Tag: Amazon

Energy Reality Forces Tech to Ditch Climate Virtue Signaling

In Pecos County, Texas, crews are clearing scrubland for a power plant that will burn natural gas and answer to no one but Amazon.

Microsoft has signed a 20-year deal for power from a Chevron gas plant in neighboring Reeves County.

In 2021, Facebook’s parent company Meta declared climate change one of the most pressing challenges facing the world and positioned itself among the largest corporate buyers of clean electricity. Then came its Hyperion data center in Louisiana.

A cartoon-style illustration titled 'Energy Reality' showing a man wearing a green 'Climate' mask, standing amidst energy infrastructure like wind turbines and natural gas plants in Pecos County, Texas. The image displays humorous commentary on energy, technology, and climate, with text elements emphasizing reliable power and critiques of 'virtue signaling.'

From The CO2 Coalition

By Vijay Jayaraj

In Pecos County, Texas, crews are clearing scrubland for a power plant that will burn natural gas and answer to no one but Amazon. With 35 turbines and a generating capacity of more than 7 gigawatts, the plant will be able to produce more electricity than the Grand Coulee Dam. A state permit allows the facility to emit 33 million tons of greenhouse gases a year, roughly double what comes from an Alabama coal-fired generator that has topped America’s emissions tables for years.

Now recall who founded the company building the gas behemoth. That would be Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who just 5 years ago told delegates at a U.N. climate summit that a rocket ride had shown him a planet that was finite and fragile, prompting a pledge of $2 billion to “restore” nature. The applause was warm. The carbon-intensive private jet that carried Bezos to the Scotland meeting was noted by critics and forgotten by everyone else.

Now, his company is financing what may become the largest point source of carbon dioxide in the United States, whose contribution to the greening of ecosystems should be welcome.

You are watching a conversion, and it deserves your attention because of what forced it.

The template, not the exception
Amazon did not stumble into natural gas. It joined a queue. Enverus Intelligence Research projects that user-owned turbines will account for about 40% of new data center capacity through 2030. Microsoft has signed a 20-year deal for power from a Chevron gas plant in neighboring Reeves County. Interconnection subscriptions are full, transformers are back-ordered, and the only metric that matters is the time it takes to get a power plant in operation.

In 2021, Facebook’s parent company Meta declared climate change one of the most pressing challenges facing the world and positioned itself among the largest corporate buyers of clean electricity. Then came its Hyperion data center in Louisiana. Regulators approved three combined-cycle gas plants for it in August 2025. In March 2026 Meta tripled the order, funding seven more and making the totals 10 gas plants and nearly $11 billion of investment. Meta will underwrite 15 years of revenue, while the turbines will run for 30 – a mismatch that has a dissenting member of the Public Service Commission warning that households may inherit the balance.

Elon Musk built an empire on the premise that combustion belongs to the past. In 2024, he said that a carbon tax was the only action needed to solve climate change. More recently, addressing G20 ministers, he warned of a significant power shortfall next year and defended data center construction against negative public sentiment. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, in the same meeting, asked governments for more electricians and more electricity. Neither man requested more wind and solar installations.

Energy Physics Forces a Hard Reset
Big Tech’s turn toward dedicated gas power does not settle the climate debate, but it exposes the distance between a political narrative and a power grid capable of supporting industries. When servers must run, physics gets a vote and realities are acknowledged.

For example, at the start of 2026, every grid-scale battery in the United States combined could meet national demand for only 15 minutes. Modeling the PJM regional power system through 2045, Jonathan Lesser and Mitchell Rolling found that a grid of wind, solar, and batteries would need 10 times the generating capacity of gas and nuclear power. It would also cost about seven times as much, and cover a land area larger than the PJM service area, which comprises most of the Mid-Atlantic and parts of the Midwest.

Yet, despite these facts, pseudo-scientists, grifters, and demagogues lectured for 20 years that coal is immoral, natural gas is a bridge to nowhere, and so-called green technologies are the planet’s salvation. Banks denied financing for hydrocarbon projects in developing countries where surgeons operate under lights powered by unreliable generators and where hundreds of millions cook with sooty wood and dung.

The lesson is the same for data centers and households: Prosperity requires electricity that is available when needed. Dependable systems of conventional energy sources will continue to power the tech revolution and human progress for decades.

Originally published at American Thinker, September 13th, 2026.

Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India. He served as a research associate with the Changing Oceans Research Unit at University of British Columbia, Canada.

Satellite Data Show Tropical Forests React Differently to Climate Across Continents

Satellite data from NASA’s GEDI mission show that tropical forests on different continents respond differently to climate factors such as temperature and aridity, with effects further modified by soils, topography, and other local conditions.

AI generated by Grok

Satellite data from NASA’s GEDI mission show that tropical forests on different continents respond differently to climate factors such as temperature and aridity, with effects further modified by soils, topography, and other local conditions.

In a 2026 Nature study (“Heterogeneous climatic controls on tropical-forest biomass”), researchers affiliated with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), the University of Maryland, NASA, and a Brazilian university analyzed roughly 16 million 2020 GEDI spaceborne LiDAR estimates of aboveground biomass (AGB) in intact lowland forests of the Amazon, Congo Basin, and Southeast Asia.

