One of America’s Last Chestnut Groves Is About to Be Destroyed for a Data Center

[u/Miserable_Phase_2519]

https://www.gadgetreview.com/one-of-americas-last-chestnut-groves-is-about-to-be-destroyed-for-a-data-center

[u/rankostankotheclown]

Interesting situation. The near extinction of the American Chestnut is a tragedy, and the tree remains under threat since the blight has not been cured nor has the species endogenously developed immunity. This makes the few stands not impacted extremely important. Even if the grove is not set for cutting, the risk of water contamination is still present, and unfortunately I don't really trust the WV authorities to handle this appropriately.

That all said, the article was a brutal read. Awful and blatant AI writing made it hard to follow.

[u/snowmunkey → u/rankostankotheclown]

The irony of Ai writing articles about the roadblocks to building more Ai

[u/Aranthos-Faroth → u/snowmunkey]

Even more wild when OP is in itself a bot, likely now fully automated to choose and post based on potential for upvotes.

[u/snowmunkey → u/Aranthos-Faroth]

Interestingly, you and I are also bots

[u/shawnkfox → u/snowmunkey]

Damn, the technology has gotten so good that until now I didn't even realize that I'm also a bot.

[u/Draexian → u/shawnkfox]

Uhh, folks, I just looked in a mirror and noticed a servo. Am I cooked?

[u/Aranthos-Faroth → u/Draexian]

We prefer to call it 'fried' my silicon brother.

[u/Just_another_grumble → u/Aranthos-Faroth]

beep boop, my fellow meatbags!

[u/DadJokeBadJoke → u/Draexian]

a servo

C'mon guys, it's all ball-bearings nowadays.

[u/DoomRamen → u/snowmunkey]

That explains all the times I failed a CAPTCHA

[u/InfiniteWaffles58364 → u/snowmunkey]

Always have been

[u/Claireah → u/Aranthos-Faroth]

Yep, 271k in 1 month. Accounts that rack up this much karma so quickly should be automatically flagged to be checked, if not just outright banned immediately.

[u/jimlemin → u/Claireah]

reddit loves having the bots on their site. they're algorithmically designed to drive engagement and their presence alone artificiallly inflates their user numbers

[u/tevert → u/jimlemin]

All while training themselves on the resulting comment noise. An oroborous of shit

[u/NuclearWasteland → u/snowmunkey]

Humans writing articles about the roadblocks to more human constructs got us here.

I'm sorry nature, those dumb "grandpa, what was a tree?" late night PSA radio broadcasts from the 90s seemed so silly then.

[u/FlyingDiscsandJams → u/rankostankotheclown]

So for blight immunity, the current strategy is cross breeding with Chinese Chestnuts that do have it. They are breeding saplings that are like 15/16ths American genetics, but still have the immunity, and are planting new groves of those which are doing well.

[u/rankostankotheclown → u/FlyingDiscsandJams]

Yes, it's a very exciting research space, and I think back crossing Chinese chestnut genetics is one of the best paths forward I've read about. Chestnuts are really fantastic trees in a bunch of ways, their viability as a food source is underappreciated especially. 

[u/Armadylio → u/rankostankotheclown]

Before the blight, one in four trees in american forests were chestnuts. They were the main mast producer for wildlife, a role that has been taken over now by the oaks. We also lost all of the gigantic chestnuts in the blight, they were quite literally lords of the forest 

[u/NettingStick → u/Armadylio]

Both their prevalence and stature have been over-stated. They were important mast trees, absolutely. But they only reached that one-in-four density and the "lord of the forest" stature in the heart of their range in the Appalachians. Outside of the Appalachians, they were part of a much more healthily-balanced mix of species.

[u/FlyingDiscsandJams → u/rankostankotheclown]

It's not even that new, it's just that forestry research moves so slowly. I took a road trip last year for my birthday last year to visit the 2 oldest research groves in Virginia that have survived long enough to produce chestnut crops, it was awesome to see that in the Appalachians.

[u/cuticle_cream → u/FlyingDiscsandJams]

Are these available for purchase yet or is it still going through testing? I’m planting a lot of natives in my yard and you’ve got me intrigued. 

[u/FlyingDiscsandJams → u/cuticle_cream]

In general, yes they are available, can't say about your area in particular. Search "blight resistant American chestnut trees" and a bunch of stuff pops up.

[u/DuntadaMan → u/rankostankotheclown]

WV government has never been trustworthy, but the people there used to be.

How the fuck did the people there go from shooting mine owners in the street to get the 40 hour work week to "yes mister rich man, please step on me as hard as you want for $5!"

[u/Impossible-Year-5924 → u/DuntadaMan]

Propaganda is pretty damn effective if you know how to aim it and fracture communities

[u/smokeweedNgarden → u/DuntadaMan]

I dunno about West Virginia, but usually the answer is "because minorities eventually got those rights"

A lot of public stuff was fought for with the caveat that is was for white people 

[u/scoff-law → u/rankostankotheclown]

I've noticed a lot of FUD clickbait from this source lately, and it looks like they recently changed their strategy to pushing exactly that sort of AI content - AI written stories about why AI is bad.

