@esghound.com:
“DATA CENTER WATER USE DOESN’T MATTER” is one of the silliest arguments I see floating around. unless you think re-writing 200 yr old water law (OG political third rail in the US) is a simple matter, the marginal consumption of new water is literally make or break for much of life in the western US
and Canada
@mistyksnow.bsky.social:
When the AI bubble burst, I hope these people all go to prison where they belong.
frankfrankson.bsky.social:
Time’s person of the year was all the dumb fucks behind the AI bubble? Every time I think I can’t hate this timeline more it surprises me.
@indiohistorian:
What an insult to the workers in the original photograph.and hideous insult to the photographer, Charles Clyde Ebbets, and theft of his brilliance, courage and creativity – fitting, given that AI is just that – theft of the hard work, creativity and brilliance of others.
The Koch Network Is Pushing Trump to Accelerate AI, Documents Show
Right-wing political group Americans for Prosperity, backed by oil and gas billionaire Charles Koch, sees data centers as part of a larger pro-fossil fuel agenda.
A political group created by oil and gas billionaire Charles Koch earlier this year wrote to a branch of the U.S. government making requests about artificial intelligence.
“To seize the moment and ensure that AI can meet its true promise and potential,” it argued in March to the National Coordination Office, a federal body tasked by Donald Trump at the time with developing an AI Action Plan, the administration should “clear the red tape” preventing “energy innovators” from supplying the massive amounts of electricity required to power new AI data centers across the country.
The comments were written by analysts with Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a Koch-bankrolled activist organization that supports right-wing causes and political candidates and spent more than $157 million to sway voters during the 2024 elections.
MORE: The Appalachianization of America’s Economy
@jimbostanford.bsky.social:
Millions of jobs are at risk from AI–but not because we can be replaced by algorithms. Rather, the big risk is the financial and macroeconomic fallout when the AI stock bubble (bigger than any in history) inevitably bursts. My take in today’s @thestar.com:
www.thestar.com/business/opi…
@jim-stewartson.bsky.social:
I took a deep dive into the Trump regime’s furious inflation of the AI bubble—including Pete Hegseth mandating AI as a “teammate” in every soldier’s daily “battle rhythm”—and Trump’s PayPal Mafia-authored EO. The sheer scale of this fraud is astonishing.
www.mind-war.com/p/chatbot-in…
PhoenixKissed, Esq. KC@Lilyframe:
Whenever I see a Kevin O’Leary post, I’m reminded of the time he drove his boat into another boat and killed 2 people. Then he blamed his wife. Good times! … like to remind people what a dick he is
@notkaspeck.bsky.social:
Abolish AI. These server farms suck up scarce water, drive up energy prices, and will be worthless after the economic bubble blows.
@onealmp.bsky.social:
The best evidence that AI is a bubble is the fact that both Andreessen and Horowitz both feel compelled to tell us that it isn’t a bubble.
@a-reader-ft.bsky.social:
Europe must be ready when the AI bubble bursts—
The US hyperscale model is not destiny. It emerged from a particular corporate culture with a high tolerance for risk, hands-off regulation, disregard for environmental harms… www.ft.com/content/0308…
The truth about Wonder Valley, Kevin O’Leary’s data-centre dream by David Reevely, Dec 12, 2025, The Logic
GREENVIEW, Alta. — At Wonder Valley, the giant data centre in northwestern Alberta backed by flamboyant investor Kevin O’Leary, the wonder is behind schedule.
Announced as all but a sure thing in December 2024, construction was supposed to begin by 2026 with a first phase operating by 2027.
Talking Points
- A year after Kevin O’Leary’s massive Wonder Valley data-centre project in northwestern Alberta was announced, preliminary work is already more than a year behind its aggressive schedule, with construction now not expected to start until after the initial phase was supposed to be up and running
- The Grande Prairie region has been trying to move up the fossil-fuel value chain for years, with a string of aborted proposals to turn natural gas into other products before shipping it out
- Wonder Valley is not just a new plan, but one radically different from what’s been tried before
Then would come relentless growth. In a vacant lot of publicly owned land 700 kilometres northwest of Calgary would rise the world’s largest data centre powered, in part, by the vast reserves of natural gas that sit under the Grande Prairie region. Once complete, Wonder Valley would, its backers boasted, produce 7.5 gigawatts of computing power—about two-thirds of what the whole of Alberta’s power grid uses in the middle of a typical day.
