The natural gas turbines used are relatively efficient as far as engines go. Having them on-site makes transmission losses basically negligible.

Nothing short of full solar connected to batteries produced without any difficult to mine elements will make some people happy, but as far as pollution and fuel consumption data centers aren’t really a global concern at the same level as things like transportation.

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estearum 16 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I'm honestly curious whether you yourself are even aware of the disingenuousness of this argument. It's fairly impressive in its density!

1. Nobody complained about the efficiency of natural gas turbines. You can efficiently do a lot of useless stuff with deep negative externalities, and the fact it's efficient is not all that helpful.

2. Saying "the extreme far end would not be satisfied even by much better solutions" is not an excuse not to pursue better solutions!

3. There are many dimensions of this that people care about beyond the "global concern" level regarding "pollution and fuel consumption."

4. There are many problems that are significant and worth thinking about even if they are not the largest singular problems that could be included by some arbitrarily defined criteria

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Aurornis 15 hours ago | parent [-]

> I'm honestly curious whether you yourself are even aware of the disingenuousness of this argument.

Unnecessarily condescending and smug, but I’ll try to respond.

That said, you’re putting forth your own disingenuous assumptions and misconceptions. The natural gas turbines are an intermediate solution to get up and running due to the extremely long and arduous process of getting connected to the grid.

Arguing pedantry about the word efficiency isn’t helpful either. The data centers are being built, sorry to anyone who gets triggered by that. The gas turbines are an efficient way to power them while waiting for grid interconnect and longterm renewables to come online.

Disingenuous is acting like this is a permanent solution to the exclusion of others. The whole point is that it gets them started now with portable generation that is efficient.

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windexh8er 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> The data centers are being built, sorry to anyone who gets triggered by that.

Unnecessarily smug?

Beyond that they can be stopped. They're being met with a lot of resistance in the Midwest as they're attempting to be built without much understanding of the public utilities impact. People are catching on to the fact that energy and water consumption is pushing up costs for residents. A lot of assumptions are supporting this argument.

> The gas turbines are an efficient way to power them while waiting for grid interconnect and longterm renewables to come online.

I like the gymnastics of wordplay here. Efficient only when you look at them through the lens of some ephemeral timeframe that may or may not exist.

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estearum 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The gas turbines are hopefully an intermediate solution due to the long and not guaranteed process of grid connection and renewable buildout. History is of course full of such bets that did not work out the way their proponents hoped.

> The data centers are being built, sorry to anyone who gets triggered by that.

It's obvious that you're starting from your conclusion and working backwards, which is probably how your initial comment was full of so much motivated reasoning to begin with.

In your mind, is there any set of negative externalities that would justify not building the data centers, or at least not building them now, or at least not building them now in specific areas that require these types of interim solutions?

	▲	zozbot234 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		This is exactly right. These are glorified emergency generators, and grid power is ordinarily far cheaper; especially for interruptible loads like training new models (checkpointing work in progress and resuming it later is cheap and easy). The article mentions that quite clearly.

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miltonlost 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> as far as pollution and fuel consumption data centers aren’t really a global concern at the same level as things like transportation.

Same level doesn't remove the concern for this unnecessary pollution. Stop changing the subject from the environmental problems that AI usage can have by their increased power consumption.

Natural gas engines are efficient!

Ok! But what about the pollution they produce to nearby neighborhoods? What about the health repercussions? Do human lives not matter?

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/06/elon-musk-xai-memph...