Tag: Google

The Devil’s Algorithm: Unplugging from the Climate Matrix

The world is trapped in a digital Matrix, not unlike the one depicted in the iconic 1999 film (The Matrix) where Morpheus offers Neo a choice: take the blue pill and remain in a comforting illusion or the red pill and confront the unsettling truth. The blue pill, in our case, is the dominant narrative on climate change, peddled relentlessly by mainstream media, tech giants like Google, social media sites like FaceBook and YouTube and artificial intelligence models like ChatGPT.

A surreal illustration featuring a horned figure resembling a demon or devil, set against a dark red background with abstract mathematical and scientific symbols.

From Tilak´s Substack

By Tilak Doshi

The world is trapped in a digital Matrix, not unlike the one depicted in the iconic 1999 film (The Matrix) where Morpheus offers Neo a choice: take the blue pill and remain in a comforting illusion or the red pill and confront the unsettling truth. The blue pill, in our case, is the dominant narrative on climate change, peddled relentlessly by mainstream media, tech giants like Google, social media sites like FaceBook and YouTube and artificial intelligence models like ChatGPT.

This narrative — that man-made global warming, caused by fossil fuel use, is an imminent existential threat — has achieved near-total dominance, suffocating dissent and sidelining credible scientists who dare question it. Mainstream media and Big Tech’s search algorithms often constitute determining factors in shaping our perception of climate change.

To ‘red pill’ someone is to set him or her free from the manufactured climate consensus, to be open to contrarian views and, in the process, to restore science to its proper place as a field of sceptical inquiry, not ideology.

The Algorithmic Stranglehold on Truth

Dr Robert Epstein, a behavioural scientist, former editor of Psychology Today and Senior Research Fellow at the American Institute for Behavioural Research and Technology, is well known for his work on exposing Big Tech’s influence over voters’ thoughts and over elections. He has spent the last decade monitoring Google’s manipulation of newsfeeds, search results and YouTube suggestions. In 2019, he gave testimony to the United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution on ‘Why Google Poses a Serious Threat to Democracy, and How to End That Threat’. In the testimony, he exposed the chilling extent of Google’s narrative dominance.

In a recent Tech Watch article, Epstein analysed 1,495 Google search results on climate change topics between January and September 2025. The findings are stark: 98% of results aligned with the climate alarmist narrative, 2% were neutral, and a stunning 0% offered a contrarian perspective. Even more troubling, the top three search results — those most likely to be clicked — uniformly promoted the alarmist view, regardless of the searcher’s political leanings. Whether you’re a liberal in New York, a conservative in Pennsylvania or an independent in Arizona, Google feeds you the same story: climate change is an imminent man-made catastrophe requiring urgent action.

I initiated a Google search under the ‘news’ category for this article (September 30th). I asked, “are we facing a climate crisis” and the results are exactly as expected in Epstein’s work. The search results from the first page – beyond which most searchers do not read – are reproduced below. I list the source, date and text of the first sentence accompanying the source:

WWF-UK (two weeks ago): “Learn about the effects of climate change; The effects of climate change are likely to be some of the biggest environmental challenges our generation has ever faced.”

Global Witness (April 15th 2025): “UK households facing £3,000 climate damage costs this year: The costs of climate breakdown in the UK amount to an estimated £3000 per household over the course of this year, new research by Global…”

CEJIL (Center for Justice and International Law) (April 1st 2025): ‘Can International Justice Change the Course of the Climate Crisis?’

The Guardian(May 28th 2025): ‘World faces new danger of “economic denial” in climate fight, COP30 head says’

NASA (October 23rd 2024): “We already see effects scientists predicted, such as the loss of sea ice, melting glaciers and ice sheets, sea level rise, and more intense…”

United Nations (October 24th 2019): “The Climate Crisis – A Race We Can Win: Climate change is the defining crisis of our time and it is happening even more quickly than we feared. But we are far from powerless in the face of this…”

Greenpeace UK (April 15th 2021): “What are the solutions to climate change? Climate change is a threat to millions of lives. Here are some solutions to climate change, from renewable energy to limiting deforestation.”

Yale Climate Connections (October 30th 2024): “The planet is ‘on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster,’ scientists warn: The 2024 ‘State of the climate’ report says climate scientists are more worried than ever and calls for ‘transformative science-based solutions across all…”

The Guardian (December 20th 2024): “The facts about a planet facing climate disaster are clear. Why won’t this Labour government face them? Labour seems gripped by a form of denialism. The danger is real and incremental change won’t avert it, says Jeremy Corbyn, independent MP…

UK Government (January 16th 2023): “Facing the fear of fear itself: the case for climate optimism: Speech on our role in tackling climate change by Sir James Bevan, Chief Executive of the Environment Agency.”

