Don’t mind this glaring bastion of land use mismanagement
They are not AI data centers, that is just the marketing. They will be Surveillance Data Centers.
U see the thinking here but I disagree. Renewables are by far the most economic source of energy. More demand for energy will thus create more energy production and thus drive the transition to happen faster.
Nah, those data centers will be powered by gas turbines cos the current electrical infrastructure can’t handle the amount of power the data centers need.
Yeah I’m not saying they will be powered by renewables but increased power demands will drive investment into it cos their is a profit incentive.
This would make perfect sense under a management that doesn’t bomb regulations or uses the phrase ‘big beautiful coal’.
Increased demand will cause increased supply on all fronts including coal/oil/gas and drive investment into renewables as its more economical. If the demand wasn’t increased the same amount of foss fuels will be burned just over a longer period of time. The graph may be steeper now but the integral will remain the same.
Let’s abstract the idea here: Widgets are in heigh demand and sell for $3 each they come in 2 types type A and type B. Type A costs $1 to produce and type be costs $2 to produce but their is not enough production of type A to meet the total demand so it is backfilled with type B. The people making type B widgets realise they can make an extra $1 per widget if they switch from type B to type A widgets. They thus invest in the production of type A widgets for the next generation. This investment isn’t instant so they also lobby politicians so they reduce the cost of type B widgets from $2 to $1.5.
The people buying the widgets are unhappy that widgets are so expensive and as such want cheaper widgets. They now have a vested interest in creating more type A widget production machines.
So if we want less type B widgets increased demand for widgets overall in the long run will result in more investment of type A widgets and the eventual phasing out of type B widgets completely simply due to economic profit incentives.
Nobody wants to invest in making type B widget making machines as that is less profitable than investing in type A widget production machines. Thus all new widgets production machines will be type A. The type B production machine have a running lifetime they will produce the same amount of type B widgets over their lifetime regardless of if that lifetime happens now or spread over a longer time.
Even if the price of widgets drops to $1.2 and type B production becomes unprofitable the money on the type B production machine has already been spent it still makes sense to run it till its lifetime is complete (this is the case cos fosil fuel products are cheap but the infrastructure to burn them is expensive) it is better to realise some percentage of the infrastructure roi than to realise 0% of the roi. Thus you run the machine despite it being unprofitable on a per widget bases as this reduces ur overall loss.
In the end the same total number of type B widgets where produced just that increased demand means that we transition to type A widgets faster and produce the last of the type B widgets now instead of later.
Great explanation which makes sense.
“Coalie” the cute little mascot to sell the idea to fucking children for fucks sake.
This timeline is fucking atrocious.
The Oil industry fist began with putting the blame for climate-destroying stuff on the consumer. Wr need to acknowledge that companies are at fault
They always get us to pay for anything they don’t want to., which is most things.
Note that it’s not the same voices saying these two things.
The stupid part is that it 100% is. The plastic straw thing was to shift blame onto consumers so we’d blame ourselves instead of the big energy companies. The “AI data centres are cool” people are the same ones as before, now telling everyone how we need to give up more of our meager existence to serve the rich. Energy companies also love it because they can check prices to the fucking moon.
Why is everyone so angry about straws? You all acting like we made you put down your dog. Nobody said it’d solve all issues. Besides, wasn’t it about marine life and not carbon?
I mean the paper straws suck, and 100% of my straws here in Finland were going into recycling or the incinerator rather than the Pacific Ocean, so it feels like I’m putting up with terrible straws for literally no reason.
People here care about those? I’ve never had any issue with them even in movies where they lay in the drink for a long time. What issues do you have?
They taste and feel gross in the mouth and get soggy. Maybe the ones you’ve had have thicker plastic coating (ironic when you think about it) than the ones in my neck of the woods. I can barely finish a burger before the straw in the drink starts getting soggy.
I feel like I’m one of the few people that never really minded the paper straws.
The Sun Life chip bags that were super loud was funny to me though.
Oh, I don’t mind them at all, and people who do are weird for that. There’s a use case for plastic straws for people with certain disabilities but it’s rare. The important thing is that I still understand what that push was trying to do. I can be ok with the results while not being blind to the true motivations.
This isn’t a 2020 vs. 2026 thing. It’s a corporate thing. What corporations do is pour money into anything that makes pollution primarily the fault of the average person’s choices.
“The reason the environment is bad is that you don’t choose to recycle properly.”
It works best for corporations when the thing requires permanent vigilance from the average person. That way, when John down the street accidentally puts a soda can in the trash, an environmentally focused person who has bought the corporate propaganda can have their bile focused on John, and will forget all about the company down the street that pollutes every day the amount that John pollutes in a decade.
The truth is that, while individual responsibility makes a difference, what really makes a difference is legislation regulating corporations. That packaging that you have to figure out how to recycle? That’s not really your fault. It’s the fault of the company that packaged it that way. If they had legislation to force them to do environmentally friendly packaging, they would do that. But it’s so much more convenient for them if they can do the irresponsible thing and still make you feel like it’s your fault.
Plastic straws can be cast as the consumer’s fault. Data centers are corporate. That’s the difference.
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This right here. It’s the same in just about every sphere. If there’s money to be made, the environment takes a back seat, and the psyop gets to work
Awesome summary.
It is a pretty good contrasting example of the hypocrisy and ridiculousness though.
It was just performative corporate “wokism”. They’d do anything to appear attractive to their customers as long as it doesn’t hurt their bottom line. Plastic straws, sure! Actually reduce the amount of waste generated? Absolutely not. How much of the great Pacific garbage patch is made up of straws?
And yeah get the compensation money from the people
2020…the electrical grid cannot handle EVs, what happens when they all plugin at the same time? Stupid libtards!
2026…plug in all the datacentres sucking megawatts 24/7
Plastic straws never had much to do with climate change though? That was mostly about plastic pollution.
Plastic straws are the least of our issues. As long as the 1% are using private jets and super yahts, it makes zero difference.
Corporations are blasting bombs, burning cities, drying rivers, fracking forests and then they tell you how you eating 3 times a day is what’s bad for the environment
Let me fix that:
2020corporation: BUY MY STRAWS! REALLY GOOD STRAWS! CHEAP TOO! environment: better stop using those, people will not properly dispose them and animals will think it’s food and die of starvation because their bellies are filled with undigestable garbage. Also they can easily get stuck in a turtle’s nose,2026corporation: BUY MY AI! REALLY GOOD AI! CHEAP TOO! environment: better not use it too much, nature and humans included need that water too. Also they use a lot of electricity and you need either dinosaur bones or rare earth to produce that electricity, both is bad for the climate you depend on to survive.trump
OK, derailing slightly. There is nothing I hate more than going to a restaurant and getting a cardboard straw for a plastic cup with a plastic lid.
It’s almost as infuriating as seeing people who still somehow wear masks incorrectly.
I always liked how the best argument against wind farms they could come up with was they’re an eyesore, even though they’re not really that different from windmills, which nobody objects to. But yeah a massive grey cube that drains all the fresh water out of everything in a 10-mile radius is just fine.
Perhaps we can develop wind turbines that look like those old dutch windmills, without losing too much cost performance?
Nope, no matter how I think about it that’s not happening. Maybe we can make them look like pinwheels though?
I think wind farms look kinda cool…
