy crises because we have to shut down power plants etc etc?

It will go up. The rest of the third world is at very low life expectancy and the next 100 years will involve a lot of progress for them. You have not shown me any evidence that it will go down.

Re: New Amazon Data Center Is Set to Have the Most Polluting Power Plant in the U.S.

#287

Post by graemep »

jurgenburgen wrote: post #151
gruez wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>in 50 years America won't be a world power any more. It'll be in a similar place to Canada at best. What's going to replace it? Rapidly aging China? https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=600,quality=80... https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=600,quality=80... https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=600,quality=10...

You don’t need a numerical advantage to dominate if you have a technological / organizational advantage. The British empire was outnumbered 10 to 1 and still managed to control a large portion of the world for a while. US government is working overtime to make sure legacy technologies stay around while the rest of the world is investing into the future.

> The British empire was outnumbered 10 to 1 and still managed to control a large portion of the world for a while

It also had the support of a lot of the population of the areas it controlled and at least toleration by the majority. Most of its colonial civil service and military were people fro the colonies.

Re: New Amazon Data Center Is Set to Have the Most Polluting Power Plant in the U.S.

#288

Post by brikym »

brikym wrote: post #101

On this map I can't see _any_ nuclear under construction in the US yet the rest of the world seems to be building many. When a man has a hammer everything is a gas turbine. GEV stock has treated me well but I'd much rather nuclear was winning. It's a catch22 problem because nuclear is much slower to build than a data center so there is no demand from the data centers. And the nuclear plant doesn't know the demand wil…

Forgot to post the link -> https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/facts-and-figu...

Re: New Amazon Data Center Is Set to Have the Most Polluting Power Plant in the U.S.

#289

Post by graemep »

gruez wrote: post #148
fn-mote wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's going to replace it? Rapidly aging China? Using the age profile of a country with over a billion people to dismiss its geopolitical power has no credibility. More appropriate to point out their (our) lack of domestic chip production and outsourcing of critical technologies.

>Using the age profile of a country with over a billion people to dismiss its geopolitical power has no credibility. The first two charts are for GDP, which correlates pretty well with geopolitical power. Moreover if we're going by population, wouldn't that imply India, and then later Africa are going to be superpowers?

Africa is not a country.

Re: New Amazon Data Center Is Set to Have the Most Polluting Power Plant in the U.S.

#290

Post by brikym »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #263
brikym wrote: post #101

On this map I can't see _any_ nuclear under construction in the US yet the rest of the world seems to be building many. When a man has a hammer everything is a gas turbine. GEV stock has treated me well but I'd much rather nuclear was winning. It's a catch22 problem because nuclear is much slower to build than a data center so there is no demand from the data centers. And the nuclear plant doesn't know the demand wil…

The world isn’t building nuclear power. It’s simply too slow to build and expensive to be relevant.

That's not true though. China has ~20 plants under construction.
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