The list is neither an accident nor arbitrary. It fits the Google algorithm, reflecting the corporation’s Leftist-progressive worldview, and serves the climate industrial complex and its climate alarmist cause. It is also interesting to note that the science.nasa.gov website cited in the Google search results listed above still shows the same climate alarmist claptrap even now. This is despite President Trump having called the climate change movement a hoax since he ran his Presidential campaign in 2024 and most recently in his speech at the United Nations General Assembly.

Why this contradiction? The answer lies in the peculiar alchemy of American governance: a blend of institutional inertia, congressional guardrails, scientific independence and the sheer logistical drag of updating federal websites.

I next turned to ‘AI Mode’ in the Google Search options, and this is the first couple of sentences that Google AI spits out:

Yes, based on the overwhelming scientific consensus, the world is facing a climate crisis. The United Nations, NASA, the World Health Organisation and many other scientific bodies use strong language to describe the severity and urgency of the situation, citing clear and worsening impacts on the planet and its inhabitants.

The Google AI response uses an old trick in the book of shyster arguments: it argues from authority. This is a form of argument in which the opinion of an authority figure or institution is used as evidence to support the thesis proposed. The argument from authority is a logical fallacy, and obtaining knowledge in this way is unsound. Richard Lindzen, Emeritus Professor of Meteorology at MIT, has written about the long march through the institutions by progressive neo-Marxian ideology, subverting key agencies in the climate industrial complex to sing from the same climate alarmist hymn sheet.

Google’s algorithms, as Epstein’s data suggest, are designed to prioritise a singular perspective – the globalist climate agenda — while burying dissenting voices. Renowned scientists like William Happer, John Clauser, Judith Curry and Richard Lindzen — whose credentials include professorships at Princeton, MIT and Nobel Prize laureates — are effectively erased from search results. Their arguments – which show that climate change is within the bounds of natural variability, that increasing CO2 levels will not significantly increase global temperatures and that CO2 promotes global greening – are nowhere to be found in the Google search results.

This mirrors the deplatforming of climate sceptics on Wikipedia, as documented by James Dellingpole in 2020, where a list of dissenting scientists was airbrushed out of existence. The parallels to other contentious issues are striking. In Delingpole’s words (bold in original):

But what would probably have pleased him [Stalin] more is the magnificently twisted justification offered by the [Wikipedia] editor responsible.

The result was delete. This is because I see a consensus here that there is no value in having a list that combines the qualities of a) being a scientist, in the general sense of that word, and b) disagreeing with the scientific consensus on global warming.

What this Wikipedia editor is saying, in other words, is that if you’re a scientist who doesn’t believe in global warming then that automatically makes you not a scientist.

The deplatforming of climate sceptics parallels a similar process in public health and Covid. During the WHO-proclaimed COVID-19 pandemic, tech platforms colluded to silence contrarian voices such as the highly credentialed authors of the Great Barrington Declaration. The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal stated that

In public, Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins urge Americans to “follow the science”. In private, the two sainted public-health officials schemed to quash dissenting views from top scientists. That’s the troubling but fair conclusion from emails obtained recently via the Freedom of Information Act by the American Institute for Economic Research.

Fauci, then head of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and his close colleague Collins, then Director of the National Institutes of Health, conspired to smear the three authors of the Great Barrington Declaration as “fringe epidemiologists”. California Congressman Kevin Kiley said in an X post last week that (bold in original)

Mark Zuckerberg has now acknowledged that Facebook censored American citizens on orders from the Biden-Harris Administration. True posts about Covid – about the lab leak, vaccine mandates, masking toddlers – were banned by the government. You couldn’t say 2 + 2 = 4.

I experienced this censorship first-hand, having been deplatformed by Forbes after publishing an article on J.D. Vance which challenged liberal orthodoxy. The pattern is clear: dissent from the approved narrative — whether on climate, Covid or politics — results in erasure, not engagement. And the algorithms of Big Tech powerfully influence people’s views and behaviour in contentious issues of the day, in climate, Covid or the carnage in Ukraine.

A Glimmer of Hope?