Locally, the project could be transformative. It would create thousands of construction jobs, with hundreds more long-term jobs to keep the computers running and the power flowing. It could also put the region on the map as a destination for more data centres and high-tech industry.
For now, the site remains fallow. A highway turnoff and a short length of road lead to dirt tracks, stands of trees and burned slash piles in open areas where trees used to be. It’s less a valley than a wide, gentle slope, home to a pack of coyotes.
The hope is that construction might start in late 2028, says Kyle Reiling, the executive director of industrial development for the Greenview Municipal District, Wonder Valley’s intended host.
Greenview covers thousands of square kilometres south and east of the industrial city of Grande Prairie itself.
Kyle Reiling on site at the Greenview Industrial Gateway. Reiling has been working on Wonder Valley for years, though he didn’t know that would be the case in 2021 when he started preparing its prospective site. Photo: William Vavrek for The Logic
The region is built on gas. It’s squarely atop the Montney Formation, a gigantic pool of hydrocarbons under Alberta and British Columbia that supplies current and planned gas export terminals on the B.C. coast. Oil and gas are typically found together but the proportions vary, and what oil is to northeastern Alberta, gas is to the northwest. Stab an icepick into the ground here and you might get yourself a hissing little well.
In Grande Prairie itself, the many hotels lining the highways in and out indicate its position as a hitching post for workers and travellers. At 100 Street and 100 Avenue—the origin point of the street grid and the heart of Grande Prairie’s one-tower downtown—a road sign points the way to Alaska.
Much of the city is surrounded by the neat checkerboards of prairie farming, studded with occasional pumpjacks and sproutings of pipes. To the south, on land mostly governed by Greenview, the land is more rugged and forested. This is the Gold Creek area, a particularly resource-rich part of the Montney Formation where oil and gas companies, including Shell, are extracting fossil fuels and looking for more.
Running off the few highways are rough roads for loggers and workers servicing the wells that are more numerous in the forest than on the flatland. From above, the network looks like a haphazard circuit board.
Reiling has been working on Wonder Valley for years, though he didn’t know that would be the case in 2021 when he started preparing its prospective site, a public property now branded the Greenview Industrial Gateway, for heavy industry. The GIG, as locals call it, has highway and rail access, a power line and even a river to draw water from. It’s an 800-hectare socket in the middle of that circuit board landscape, waiting for something to plug into it.
Multiple plans, none as ambitious as Wonder Valley, have failed here before, but the municipality has a lot to show for its efforts.
“We’ve spent over $70 million to date on the development of this infrastructure,” Reiling says. “So when you hear Kevin O’Leary say that he found a unicorn—yeah, he found a unicorn, but it didn’t just happen.”
Tens of millions of public dollars have gone into upgrading the highway connecting the GIG to Grande Prairie, about half an hour’s drive away. Highway 40 has a turnoff into the GIG now, leading to a newly paved road that leads, for the moment, to nowhere. “I have a water design, I have a built road… We’ve completed the wetlands assessment, the biophysical assessment,” Reiling says.
Yet O’Leary Ventures has yet to finalize the purchase of the municipal land and has not, as far as Reiling knows, applied for any new provincial permits it might need, nor started formal consultations with Indigenous communities. The firm did not not respond to multiple requests for interviews or written updates about the project.
Reeve Ryan Ratzlaff, the leader of Greenview’s municipal council, remains optimistic. Once O’Leary Ventures realized how big the opportunity was, Ratzlaff believes, it decided to slow things down.
“They just started moving a little bit slower to make sure that they had everything as perfect as they could get it,” he says, sitting by the wood stove in his repair shop, known as the Ratz Nest.
A former mechanic for pipeline company Pembina whose dad drove a grader for the municipality, Ratzlaff is in his second term on Greenview’s council. His shop is on the property where he lives near the hamlet of Little Smoky. The mounted skull of a moose—bagged a mile and a half away, Ratzlaff says—looks over a partially deconstructed car, workbenches, and innumerable parts and stacks of supplies. Final approvals and construction for Wonder Valley are getting closer by the day, he says.
