Kagi is not an original source.

Ground news was started by the right wing to shift the Overton window rightward. It's funded by Joe Ricketts, a conspicuous conservative super-PAC donor and gets its bias scores from AllSides, which grew out of Republican organizations.

Yep, here’s their page for this topic: https://ground.news/article/lvv-made-a-request-to-the-police...

I said nothing about politics, you are reading your own stuff into it. I linked to the original reporting that every other article is a rewrite of. Sorry that you find it biased.

You are indeed idiots, if you think that climate collapse is a bigger and more acute threat to EU than the coming economic collapse caused by lack of growth and innovation compared to US and China. More environmental regulations will not help Europe rebuild the industrial base it needs to defend itself against Russia+China without the US.

The enemy of my friend is my…. Frenemy?

It does almost seem like it, doesn’t it?

>After the tech company illegally stripped the entire area to build a datacentre – taking even the top soil with it – all that remains is a vast expanse of mud indented with the trail marks of machinery, puddles and mounds of earth, roots and branches. Residents say that brown water flowing off the site is going into a stream that feeds the Oulujoki River.

Yup, definitely no partisan spin in the guardian article...c'mon

The guardian is just lying more politely.

> Because of the news articles.

Yes, obviously people are only angry about things they know about. This says absolutely nothing about the news articles, as the same thing thing can be said about any event, no matter how justified the anger would be.

An article making people angry doesn't automatically make the article rage- or clickbait.

"Because of the news articles."

Yes, generally that's how you make public aware of illegal activity.

Not having news about companies braking laws mean generally that the country is likely quite corrupt.

So I don't know where you are from but in Finland anyone breaking a law is expected to be treated equally.

If an individual had ignored the process to this extent they would be in quite hot water.

A large multinational company avoiding the official process feels unjust and is exactly the thing public has been extremely worried of happening regarding the environmental impact.

So it's not because news inflamed something.

It's because something like this is exactly what the public has been alarmed about for a long time.

They definitely intended to cut down the trees. The municipalities far away from cities are poor. And Google is giving payoffs to/threatening local politicians/bureaucrats to get these permits quickly. They promise to fund whatever projects/schools/roads which is pennies to them. While skipping the law set by the central government.

Around here we think that those who pay money to avoid the law have a spot behind the Sauna. I’m quite sure after the next election, because of these shenanigans, we start taxing these DCs to oblivion.

Typically things like zoning and environmental assessments are done by different organizations with different mandates.

https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000012304991.html for starters.

Basically the law says you need to do the assessment if you're removing the trees permanently from over 200 hectares. The company asked for an exemption, the relevant bureau said nope, they cut anyway.

The assessment also concerns assessing for example runoff into rivers and neighbouring areas which include natural peatland. The culture in Finland respects the rule of law and people are often quite informed and detail oriented about matters of land management. The process exists for a reason and if people try to shortcut it the land should be forfitted although clearly there is so much money involved that it won't be. If they don't send a string message now, it errodes people's trust in the law and society which as said is very important in Finland. It keeps things working well.

> (a parking ticket level occurnace)

Remember Finland is the country where we scale fines based on income, as the famous article says "Home of the $103,000 Speeding Ticket."

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/finland...

Not appropriate for this specific issue, but for "traffic ticket" it's worth remembering.

How many times do we get to take “microscopic compared to total forested land” away?

Boy I sure hope it’s infinity times!

Anyway it seems like you’re incorrect. They actually didn’t have the approval necessary, and no, a zoning approval does not grant all other required forms of approval (obviously).

I don't think people realize that there was no option of do we not log the forest, but imho the issue is any forest being cut down for data centers is a waste of sand and effort, make them in deserts or dry land. In the middle of oceans works as well, we are getting data centers in all sorts of weird and imho wrong places.

I find this issue small but the choice of these companies to pick the convenient location for them to build a data center concerning, and govts shouldn't be bending over. If these things can be built in space we can build them in places where no one lives and no living being is harmed or logged.. cough.

Not sure if I should respond to the attitude or the facts here...

I'm guessing you're out of the blast radius so it's easy to form an image and shadow box against it...with the hope others will buy into the diversion...

Btw I'm not even against all data centers. I am for following the law.

Trees take a generation or two to regrow. They don't "grow like weeds." Someone has to plant and protect them while they grow. That's a lot of work.