GEDI (Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation) is a full-waveform LiDAR instrument developed by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the University of Maryland. It is mounted on the International Space Station (ISS) and provides high-resolution, dense sampling of Earth’s 3D surface structure—especially forest canopy height, vertical structure, and topography—between approximately 51.6° N and 51.6° S latitude.

GEDI is an active remote-sensing system that fires short pulses of near-infrared laser light (wavelength 1064 nm) toward Earth.

The light reflects off vegetation, the ground, and other surfaces. An onboard telescope collects the returning photons, which are converted into electronic signals and recorded as a function of time. This produces a full waveform—a continuous vertical profile of reflected energy rather than discrete points.

GEDI remains one of the highest-resolution and densest-sampling spaceborne LiDAR systems ever flown for vegetation and topography.

Key findings

Higher temperatures were generally linked to lower biomass, but sensitivity varied sharply by region: Congo Basin forests were the most sensitive (e.g., roughly 27.6 Mg/ha AGB decline associated with temperature increases in reported analyses), Amazonian forests moderately sensitive (~11 Mg/ha), and Southeast Asian forests relatively insensitive (~0.1 Mg/ha).

Water limitation/aridity had the strongest negative effects in Southeast Asia (strong biomass declines in more arid sites). Amazonian forests often showed peak biomass at intermediate aridity; African forests were relatively insensitive. Effects of temperature and drought anomalies intensified with overall aridity and interacted with soils and landscape features.

In the tallest forests (trees >70 m), storms (lightning and windthrow) emerged as a major negative driver of biomass.

These patterns help resolve earlier conflicting results from plot-based or regional studies: the differences largely reflect real biological and historical variation rather than just methodological inconsistencies. Africa’s drier evolutionary/climatic history, Southeast Asia’s wetter history, and the distinct trajectories of the Americas have shaped species composition and climate responses that persist today.

Co-author Helene Muller-Landau (STRI) noted that the study “definitively shows that tropical forests on different continents respond differently to climate,” consistent with enduring legacies of historical climates and evolutionary paths. Lead author Matheus Henrique Nunes emphasized that global analyses alone are insufficient because effects are highly context-dependent, underscoring the need for local expertise and data.

The results improve predictions of how tropical forests (which store ~40% of global forest carbon) may respond to ongoing climate change and highlight that resilience and vulnerability vary substantially even among intact forests. Networks of standardized ground plots (e.g., GEO-TREES) will remain important for validating satellite biomass estimates.

The paper is available via the DOI 10.1038/s41586-026-10880-2; press coverage from STRI/Smithsonian and the University of Maryland provides accessible summaries of the work.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Heterogeneous climatic controls on tropical-forest biomass

Heterogeneous climatic controls on tropical-forest biomass is a 2026 Nature paper (published 12 August 2026; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10880-2) led by Matheus Henrique Nunes (University of Maryland / NASA GEDI), with co-authors including Helene C. Muller-Landau (Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute), Eric Bastos Görgens, Adrián Pascual, and Ralph Dubayah.

The study analyzed ~16 million spaceborne LiDAR-derived estimates of aboveground biomass (AGB) for 2020 from NASA’s Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) mission. It focused on intact lowland tropical forests in three major regions: the Amazon, the Congo Basin, and Southeast Asia.

Key results show that climatic associations with AGB are heterogeneous and strongly context-dependent:

  • Temperature effects dominate in drier forests. Congo Basin forests are the most sensitive to warming (largest AGB declines), Amazonian forests are moderately sensitive, and Southeast Asian forests are relatively insensitive.
  • Water limitation / aridity has the strongest negative effects in Southeast Asia (strong AGB declines in more arid sites). Amazonian forests often peak at intermediate aridity; African forests are relatively insensitive to aridity.
  • Effects of temperature and drought anomalies intensify with overall aridity and are further modified by soils and topography.
  • In the tallest, carbon-dense forests (canopy height >70 m), storms (lightning and windthrow) emerge as a strong negative driver of biomass.

These patterns help reconcile previously conflicting findings from plot-based or regional studies. Differences largely reflect genuine biological and biogeographical variation (rooted in distinct evolutionary and climatic histories of Africa, Asia, and the Americas) rather than solely methodological differences.

Tropical forests store a major fraction of global forest carbon (~40%). Understanding how climate controls their biomass is critical for predicting climate–carbon feedbacks. The results demonstrate that simple global relationships are insufficient: accurate predictions require accounting for interactions among climate, disturbance, soils, topography, and regional biogeographical context. Local expertise and standardized ground networks (e.g., GEO-TREES) remain essential for validating satellite estimates and refining forecasts.

Data and code supporting the analyses are publicly available via Zenodo (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19474558). Press summaries from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and the University of Maryland provide accessible overviews of the work.

