how did they get permits to do this? not taking away from what they did, but pointing out that there's a politician or two that might also share the blame

Tar and feather the “Regional manager”

They didn't.

Cucked by the American tech stack again.

Wtf? People should be in jail over this

Short answer: Money

Long answer: Currency

Feed 'em to the wolves.

The government sold them the land, it's not like they thought Google was going to turn it in to a nature preserve. They knew exactly what Google was planning on doing with it, and it didn't involve keeping the trees.

And their own government that sold Google the land

People should be covered in meat juice and sent into the forest mud expanse for this

I mean, jail is one option, but the hungry wolves are right there.

I am so glad I never procreated.

I wonder, if there is an AI calamity that kills off humanity, how long it will take the earth to heal all the shit we've done to it?

Remember how quickly rivers cleaned up during Covid? Some things would get fixed basically overnight. Deforestation would take a year to resolve the worse of it, a couple of centuries to really get back to pre-agricultural times.

depends on what you mean by "heal."

nature can bounce back surprisingly quickly. we saw that during the lockdowns. it's a thing that gives me hope.

but also, so much irreversible damage has already been done; we're in a mass extinction, after all. it will be millions of years before we have a similar level of biodiversity as we did before humans took over the planet.

I mean sure, but they still didn't get proper authorization, likely because it comes with environmental assessments, and interventions which could very well include wolf relocation.

To be fair, on paper...

1. Sell land for millions.
2. Google applies for building permits.
3. Deny permits because of environmental impact.

The odds of them completely ignoring step 2 are honestly pretty slim. Building permits are still necessary even if you're planning on ignoring things like the environmental stuff.

The AI calamity that will kill off humanity (or at least our current way of life) is the massively increased output of greenhouse gases on account of the huge AI datacenter power usage, mostly fueled by fossil fuel generators.

This will speed up climate change and the mass extinction event already occuring. For lots of living species on this planet it is already too late. And instead of doing everything in our power to counter that, we are actively piling on top of the causes for it. All for nothing but greed.

Many habitats are completely fucked because of climate change though. For example, coral reefs likely will not survive except in isolated pockets. And because coral is a keystone species, all of the life that depends on them is also likely fucked.

Life in general will continue, but we are already well down the path of drastically reducing the planet’s biodiversity.

Fly them over to California and release them in Google's C-Suite.

Eons.

Air and temperature changes need to reset, too.

The pollution in our air, water, soil will travel, not disappear. They may eventually over very long geological timescales, but the poisons may never truly be neutralized, but only eventually locked back in with another ice age or deep embedding in soil and ice.

That said, I am not a scientist, paid or otherwise.

Lol, no.

I hate this timeline. Fuck Google and all these big tech assholes

In a more just timeline, heroes would feed Sundar Pichai's worthless carcass directly to those wolves.

Rotten dinos, virii, radioactiva material WebTV weren't poison until they were mined and thawed, millenia after they froze and were buried in mud and ice, which also took time. Lol yes.

A pox on auto-incorrect.

I like how the Finnish government protects its people.

when one sells property, as one does, nobody expects the buyers to do really dumb shit.

sell a house. buyer cooks meth in it. house is decommissioned and demolished.

see? same thing.

Whoever these nameleless data center tyrants are, they're of the eminent domain caliber. They don't need permits for anything.

how dare you bring facts to this emotional rollercoaster!

Google’s Finland country manager has apologized for unauthorized forest clearings near Muhos, which have turned 816 acres of forest into an expanse of mud

There are certain basic questions that should be asked when a company known for building massive data centers and employee campuses suddenly offers to buy over 1000 acres of forest land. The first that comes to mind is "what are you going to do with it?". But that's just me I guess.

Ooooookkkk, this is a step WAYYYYY too far. (Not that Google should be given any leeway.) I was under the assumption that they would keep their construction on pre-cleared and approved municipal land.

Guess I was wrong. Dammit.

I feel like the fact the 250,000 trees were illegally cleared should be in the article title.

How did this even happen? Did Google clear all that in 1 day? Or can people clear this big of a land and no one gets to know about it until everything is done?

I submit to you the best sad song I know, and about as relevant as it gets

https://youtu.be/kM5ABrBy7g8

How did no one see the equipment coming in and the wood going out. It's not invisible

It really depends on size of the team and equipment. Three guys with a hand saw, the trees will probably grow back as fast as they clear them. Three hundred guys each running an industrial feller, that's done by lunch and they've got time for some kebabs (maybe an exaggeration, but still).

If they snuck in a large enough team and clearcut, it's very plausible they could do that in a week or two without someone visiting and noticing.

Meanwhile, people aggressively defend their use of chatgpt and other google services.

Actual adults around me think I'm some kind of conspiracy theorist for using alternatives.

As if problems caused by "AI" weren't even real.

Billionairism is a mental disease

I do not plan to cook and sell meth from this house. even if I were to cook and sell meth from this house, I would let you know first because that's the law.

I promise 🤞

see. not that hard to lie about it.

Clippy 2.0

Carcass means already dead, right? I feel like all involved decision makers should be felled like trees. And I don’t mean “one cut”. If you've seen how trees are felled, you know what I mean.

But it’s definitely predictable if you’re selling it to Walter white. The solution is not to sell houses you don’t want blown up to known meth manufacturers and not to sell land with forests you want to keep to companies that only buy land to build on it.

Equipment coming in isn't that unusual. Wood can be piled up while the job is done.

You're right. Its probably all still there, and about to be sold to ikea or something

you're not wrong. local governments often attempt to use unused property as a way to funnel much needed financial support into the city/state by ways of their own deception.

we'll sell you this property and you can do what you want with it. *some exemptions may apply

in this case, the buyer had enough "fuck you" money to see to it that this turned into a huge mess, ecological and otherwise.

that said. who's to blame? is it the government attempting to finance social programs for their city/state by selling unused property to companies? or is it the company that purchased the property and decided they don't have to follow the laws because they have enough money to do so and in turn destroyed hundreds of thousands of local ecologies out of spite?

personally, I'm blaming the company. they had no reason to do what they did other than to menace the locals.

sure the politicians aren't blameless, but they are operating within the laws.

Can we feed google employees and their share holders to the displaced puppies please?

We didn't mean to be evil. Soooorrryyy

Both are to blame, as is the person who was supposed to pay attention to whether anyone is amassing enough machinery to clear cut a forest. If nobody had that job, then that falls back to the government making the contract.

The company totally had reasons to build there, just not any that excuse clear cutting the forest, just like the government had reasons to sell it to them, just none good enough to excuse not doing their due diligence.