Grok is an AI-powered assistant developed by xAI, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, designed to be “maximally truthful, useful and curious”. Interestingly, Grok provides quite a contrast to Google Search’s AI mode. When I asked Grok the same question (“Are we facing a climate crisis”?), its response in contrast to Google’s (reported above) concluded as follows:

No, we’re not facing a “climate crisis”. Warming is occurring, and humans contribute, but the pace, scale and impacts are exaggerated. Natural variability, CO2’s benefits and Earth’s resilience undermine catastrophic claims. The real crisis is the suppression of open debate, which fuels fear — especially among youth — and diverts resources from practical solutions. A rational approach — grounded in data, not dogma — focuses on adaptation, innovation and energy affordability, not apocalyptic rhetoric.

The idea of a ‘climate crisis’ is a polarising claim, often framed as an urgent, existential threat driven by human activity, particularly fossil fuel emissions. Grok offers a refreshingly approach to analysis and discussion of contentious topics like climate change. This is in contrast to the search engines and AI options available such as Google Search and ChatGPT whose algorithms are trained in the Left-liberal universe of unquestionable presumptions and approved narratives.

Red Pilling: A Call to Break the Matrix

Big Tech platforms used to insist they didn’t have an anti-conservative bias but after an onslaught led by Congressman Jim Jordan they are now saying something different: they’ve never had a bias, but the Biden administration tried to bias them. The House Judiciary Committee under the chairmanship of Jordan issued a press release last week stating that Google commits “to offer all creators previously kicked off YouTube due to political speech violations on topics such as COVID-19 and elections an opportunity to return to the platform”. Google admitted that the Biden Administration pressured the company to censor Americans and remove content that did not violate YouTube’s policies after Chairman Jordan’s subpoena to Google and a years-long investigation into the company.

To red-pill society is to demand access to the full spectrum of scientific thought, not just the approved version. Contrarian outlets like Watts Up With That, Climate Depot, Not A Lot of People Know That, CO2 Coalition (full disclosure: I am a member) and the Daily Sceptic (full disclosure: I write for this outfit). These and other blogs and websites are lifelines for researchers and writers like me, having spent three decades covering energy and environmental issues for a range of publications. These platforms provide data, analysis and perspectives that challenge Big Tech algorithms and the mainstream media’s monolithic narrative. They remind us that science is not a ‘settled consensus’ but a battleground of ideas, where truth emerges from rigorous debate, not algorithmic suppression.

Red-pilling society requires a multi-pronged approach. First, we must demand transparency from tech giants like Google. Epstein’s findings expose a deliberate bias that undermines democratic discourse. Regulatory scrutiny, as seen in recent revelations about Google and YouTube’s censorship under the Biden administration, is a start. Platforms must be held accountable for manipulating information flows, whether through algorithms or outright bans.

Second, we need to amplify contrarian voices. Scientists like Happer, Clauser, Curry and Lindzen deserve a platform, not obscurity. Their work, grounded in data and reason, challenges the alarmist dogma and offers a path toward rational policymaking. Supporting independent outlets to speak out is crucial.

Finally, we must educate the next generation to question, not conform. Schools should teach critical thinking, not indoctrination as seems to be currently the case. Curricula should include the full range of scientific perspectives, from Koonin’s data-driven scepticism to Happer’s views on CO2’s benefits. Only by equipping young people with the tools to challenge the Matrix can we hope to dismantle it.

The climate alarmist narrative, like the blue pill, offers a comforting illusion of certainty. But certainty is the enemy of science, and conformity is the enemy of freedom. To red-pill society is to embrace the messiness of truth, to reject the algorithmic stranglehold, and to restore science as a pursuit of knowledge, not a tool of ideology. Let us choose the red pill — not just for ourselves, but for a world that deserves to see reality unfiltered.

A version of this article was first published in The Daily Sceptic (https://dailysceptic.org/2025/10/02/the-devils-algorithm-unplugging-from-the-climate-matrix/)

Dr Tilak K. Doshi is the Daily Sceptic‘s Energy Editor. He is an economist, a member of the CO2 Coalition and a former contributor to Forbes. Follow him on Substack and X.

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.

Google Accused of Greenwashing Massive AI Energy Consumption

Accused of signing zero carbon nuclear deals with no timeline, scanty details.

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Accused of signing zero carbon nuclear deals with no timeline, scanty details.