Published:  Nature

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10880-2, Zenodo (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19474558)

Provided: Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

Authors: Matheus Henrique Nunes, 
Helene C. Muller-Landau, 
Eric Bastos Görgens, 
Adrian Pascual & 
Ralph Dubayah 

Abstract

Tropical-forest aboveground biomass (AGB) is a major component of the global carbon cycle and understanding its response to climate change is crucial for predicting future climate–carbon feedbacks. Yet debate continues as to whether differences between studies in observed associations with climate reflect true regional variation or methodological differences1,2,3,4,5. Here we analyse around 16 million spaceborne-LiDAR-derived estimates of AGB for the year 2020 across intact lowland forests in the Amazon, the Congo Basin and Southeast Asia to investigate how climatic variables differentially relate to AGB on pantropical scales. We show that climatic associations with AGB are heterogeneous and depend on environmental context. Temperature dominates in drier forests, with AGB in the Congo Basin the most sensitive to warming, whereas Southeast Asian forests have the strongest declines in AGB under increasing water limitation. Across regions, the effects of temperature and drought anomalies intensify with aridity and are further modified by soils and topography. In the tallest (above 70 m), carbon-dense forests6,7, storms (lightning and windthrow) emerge as a strong negative driver. These results reconcile previously conflicting findings and show that predicting tropical-forest carbon storage requires accounting for interactions among climate, disturbance, soil and topography in a variety of biogeographical contexts.

For National Security, We Need Uranium Mined in America

Perhaps it’s too soon to mark nuclear power’s revival in the U.S. but there is a burst of activity that should ultimately yield a new generation of advanced nuclear plants and small modular reactors. 

From Watts Up With That?

By Ivan Maldonado

Perhaps it’s too soon to mark nuclear power’s revival in the U.S. but there is a burst of activity that should ultimately yield a new generation of advanced nuclear plants and small modular reactors. 

This is especially true for major industrial energy consumers – which now also includes data centers – where there is a strong economic incentive to use more nuclear power instead of natural gas and intermittent renewables. 

In Illinois, Meta recently signed a long-term agreement to buy nuclear power from Constellation’s Clinton nuclear plant, the latest in a slew of deals between big tech and the nuclear industry. Constellation also said it would restart Three Mile Island Unit One in Pennsylvania and sell the power to Microsoft under a 20-year agreement. Google, too, has agreed to fund the development of small modular reactors, or SMRs, at three new nuclear sites in Oregon. TVA plans to build SMRs at its Clinch River site and Kairos Power has a blueprint for an advanced molten salt reactor. Moreover, Amazon, Google and Meta signed a pledge in March calling for nuclear energy worldwide to triple by 2050.

Elevating nuclear power on our list of energy options makes sense because it is the only way to generate large amounts of emission-free electricity reliably for AI-powered data centers, electric vehicles and industries. But surging demand for electricity and nuclear power underscores a serious issue: Who will provide the huge amounts of uranium needed to fuel nuclear plants? 

Currently, 95% of the uranium used at US nuclear plants is imported from other countries, with Russia and former Soviet States flooding the global market and driving free-market companies out of business. China is also rapidly expanding its influence in the global uranium supply chain. But our dependence on uranium imports is not for lack of domestic resources.

In fact, in the mid-1970s the U.S. was the sole supplier of enriched uranium in the West, and business boomed. Since then, artificially low prices – and policy antagonism to domestic production – have forced U.S. customers into the hands of foreign competitors. Currently, there are only five uranium mines operating in the U.S. in contrast to several dozen in the 1970s and 20 as recently as 2009.

A uranium crisis may not be imminent, but the long-term implications of buying cheap foreign uranium instead of from US mining companies are ominous, particularly for national defense, including the Navy’s fleet of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines. Our nation’s fleet of 94 nuclear power plants also requires a dependable supply of uranium. 

American industries, including our defense industrial base, are currently under immense pressure from China’s export restrictions on mineral exports – including rare earth metals. We know too well that the era of overreliance on mineral imports must come to an end. This is an economic, energy and national security vulnerability that has become untenable.

Given the risk of a cutoff of uranium imports or a huge spike in the price of uranium, we need a government policy to counter the threat to our national security and economy. President Trump recently said the Administration will draw up recommendations for reviving and expanding U.S. uranium production. That’s a good first step but we must match intent with action.

Our dependence on imported minerals, particularly from adversaries, poses a grave threat to national security. And it will cause serious trouble for key sectors of our economy if something isn’t done soon to boost domestic production. For these reasons, the U.S. now faces a monumental challenge: scaling up production of uranium, diversifying supply chains to protect national security and doing so in ways that are sustainable.

Dr. G. Ivan Maldonado, Professor, Department of Nuclear Engineering at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. 

This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.

COP30’s Amazon Highway: Hypocrisy Paved with Virtue Signaling

The BBC has uncovered a jaw-dropping irony in Brazil’s preparations for the COP30 climate summit, set for November 2025 in Belém: a four-lane highway, Avenida Liberdade, is being bulldozed through tens of thousands of acres of protected Amazon rainforest. Touted as a traffic solution for the 50,000 world leaders and delegates expected to attend, this project drips with hypocrisy, exposing the gaping chasm between the climate summit’s green rhetoric and its deforestation reality.

From Watts Up With That?

