undefined

points

[-]

CO2, the stuff that has been buried for millions of years, and we're releasing all at once into the atmosphere? The stuff that is warming our planet faster than we, or nature, can adapt to? The stuff that is worsening global wildfires, flooding, retreating glaciers, heat waves, desertification, etc.?

Yeah, that stuff. And other nasty things in the exhaust as well.

by WarmWash7 hours ago|

parent|

[-]

The global problem of CO2 is something separate than the hyper local "problem" of CO2.

The "other stuff" is lower than the emissions in cars "other stuff".

If you are rallying behind "Natural gas generators are poisoning our town" you are 100% guaranteed to look dumb upon any rational analyses. Its a bad angle and should be abandoned. Go after noise if anything.

by standeven5 hours ago|

parent|

[-]

Right, but global CO2 is still a massive problem.

A data center drawing 5 GW is the equivalent power of 278,000 cars driving at highway speed. Even if these gas generators are cleaner (we don’t know because they are not regulated or measured), that is an insane amount of exhaust to locate near residential areas.

by WarmWash5 hours ago|

parent|

[-]

If you're gonna change the subject to global CO2, I can go ahead and change the subject to meat production, or using AC, or flying in airplanes because surely the high horse you're trying to ride on can only carry an AC free low impact vegan, right?

You gotta scale a lot of mountains before you can come down on DC emissions...

by runako4 hours ago|

prev|

[-]

> Water vapor? The stuff we drink?

This is really obnoxious coming as people are still missing after historic flooding in Asia (via lots of concentrated water vapor, I guess).

by convolvatron7 hours ago|

prev|

[-]

no, we already abolished all rule making and review about CO2, this is removing the EPA requirement to install scrubbers for removal of NO and NO2 given sufficiently large outputs, which cause acid rain and are linked to respiratory problems. of course it all depends on the dose, which is why there there is a review process, which I guess was just too inconvenient

by WarmWash7 hours ago|

parent|

[-]

These are off-the-shelf generators, not bespoke built on-site. They typically have NOx emissions even lower than modern cars.

by convolvatron6 hours ago|

parent|

[-]

idk where you've been but the standard for AI datacenters buildouts right now is power-plant size turbine operations up to 1GW in size. not 2KVA Honda generators. notably they are single cycle and not combined cycle used in actual plants which requires burning up to 3x the methane for the same power output. none of this is a big secret.

by WarmWash4 hours ago|

parent|

[-]

1GW is around 6,000 cars.

There are probably twice that in the community complaining...

Also the stat is from GE Vernova, they make the generators used.

If you really want to argue without having the flex and bend to grasp at straws, just go with the noise argument, it actually is annoying to people nearby.

by convolvatron4 hours ago|

parent|

[-]

my only argument here is that there isn't really any reason to avoid going through an emissions review if required. or to require that scrubbers be installed if necessary. the decision to just make an exception to the process for datacenters is more of a political statement about deregulation than anything else.