It really muddies the waters I think this sort of material will ultimately do more harm than good. Here we have a story about how the grove is about to be cut down but also nobody knows if that's actually true. That doesn't stop them from the certainty in their headline - the article doesn't matter because it's the headline and the click that they care about.

Do we not teach the story about the boy who cried wolf anymore?

[u/twinsea → u/rankostankotheclown]

Huh, didn't realize that they were endangered. We have quite a few American Chestnut trees here in Loudon. Maybe they are the crossbred ones.

[u/theshoeshiner84 → u/twinsea]

Prior to the blight, one in four trees in the U.S. were American Chesnut. They are, for all intents and purposes, completely gone. It really was an unimaginable ecological disaster.

[u/Gastronomicus → u/theshoeshiner84]

one in four trees in the U.S. were American Chesnut.

It was very abundant, but this claim is based on an unsupported assertion and has been disputed. In portions of the eastern Carolinian forest maybe. Unlikely across the entirety of eastern forest as a whole. Definitely not when considering western conifer forests as well.

[u/Yunzer2000 → u/twinsea]

The American chestnut - a huge tree that was once the "redwood" of the hardwoods on eastern N. America, was wiped out by the blight by the mid-1950s. As a young kid in the 1960s, I remember their enormous rotting logs in the woods near my house near Washington DC. The trunk of one tree was still standing on a hilltop, extending all the way into the canopy of the 100 ft tall oaks. At the time, I didn't know what these old trees were and only knew that they were remnants of a different age when "there be giants".

Since then, I've witnesses other big trees of the eastern forests pretty much wiped out - American elms, and recently ash trees and especially eastern hemlock which grew in the hollows and north slopes of the Appalachians up to 200 ft tall - extirpated by the wooly adelgid aphid.

[u/Timmy-0518 → u/twinsea]

There used to be hundreds of millions of them covering the usa back in the frontier days but got wiped out by disease. Those chestnut trees likely are from before then. And haven’t died because they are across the pond from where the blight originated.

[u/fuccguppy → u/Timmy-0518]

The blight originated in east Asia, and came to the US in the early 1900s via Japanese and Chinese Chestnuts brought over here. This is why Japanese and Chinese Chestnuts have a strong resistance to the blight, they evolved alongside it for millennia unlike American Chestnuts. The blight also spread into Europe including the UK so it seems likely the above commenter is talking about crossbreeds or some lucky trees that avoided the disease somehow

[u/Humble_Initiative_90 → u/twinsea]

They are growing some of these hybrids at Banshee Reeks, if you're fortunate to know where that's at! Great spot in Loudoun. I believe they are transplanting mature ones around the county.

[u/sombertownDS → u/rankostankotheclown]

As someone who lives in WV, the most surprising thing in the world to me would be if any WV politician didn’t sell us out for a quick buck, trust me, its bad

[u/HarryBallsanya420]

Tear down all the forests, use all the power so we can have glorious AI!!! It’s so worth it! I promise the benefits will trickle down to everyone.

[u/American_PissAnt → u/HarryBallsanya420]

The LORAX does not approve this message!

[u/slawnz → u/American_PissAnt]

And at that very moment, we heard a loud whack! From outside in the fields came a sickening smack of an axe on a tree. Then we heard the tree fall. The very last Truffula Tree of them all! No more trees. No more Thneed’s. No more work to be done. So, in no time, my uncles and aunts, every one, all waved my good-bye. They jumped into my cars and drove away under the smoke-smuggered stars. Now all that was left beneath the bad-smelling sky was my big empty factory... the Lorax... and I.

[u/Chroniclyironic1986 → u/slawnz]

UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.

[u/Sammisuperficial → u/Chroniclyironic1986]

I do care. I care oh so a lot.

But if I put up resistance I will get shot.

[u/Equivalent_Sea_1895 → u/Sammisuperficial]

Say anymore, and you will get banned on Reddit for 7 days

[u/Internal_Seething → u/slawnz]

I always read that as the lament of the addled boomer, fracking everything up, throwing up their hands and saying oops, oh well, your responsibility now.

[u/slawnz → u/Internal_Seething]

Don’t forget it was written in 1971 when boomers were in their 20s / 30s. 

[u/mageta621 → u/slawnz]

Thanks to my son, I could do that whole book from memory

[u/ImpossibleSleep3986 → u/American_PissAnt]

The forests won't be harmed if the Lorax is armed.

[u/mageta621 → u/ImpossibleSleep3986]

I am the Lorax

I speak for the trees

Stop killing my forest

Or I'll take out your knees

[u/wherere_my_pants → u/mageta621]

I need a shirt with these rhymes on it

[u/PedaniusDioscorides → u/American_PissAnt]

Seriously, a simple kids story shares the fate of such a world. No human could possibly want that.