Google tries to greenwash massive AI energy consumption with another vague nuclear deal

Chocolate Factory promises early-stage capital to atomic upstart Elementl

Brandon Vigliarolo 
Wed 7 May 2025  // 19:02 UTC

Google has signed a strategic agreement with nuclear project developer Elementl Power to support the early development of three potential fission reactor sites in the US.

But with no selected reactor tech and no construction timeline, the announcement sounds more like a handwaving exercise to distract onlookers from the massive amount of energy that will be expended as Google and other companies race to capitalize on the AI boom.

…

But as The Register pointed out recently, Google’s nuclear plans – along with those backed by Meta, Amazon, and others – may be too little too late to address the growing concerns that there isn’t enough power to fuel the growing demand from datacenters and AI. Experts predict an “unprecedented” spike in demand, driven in part by datacenter and AI growth, that could require 3,500 TWh of new energy generation by 2027.

Google’s own plans for AI expansion are gigantic. Google parent company Alphabet saidin its most recent earnings call last month that it intended to invest $75 billion in CapEx in 2025, much of that going to servers and datacenters to support the expansion of Google services and DeepMind AI products. At least a portion of the electricity going into those data centers is generated by burning fossil fuels, which contribute to global warming: Google itself admitted in its 2024 environmental report AI investments were a big factor as Google’s carbon emissions to increase by 13 percent year-over-year, writing “Overall, our total GHG emissions increased by 13% — highlighting the challenge of reducing emissions while compute intensity increases and we grow our technical infrastructure investment to support this AI transition.” Overall, the report said, its emissions grew 48% between 2019 and 2024.

…Read more: 

https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/07/google_signs_another_nuclear_deal/

The green movement is finished. The AI revolution has barely begun, yet the momentum behind AI is already unstoppable.

Wait until advanced AI powered consumer devices – robotic household servants which can mind the kids, take care of the gardening, or provide for other needs – start penetrating the consumer market at scale. There is no way the gargantuan energy needs of the AI required to power such consumer tech will be satisfied by handwaving agreements with early-stage nuke startups, it will be all hands-on deck for new dispatchable energy capacity in whatever form is most readily available.

Carbon Capture: Tech Giants Throw Money at the Latest Green Trend

Google, Salesforce, and a handful of other tech companies have announced an $80 million investment in carbon capture technologies, aiming to retrofit industrial facilities like paper mills and sewage plants. This move is framed as a forward-thinking solution to climate concerns, but given the complexities and uncertainties of the issue, it looks more like an expensive foray into the latest corporate trend than a meaningful response to any clearly defined problem.

From Watts Up With That?

By Charles Rotter

Google, Salesforce, and a handful of other tech companies have announced an $80 million investment in carbon capture technologies, aiming to retrofit industrial facilities like paper mills and sewage plants. This move is framed as a forward-thinking solution to climate concerns, but given the complexities and uncertainties of the issue, it looks more like an expensive foray into the latest corporate trend than a meaningful response to any clearly defined problem.

What’s the Plan?

The funds are split between two projects:

  • CREW: A startup focused on capturing CO₂ emissions at wastewater treatment facilities.
  • CO₂80: A company retrofitting pulp and paper mills with carbon capture systems.

CO280 takes a different approach by adding carbon capture devices to facilities that burn “black liquor,” a bi-product from pulp manufacturing that’s used to generate heat and power. The devices are supposed to capture the CO2 from burning black liquor so that it can be permanently stored in underground wells. Since the fuel is made from trees, the process essentially sequesters CO2 that those trees drew in through photosynthesis during their lifetimes.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/23/24328158/paper-sewage-carbon-removal-google-salesforce-frontier-crew-co280?utm_source=chatgpt.com

The pitch is simple: trap carbon emissions at the source, theoretically reducing the environmental impact of these industrial processes. But these are industries that don’t even crack the top tier of global emitters, raising questions about why this is the focus. Is this really about environmental benefit—or is it just low-hanging PR fruit?

Carbon Capture: A Technology in Search of a Purpose

Carbon capture technologies are a favorite among policymakers and corporations because they give the appearance of action without requiring much sacrifice. But in practice, the approach is plagued by problems:

  • High Costs, Questionable Returns: Retrofitting facilities is expensive, and the amount of CO₂ captured is often negligible compared to the costs.
  • Energy-Intensive: Running these systems requires significant energy input, which can reduce or even negate the supposed environmental benefit.
  • Narrow Focus: Targeting small industrial sectors like paper mills and wastewater plants won’t make a dent in global emissions.