Greenview Reeve Ryan Ratzlaff on his property in Little Smoky, Alta. Ratzlaff also works as a mechanic from his repair shop known as the Ratz Nest. Photo: William Vavrek for The Logic
Data-centre experts say time is of the essence. Tech giants are rushing to secure the compute capacity they’ll need to train and run models and applications over the next three or four years—a period when the field’s leading lights promise AI will change how everything in the economy and society works.
When Wonder Valley was announced, Nate Glubish, Alberta’s minister of technology, said his ministry had been working with O’Leary Ventures “for several months” to help navigate Alberta’s regulatory system.or, more accurately, instruct the greedy creepy billionaire how to evade it, or perhaps how much money Queen Danielle will accept to drop all permit requirements, and deregulate to nothing, like her hero kid rapist Trump is doing.
“Projects like these don’t happen by accident,” Glubish wrote in an op-ed in The Sherwood Park-Strathcona County News, his constituency newspaper.
A year on, when asked for an update from the provincial government’s perspective, a spokesperson said Glubish would rather just talk about Alberta’s strategy for attracting data centres in general.aka, let’s spin the con of AI to get rural Albertan’s greedy cells vibrating.
People closer to Wonder Valley geographically, but removed from the hype, say they’re eager for it to happen and ready to help—as Greenview’s efforts continue. “Being a part of this, supporting where possible, is something we’re very happy to do, and we’ll continue to support them as this project and other projects go down the road,” says Grande Prairie Mayor Jackie Clayton.Can’t fix stupid, especially not Alberta stupid
Vanessa Sheane, president of Grande Prairie’s Northwestern Polytechnic, says her school is “keen and ready to do what we need to do to make sure they have the workforce and skilled labour that they need” to build and staff Wonder Valley, but hasn’t yet spun up any new programs.
An aerial view of part of the GIG site, with Alberta’s Highway 40 in the foreground. In the distance are three gas processing facilities. Photo: William Vavrek for The Logic
Before Wonder Valley there were others. Greenview’s decade-plus dream has been to create its own version of an area called Alberta’s Industrial Heartland, the complex of petrochemical factories and oil refineries north and east of Edmonton. Reiling used to work in economic development in Strathcona and Sturgeon counties, both of which have stakes in the Heartland.
Proponents want the Grande Prairie region to process its own gas into more expensive products—but getting interest from companies willing to make the investment has been a challenge.
Ratzlaff laments the pattern. “We’ve seen so much of that—[companies] have looked at our area, and then I think a lot of them ended up going to the Heartland, right?” The council’s dream, he adds, is to get some of the Heartland money up north.
The natural gas in the Montney Formation is abundant but not all of it is worth extracting. Sometimes the geology is unfavourable or the flow is poor or there are too many contaminants mixed in with the good stuff.
“Depending on the location, it might not be viable to pipe all of that into a larger plant and get it into the Trans Canada pipeline,” says Ratzlaff. But a local buyer for the gas from marginal wells? That changes the economics.
The GIG is Greenview’s attempt to present major industrial players with a site where much of the hard work is already done for them. It’s almost worked several times, producing announcements that are just as sure in their tones as Wonder Valley’s.
The GIG site. Greenview’s decade-plus dream has been to create its own version of an area called Alberta’s Industrial Heartland. To date, all the projects proposed for the site have fizzled out. Photo: William Vavrek for The Logic
In 2021, Northern Petrochemical Corporation proposed a plant to turn natural gas into methanol and ammonia, bringing 400 long-term jobs. In April 2022, Cerilon GTL announced it would build a facility to turn natural gas into diesel, jet fuel, wax and other specialty petrochemical products, bringing 280 long-term jobs. In January 2024, Interprovincial Fuel Solutions announced plans for a plant to produce synthetic gasoline and hydrogen, with 50 to 70 full-time jobs.
All these projects have fizzled. Each is its own story—failing amid uncertainty about whether the rail line was suitable for ammonia transportation, a lack of carbon-capture infrastructure, the list goes on. Collectively, they show how difficult it is to do large-scale projects, Reiling says—though he remains optimistic.
