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1. G on 01/16/2026 at 10:57 am

   Thanks for the good news on the Data Center front guys.

   I know three separate people in the states and two in Canada that have been fighting them in their towns and lost the fight (Big tech companies used sneaky tactics like putting all the layers within a 100km radius on retainer so they all have NDAs and will not help locals) so it is good to know some people are succeeding in resisting the earth eating data beast.

   In the note below pictures show before and after of a couple Data Centers that were built in Virginia and Georgia (after they scalped the forests and suffocated the earth with concrete).

   https://substack.com/@gavinmounsey/note/c-200387727

   “When people talk about AI, they often speak in abstractions: “models,” “agents,” “the cloud,” “digital transformation.” But the infrastructure behind AI is not abstract at all. It is concrete. Literal concrete, poured by the ton. It is steel, wire, copper, compressors, water pipelines, diesel tanks, and transmission lines humming with electricity pulled from distant rivers, mountains, and mines.

   If we peel back the metaphor, what we find is staggering.

   The United States alone now houses data centers that consume roughly as much electricity as many entire nations. And they are expanding at a pace that even utilities admit they can’t keep up with. One analysis suggests that nearly half of the world’s data-center electricity consumption occurs in the U.S. The new AI-optimized facilities are larger, hotter, thirstier, and far more power-hungry than their predecessors.

   A brief accounting of the water, energy, and materials flowing into the AI revolution.

   Water :

   -By 2027, AI data centers could consume 6.4 trillion liters of freshwater annually. That’s enough to fill 2.8 million Olympic swimming pools.

   -Microsoft already draws 42% of its water from regions officially classified as “water-stressed.”

   -Google reports 15% of its data-center water use occurs in “high water scarcity” areas, and that number is rising.

   -A single hyperscale AI complex can require millions of gallons per day just for cooling.

   -Water withdrawals for AI compete directly with human drinking water, agriculture, and the ecological flows that keep rivers alive.

   (continued..)

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   • G on 01/16/2026 at 11:02 am

     (..continued from comment above)

     ..Energy :

     -Global data-center power consumption is projected to reach ~1,000 TWh/year by 2030, or roughly equivalent to the electricity use of Japan.

     -AI will likely account for 40–60% of this surge, making it one of the fastest-growing energy loads on the planet.

     -U.S. data centers alone already consume as much electricity as entire nations.

     -Coal plants in the U.S. and Europe are being kept alive, or reactivated, specifically to feed AI server clusters.

     -Nuclear power is being revived at an unprecedented scale to meet AI’s 24/7 baseload demand, triggering a new wave of uranium mining on Indigenous land.

     -AI is not “efficient.” It is becoming one of the most energy-intensive technologies humanity has ever built.

     Materials and Mining :

     -To meet AI’s copper needs alone, the world may need to mine as much copper in the next 25 years as in all of human history to date.

     -AI chips require 10–15× more energy and water to manufacture than standard chips.

     -Server lifespans are shrinking to 3–5 years, accelerating the world’s fastest-growing toxic waste stream: e-waste.

     -Each AI accelerator chip contains layers of rare metals that are currently impossible to recycle economically.

     -New mining and processing demands fall overwhelmingly on the Global South: the Atacama Desert (lithium), the Congo (cobalt), Indonesia (nickel), the Navajo Nation and Kazakhstan (uranium), Chile and Peru (copper).

     The “intelligence” of AI rests on an explosion of extraction, massive new wounds on land, watersheds, and communities.”

     – Justin McAffee (from his post titled “What We Burn to Speak to Machines : Inside the Global AI Buildout: Power, Water, and Sacrifice Zones”)

     —–

     This video investigation linked below goes into more details on those two data centers I mentioned above (and several others). They talk to local residents that (some of them cannot sleep in their homes anymore and are suffering health issues because of the endless droning sound and vibrations from the servers, cooling systems and energy generation units pressed against their neighborhoods and likely crazy EMFs too)

     “Exposing The Dark Side of America’s AI Data Center Explosion | View From Above”

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-8TDOFqkQA

     They explore the massive Amazon, Microsoft and Google Data Centers, they mapped them out and measured how much water they are stealing from the locals (in some cases causing droughts so that farmers can no longer tend their fields).

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