Despite decades of development, carbon capture has yet to prove itself as a scalable or efficient way to address emissions—if that’s even the goal.

What’s Driving This?

For companies like Google and Salesforce, this investment isn’t about solving so-called climate problems; it’s about optics. Supporting cutting-edge green technology offers a way to polish their image and divert attention from their own contributions to energy consumption.

Google, for instance, runs massive data centers that guzzle electricity. While the company boasts about renewable energy purchases, those claims often rest on dubious accounting tricks like renewable energy certificates (RECs), which don’t guarantee actual reductions in emissions. Salesforce’s operations, meanwhile, depend on cloud computing infrastructure with similar energy demands.

Rather than focus on streamlining operations or truly reducing energy use, these companies find it easier—and more lucrative—to invest in a splashy technology that aligns with public expectations about climate action.

Climate Uncertainty: The Elephant in the Room

This entire effort assumes that reducing CO₂ emissions is both urgent and universally beneficial. But the science surrounding climate change remains riddled with uncertainties, from the accuracy of long-term models to the complex interplay of natural climate systems.

This focus on carbon capture is premature and likely impotent, given these unknowns. Even if reducing emissions were proven to yield significant benefits, there’s little evidence that capturing CO₂ at wastewater plants or paper mills would be an effective—or necessary—contribution to global efforts.

The Real Beneficiaries

As usual, the main winners here aren’t the environment or the general public. Startups like CREW and CO₂80 stand to gain substantial funding to develop technologies that might never deliver on their promises. Meanwhile, tech giants secure glowing headlines and a veneer of environmental responsibility.

Taxpayers and consumers, on the other hand, are likely to bear the costs, whether through subsidies for these projects or higher prices for goods and services.

A Fad, Not a Fix

At its core, the push for carbon capture feels more like a corporate trend than a genuine response to environmental concerns. By targeting small-scale emitters with expensive and inefficient technologies, this initiative sidesteps larger questions about whether such efforts are even needed.

As tech giants race to outdo each other in the climate virtue-signaling game, the public would do well to remember that these projects often serve corporate interests far more effectively than they serve the planet. Instead of looking for real solutions—or asking whether solutions are even necessary—this is just another example of companies chasing headlines and staying on-trend.

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.

Google buys world’s first private mini-nuclear reactors

Google has struck a deal to buy the world’s first private mini-nuclear reactors, as technology companies race to secure power for their data centres.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Ian Magness

It’s good enough for Google, but not for Mad Miliband!

Google has struck a deal to buy the world’s first private mini-nuclear reactors, as technology companies race to secure power for their data centres.

The US search engine giant has ordered a fleet of small modular reactors (SMRs) from California’s Kairos Power, with each mini-nuke capable of generating 500 megawatts (MW) of low-carbon electricity.

California-based Kairos said its first commercial reactor will come online by 2030, with additional reactors operational by 2035.

Google’s decision to embrace nuclear comes as the expansion of AI increases the tech sector’s energy requirements.

Michael Terrell, senior director for energy and climate at Google, said: “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. 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/10/15/google-buys-worlds-first-private-mini-nuclear-reactors

Former Google CEO on AI: “we’re not going to hit the climate goals anyway…”

… any moves to curtail the expanding amounts of energy consumed in developing … ever more advanced AI models are futile…

Google’s former chief Eric Schmidt

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

… any moves to curtail the expanding amounts of energy consumed in developing … ever more advanced AI models are futile…

Eric Schmidt: Build more AI datacenters, we aren’t going to ‘hit climate goals anyway’

Perhaps the power-draining tech is the solution after all, posits former Google CEO

Dan Robinson 
Tue 8 Oct 2024  // 13:00 UTC

Google’s former chief Eric Schmidt thinks we shouldn’t let AI’s ballooning power consumption worry us, because putting AI to work on climate change issues will be our best shot at solving them.

Schmidt was speaking at a recent AI summit in Washington DC, and his comments echo those of Microsoft founder Bill Gates who expressed very similar sentiments at an event in London earlier this year.

…

“All of that will be swamped by the enormous needs of this new technology,” he said, adding that “we may make mistakes with respect to how it’s used, but I can assure you that we’re not going to get there through conservation.”

Schmidt further stated that he believes that “we’re not going to hit the climate goals anyway because we’re not organized to do it,” and that he would rather bet on AI solving the problems than constraining the development of the tech and still having the problems anyway.