Wonder Valley’s plan is to use all that local natural gas as a cheap power source for a gargantuan data centre, buttressed by geothermal energy. Instead of processing gas into another physical product, Wonder Valley plans to turn it into high-value bits that can be shipped out on fibre-optics, not tanker cars.
That’s even more appealing than a petrochemical refiner, says Ratzlaff, which would spread huge plains of black gravel on the landscape. A data centre, by comparison, would have less of an impact. OMG! Data centres have enormous hideous polluting water-guzzling public health impacts. The best thing for “Wonder Valley” and Alberta, is if O’Leary and his stupid project vanishes up Trump’s AI propagandizing ass.
“The O’Leary group wants to fit their buildings in here and there and try and keep as much of the natural landscape as they can,” he says. “To me, that’s a massive win.”
Jon Anderson, who until recently chaired the Grande Prairie regional chamber of commerce. He says that if Wonder Valley happens, it could spark a period of major economic development in the region. Photo: William Vavrek for The Logic
Wonder Valley would also be a signal to others, says Jon Anderson, who this month completed a one-year stint as chair of the Grande Prairie regional chamber of commerce. A former director at ATB Financial, where he spent more than 30 years, he’s now an executive coach. “Wonder Valley is the first domino,” he says. “If we can get this to fall, we now have something to strengthen our economic development story. We know what we have to offer. We’re inviting the world to come see our region.” He concedes, though, that everyone will breathe easier when there’s a shovel in the ground.I bet greedy O’leary won’t dig a thing unless Quisling Danielle steals the $billions from ordinary struggling Albertans and give the money to Mr. Billionaire to build and run the monstrosity. He’s a sleaze bucket but not stupid, he knows damned well AI is a bubble being blown up by ultra rich and corrupt politicians like Carney and Trump to steal from the masses to make billionaires richer. And I bet lying O’Leary is demanding immunity from any and all related lawsuits and legally be allowed to walk from clean-up when Wonder Valley goes bust.
Wonder Valley isn’t Kevin O’Leary’s attempt to launch a cloud provider to rival Amazon, Google, Microsoft or Oracle. Instead, the proposed data centre would be rented out to one or more of those so-called hyperscalers. Even if Wonder Valley gets built, though, Big Tech might not come.Why the hell would billionaires want to live where they must breath toxic sour frac’d gas and bathe in toxic explosive frac water? They’re not as stupid as Albertans are.
Microsoft doesn’t have a major data centre in the west, which makes Alberta “a logical place to look to expand capacity,” says Microsoft Canada president Matt Milton. Wonder Valley, though, isn’t really in its thinking as it invests billions in expanding its own facilities: “We’re not part of the discussions right now.”
While tech giants have the money and expertise to put up their own AI compute infrastructure, they’re turning to external data centre operators for two things: pace and power, “The need for new capacity is very urgent—it needs to be procured now,”Scam talk; the AI fuckers must move fast before some sense comes to the stupid masses, and investors realize they’ve been had and the bubble pops AI is a says Tania Tsoneva, head of infrastructure research at CBRE Investment Management. Working with firms that have already secured land and energy lets the hyperscalers speed up the launch of new compute capacity, since all they have to do is bring in their hardware.
That doesn’t mean, however, that any data centre will do. Tech giants want operators that have a lot of technical expertise and long track records, according to Tsoneva, who hadn’t heard of Wonder Valley until a reporter from The Logic asked about it. The chips and hardware that go into an AI data centre are expensive, she says. “You’re not just going to give them to just about anybody.”
O’Leary Ventures will need to raise a lot of moneyor more likely, gets it from Queen Danielle (which is why I believe she’s plunked filthy Steve Harper as Chair of AIMCo and is screaming to be given the Canada Pensions of more than half of all Canadians – to give free money to bad projects like O’Leechiesto fund its buildout in Greenview. Data centres are much easier and cheaper to finance when they already have long-term contracts with tech giants, Tsoneva says. “The tenant is very, very, very important.”
Wonder Valley doesn’t yet seem to have one. The stated plan is to design Wonder Valley on spec, then try to attract a tenant.
Ratzlaff says he understands that “big players” are watching and waiting. “I think they’ve all seen things come and go in Canada and Alberta,” he says. “‘Till they know it’s a sure thing, they don’t want to sign on the dotted line.”