By Charles Rotter

The BBC has uncovered a jaw-dropping irony in Brazil’s preparations for the COP30 climate summit, set for November 2025 in Belém: a four-lane highway, Avenida Liberdade, is being bulldozed through tens of thousands of acres of protected Amazon rainforest. Touted as a traffic solution for the 50,000 world leaders and delegates expected to attend, this project drips with hypocrisy, exposing the gaping chasm between the climate summit’s green rhetoric and its deforestation reality. While global elites preach carbon cuts and sustainability, the Amazon—Earth’s mightiest carbon sink and biodiversity stronghold—is being felled to roll out the red carpet for their virtue-signaling parade.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9vy191rgn1o

The state government of Pará slaps a “sustainable” label on this 13-kilometer (8-mile) scar through the jungle, complete with promised wildlife crossings, bike lanes, and solar lighting. Infrastructure Secretary Adler Silveira calls it an “important mobility intervention” to modernize Belém and leave a “legacy” for COP30. But the reality on the ground tells a different story. Where lush rainforest once stood, logs now pile high as diggers pave over wetlands, slicing protected forest into fragmented patches. For locals like Claudio Verequete, who lives 200 meters from the carnage, it’s a personal betrayal. His açai berry harvest—his family’s livelihood—has been reduced to rubble. “Everything was destroyed,” he told the BBC. “We no longer have that income to support our family.” No compensation, no benefits—just a walled-off highway built for trucks and summit VIPs, not the people it displaces.

This isn’t just an environmental travesty; it’s a masterclass in greenwashing. The Brazilian president and environment minister have grandly declared COP30 “a COP in the Amazon, not a COP about the Amazon,” as if hosting it in the rainforest’s backyard absolves the sin of slashing it down. They’ll jet in thousands of delegates, build hotels, expand airports with an $81 million federal splurge, and redevelop ports for cruise ships—all while posing as saviors of the planet. Meanwhile, the road’s ecological toll is glaring: fragmented habitats, disrupted wildlife, and a shrinking wild where vets like Professor Silvia Sardinha struggle to release rehabilitated animals. “Land animals will no longer be able to cross to the other side,” she warned, underscoring the summit’s hollow promises.

The hypocrisy deepens when you consider Avenida Liberdade’s history. Shelved since 2012 due to environmental outcry, it was resurrected only when the prestige of COP30 dangled a chance to signal virtue on the world stage. Scientists decry the loss of biodiversity, locals lament their erased livelihoods, and yet the state presses on, cloaking destruction in buzzwords. Some market vendors, like Dalci Cardoso da Silva, buy the spin, hoping tourist dollars will trickle down. But others, like Verequete, see the grim future: a gateway to more deforestation, where gas stations and warehouses could soon replace what’s left of their homes—all while summit attendees sip cocktails and pat themselves on the back.

The COP30 spectacle reeks of performative environmentalism. Flying in global leaders to lament climate change while razing the Amazon for their convenience isn’t a solution—it’s a farce. As Sardinha put it, the high-level talks will hum along “among business people and government officials,” while those living the Amazon’s reality are silenced. This highway isn’t a legacy of progress; it’s a paved monument to the disconnect between climate grandstanding and the dirty work done in its name. If this is the road to a supposedly greener future, it’s one built on hypocrisy’s shaky foundation.

H/T strativarius and John C

Amazonian Rainforest Obliterated To Make Way For COP30

As any level-headed sceptic knows, a great deal of climate change activism is about posturing and virtue-signalling. No surprise then that part of an Amazonian rainforest has been obliterated to accommodate the upcoming COP30 summit.

The Daily Sceptic

By Sallust

As any level-headed sceptic knows, a great deal of climate change activism is about posturing and virtue-signalling. No surprise then that part of an Amazonian rainforest has been obliterated to accommodate the upcoming COP30 summit. The BBC has the story (so it must be true):

A new four-lane highway cutting through tens of thousands of acres of protected Amazon rainforest is being built for the COP30 climate summit in the Brazilian city of Belém.

It aims to ease traffic to the city, which will host more than 50,000 people – including world leaders – at the conference in November.

The state government touts the highway’s “sustainable” credentials, but some locals and conservationists are outraged at the environmental impact.

The Amazon plays a vital role in absorbing carbon for the world and providing biodiversity, and many say this deforestation contradicts the very purpose of a climate summit.

Along the partially built road, lush rainforest towers on either side – a reminder of what was once there. Logs are piled high in the cleared land which stretches more than 13km (eight miles) through the rainforest into Belém.

Diggers and machines carve through the forest floor, paving over wetland to surface the road which will cut through a protected area.

Berry harvests have been destroyed with no compensation to the farmers. Wildlife has been disrupted too:

The road leaves two disconnected areas of protected forest. Scientists are concerned it will fragment the ecosystem and disrupt the movement of wildlife.

Prof Silvia Sardinha is a wildlife vet and researcher at a university animal hospital that overlooks the site of the new highway.

She and her team rehabilitate wild animals with injuries, predominantly caused by humans or vehicles.

Once healed, they release them back into the wild – something she says will be harder if there is a highway on their doorstep:

“From the moment of deforestation, there is a loss.

“We are going to lose an area to release these animals back into the wild, the natural environment of these species,” she said.

