Developers working for Google have significantly misstated how much carbon two proposed AI datacentres will contribute to the UK’s total emissions in planning documents reviewed by the Guardian.
The tech company wants to build two huge datacentres – one 52-hectare (130 acre) project in Thurrock and another at an airfield in North Weald, both in Essex. To do so, developers are required to submit planning documents calculating how much carbon these projects will emit as a proportion of the UK’s total carbon footprint.
In both cases, they appear to have compared one year of the proposed datacentre’s emissions with the UK’s entire five-year carbon budget, understating the significance of their emissions by a factor of five, according to experts at the tech justice nonprofit Foxglove.
Hmmm, maybe we should imprison these criminals for their attempted fraud?
Oh I’m sorry. I forgot we live in capitalist dictatorships, where you’re free to commit crime behind the liability shield of an LLC…
Lie. They lied. They knowingly lied about the negative externalities of their business in order to try to maximize returns for their shareholders.
When you put this in normal words. It becomes clear what an obvious crime it is. I wonder why journos don’t do that…
Because lying requires intent. They can’t show that these statements were made intentionally and knowingly. And there are stronger libel laws in the UK.
Libel laws are far less stringent for public personas, especially where the reporting is in the public interest. Reporting a “significant misstatement” if a large public company, where that “misstatement” misleads people about very clear and obvious harms to the public is highly unlikely to rise to the level of libel just because you use the word “lie”
Arrest them.
“misstate”, what a cute word for “fraudulently mislead”
Of course they did. We can’t expect them to be good with actual numbers.