Basic rule: Protestors are always working for Deepstate whether they know it or not. Government creates two sides so it can punish one side and “follow the will of the people” on the other side.
One of the main complaints against AI data centers is the use of water for cooling. The complaint is a distraction.
1. Water isn’t the only way to cool a data center. They could use regular air conditioning with Halon, or large-scale car radiators with ethylene glycol.
2. Water used for cooling isn’t consumed unless it’s totally evaporated in a cooling tower. There are ways to recirculate the same water through cooling reservoirs, again similar to car radiators.
3. Thus protestors who are focusing mainly on water can be disarmed by choosing another method of cooling. I suspect this disarming is the reason for the focus.
= = = = =
The real wastage of AI data centers is the same as the bitcoin data centers that preceded them. They consume lots of energy, lots of Chinese-made chips, and lots of intellectual property, and PRODUCE NOTHING. Or more precisely what they “produce” is lost jobs and lost IP and infinite Share Value for Altman.
Many industrial processes consume lots of energy and water while producing real useful materials and employing real workers. Paper, steel, oil, chemicals, all ADD REAL VALUE to the raw material. We destroyed those industries to satisfy the environmental “protestors”. Those “protestors” were working for the bankers who sent our industry to China so our blue-collar economy could be safely contained in the Dow. Now the same bankers are consuming the white-collar economy so it can be safely contained in the Dow.
= = = = =
TMI: This rant was spawned by thinking about a much earlier protest. When I worked and studented at OU in 1978, I was active in the protests against Kerr McGee’s Cimarron plant. KM was in the chemical biz, not the nuke biz. The plant was going to process uranium for nuke reactors. Polluting the Cimarron was one of our main talking points. We were deluded like all protestors. Oil refineries had learned how to avoid real pollution. They were careful to contain and REUSE the waste products of drilling, pumping and refining. Pumpjacks were powered by gasoline from a miniature on-site refinery. The big refineries burned waste parts to heat up the processing stages, and repeatedly ran waste through finer and finer processes to create more usable products.
Polistra's Mill 