[u/MyHamburgerLovesMe → u/PedaniusDioscorides]

Yet many vote for people who do.

[u/eightdx → u/HarryBallsanya420]

That yellow liquid trickling down smells suspiciously like piss

[u/Future-Guarantee-573 → u/eightdx]

We've had piss trickling down for the past 40 years.

At this point, the only thing trickling down is diarrhea shit.

[u/DadJokeBadJoke → u/eightdx]

It used to be called "horse and sparrow" economics. If we shovel enough money to the rich, the rest of us may be able to survive on the undigested parts of their shit.

[u/aiij → u/eightdx]

There's a reason it's often called tinkle-down economics rather than trickle-down economics...

[u/Slothnado209 → u/HarryBallsanya420]

“Oceans empty, rivers dry
Forests turned to ashes in the sky
You and I sat in solace as we watch the world burn….
We've been living like the end would never truly come
Now it's knockin' down your door and there's nowhere left to run” -Wage War

[u/macnbloo → u/HarryBallsanya420]

America is now Isengard

[u/Muffinlette → u/HarryBallsanya420]

Reminds me of the song seed by Aurora

[u/BayouGal → u/Muffinlette]

When the last tree has fallen 😢

[u/Muffinlette → u/BayouGal]

i recently learned it was inspired by a cree Indian proverb
“Only when the last tree has been cut down, the last fish been caught, and the last stream poisoned, will we realize we cannot eat money.”

[u/drunkenvalley → u/Muffinlette]

🎵 You cannot eat money 🎶

[u/SpaceGoonie → u/HarryBallsanya420]

Chestnuts roasting on an AI fire... Merry Christmas bitches!

[u/WoodsLovelyDarkNDeep → u/HarryBallsanya420]

It has to be intentional at this point like where they are placing them s as nd how big they are making them.  Just trying to cause as much damage as possibe

[u/drsweetscience → u/HarryBallsanya420]

Benefits? AI has not proved yet it actually can do all the advanced things it purports. It hasn't done anything yet better than humans for less expenditure. The wealth is speculative and really only exists because we dort of agree to believe in it. 

[u/Keizman55 → u/drsweetscience]

AI is useful when used specifically and narrowly towards research that can benefit humanity: drug development, medical advances, robotics,… it is bad when it uses tremendous amount of resources to find the best ad to show you, to answer barroom sports trivia, create funny memes to mock your friends, look up simple things that can be found with a little extra effort in Google, in a book, or at the library.
Unfortunately, it will go where the money leads it, just as the internet has done. Perhaps, the bad stuff will start costing too much money to provide for free or cheaply and the good stuff will survive. But with the trillions that are being bet on it, the only way to make back the bucks will be to cram it into every facet of our lives whether we want it or not.

[u/Stuwey → u/Keizman55]

Problem is, those aren't what we are getting. Those models used specially curated datasets of specific, verified knowledge as the base for the neural networks. The LLMs that we are getting now scrape everything possible, including extremely wrong information, but its not designed to ignore wrong information and that will inevitably cause hallucinations in the output. Not only that, its recursive, and that information will always be a part of any future iterations

Not only that, but the reason we need the datacenters is because the LLM models are simply brute-forcing human language and that's the expensive part. The smaller models do not require a fraction of the computational assets that the LLMs do, and the work is vastly more verifiable than those models as well.

Calling the hyper-specialized AIs the same as the bloated masses that we are building now is drawing a false equivalency. That's not to say that there isn't at least a little value in them, but for the most part we are destroying the environment and propping up the economy on a system that's most impressive feature is turning a one sentence email into a 5 paragraph email that the receiver will use an llm to turn back into a 1 sentence summary.

[u/lack_of_communicatio → u/HarryBallsanya420]

'I mean - I'll have the money, and you can have your laughs over how stupid I'm with your money.'

[u/Feezec → u/HarryBallsanya420]

We can use AI to draw infinite pictures of forests, so it's a net win /s

[u/robodrew → u/HarryBallsanya420]

Data centers that will absolutely never become obsolete and will definitely last longer than the trees ever did...... :(

[u/steppe5 → u/HarryBallsanya420]

Don't worry. AI will figure out how we can breathe without plants. Or not, they don't need us anymore.

[u/Soooome_Guuuuy → u/HarryBallsanya420]

It fundamentally, mathematically won't. More demand for water and energy will just make everything more expensive for the rest of us, all while competing for labor driving down wages. This is hell.

[u/Glum_Mobile5663 → u/HarryBallsanya420]

Excuse me, it's called SI now you peon

[u/NotInTheKnee → u/HarryBallsanya420]

ChatGPT, how can we save the forest?