Part of the Grande Prairie skyline. The vapour plume is from Canfor’s sawmill in southern Grande Prairie, on the way to the GIG site. Photo: William Vavrek for The Logic
The literal road to what may one day be Wonder Valley isn’t straightforward, either. It’s more than 40 kilometres outside Grande Prairie and passes a sawmill, three separate landfills and disposal sites for well waste. At times it carries more heavy trucks than cars and pickups.
Kevin and Lorelei Bowie are two of the site’s closest neighbours. They run KeLore Kennels, a business descended from Lorelei’s dream of breeding Irish setters, on the 112 acres where they also live.
Kevin Bowie is retired from the Grande Prairie fire department and, despite his bad back, a volunteer firefighter in Greenview. “During construction, it’s supposed to bring in a whole bunch of jobs,” he says. “They’re talking like, this basically is going to be its own city. There will be accommodations on site. There’ll be stores, gas stations, all kinds of stuff.”
All that will surely mean more traffic, more trucks, he adds. “I don’t think it’s a detriment, as long as people aren’t stupid.”
He very much hopes Wonder Valley gets started, partly because he and Lorelei are looking to sell and, if she has her way, move someplace where it never, ever snows. “I’m hoping that’ll help with the sale too—the appeal of the data centre coming in and the spinoffs from it,” he says.
Kevin Bowie, one of the closest neighbours to the GIG site, at his and his wife’s KeLore Kennels. Photo: William Vavrek for The Logic
Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation, in contrast, isn’t going anywhere. Members of the First Nation use the nearby land extensively, Chief Sheldon Sunshine wrote in an open letter to Premier Danielle Smith shortly after the Wonder Valley announcement.
“Our people have traplines in this area; we rely on the water from the Smoky River; and it is one of the few areas accessible to exercise our way of life, which has been systemically eroded by unmitigated cumulative effects resulting from the provincial government’s authorizations of industrial development in our territory,” Sunshine wrote.
The GIG is on land the province sold to the municipality in 2022. The Sturgeon Lake Cree opposed that transfer at the time. Now, Sunshine’s letter said, they’re learning about development plans from news releases.
“We therefore and respectfully ask that the provincial government cease and desist from using our traditional territory in this manner and in coordination with a proponent, without our free, prior and informed consent,” the chief wrote. The Logic was unable to arrange an interview with Sunshine. All the band councillors were in Edmonton during a recent visit to the First Nation’s administrative office.
Yet work at the GIG is continuing. One morning in late November, just after the first snow had stuck, fresh tire tracks led into the site and off into the bush. A pair of big yellow tripods holding surveying electronics sat by the side of the road, surrounded by footprints. Somebody was in the woods somewhere, measuring something.Scams gotta keep conning people.
Anderson at the chamber of commerce gives Wonder Valley good odds of happening: “I’m all the way up to 70 per cent at this point,” he says. Ratzlaff is hopeful, too. “Things are getting really close. There’s just a last few little hoops to jump through here,” he says. “But things are getting closer all the time.”
With files from Murad Hemmadi in Toronto
Refer also to:
‘We’re Living in a Nightmare:’ Inside the Health Crisis of a Texas Bitcoin Town
… According to a recent report, data centers will use 8% of total U.S. power by 2030, up from 3% in 2022. And if operators continue to locate the centers near existing communities and prioritize profits above all else, then the story of Granbury could become the story of countless small towns across America.
@carnage4life.bsky.social:
Donald Trump has filed an executive order asking federal agencies to fight state AI laws including using tactics like withholding federal funding.
The AI boom is the only bright spot in the Trumpflation economy and he’s going fight tooth and nail to keep the bubble inflated.
@bullbearalert.bsky.social:
The question is whether Trump can actually keep the AI bubble inflated, and whether anyone in history has ever managed to keep a bubble inflated indefinitely, whether it’s the tulip bubble in 1637 or the housing bubble of 2008?
@timharford.ft.com:
Swiss psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross suggested that there are five stages of grief, but we have leapt instead from stage one, denial — “there is no AI bubble”, to stage five, acceptance — “AI is a bubble and bubbles are great”.
timharford.com/2025/12/are-…