Ugh, what violation of local law can't be excused by specious "national security" claims?
> resulting in a corresponding increase in three major air pollutants:
Sometimes I wonder how valuable it would be to go to vulnerable areas (ecologically or socio-economically) and record baseline pollution, noise, etc. readings, simply to give future residents some statistical ammunition against some New Thing ruins the old implicit standard of safety and comfort.
I guess the problem is you don't always know what to measure until it's nearly too late, such as if the problem is a new chemical that needs a particular test to measure, or noise that isn't about raw decibels but causes problems with particular frequencies and harmonics, etc.
>The company, which is now a division of SpaceX, is likely to buy more generators in the coming months or years. In SpaceX’s IPO filing, the company said that it will buy another $2.8 billion worth of gas turbines to power its AI data centers over the next three years. Of that, at least $2 billion are earmarked for “mobile gas turbines.”
Timnit Gebru was laughed out of town for overlooking research into making LLMs more energy efficient. By the logic used to drag her through the mud, Musk must be a total idiot to be buying so much fossil fuel capacity. Truly, nobody could see this coming. Must be 5d chess.
We are confused here too. Really could be any large enough group I suppose as long as it contains a lot of members living near the turbines.
I suspect because these data centers are usually placed in areas where land and labor are very cheap, which in some/many states are predominantly black(er) areas.
Really though, the USA has been chipping away at the ability for groups like these to show “standing” so its mildly impressive that this case got this far.
And watch them get charged with terrorism. Anti-nuke protestors who did no real harm were charged under 18 USC 1361 and faced up to 25 years in prison [1]. “Sabotage” here means over $1.000 in damage.
The national security and defense arguments are fortunately the only things that protect any forward progress. Without DoD cover, every Starlink launch would be governed by the California Coastal Commission and friends. Frankly, living in the Bay Area, where people use anti-pollution laws to prevent student housing, I think I understand a little the law structure of the United States. It is perhaps analogous to the way Jewish people treat the halakha. The idea being that if you can find a way around the law, it is meant to be operated that way. So students are noise pollution, bike lanes need environmental impact reports while highways don't, solar power is polluting while gas isn't, endangered species genetically identical to common species are discovered when they would block dams, and 50 years of having a Nuclear Regulatory Commission means exactly one reactor approved by them built.
So there's outrage and all that, but this is the fundamental law of the USA: the law is the Word; and all bugs in it are features.
For the most part, I get why this helps the USA. But boy does it feel like there's going to be a reckoning one day.
Also the law is not static. Things can go back and forth. Out of phase with whatever trends in news cycles. Watch the Germans debating Nuclear phase out over 30 years.
They don't care much about connecting it to the grid. They'll take whatever is available and cheaper. If gas turbine on trucks are somehow cheaper (reduced regulation, taxation, planning...) than grid, that'll stay as-is in the foreseeable future. Once you spent billions on turbines and gas contracts, you most likely won't connect to the grid overnight.
It IT there is nothing more permanent than a temporary fix.
That being said, why don’t utilities provide power when it is needed and make peopke wait for months or years on end? I don’t think it is cheaper to run on generators for months/years.
Its obviously a permanent fixture. And well, electricity by virtue of having been around for 100+ years as a mass market product has been utterly ossified, saddled with far too onerous regulations and taxes and is being driven by inflexible, uninterested practitioners.
Of course someone will go „its just energy“ and use almost free natural gas. In some places in the US a diesel generator with gas from the pump is likely cheaper too.