[u/Kersenn → u/HarryBallsanya420]

There's this game called Scorn I think where humanity uses up all the resources on earth and then starts to use humans as resources, creating biomechanical devices, using them as food, using them as fuel, etc. Pretty nightmare inducing and kinda seems like where we're heading.

[u/potroast2000 → u/Kersenn]

Isn't that basically The Matrix?

[u/XanALqOM00 → u/HarryBallsanya420]

This is the way, invest heavy into AI ETFs, come dystopian blade runner 2049 future! LETS GOOOO

[u/Rift_Revan → u/HarryBallsanya420]

SI!!!! 

Stupid idea 

[u/Lexi_Banner → u/HarryBallsanya420]

They paved paradise to put up a parking lot.

oo bop bop bop :(

[u/smarmageddon → u/HarryBallsanya420]

If we can get fake food pictures on every restaurant menu, it will have been worth it all.

[u/Training-Republic301]

Every fucking day with this fucking country

[u/atreeismissing → u/Training-Republic301]

To be fair, it's a big country, and when all news is nationalized like this even people on the west coast can get easily depressed by stuff happening 3000 miles away that doesn't impact them. But, use it as a learning moment on what to look out for and take action on in your own community and town.

[u/thaiberius_kirk]

Too bad these data centers can’t be built right behind the CEO’s backyard.

That’ll put a stop to all this nonsense real quick.

[u/ShadowKingthe7 → u/thaiberius_kirk]

Build one next to MaraLago and see how fast mr shits his pants turns against data centers like he did with wind farms

[u/IvarTheBoned → u/thaiberius_kirk]

Weenietown belongs in their backyards

[u/invyros]

The relationship among Project Tamarack, Monarch Compute Campus, Nscale, and Anthropic remains unclear. Neither Nscale nor Anthropic has publicly confirmed any role in the reported development. Parcel maps, ownership records, site plans, and environmental review documents that could resolve the boundary dispute were not identified in the materials reviewed.

They're purposefully burying everything in red tape and bureaucratic corruption to hide shit from the public.

[u/lilithskies]

Was a walmart parking lot not available? Chestnuts are endangered

[u/cannibalpeas → u/lilithskies]

American Chestnuts are nearly non-existent. Most chestnuts have been hybridized with Asian species for resistance, but true native chestnuts are all but extinct… except for this grove and a few examples here and there that have been identified for preservation.

https://tacf.org

[u/whattothewhonow → u/cannibalpeas]

There's actually quite a few healthy trees that were planted on the west side of the Rockies as ornamentals by people moving from out east

The blight hasn't made it out there for the most part and the trees are geographically isolated.

But every bit of genetic diversity lost is bad for the long term survival of the species and thus entire data enter development can fuck all the way off.

[u/NeedNameGenerator → u/lilithskies]

Have you considered how strapped for space a country like the US is? There's hardly anywhere to build, with how full the country already is.

So, unfortunately, but naturally the only place they could build on is on top of an endangered forest.

[u/eligodfrey → u/NeedNameGenerator]

For anyone who didn't catch the sarcasm in this comment: the US ranks around 180th (out of ~230) in the world for population density. In a global context, we're basically empty.

[u/t-mille]

They just HAVE to destroy fucking everything dont they. Millions of square miles of land in this country but no, they absolutely HAVE to build where a grove of near-extinct trees stand. Fuck these monsters.

[u/DisraeliEers → u/t-mille]

It's because WV is District 12 and we constantly vote in ghouls to keep it that way.

[u/truckercharles]

I'm a West Virginian. There's a ton of grassroots pushback right now and a lot of people doing everything they can to stop this. I'm not saying it will work, but the effort is there.

[u/AFK_Tornado → u/truckercharles]

You know how every time there's an armed peaceful protest, the police treat it with kid gloves? Time for a peaceful protest.

[u/truckercharles → u/AFK_Tornado]

Protests will certainly occur, but you probably won't hear anything about them. Hopefully the national grassroots organizations keep some pressure on there too.

[u/wonko_abnormal]

but we can eat data centres right ?

[u/ManatuBear → u/wonko_abnormal]

No, but I hope people will soon find out that billionaires and politicians are edible! (but avoid the liver, no point risking Vitamin A overdose).

[u/Technical-Finish304 → u/ManatuBear]

New Xmas track just dropped:

"Billionaire's nuts roasting on an open fire"

ewe

[u/mismocanibalismo]

Why are they not just building these things in Wyoming where there’s space to spare?

[u/Chiiro → u/mismocanibalismo]

Probably cuz it's too far from infrastructure and those winters can get brutal.