“Land animals will no longer be able to cross to the other side too, reducing the areas where they can live and breed.”

Needless to say, the underlying reason for this gratuitous destruction is political self-interest:

The Brazilian President and Environment Minister say this will be a historic summit because it is “a COP in the Amazon, not a COP about the Amazon”.

The President says the meeting will provide an opportunity to focus on the needs of the Amazon, show the forest to the world, and present what the federal Government has done to protect it.

Worth reading in full.

Meanwhile back in Britain, Britain’s eco-warrior Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, the tireless advocate of Net Zero at any price, is putting his money where his mouth is with his own brand of virtue-signalling.

According to the Telegraph, Mr Miliband has installed a heat pump in his north London home.

In 2023 his house was awarded an Energy Performance Certificate of grade D. A year later, with a heat pump installed:

The green heating system lowered the home’s carbon emission from 12 tonnes to 4.5 tonnes, but the property’s energy rating only rose to a C grade as a result.

Chris Norris, of the National Residential Landlords Association, said he was unsurprised a heat pump had “little impact” on Mr Miliband’s EPC.

He said: “At present, the metrics used are focused on cost of heating, and gas is significantly cheaper per unit than electricity.

“It is perfectly possible, as things stand, for an EPC score to deteriorate if switching from gas to electricity as the primary heating fuel. Changing this is one of the policies being consulted on by the Government.”

It seems two companies were involved in assessing the properly. Bizarrely:

Furthermore, the recorded floorspace of Mr Miliband’s property was assessed as being 252 square metres – 30 square metres less than had been recorded in the previous assessment only a year before.

There’s an explanation:

The assessor responsible for the new grade is a former hypnotherapist who retrained to be an assessor five years ago. He told the Telegraph that the training took “only around a week” to complete.

He said: “A lot of the time it’s low-paid – estate agents just use you. We’re the lowest of the low, really. EPCs don’t have a very good reputation.”

Dr Toby Gledhill, who led a PhD study into the flaws in EPCs, said of the Energy Minister’s assessments: “The floor area has shrunk quite substantially, by more than 10% between these two EPCs which are only a year apart.

“The smaller floor area means a reduced volume of space to heat, which leads to greater economy and this is reflected in the improved energy rating of the more recent EPC.”

In other words, the new EPC achieved a (slightly) higher grade because of the reduced heating requirements, not because of the heat pump.

The solution would appear to be simple: shut off as many rooms as possible in your home and see your EPC skyrocket. Then you can open them up again after the inspector has gone and save yourself the cost of a heat pump.

Or perhaps the Government could employ more hypnotherapists to encourage people to install more heat pumps?

Also worth reading in full.

Reality Forces Reason into Power Choices

At a time when campaigning politicians defy reality with extravagant promises, recent developments suggest reason may be returning to the electric power sector – even as the Biden administration frantically tries to spend billions on so-called ‘renewable energy.’

From Watts Up With That?

Guest essay by Gordon J. Fulks

At a time when campaigning politicians defy reality with extravagant promises, recent developments suggest reason may be returning to the electric power sector – even as the Biden administration frantically tries to spend billions on so-called ‘renewable energy.’

Much of this drama plays out in my Pacific Northwest, where policymakers favor faddish, ideological approaches to energy needs over practical technologies relying on fossil fuels, nuclear, or hydro. One result has been the intrusion of expensive, unreliable, and environmentally damaging wind turbines on the beauty that makes the Northwest special.

Among those saving us from ourselves are native people, for whom the land is sacred. They recently forced the federal government and Oregon Governor Tina Kotek to cancel the sale of large offshore tracts for wind development.

Also playing a role were market realities: Only a single, inexperienced company bid on the project. Other competitors dropped out because offshore wind is financially risky, involving high costs and the hazards of a corrosive and stormy marine environment. Besides, who wants intermittent power that costs more than it is worth?  No one.

Another ally in the fight for sanity is Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, sometimes known for harebrained schemes such as blocking out the Sun to cool the planet. Sweden nixed that.

Nevertheless, Gates rightly has championed nuclear power, much maligned despite obvious advantages. In 2006, he founded TerraPower to develop an advanced breeder reactor that will power a plant in Kemmerer, Wyoming. With one billion dollars from Gates, TerraPower broke ground in June. The plant is designed to run 50 years without refueling.

In Pennsylvania, Microsoft, which Gates continues to advise, signed a 1.6-billion-dollar agreement to power data centers with 800 megawatts of nuclear power from Three Mile Island.  With the generating capacity of thousands of large wind turbines, TMI’s Unit 1 will provide power far more reliably than wind and solar.

TMI’s reopening would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.  People now seem to have forgotten the partial meltdown of Unit 2 in 1979. Or they have come to understand that the risks of nuclear power can be managed — just like the hazards (real or imagined) of other modern technologies.

Then there is Amazon, a company better known for its delivery of consumer goods than for its profitable data centers. Residents of eastern Oregon are familiar with Amazon’s large, dreary concrete buildings that have elaborate cooling equipment and large backup generators should utility power fail. These hint at enormous power consumption.

