A massive data center at xAI’s controversial site in Memphis, Tennessee is emitting huge plumes of pollution, according to footage recorded by an environmental watchdog group.
A massive data center at xAI’s controversial site in Memphis, Tennessee is emitting huge plumes of pollution, according to footage recorded by an environmental watchdog group.
The article is not fishy, you are just uninformed. They are powering the datacenter with turbines fueled by natural gas. You are right about the datacenter though, it’s beyond fishy, into crime territory. To top it all off, they have approval to run only a handful of turbines (after not even seeking approval in the first place, i.e. running them illegally), but they are running a ton of them.
You misconstru uninformed for skeptical, an eco-themed news site will have a bias against anything related to data centers, supreme leader musk, or burning hydrocarbons. So apologies if I took the article with a grain of salt.
One of the details that I spotted was that the images in the article show the FLIR logo, which is a type of equipment that one would use to view methane plumes, and was used to dramatic effect during the Aliso Canyon gas storage field leaks. That may not be a convincing detail on its own, but one that I thought suggested some credibility.
We have similar products where I work as well, they are just expensive thermal imaging cameras. They would not be able to identify the chemical contents of a gas cloud at a distance, just that there was a cloud. The point is that in the age of digital media, its very hard to prove anything is what you say it is. Between photoshop and AI making a mess of the digital media landscape, it makes things increasingly difficult to validate, and shouting “do your own reaserch” will only add to the ambiguity as the internet is not static and can be changed by anyone at any time.
Perhaps one begets the other.