[u/spencertron → u/Chiiro]

Can we use the brutal winters for cooling 😅

[u/scienceisaserfdom → u/spencertron]

Absolutely! See the NCAR Wyoming Supercomputer Center for an example of that and WY has a ton of wind power as well. Unfortunately, these AI Data Centers aren't built for sustainability whatsoever....because that would be pretty expensive. Rather these are built explicitly for the speed they can be rapidly constructed (before the public can organize), in the most bribe-able/corrupt/ungoverned places in the US, and most importantly in total disregard of environmental impact that would otherwise drive up construction costs or force them to actually pay for the resources that are sucking up. That last part is important, because there are also often giant large tax incentives/bribes secretly negotated between these companies and a state or local polticial establishement (almost always Repugs) to give away huge rate discounts on water and electricity that taxpayers are actually subsidizing. Beyond all that, its catagorically insane and cartoonishly evil to erase this genentically-critical grove of trees; as there is absolutely no reason why this project cant just be re-sited beyond the staggering greed and political graft driving it.

[u/kinglouie493 → u/Chiiro]

But the cooling costs could be offset in those months, no?

[u/AdvancedSandwiches → u/mismocanibalismo]

Latency, I imagine.  It takes about 70ms to send a round trip signal across the US. So in general you want your datacenter as close as possible to where it's used, so it can be single digit milliseconds.

That plus some asshole in government will agree to give you a bunch of free shit and make sure residents pay your tax burden for the next 100 years because you're going to bring 6 full time jobs to the area.  That doesn't work if Wyoming gets all 500 permanent jobs from all of the datacenters we're building.

[u/Sibs → u/AdvancedSandwiches]

I would think the biggest factor would be how easily they can buy electricity below market value.

[u/vagabond_nerd → u/mismocanibalismo]

That is billionaire bunker territory

[u/AGushingHeadWound → u/mismocanibalismo]

Wyoming told them to fuck off.

[u/bassrooster]

The people whom humans decided to worship and throw all the money at, are actually greedy monsters. Too late… I’m sad, humans suck. And I hate all wealthy people, rich people are the problem. But the poor suffer.

[u/Tigers2349 → u/bassrooster]

Yup Jensen Huang Lisa Su, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk all people once thought as innovators have turned heir backs on us and are eivl monsters.

Sam Altman to though most of us never viewed Sam Altman as good. And ELon Musk though less except electric vehicle fans viewed him as good and electric vehicles were very niche and expensive compared to gas vehicles.

Lisa Su Jensen Huang once pioneered good DIY PC OEM PC and laptop products, Now they are evil monsters feeding their hardware to AI parasites threatening humanity and trying to replace us while abandoning DIY PCs and laptops in droves.

They are greedy evil monsters and I hate them ll worse than dictators at this point despite me owning a 9800X3D, RTX 5090 custom built PC.

[u/schmod]

Does anybody have a better source for this story? The linked article was pretty clearly (and ironically!) written by a recent Anthropic LLM, only cites a single tweet as a source, and doesn't seem to provide any evidence justifying the source of concern.

A core point of contention seems to be whether or not the developer even owns the site in question. That seems like it'd be a pretty easy fact to verify?

[u/ZombyPuppy → u/schmod]

They literally say this in there,

None of these claims have been confirmed by the named companies or relevant state agencies, and no mainstream news report or publicly available permit was identified in the materials reviewed to corroborate the timeline.

People in here will believe the craziest shit with no sources. Then they'll lament how shitty the news is because this is the kind of drivel they actually want to consume.

Not one person in here better ever talk about a boomer believing the craziest shit on Facebook. This is exactly the same.

[u/GordonShumway69420 → u/schmod]

Yeah none of this makes any sense. The grove is supposedly 3 miles from the data center, and the developers haven't made any mention about cutting it down, nor would they even need to. Seems like rage-bait.

[u/Vaxxed_and_Relaxed]

Dolly Parton was a huge advocate and donor to the American Chestnut Foundation.

[u/OGBeege]

Bots Blow, AI Slop is shit. Boo

[u/YobaiYamete → u/OGBeege]

OP is a bot and the article is ai written too lol

[u/Wayelder]

This is tragic. That tree species fed all the American forests before the diseases destroyed them. It was a huge, unfathomable loss.

So of course Trump's there to finish the job...Guys, HE WORKS FOR RUSSIA. Anything good must be destroyed.

[u/ExcellentAccountant8]

Well the ancient cherry trees gifted by Japan were taken out in Washington for a golf course so don't expect anyone to care about these trees. Nature is getting in the way of American progress.

[u/lilithskies → u/ExcellentAccountant8]

Criminal behavior

[u/Dependent_Invite9149]

I work near whats going on. The site was home to Clements State Tree Nursery, which was a nursery funded by West Virginia to grow trees for restoration projects. The state ended the nursery years ago because they were selling too many trees out of state. Which was because other states were defunding their own state nurseries. They had tons of great infrastructure built up, and bulldozed all of it years ago. The only thing that remains of the nursery are trees that they planted for seed production to grow more trees in the future. It’s an all around mismanagement of state funds and disservice to environmental issues. It’s more evidence that shows people do not care about nature. Profit > natural heritage.

