Wind turbines do not simply kill millions of birds and bats every year, they displace many millions more. Studies have shown that in an area where wind turbines are present, as many as two-thirds of birds, bats and terrestrial mammals showed displacement, thus impacting their survival rates. The golden eagles of Wyoming, USA, soar majestically on wings that can span two meters. They are no match for the wind turbine blades that can be longer than a Boeing 747’s wings.
Gerry McGovern
Wind turbines kill birds—but what’s a few million birds for progress?
AI: making nuclear clean and cool again Fermi America has enlisted South Korea’s Hyundai Engineering & Construction (Hyundai E&C) to design and build the nuclear heart of a vast private power grid aimed squarely at fueling next-generation artificial-intelligence workloads in Texas.
Interesting Engineering
Nuclear reactors to power AI data farms in US' first private HyperGrid
A new MoU cements Fermi America–Hyundai E&C’s plan to build four AP1000 reactors for the HyperGrid campus, powering AI workloads.
Texas Data Centers Use 50 Billion Gallons of Water as State Faces Drought
Newsweek
Texas data centers use 50 billion gallons of water as state faces drought
The Alamo City facilities, owned by Microsoft and the Army Corps, have taken large amounts of water from the drought-ridden state.
AI is not Africa’s savior: Avoiding technosolutionism in digital development "The fundamental premise that AI represents a panacea for Africa’s myriad challenges across effective governance, corruption, socioeconomic development, infrastructure, and conflict demonstrates a form of technological determinism that warrants critical examination."
Brookings
AI is not Africa’s savior: Avoiding technosolutionism in digital development | Brookings
Chinasa T. Okolo discusses how Africa can ensure AI progress serves the contitnent's broader goals of social and economic empowerment.
Microsoft are opening up Three Mile Island again. You know what they're rebranding it as: Crane Clean Energy Center I kid you not. They're doing it in order to become "carbon negative" and "carbon-free"--they say! Of course, nuclear is not even remotely carbon free. But seems like you can get away with killing someone on Fifth Avenue once you claim it was for good "carbon" reasons. Carbon is the new greenwashing. Need to watch out for that Carbon Tunnel Vision.
Constellation to Launch Crane Clean Energy Center, Restoring Jobs and Carbon-Free Power to The Grid
Constellation announced today the signing of a 20-year power purchase agreement with Microsoft that will pave the way for the launch of the Crane C...
"Earlier this month in southern Arizona, nearly 1,000 people in Tucson turned out to a city council meeting after local reporters revealed that officials had secretly planned an Amazon Web Services facility in their community. At a public meeting, angry residents cited that the city’s pattern of droughts would not meet the data center’s surging water needs."
Grist
Data centers, drought, and dispossession: The real nightmares in Ari Aster’s ‘Eddington’
In the new horror-tinged Western, a fictional Pueblo tribe and a fractured town reveal how pandemic politics and AI infrastructure deepen old patte...
"A 2023 study found that a single Chat GPT-3 request processed at an Arizona data center uses about 30 milliliters of water, compared to 12 ml per request in Wyoming. That doesn’t seem like much (it’s less than a shot-glass) until you consider that there are at least 1 billion ChatGPT queries worldwide per day and growing, using a total of some 8 million gallons of water daily, worldwide."
Coyote Gulch
No, there is not plenty of water for data centers: And, yes, we should worry about it, along with the facilities’ power use — Jonathan P. Thompson (LandDesk.org) #ColoradoRiver #COriver #RioGrande #aridification
A satellite view of Mesa, Arizona, showing a handful of the 91 energy- and water-intensive data centers in the greater Phoenix metro area. Source: ...
Bitcoin is pure, pure evil "Critics warn that bitcoin is becoming a multitrillion-dollar marketplace built on greed, wild speculation and criminality."
Conservation news
Bitcoin boom comes with huge intensifying environmental footprint
While much has been written about bitcoin, many people still find it a hard topic to comprehend, even as promoters like U.S. President Donald Trump...
 "For all the excitement about the electricity-intensive proof-of-work protocol used by Bitcoin giving way to the more frugal proof-of-stake principles used by Ethereum, the computing power being used to mine Bitcoin is currently roughly three times what it was two years ago."
Bloomberg.com
Bitcoin Devours the Electricity Meant for the World’s Poor
Crypto mines and data centers overwhelm the hydropower projects built to lift nations out of poverty.
Alberta Municipality Declares Farm Disaster Due to Drought, Approves Water-Guzzling Data Centre Plan
The Energy Mix
Alberta Municipality Declares Farm Disaster Due to Drought, Approves Water-Guzzling Data Centre Plan
An Alberta municipality that declared an agricultural disaster earlier this month due to drought is moving forward with plans to host the “larges...
 Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation (SLCN) Chief Sheldon Sunshine said he learned about the project through social media, despite the project being proposed for the Nation’s traditional lands. “It seems like it was all worked on well before us, and then we’re an afterthought, and it should never be that way,” said Sunshine in an interview.
CTVNews
First Nation says it wasn’t consulted on Wonder Valley AI data centre proposed for thousands of hectares of land
As Canadian entrepreneur and television personality Kevin O’Leary takes to the U.S. to promote his proposed Wonder Valley AI data centre, one Fir...
More data centers are moving into Arizona. Who's going to pay for them? "According to the July report, electricity or ‘load’ demand from data centers rose by 1% annually between 2010 and 2023 across seven of the eight largest utilities in the Interior West, including Arizona. Now, with the addition of AI systems and machine learning models, that number is expected to increase significantly by as much as 4.5% annually potentially straining already taxed power grids."
Arizona data centers drive rising power and water demand | 12news.com