Lured by Oregon’s generous tax breaks, Amazon and other web service providers like Google and Facebook built data centers to take advantage of the state’s cheap hydroelectric power.

However, the newcomers did not realize that public officials were inadequately planning for the increased power that new data centers would require. This came at a time when politicians were also forcing electric utilities like Portland General Electric to switch to wind and solar while promoting an all-electric economy.

Data centers had to find reliable power and meet the ideological requirements of Oregon politicians.  It did not work. The centers now need more electricity than the Oregon grid can supply.  Blackouts are a distinct possibility.

Although ideologically aligned with Oregon politicians, Amazon executives realized their very profitable data centers would fail if they kept posturing with renewable energy.

So, they took a bold step on October 16, announcing that they will work with X-Energy to build small modular nuclear reactors to provide the power they need. These will be set up, not in Oregon where nuclear power is essentially banned, but across the Columbia River in Washington State, near an existing nuclear plant. Power can be easily shipped to Oregon.

Amazon announced that it is working with Energy Northwest, a consortium of 29 Washington State utilities on this nuclear project.  This suggests that many Northwest utilities are finally acknowledging that the region will need great amounts of new and reliable power.

Thank you, Amazon, for promoting a solution to the looming Pacific Northwest power shortage. This may not save us from the massive rate increases that are beginning to hit consumers due to the renewable debacle. But it may keep the lights on.

This commentary was first published at Newsmax on December 4, 2024.

Gordon J. Fulks has a Ph.D. in physics from the Laboratory for Astrophysics and Space Research at the University of Chicago. He is a director of the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia.

Google, Amazon, give up on national grid, ignore renewables, and buy their own nuclear plants

Two weeks ago it was Microsoft reviving Three Mile Island’s nuclear plant. Now Google is buying seven small modular reactors, and Amazon is  spending $500 million USD on part of a nuclear energy company.

From JoNova

By Jo Nova

Soon every tech billionaire will have their own nuclear power plant

Two weeks ago it was Microsoft reviving Three Mile Island’s nuclear plant. Now Google is buying seven small modular reactors, and Amazon is  spending $500 million USD on part of a nuclear energy company.

Too bad for the deplorables who get stuck with the expensive wind-solar-battery clunker spaghetti-grid forced on them by the arts graduates in Parliament. An AI datacentre needs all the same thing a human city does — cheap gigawatts, 24 hours a day. The number-nerd men with money have all decided the cheapest reliable answer to running their AI data center cities, while pretending to fix the weather, is nuclear power. (Coal, of course, is cheaper which is why China uses so much, but it’s against the religion).

The unwashed masses won’t get that choice, of course, to sign up with whatever generator they want. Only the uber rich get that kind of luck.

Every one of these tech giants could have poured that money into wind farms and gardens of solar panels, backed up with acres of batteries and ten thousand miles of high voltage towers, pumped hydro, and synchronous condenser flywheels. But none of them want to pour in their own billions anymore, despite the social credit points bonanza and the bragging rights that would bring.

For twenty years these same people have been pushing the renewable hard sell on us, now overnight, without so much as a “sorry” they’ve all flipped, leaving us holding the can of decrepit national grids that can’t do what they were designed to do.

Google will build seven small nuclear reactors, the first by 2030…Our PM and the CSIRO must be feeling hung-out-to-dry. They declared nuclear was the most expensive option and said Australia couldn’t even build one before 2040.

Google signs deal with startup to build small nuclear reactors to power AI

Aljazeera

Google has signed a landmark deal to use electricity produced by small nuclear reactors to power its artificial intelligence (AI) efforts.

Under the agreement with startup Kairos Power announced on Monday, the California-based tech giant will back the construction of seven small nuclear reactors capable of generating 500 megawatts of power. The first reactor is scheduled to come online by 2030, with others to follow in the coming years.

“The grid needs new electricity sources to support AI technologies that are powering major scientific advances, improving services for businesses and customers, and driving national competitiveness and economic growth,” Michael Terrell, the senior director of energy and climate at Google, said in a blog post.

Two days later, Amazon too.

Amazon follows Google in taking the nuclear option to power data centres

EuroNews

Amazon is investing in US firm X-energy to utilise nuclear reactors to power its data centres.

Amazon and X-energy are aiming to have more than 5 gigawatts of SMR-generated power operational by 2039.

The reactors are currently under development, with none currently providing power to the electric grid in the US.

Big investors can help change that, and these announcements could be the “inflection point” that makes scaling up this technology truly possible, Huff said.

Feel the heat. Only weeks ago these same billionaires were raving about renewable energy, downranking and censoring the skeptics… now they are doing exactly what we said all along.

What Drought? Amazon Data Show Little Overall Rainfall Change in 300 Years

Hysteria reigned supreme as recent global mainstream media headlines blamed last year’s drought in the Amazon basin on human-caused climate change. The BBC reported that without human involvement, the drought may have been a once in 1,500 year event. Damian Carrington of the Guardian said it “hit the maximum ‘exceptional’ level on the scientific scale”, whatever that means.