[u/Aggravating-Art2814 → u/Dependent_Invite9149]

Thank you for the context. They were growing trees but selling “too many” of them? So hard to understand the logic of politicians. 

[u/Dependent_Invite9149 → u/Aggravating-Art2814]

I guess the problem was that they were selling too many out of state. A majority of what was grown ended up in Ohio and elsewhere. But yeah, they sold too many trees lol

[u/Thatotherguy129]

Chestnut trees were the most important tree in American culture, it was literally the lifeblood of entire towns before they were destroyed. Putting a data center there is straight up symbolic.

[u/paulsteinway]

Great hulking data centres will be our Easter Island statues.

[u/fckyungchaky]

Good man, these fucking trees and all their free air and chestnuts that smell good for Christmas roasting. I’m so glad there gonna be gone so we can have a giant data center that screams at rock concert decibels.

Like living in my own private AC/DC concert 24/7!!! Fuck yeah! America is gonna be so MUCH better now.

Thank Jesus for billionaires and their fucking so cool ideas to beat the foreigners and definitely not to increase compute to manage robot soldiers to keep the masses in check.

So worth it to exchange a bunch of trees that don’t do anything productive for the economy.

[u/Ya-Not-Happening]

I used to think technology was good for the environment since it reduced use of physical resources.

Now we are on a death march of sucking resources just to keep technology moving.

[u/Due_Rip9320 → u/Ya-Not-Happening]

That's because systems that require insane power draws to function at the detriment of the environment shouldn't be allowed to exist....PERIOD

But then we go ahead and give these rich fucks leeway to do whatever they want, and complete and utter disaster results.

[u/happy_bluebird → u/Ya-Not-Happening]

"Technology" is way too broad to make generalizations like that

[u/redheadedandbold]

Well, Trump and Gov Abbott let Elon destroy the range of the ONLY ocelots in the US. The Fundamentalist Christians are convinced the end-times are near (as religions have been for millenia). They believe they don't have to save the planet for their children and grandchildren. They don't care what they destroy, and they'll fight tooth and nail for the right to let the rich destroy it--how very ungodly of them.

This is ridiculous.

[u/timberdoodledan → u/redheadedandbold]

Honestly it might be even worse than this. I've heard people talking about how destroying the planet will trigger the end-times. So according to them, God's plan is not fast enough. They want to accelerate.

[u/Fragrant-Increase-94 → u/timberdoodledan]

They’re called accelerationists. They’re a literal death cult. It’s hard to express how much I hate them.

[u/Adept-Mulberry-8720]

So fricking sad!

[u/pandorascannabox]

One day people will realize you can’t drink money, can’t eat money, can’t breathe money. All that will be left of this earth is the kingdom of landfill.

[u/Cirque14505]

This would be an absolute crime. It’s such a shame the American chestnut tree got wiped out by disease. For people that don’t know, they used to be everywhere along the east coast, and they were giant.

[u/WhereMyWeirdosAt]

Because there is just NO other place they can put the data center.... right? Fuck these rich assholes

[u/tekdiwah]

There's so much media about humans ruining the Earth and turning it into a wasteland. And so much real life examples and disasters to look into when we cut down all the trees. These resource hungry data centers will eventually turn everything to dust and then what? AI for those who have a bunker below the wasteland?

[u/Zestyclose_Pay9469 → u/tekdiwah]

Its all good,  we'll be able to read about the chestnut groves in ChatGPT and even create fake pictures ourselves having a picnic in them, so basically same thing.

/s

[u/Ya-Dikobraz]

I'm in Tasmania. One the world's most pristine islands. They are building 3 AI datacentres here now that will take 30% of the power grid. And guess who will pay for that power? Yep, us. And they are behaving really dodgy as to where they will source the water from. They claim they are closed systems. They are not.

[u/Blueberry-Synthoid]

So if this species of chestnut goes extinct, is this when we go to the seed vault? They have these right?

[u/NotApparent → u/Blueberry-Synthoid]

We still have them in Oregon. When the blight hit the east coast we implemented really intense tree import and quarantine regulations because people were scared the blight would jump to our hazelnut crop. All these decades later Oregon is home to the oldest and largest living American chestnuts left.

[u/GordonShumway69420]

no mainstream news report or publicly available permit was identified in the materials reviewed to corroborate the timeline.

Am I missing something here? The article says there are no plans to destroy the trees, and the company building the data center a few miles away from the grove hasn't said anything about cutting down the trees. The only source is a tweet from an activist that doesn't have anything to support it. Where is this information actually coming from?

[u/jaynor88]

Wait wait wait!!

Why have we never heard of these 200 American Chestnut trees that survived all these years?????

I was under the impression these were extinct!

These must be protected. They must be used to bring back the American Chestnut trees!!

I thought only the Chinese Chestnut cultivar was available to work with at this point

[u/AFK_Tornado → u/jaynor88]

It's worse than that.

