Methane Generators For xAI

Thanks to Kathleen, who gave me the links for this, because I am angry and disturbed by yet another thing that Elon is doing! Y’all, these generators are nasty. They vomit out formaldehyde and harmful nitrogen oxides into the air. And downwind just *happens* to be Memphis, starting with some residential neighborhoods. They don’t have permits for the first set, let alone all 35!!! Once again, Elon doesn’t give a damn about anything else, and he’ll do what he wants to do with *all* his companies.

These generators produce such massive amounts of gas that their high emission rates violate the Clean Air Act, including specified limits on toxic and carcinogenic pollution. And again, there are *people* downwind! From The Guardian: “xAI has essentially built a power plant in South Memphis with no oversight, no permitting, and no regard for families living in nearby communities,” Amanda Garcia, senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, said in a statement. “These dozens of gas turbines are doing significant harm to the air that Memphians breathe every day.” And by the way, these gas turbines combined can generate around 420MW of electricity, enough to power an entire city. In comparison, the Tennessee Valley Authority’s gas power plant in nearby Brownsville, Tenn., has a capacity of 425 megawatts.

Here’s some more information from SELC (Southern Environmental Law Center):” Artificial intelligence requires an immense amount of energy to carry out computations and provide quick responses to user queries. For example, a query with ChatGPT needs nearly 10 times as much electricity as a typical Google search query, according to a report by Goldman Sachs. In the US, the majority of that electricity comes from burning fossil fuels like coal and gas, which are primary drivers of climate change.” From The Guardian: Musk fired up his xAI facility in Memphis last summer. He calls the supercomputer “Colossus,” and it’s tasked with providing compute power for xAI’s chatbot Grok. The building that houses Colossus is the size of 13 football fields, and Musk has said he plans to double that.” Good grief! “It appears the company found a loophole in the system that allows it to use the gas generators as long as they’re not in the same location for more than 364 days. In January, xAI applied for a permit for 15 generators, but there was no mention of the additional 20 units in the application. The company has yet to be awarded any permits.”

What a bunch of hooey, 364 days! These byproduct emissions are *known*. It makes me furious that Elon doesn’t give a damn about anything except himself and his wants and needs! Not happy with making a mess of the government, he has to go set up next to Memphis and emit known carcinogens! His star may be fading in government, but he has plenty to replace it. Well, replace it in a *not* good way. Could someone slap that man? Maybe it would knock some of his crap out his ears. What can be done to get rid of him? No, don’t answer that, because the answer is likely “not much”. So, he’ll just continue to make the news for stupid crap like this.

But we can’t ignore it, because looking at this example, what else has he done and kept it *out* of the news? This is bad enough, but what about his other businesses? And his work in China, which, ha, is going to have a 145% tariff on it to bring it back into the US? That gives me a small bit of vindictive joy. We know he’s going to try and crawl into President Xi Jinping’s pocket since he turned out to be such a failure here. Of course, Xi is far from stupid and likely sees *exactly* what Elon is trying to do. He’ll have seen all the news here about Elon and will keep him at arm’s length, I hope. I also hope you enjoyed my rant and that the information on xAI’s power consumption and how it’s done has given you something to think about. Thanks for sticking with me!

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