From The Daily Sceptic

By CHRIS MORRISON

Hysteria reigned supreme as recent global mainstream media headlines blamed last year’s drought in the Amazon basin on human-caused climate change. The BBC reported that without human involvement, the drought may have been a once in 1,500 year event. Damian Carrington of the Guardian said it “hit the maximum ‘exceptional’ level on the scientific scale”, whatever that means. Those of a more sceptical persuasion might note that the scares arose from computer models funded by the green billionaire investor Jeremy Grantham. In fact, rainfall in the area has shown little cyclical deviation across nearly 300 years, severe droughts are common in the basin, particularly in El Niño years, and temperatures in Brazil have risen by only 0.6°C since 1900 – considerably less than rises claimed for the northern hemisphere.

The scares emanated from World Weather Attribution (WWA), a green activist unit run out of the Grantham Institute at Imperial College. The take-out figure, reproduced around the media, was that the event was 30 times more likely to happen due to what the Guardian called “global heating”. The climate crisis is “super-charging” extreme weather across the planet, informs a clearly very disturbed Carrington, and the Amazon rainforest is already thought to be close to a “tipping point” into a drier state.

Calm down. Not according to work published last September by two geo-scientists in the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate. The graph below tracks rainfall going back to 1760 and shows a remarkably consistent cyclical pattern up to present times. The graph also shows that severe droughts were not uncommon in the historical past – events that are also recorded in copious writings from the time.

The scientists used proxy evidence provided by tree rings to calculate rainfall and found that recent high and low flow anomalies on the Amazon river “may not have exceeded the natural variability of precipitation and stream-flow during the 19th century”. Recent river-level extremes may have been equalled or possibly exceeded in the pre-industrial 1800s, they added.

In its way the WWA fills a gap in the pseudoscientific market. Much to the irritation of activists, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has largely refused to be drawn on any increasing signal in natural disasters such as droughts, hurricanes and wildfires. Using what it claims to be “peer-reviewed” methods, WWA computer models first simulate a climate with no human involvement that does not exist, and then compare it with another simulation that is supposed to reflect the involvement of humans burning hydrocarbons. Any weather event at a local level that is magnified in the second scenario – magic words can be applied at this point – is said to be due to human-caused climate change.  “I can think of no other area of research where the relaxing of rigour and standards has been encouraged by researchers in order to generate claims more friendly to headlines, political advocacy and even lawsuits,” is the verdict of the distinguished science commentator Roger Pielke Jr.

The WWA accepts the influence of a strong El Niño causing drought in the Amazon last year, but said its study showed climate change was the main driver of the event, “through its influence on higher temperatures”. It is a little warmer in Brazil than 120 years ago as the planet has naturally bounced back from the Little Ice Age. But the tropics generally show much less warming than parts of the northern hemisphere.

Temperature in Brazil (World Bank)

The above temperature graph for Brazil has been published by the World Bank and it shows a rise from 1901 to 2022 of just 0.6°C. In fact on a five-year smoothing trend it displays a near 0.3°C fall between 2017 and 2022.

The billionaire-funded WWA and its faithful poodle press pack are clearly attempting to fill global populations with alarm about a collapsing climate and the need for a supra-national, collectivist Net Zero solution. WWA co-founder and regular BBC contributor Dr. Friederike Otto is quite clear about the political message being promoted. She noted that it was “very worrying” that human-caused climate change was the driver of the devastating drought in the Amazon last year. “Our choices in the battle against climate change remain the same in 2024 – continue to destroy lives and livelihoods by burning fossil fuels, or secure a healthy, liveable future by rapidly replacing them with clean renewable energy.” But whatever the political agenda, the product of attribution models is not scientific proof. In fact they prove nothing since they fail the most important principle of the scientific process – they cannot be tested and shown to be either true or false. In the end they are just opinions, and it is to the increasing discredit of much mainstream media that they are treated as anything else.

The Ottos of this world might think they can stop the climate changing, but back on the real planet the Amazon seems to be getting along just fine. Deforestation is a real problem but that has nothing to do with a changing climate, and is solvable at a political level. Improving the standard of living for people living in the Amazon region by encouraging more hydrocarbon use might help. Last week the Daily Sceptic reported on the accelerated rate of global ‘greening’ caused by higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over the last two decades. This growth can be seen in the map below.

Leaf Area Index (LAI) 10-year growth/trend by region (blue/green represents high growth/trend)

The entire Amazon region has not shown as much leaf growth as India, Europe and eastern equatorial Africa. It has yet to hit the “maximum exceptional level on the scientific scale”, as the Guardian probably wouldn’t note, but it hardly suggests an area in vegetative decline.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

Inside Amazon’s British wind power grab

When Amazon announced it was buying up half the output from one of Britain’s newest and biggest wind farms last week, it appeared like good news for Britain’s net zero ambitions.

Turbines will power Amazon’s expansion – but some say the output should be decarbonising UK homes.

When Amazon announced it was buying up half the output from one of Britain’s newest and biggest wind farms last week, it appeared like good news for Britain’s net zero ambitions.

The US giant committed to buying energy from Scotland’s Moray West wind farm before it was even built, bolstering its bid to power all operations with 100pc renewable energy by 2025. The Telegraph has the story.