In the meantime, there are displaced wolves roaming the neighborhoods.

Plus, these trees aren't going to be replanted like in your projection. They're getting replaced with steel, concrete, asphalt, and electronics. All of which supporting tech that consumes rather than generates resources.

And the trees are^Wwere part of a system. They kept muddy water from flowing into the other stream. This will have all kinds of "downstrean" (heh) effects.

Forests can be cleared like this, but it requires assessment, approval and preparation. This wrecklessness is the epitome of "move fast and break things," "ask forgiveness rather than permission," and the "never believe you're wrong" mindsets that have caused so much damage.

As if people didnt have enough reasons to mistrust the U.S.

I hope this disastwe hastens Europe toward de-googlification.

It’s funny that we’re getting rid of cold climate places by 1) felling trees (small bundles at a time!) and 2) building data centers

The trees are part of an ecosystem. Even though they can be planted elsewhere, who knows how many endangered species this will affect.

>250k trees seems like a lot from you looking out your window. From the perspective of trees we cut down every year (that we account for) it is close to a rounding error.

Because there's a bigger bad the smaller bad is totally fine and nobody should care?

And it seems it was 400k in total :

"In addition to the 250,000 trees felled at Muhos, Annala estimates that an additional 150,000 trees were felled at Otanmäki"

I don't care how sick our society is to normalize cutting 400k trees for data centers. It's wrong.

They still broke the law. The law is kinda strict about logging.

> That sounds ridiculous though, no? Look at how much forest the country has.

The British isles where once covered in forest, too. Then they decided to build a big fleet. Then came the industrial revolution. Now they're down to some 13% of forest...

Yes, Finland might be one of most forested countries in the world (by percentage of land area) now, but history shows that can change quickly if one is not careful about it. Death of a country's forest by a thousand cuts, if you will :)

To an outsider this might sound like an overreaction, but it has to be taken seriously - keep in mind that Finland is one of Europe's premiere locations for grand scale datacentre buildout. Cool climate, lots of available land, politically stable, easy access to cheap and clean power; many very good reasons to assume that this will not be the last datacentre being built there. So yeah, stories like this concern people.

It seems out of proportion that it's national news when a foreign megacorporation illegally logs woods in order to build a data centre?

They (Tuike Finland, the Google subsidiary, not a contractor) even asked the authorities if they could skip doing the assessment, were not exempted, and they still continued to log.

In my world, ignoring the law isn't "a permitting mishap". Or do you also call speeding "an accelerator mishap"?

Google didn't do the environmental impact assessment the law required. Google asked the regulators if they could get a case-by-case decision to not do it. Regulators shot down Google's idea, emphasising how a clearance as large as the one they planned would specifically require it. And Google continued to log for months after this.

They're still like nine weeks away from submitting their environmental impact assessment by their own statements. For a logging project they started in March.

You can't even put this on ignorance when they engage in correspondence with the regulators and get told specifically about it. And as Helsingin Sanomat put it: they could have found this information easily on Google.

Ok so if the count had been 0 you still would be against it because you must jump through pointless bureaucratic hoops?

In case of a large war, data centers (even foreign ones) can be commandeered by the government to train military AI for autonomous drones or combat robots ASAP. This is clearly where the future of warfare is heading.

Protecting it could indeed be an issue, but destruction is not guaranteed. Finland has advanced air defense.

Nice, let's repost it tomorrow then

No, that's not what it's opposed to.

There's a vast ocean of middle ground.

The environmentally conscious thing to do the necessary environmental impact assessments before clear-cutting the land.

According to the Guardian article, which it the source the NY Post used, if those trees were illegally logged, they cannot be sold to wood-processing plants.

Do you know if the law also prohibits the topsoil from being sold to farms?

It really does depend on your time frame, does it not?

This is part of a 2 year, €13 billion investment by Google, so €5 billion is nearly all of the yearly investment of a single project.

On the other hand, Finland is only a part of Google's world-wide projects, and these projects are expected to produce revenue for, what, decades?

A 10-year time frame changes your numbers to ~0.1% and ~0.2%.

The weird part is that they would’ve gotten the right permit in a few weeks. Now they are just sending a message that they are above the law. Even if you are allowed to do something, it doesn’t mean there isn’t limitations how you can do it.