[ExI] Sell your Bitcoins!

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> 
…

 

> The notion is that AI data centers generate their own power:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/releases/2026/03/president-trump-secures-historic-commitment-to-keep-electricity-costs-down-amid-data-center-boom/

 

 

>…Why would you give a direct link to the White House operated by the biggest liar on the face of the Earth? I would trust anything said on it about as far as I could spit out a rat….

 

An opportunity exists for building power generation now, but investors must MOVE.  We don’t know what the next guy will do.  He might be anti-AI.  The current guy appears neutral on it, so long as they generate their own power without impacting the power bills of the locals.  OK then, sounds reasonable to me.

 

 

 

 

 

> Solar and wind power are poorly suited to AI centers.

 

For most applications the intermittent nature of solar and wind are serious disadvantages but not so much for AI data centers because regardless of if they get their power from coal, natural gas, hydroelectric, nuclear, solar or wind, they are ALL going to need extensive battery powered back up power supplies, and probably emergency diesel generators too. So they are all competing on a level playing field.

 

John K Clark

 

 

 

Disagree.  Coal and natural gas plants can be throttled up or down depending on load.  Of course they are more efficient running wide open, but consumer demand fluctuates wildly.  A data center is the ideal power consumer, nice steady persistent load.  

 

Intermittent power was sold to gullible California voters (and to Germans) without fully accounting for the storage costs (which we STILL don’t know (because we don’t yet know how much it will cost to clean up the environmental damage from the Moss Landing fire (the lawsuits keep coming.)))  We found out that the evil old capitalist power company was telling the truth and our elected leaders were lying.  Montgomery Burns was the good guy all along.  Who knew?  But now we Californians have voted ourselves the highest priced power in the country.  

 

Note: I didn’t vote for that.  Even without accounting for the risk of battery facility fires, I could see that renewables would generate expensive power once you get much past baseline generation with it, which the power company said was about 18%.

 

Germany is recognizing it was a mistake to retire their nukes and coal plants.  We still need those.  We need every form of power generation we can get.

 

John I will comment that you have been most civil in this entire discussion, even though we understand your passion.  I contrast this to a decade ago.  Perhaps we are all losing our edge to some extent.

 

spike

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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