However, amid the positivity, some industry sources claim Amazon and other global firms are embarking on an energy “power grab” that draws resources away from decarbonising Britain’s homes and businesses.

The deal completed by Amazon comes after Vodafone bought up the output from five solar farms last year, located in Norfolk, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire, Buckinghamshire and Dorset.

Similar deals have also been struck by accountancy giant EY and Tesco, both of which have acquired energy from UK wind and solar firms.

Amazon, though, has gone further.

The tech company’s first Scottish wind farm, made up of 15 turbines on the Kintyre peninsula in Scotland, came online in 2021.

Moray West is the latest addition to its portfolio north of the border, where it is involved in 26 solar and renewable energy projects with a total capacity of around a gigawatt.

That is roughly the size of a large gas-fired power station and enough to power more than 600,000 UK homes.

This all means that Amazon’s operations, including both distribution and data centres, will become a lot greener.

Overall, the company’s carbon footprint is huge and its activities and products generated around 71 million tonnes of CO2 in 2022, although the bulk of that was produced by customers using its products.

Lindsay McQuade, director of energy at the company’s booming data centre division, Amazon Web Services (AWS), says: “Projects like Moray West will play a critical role in decarbonising Amazon’s operations and the UK grid, with this agreement demonstrating Amazon’s commitment to this ambition.”

Amazon is not alone in pursuing a corporate green energy strategy, as noted by Nathan Bennett, a director at trade body RenewableUK: “The market for renewable energy corporate power purchase agreements is growing at an extraordinary rate.

“Europe hit a record high last year with over 16 gigawatts of new renewables capacity, a 40pc increase on the year before.

“The appetite among companies is enormous, as they want to cut their electricity bills and support decarbonisation.”

For Amazon, much of that energy will be used not to decarbonise existing activities but to mitigate the company’s growth, especially that of AWS.

This business has 165 facilities around the world, each packed with power-hungry servers.

Read the full story here.

Media Outlets Continue Spreading False Amazon “Record Drought” Claims

Each of these news outlets ignored or at a minimum displayed ignorance of the fact that an even worse drought occurred in 1865, well before climate change was even an issue.

By Anthony Watts

Last week my colleague Linnea Lueken published a detailed rebuttal to a story in the New York Times claiming a recent drought in the Amazon was caused by climate change, saying:

Several mainstream news sources, including The New York Times (NYT) and BBC, claim that a new study shows that recent severe drought conditions in the Amazon rainforest were “fueled” or driven by climate change. The stories are false on two fronts. First, the study in question merely says the drought was made more likely due to climate change, but more pressing, the study does not get into a detailed analysis of the causes of the drought, and real-world data show that severe drought is not becoming more common in the Amazon.

This week, additional media outlets picked up the story and made the same mistakes that the BBC and New York Times had made. Al Jazeera claimed Global warming drove record Amazon rainforest drought, study finds, while the Associated Press opined Global warming was primary cause of unprecedented Amazon drought, study finds.

Each of these news outlets ignored or at a minimum displayed ignorance of the fact that an even worse drought occurred in 1865, well before climate change was even an issue.

Peer-reviewed research published in September 2023, titled Drought and Flood Extremes on the Amazon River and in Northeast Brazil, 1790–1900 reports: “These extremes in the tree-ring estimates and historical observations indicate that recent high and low flow anomalies on the Amazon River may not have exceeded the natural variability of precipitation and streamflow during the nineteenth century.”

In other words, the Amazon has experienced floods and droughts of similar or greater severity in the past when the Earth was cooler.

They write in the paper abstract:

The “Forgotten Drought” of 1865 was the lowest wet-season rainfall total reconstructed with tree-rings in the eastern Amazon from 1790 to 2016 appears to have been one of the lowest stream levels observed on the Amazon River during the historical era according to first-hand descriptions by Louis Agassiz, his Brazilian colleague João Martins da Silva Coutinho, and others.

The figure below, also from the paper, shows clearly that in 1865, an even worse drought occurred in the Amazon river basin. As the chart also shows, several other years in the historical record were as bad or worse than the drought being experienced today.

Figure 1. Tree-ring-reconstructed wet-season precipitation totals for the eastern Amazon, plotted for 1790–2016, along with the multidecadal waveform [from Granato-Souza et al. (2020)]. The upper and lower 10th-percentile thresholds calculated for 1790–1900 are highlighted. The driest and wettest years during this interval are indicated (with exceptional years in larger font). Source: Journal of Climate 36, 20; 10.1175/JCLI-D-23-0146.1

Clearly these media outlets failed to do their homework preferring instead to immediately blame the present drought climate change as if it is unprecedented. It isn’t. In addition, as Lueken pointed out, they also failed to examine other, more direct, contributing factors to the present drought, like deforestation changing rainfall patterns and shifting El Nino/La Nina cycles.

It’s yet another example of how badly the media is complicit in pushing a specific climate narrative of worsening conditions rather than examining the facts and history in full, putting current conditions in context. This is why Climate Realism exists; to show media malfeasance in its climate reporting.

The post Media Outlets Continue Spreading False Amazon “Record Drought” Claims appeared first on ClimateRealism.