The grove was planted in the '70s from nuts gathered from some of the last surviving wild chestnuts, the ones that best resisted the blight and happened to escape the rush to fell the trees that occurred once we realized the blight was going to take essentially all of them.

Out of many seeds planted there, only a few dozen lived to sexual maturity and are today 40-60' tall, blight resisting nut producing trees. These represent the most naturally blight resistant generic stock for American Chestnuts, and they're planted in proximity to each other, able to mingle their genetics. Their nuts have been and still are sent all over the country to plant. They've sired like 10,000 seedlings, though many of those don't replicate the strong blight resistance.

So yeah, this is mustache twirling irredeemable evil.

[u/AFK_Tornado → u/AFK_Tornado]

Side note "fun" thought experiment: there's a cool what if scenario embedded here. If we hadn't written them off and harvested the entire stock preemptively, would enough have survived to eventually repopulate on their own?

Fucking humans, man.

[u/Magnolia256 → u/jaynor88]

Extinction is the objective. It’s called “planned extermination.” There are really wealthy people on this planet who want exclusive access to the more important species on the planet. There is a famous quote by an indigenous chief who objected to removal from the Appalachian region and said something like “but how will we survive without the chestnut trees?” He didn’t survive.

[u/Top_Contest_1633 → u/jaynor88]

There are also surviving individuals that escaped being cut on private property all across appalachia. Probably quite a few that researchers have no idea about. There's a huge American chestnut (confirmed not Chinese cultivar) on my hunting lease in eastern WV

[u/JPMoney81]

Yeah but those trees are in the way of some rich tech guy getting even richer!

[u/SonOfBoreale]

Cartoon villain behavior

[u/darthsploder77]

WTF, we should be studying these trees to see why they were able to resist the blight that killed all the rest of the chestnuts, and perhaps use them to repopulate the species.

[u/1x11-cx]

The sheer irony of a shit AI article about a building a data center so we can keep pushing shit AI articles.

[u/Glum_Opening_2218]

Oh wow yet another irreplaceable thing being torn down for a data center with it being hidden from the public!!

People need to be shot

[u/Possible-Bet3598]

Genuinely, when do we bring back the guillotine?

[u/OldNternetWizard43]

How fast can we tear down some country clubs for affordable housing complexes? Like months or can these things happen in weeks? Asking for the revolutionary majority.

[u/Slamtilt_Windmills]

Is the Lorax gonna have to cut a bitch?

[u/Username524]

This is happening in my home state. If you’re interested in this kind of thing here in WV, you oughta research The Battle of Blair Mountain.”

[u/A_Nonny_Muse]

Actually, blight resistant chestnut trees are being re-seeded all over the eastern part of North America from Georgia all the way up to the Hudson bay. Chestnuts are making a comeback.

There was once billions of them.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/02/can-modern-genetics-help-us-restore-the-appalachian-forests-of-the-1800s/

But to cut any down at this stage would be a gravely evil injustice.

[u/Oprah_Pwnfrey]

What the actual fuck.

One of the biggest things to fuck the Appalachian mountain region, chestnut trees being essentially wiped out because of an introduced fungus. There was billions of these trees which provided huge amounts of timber and food for deer and pigs(which were hunted for food). Now coal is apparently the only thing they got going.

[u/tianas_knife]

Jesus effing christ someone better get saplings made. We've been trying to get the chestnut back for generations now

[u/one_depressed_MF]

"They took all the trees and put them in a tree museum, and the charged all the people 250 bucks just to see them."

Update for inflation.

[u/boogiebee13]

“Data centers roasting on an open fire” doesn’t have the same ring, but if that’s what they want…

[u/Nounadjective-adverb]

“Data centers on an opeeeennnn fireeee”

Just doesn’t sound the same…..

[u/Sithlordandsavior]

Has anyone considered that trees aren't profit drivers? Like what, they just sit there. In the dirt. And they need water? What, like in a toilet?

[u/PupScent]

I'm finding it difficult to see any difference between the US regime and the Taliban. 

[u/falkorwoo]

Chestnuts roasting on an Open AI…

[u/O_oblivious]

Question- how are these trees not listed as endangered?

[u/mephitopheles13]

Things are starting to feel very Eisengard these days.

[u/jedipiper]

"We paved paradise and put up a parking lot..."

[u/ElSlabraton]

The eastern United States was covered in chestnut trees until about a century ago. We've got to protect the few chestnut tree groves we retain.

[u/QuantumEkko]

The natural world is but a minor inconvenience to corrupt politicians and corporations

[u/Traditional-Hat-952]

We're at the cutting down the Giving Tree part of the story? 

[u/Strange_Airships]

Nobody asked for this.

[u/No-Friendship44]

American chestnut tree is more rare than data centre nowadays.

[u/Viridun]

This feels deliberate as a choice of location. Like it would be easier to find ANY OTHER location for a data center, I would think, you would need to go out of your way to select a chestnut grove.