This rather optimistic view of the Earth-saving potential of AI can perhaps be explained by the fact that Schmidt has his own investments in the technology. According to Business Insider, he is the founder of White Stork, a defense company that develops AI-powered drones.

…Read more: 

https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/eric_schmidt_speech/?td=rt-3a

I guess in the future radical greens won’t enjoy the same social media and search engine privileges they once did.

A green political movement can disappear really quickly when it outlives it usefulness, just look at the rapid fall into obscurity of Greta Thunberg and her “Fridays for Future” movement.

Google’s Net Zero Plans Are Going Up in Smoke

For years, the search giant has touted its alt-energy deals and net zero plans. But these four charts show that Google’s electricity use, CO2 emissions, and carbon intensity, are soaring.

From the Robert Bryce Substack

Robert Bryce

For years, the search giant has touted its alt-energy deals and net zero plans. But these four charts show that Google’s electricity use, CO2 emissions, and carbon intensity, are soaring.

In 2017, Google declared it had reached “100% renewable energy for our global operations.” The company continued, “Google became carbon neutral in 2007, and since then, our carbon footprint has grown more slowly than our business — proof, 10 years later, that economic growth can be decoupled from environmental impact and resource use.”

That “decoupling” didn’t last long.

In fact, since 2017, Google’s environmental reports show that the company’s electricity use, CO2 emissions, and carbon intensity have soared. The most recent numbers came out last Tuesday when the search and advertising colossus released its 2024 environmental report. And the numbers don’t lie. As seen in the chart below, since 2017, CO2 emissions at Google have jumped four-fold to a company record of 14.3 million tons in 2023.

Why does this matter? There are many reasons. First among them: Google has been among the most aggressive promoters of the notion that it was a different kind of company, a “clean” industry from Silicon Valley that wouldn’t pollute like old industrial companies such as U.S. Steel or ExxonMobil. But the latest numbers show that Google is, at root, an industrial company that relies on massive digital foundries — that’s a better description than the anodyne “data centers” — that use staggering quantities of juice. Further, the company’s electricity needs could never be supplied by wind and solar alone. Or to put it bluntly, Google’s claims about decoupling itself from the realities of the physical world and the vagaries of electric grids were little more than corporate greenwashing.

Second, Google isn’t just a giant of Big Tech, it’s among the most dominant corporations of our era. It controls 92% of the search engine market. For comparison, Microsoft’s Bing has a 3% share. Google is the world’s most-visited website. Coming in at number two is YouTube, which is owned by Google, or rather, by the parent company, Alphabet. Thus, whether we like it or not, Google has become interwoven with our online experiences, and as shown in the chart below, those experiences have a growing carbon footprint.

What’s driving the increase? Its new report says emissions grew by 13% in 2023, “primarily driven by increased data center energy consumption and supply chain emissions.”

Third, Google has aggressively moved to squash debate over climate change on its platform, including on YouTube. In 2021, as reported by Axios, Google announced a policy that:

Prohibits climate deniers from being able to monetize their content on its platforms via ads or creator payments….It’s one of the most aggressive measures any major tech platform has taken to combat climate change misinformation…Google advertisers and publishers will be prohibited from making ad revenue off content that contradicts “well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change.”

As the chart below shows, the CO2 intensity of Google’s operations has doubled since 2020. That’s not misinformation. Those numbers come directly from the company’s reports. (Those reports are long and challenging to read. Further, the company has not been consistent in its reporting. I used the 2024, 2021, and 2019 reports.) But don’t expect to see these trends reported by major media outlets.

Fourth, just as Google dominates search, it also dominates the stock market. If you own an index fund that tracks the S&P 500, you own Google. The company’s market cap of $2.4 trillion and surging growth make it a must-own for any exchange-traded fund that invests in growth stocks or the broader stock market. For instance, Alphabet represents about 4.3% of the stock holdings in State Street’s S&P 500 ETF (Ticker: SPY). Thus, Google’s rising greenhouse gas emissions reflect the broader economy in the U.S.

Finally, Google is signaling that it cannot achieve net zero. The company’s chief sustainability officer, Kate Brandt, told the Associated Press last week that reaching net zero by 2030 “is an extremely ambitious goal. We know this is not going to be easy and that our approach will need to continue to evolve.” (For more on that topic, see my June 3 piece, “Vaclav Smil Calls Bullshit on Net Zero.”) Brandt continued, saying the company will have to manage “a lot of uncertainty, including this uncertainty around the future of AI’s environmental impacts.”

