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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

#81

Post by cbmuser »

conception wrote: post #47
raincole wrote: post #43

It sounds... pretty good? It's not going to put pressure to the existing grid. Nor it will use freshwater. Near to the data centers themselves so the waste from power transmission is minimalized.

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...

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

#82

Post by Mistletoe »

measurablefunc wrote: post #54
mrpopo wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one cares about West Texas, it's about the 33 million tons of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere and warming the world. Reminder that the USA are the country that historically burned the most fossil fuels, the world's largest extractor of oil, the only country trying to do a 180 on coal power. Half of the world has experienced unprecedented heatwaves that will become the norm in 2050. Stop burning fossil fue…

[flagged]

Stop the system, everyone is miserable in it anyway.

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

#83

Post by jiggawatts »

deepsun wrote: post #34
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-...

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 SpaceX. Not to mention regulatory hurdles, etc.

- Battery production is already mostly maxed out, so obtaining tens of gigawatt hours of capacity on short notice is a decent percentage of global production.

Gas and other fossil fuel power plants can be deployed adjacent to the data centres for effectively zero transmission loss and no long powerlines that upset the NIMBY types.

They can work 24/7 and are largely available right now, but as others have pointed out the turbine blades are a limiting factor with these too.

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

#84

Post by CodesInChaos »

deepsun wrote: post #34
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-...

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.

When you spend many billions buying GPUs, you want to maximize utilization, and not turn them off during the night.

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

#86

Post by tarpitt »

beebmam wrote: post #53
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.

Not if the benefits of automating basically all forms of labor reach them.

the benefits of unemployment

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

#87

Post by ponector »

measurablefunc wrote: post #76
worik wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. My food does not, why does yours 2. There are many alternatives to fossil diesel 3. The alternatives involved decentralised technology, so is actively opposed by entrenched interests who would burn the world for a dollar

Because I live in a city w/ an unsustainable ecological footprint & so does basically the rest of the industrialized world.

It does not explain why your food is travelling 3k miles.

For sure you can buy food grown within 500 miles, not delivered from other hemisphere.

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

#88

Post by wat10000 »

lazide wrote: post #25
wat10000 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

uh, that’s nonsense. co2 is problematic because of concentration - the sheer volume. leaded gas and mercury are a problem because of bio-concentration. dilution still helps!

The quip doesn't say "dilution helps." It says "the solution to pollution is dilution." Dilution solves the problem. And not only that, but it's the solution, not merely a solution.

This is just not true, and you seem to agree with that.

Yes, CO2 is problematic because of the sheer volume. The sheer volume means that dilution does not solve the problem.

Leaded gas and mercury are a problem because of bio-concentration. Which means that dilution does not solve the problem.

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

#89

Post by charlieyu1 »

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...

Have you seen the nuclear plant disasters that need a thousand years to clean up? Two of them so far and it hasn’t even been a century

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

#90

Post by ecshafer »

deepsun wrote: post #34
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-...

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.

I don't see why this isn't obvious. Terafab is a FAB not a datacenter.
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