[u/Polyman71]

Short term loss will be wiped out with longer term catastrophe.

[u/-pichael_]

Yayyy this will improve the lives of 10s of rich people.

WWWWWWWWinningggg

[u/LordTegucigalpa]

Data Centers roasting on an open fire

[u/Ironlion45]

"Yes, the world was destroyed, but for a while there we created some really great value for the shareholders."

[u/Pankosmanko]

You mean the critically endangered chestnut tree? We're going to kill them off so kids can cheat on their exams? ugh

[u/ascii122]

First they came for the Chestnuts .. then the Filberts .. all the while the Almonds remained silent

cos they're freaking trees they can't talk. But if they could

[u/iwasthen]

🎵AI roasting on an open fire 🎶

[u/jeromelevin]

Wild to write an article about the destruction of chestnut trees by data centers using AI exclusively. Not sure anything is real here. Neither the article nor the original Substack post it cites includes any primary sources, links to project documents, or other real evidence

[u/bcoder001]

AI will, like, DNA it from potato. -- AI Bro CEO

[u/Peter_Easter]

Dooming the environment and society for something that's totally unnecessary. Humans sure are smart...

[u/slanderpanther]

Chestnuts roasting on an open pyre...

[u/terid3]

Fuck this timeline. This is heartbreaking.

[u/Lookathebrightside]

Chestnuts roasting for a data center 🎶

[u/Big-Leadership-4604]

"Data centers roasting on open fires, revolution nipping at your nose."

[u/Chaosbeing79]

I'm sure West Virginia politicians will get right on making sure this doesn't happen 🙄

[u/Chaos_Theory1989]

I’m so tired y’all. 

[u/cassiegrump]

I don't care if there's a human byline, AI clearly wrote this article and did a piss poor job of it.

Kind of ironic given the topic..

[u/charliej102]

(with apologies to Longfellow)

Under the Spreading Data Cloud

Under the spreading data cloud,
The data center stands;
I’m searching for a place to live,
With power close at hand.
A patch of earth, a fiber line—
And room where I may land.

My appetite is mighty large,
For megawatts I yearn;
My servers hum both night and day,
My processors must churn.
Give me a grid both strong and sure,
And watch my engines burn.

I need some acres, flat and wide,
A substation nearby;
Some fiber running underground,
And pathways multiplied.
A friendly town, a willing state,
And room to amplify.

I promise jobs and tax receipts,
Investment by the score;
New roads and lines and infrastructure,
And perhaps a little more.
But ask me what my power costs—
And what I’m asking for.

For AI never goes to sleep,
The cloud is never still;
Each question asked, each model trained,
Adds hunger to my fill.
A thousand racks await their watts,
And more are coming still.

Yet towns may ask, “What do we gain?
What burdens will you bring?
Will homes pay more to keep you fed?
Will local turbines sing?
How much of water, land, and grid
Will feed this growing thing?”

So find me somewhere I can grow,
Where power, land, and fiber meet;
Where neighbors see me as a friend,
Not merely load and heat.
For I am searching for a home—
And many terawatts to eat.

Under the spreading data cloud,
Tomorrow takes its form;
The data center finds its home,
Its servers humming warm.
And where the chestnut once stood tall,
My cooling towers three—
Perhaps we’ll never see again
A spreading chestnut-tree.

[u/c0smokr4mer]

And sometimes, he’d accuse chestnuts of being lazy.

[u/NomisD]

Good job america

[u/Lucky-Mia]

Chestnuts roasting on an openAI data center site. Grok inflating up your power bill. Although it's been said many times, many ways, fuck data centers, we hate you.

• Mel Tormé, probably.

[u/Stress6009]

I bet a lot of people are going to show up to stand around to let it all get cut down 😑😑😑😑😑😑😑.

[u/Upbeat-Laugh-249]

Profit for the few connected people is all America is. Nothing else matter s

[u/Damizan]

We must defend this forest.

[u/toddlevy10]

Who needs trees and nature, when a server rack can show me naked cartoons pretending to be real, and give me mostly wrong answers to stuff, very, very, quickly. Like, gosh

[u/anotherdayinbk]

Was just reading about chestnuts and the plague that killed them in “Overstory” by Richard Powers. Was heartbreaking to read about how the chestnut was such a useful and giving tree…and how they dominated the east coast forests until fungus spores decimated their entire population. I hope someone in this country can stop this plague more effectively than our fore-bearers fared against those tree spores.

[u/theateroffinanciers]

This is horrific. Aren't they protected? Because they're the last remaining healthy trees? That's Extinction. Is there anything we can do?

[u/DoYouScuba]

The irony of that article being written by AI (and not well). It was almost unintelligible.

[u/ShotBoat3335]

This is a travesty if true. Chestnuts got wiped out by the blight. ITs hard to even get new stems.