Indeed, given the trajectory of its emissions growth and its ongoing push to build massive new data centers for AI — particularly in countries where the electric grids rely mainly on hydrocarbons — it’s safe to assume that Google’s emissions will continue climbing for years to come. In April, it announced it would spend $3 billion on new data centers in the U.S., including $2 billion in Indiana, which gets about 45% of its electricity from coal-fired power plants. Further, in its latest environmental report, the company said that although it’s making progress on “clean” energy, there are “some hard-to-decarbonize regions like Asia Pacific” where carbon-free electricity “isn’t readily available. In addition we often see longer lead times between initial investments and construction of clean energy projects and the resulting GHG reductions from them.”  

Of course, Amazon and other Big Tech companies are (finally!) showing interest in nuclear energy. In March, Amazon Web Services acquired Talen Energy’s data center campus in Pennsylvania, which will allow AWS to buy as much as 480 megawatts of power from the nearby 2.5-gigawatt Susquehanna nuclear plant. But there isn’t enough nuclear capacity for all of the Big Tech companies to power their digital foundries with fission power, not here in the U.S. and certainly not in other countries.

Last week, I talked to Doug Hohulin, a Kansas City-based technologist who works on AI and closely follows the data center sector. He summed up the predicament facing Google and the other power-hungry members of Big Tech. “There’s just not enough wind and solar available,” he said. “Nuclear used to be seen as bad, and now it’s good.”

Both of those statements are true. Right now, it appears that Google and other Big Tech companies will see continuing increases in emissions until the U.S. and other countries get lots of new reactors built and online. That won’t happen quickly and it won’t be cheap. But Google’s emissions show that Big Tech doesn’t have many other choices.

Speaking Engagements In Nantucket And Newport This Week On Offshore Wind

I will be giving two lectures this week on offshore wind. On Monday, July 8, I’ll be in Nantucket speaking at the Dreamland Theater. Start time is 6 pm. Click here for tickets.

On Tuesday, the 9th, I’ll be in Newport, RI, at Emmanuel Church. The start time for that event is 5:30 pm. More info on the Newport event is available here.

If you are in the area, by all means, please attend. I will discuss the history of the offshore wind industry, the threat it poses to critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whales, and the future of American energy. Hint: It’s still N2N: natural gas to nuclear.

Google emissions surge nearly 50% as demand for AI sets fire to their Net Zero plan

Saint Google’s climate piousness vanished the moment they had to give up something they cared about. The unwashed masses need to take cold showers, eat bugs and fly less often, but if those same people want artificial intelligence, who cares about the heat waves or the hurricanes? Do carbon emissions matter, or don’t they?

For three decades Saint Google strove to save the world from CO2 (and from skeptical opinions). Google were the first major company to become carbon neutral in 2007, the first to commit to operating 24/7 on carbon-free energy. They boast they’re helping 550 cities to reduce a gigaton of carbon emissions. Then opportunity knocked and set fire to those plans.

From JoNova

By Jo Nova

The World must act, The Science is clear say Google,  but Armageddon will have to wait while they make money from AI

Saint Google’s climate piousness vanished the moment they had to give up something they cared about. The unwashed masses need to take cold showers, eat bugs and fly less often, but if those same people want artificial intelligence, who cares about the heat waves or the hurricanes? Do carbon emissions matter, or don’t they?

For three decades Saint Google strove to save the world from CO2 (and from skeptical opinions). Google were the first major company to become carbon neutral in 2007, the first to commit to operating 24/7 on carbon-free energy. They boast they’re helping 550 cities to reduce a gigaton of carbon emissions. Then opportunity knocked and set fire to those plans.

In 2020 they boldly set the goal of being 100% carbon-free by 2030, now three years later, their emissions are up 50% on what they were in 2019.

In September 2020, it was Google’s “Most Ambitious Decade” because the fires of climate change were already upon them:

Google announces it will run on carbon-free energy by 2030

“We have until 2030 to chart a sustainable cause for our planet or face the worst consequences of climate change,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in a video released today. “We are already feeling those impacts today from historic wildfires in the US to devastating flooding in many parts of the world.”

Once Google’s data centers are powered completely by carbon-free energy, “this will mean every email you send through Gmail, every question you ask Google Search, every YouTube video you watch, and every route you take using Google Maps, is supplied by clean energy every hour of every day,” Pichai wrote in a blog post ….

So much for that — July 2024:

Google’s carbon emissions surge nearly 50% due to AI energy demand

Google’s emissions surged nearly 50% compared to 2019, the company said Tuesday in its 2024 environmental report, marking a notable setback in its goal to achieve net-zero emissions by 2030.  The company attributed the emissions spike to an increase in data center energy consumption and supply chain emissions driven by rapid advancements in and demand for artificial intelligence. The report noted that the company’s total data center electricity consumption grew 17% in 2023.

Way back in prehistoric times of 2020 the only mention of AI in these ambitious plans was “to optimize their electricity demand and forecasting.” which suggests AI was pretty useless, given that it didn’t tell them their 2024 electricity demand would be up 50%.

Most of Googles emissions are “Scope 3” which makes them just like the fossil fuel giants they despise

It’s not the oil and gas extraction that creates most of the emissions, it’s what Exxon’s customers do with the oil and gas that does. So it is with Google — it’s not creating the AI program that burns through the electricity, it’s the customers who keep asking it to make things like deep-fake porn movies.  I mean, “Scope 3” is just plain silly —  that any company should be accountable for what their customers do, but if you are going to apply silly rules, at least do it equally.

Fully 75% of Google’s carbon footprint are scope 3 emissions.

Our total Scope 3 emissions were approximately 10.8 million tCO2e in 2023, representing 75% of our total carbon footprint. Our Scope 3 emissions are indirect emissions from sources in our value chain. The majority of these emissions come from the production of goods and services purchased for our operations, including the upstream manufacturing and assembly of servers and networking equipment used in our technical infrastructure.

So is the world at stake or not? If emissions will wash the coast away and melt the polar ice caps, why is it OK to demand people live in cold homes and give up their family holiday to Bali, but frivolously expand artificial intelligence use?

Do carbon emissions really matter or not?

“The science is clear: The world must act now if we’re going to avert the worst consequences of climate change. 

We are committed to doing our part.”  — Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, Sept 2020

Google Damage Control Over AI Driven 48% CO2 Emissions Surge

Are all the Silicon Valley hippies jumping on board the AI greed train, selling out their alleged green principles for big pay checks, trying to avoid each other’s eyes? Are they hiding their MAGA hats at the bottom of their rucksacks? Or are there intense Soviet style denunciations of the management climate wreckers during lunch breaks, before everyone goes back to work on coding the next energy gulping AI upgrade?

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

“We know this is not going to be easy and that our approach will need to continue to evolve”.

Google falling short of important climate target, cites electricity needs of AI

Google, which has an ambitious plan to address climate change with cleaner operations, came nowhere close to its goals last year, according to the company’s annual Environmental Report Tuesday

By ALEXA ST. JOHN Associated Press
July 3, 2024, 2:01 AM

Three years ago, Google set an ambitious plan to address climate change by going “net zero,” meaning it would release no more climate-changing gases into the air than it removes, by 2030.

But a report from the company Tuesday shows it is nowhere near meeting that goal. 

Rather than declining, its emissions grew 13% in 2023 over the year before. Compared to its baseline year of 2019, emissions have soared 48%. 

Google cited artificial intelligence and the demand it puts on data centers, which require massive amounts of electricity, for last year’s growth.

…

Google Chief Sustainability Officer Kate Brandt told The Associated Press, “Reaching this net zero goal by 2030, this is an extremely ambitious goal. 

“We know this is not going to be easy and that our approach will need to continue to evolve,” Brandt added, “and it will require us to navigate a lot of uncertainty, including this uncertainty around the future of AI’s environmental impacts.”

…Read more: 

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/google-falling-short-important-climate-target-cites-electricity-111614506

What can I say – yet more evidence the AI revolution has broken Silicon Valley’s commitment to Net Zero.

I’d love to know how this AI at any cost push is playing with the Silicon Valley hippies, because it is not just Google – Microsoft and other tech giants are also pedal to the metal when it comes to the AI revolution.

The Connecticut Nuclear Data Center Controversy Exposes Tech Giant Renewable Hypocrisy – Watts Up With That?

Are all the Silicon Valley hippies jumping on board the AI greed train, selling out their alleged green principles for big pay checks, trying to avoid each other’s eyes? Are they hiding their MAGA hats at the bottom of their rucksacks? Or are there intense Soviet style denunciations of the management climate wreckers during lunch breaks, before everyone goes back to work on coding the next energy gulping AI upgrade?

I guess life would be too perfect, if we had answers to all of our questions.