Ainsworth's Folly vs. the Truth About Data Centers and Solar Farms

awakealabama
5 hours ago
16 min read

By Dean Odle

Let me begin by stating that I do not play the political games that Republicans in Montgomery and Birmingham like to play. Nor will I “go along to get along” when I see something that is harming or will harm Alabamians and endanger Alabama and our God-given freedom.

Alabama’s Lt. Governor Will Ainsworth and I have a disagreement, but it’s not the first time. In July of 2021 we had a very loud public disagreement when he said I should “stay in my lane” (because I had his picture on one of my banners) and I confronted him about both his and Governor Kay Ivey’s mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic. I feel it is the right and duty of every Alabamian to make sure their voice is heard by those who were elected to represent us!

The most recent disagreement stems from an op-ed that he wrote for 1819News on March 16, 2026, entitled, “Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth: Alabamians must dare defend all our rights.” The title makes it sound like a pro-freedom, red state Republican warning to guard and defend our rights. However, midway through his slick talk about freedom and protecting property rights, he starts defending a massive $800 million solar farm project in south Alabama that Alabamians have been fighting tooth and nail. That’s when my blood began to boil! I immediately saw through his clever manipulation. He pulls on the heart strings of freedom-loving Alabamians and then pushes us to accept the well-hidden plan of the coming technological tyranny.

Ainsworth stated that the community’s resistance to a 4,500-acre, $800 million solar farm might endanger mom and pop businesses in the future. That is nothing more than gross fearmongering/emotional manipulation and comparing apples to oranges. Mom and pop businesses in Alabama do not take up thousands of acres of farmland, require massive amounts of electricity and water, or endanger the environment. And small businesses in Alabama are not building the infrastructure of an unparalleled electronic surveillance system in the name of economic development. Like I said, comparing apples to oranges.

Coincidentally (or is it?), just two weeks after the outgoing Lt. Governor used the property rights argument to defend the building of data centers and solar farms, 1819News posted an article from the CEO of Silicon Ranch using the same argument about property rights being the issue. He even used the exact same phrase the Lt. Governor used in his article about not listening to the “loudest voices in room.” Are they coordinating a narrative together just like the mainstream news does? It certainly does sound like they are in cahoots. However, the Silicon Ranch CEO took the rhetoric to whole new level when he labeled any opposition against their solar panel farms as spreading “…propaganda, misinformation, and conspiracy theories.” [i] But it will be evident as we dive further into this matter that it’s not a “conspiracy theory” when they tell you their plan and then you see them carrying it out.

The Projects

The project in Baldwin County, proposed by Silicon Ranch, is to provide extra electricity to power a Meta data center in Montgomery. These data centers are enormous complexes that are filled with servers, data storage drives, and network equipment, for storing, processing and disseminating data primarily fueled by the rising demand of Artificial Intelligence (AI) programs. These large facilities must have powerful cooling systems, fire suppression, and consistent power sources due to the heat generated by their high-speed servers. They require massive amounts of electricity to run AI and they must have access to a lot of water to cool their servers. The needs of these data center will put a strain on our power grid and our water supply in Alabama…not to mention the farmland that will be made useless by these monstrosities.

Of course, these electricity-eating data centers coming to our state means more money for Alabama Power and as we know, Alabama Power has been “influencing” most of the politicians and biggest news outlets in Alabama for many years. They are motivated by profits and political power, but something much bigger is at stake. Artificial Intelligence is now and will ultimately be used to track our every move, conversation, and financial transaction. In the days ahead, AI and its’ data center brains will also use robots and drones to enforce their social credit system very much like what is already happening in Communist China. In essence, our leaders are allowing these companies to build and move forward with the very things that will take away our freedom and ability to provide for ourselves. This is why we must speak up and fight against solar farms and data centers from taking over Alabama.

The residents of Bessemer, Alabama recently stood up against the $14.5 billion dollar data center project, but the politicians are pushing forward regardless of the fact that this 100-acre complex will push out 18 family farms and use an estimated 2 million gallons of water a day (which in other states has caused wells to run dry and lowered river levels). It will require 1,200 megawatts of electricity for 24-hour operations, which is roughly the same amount of power needed for a city of 760,000 residents. That would correlate to nine percent of Alabama Power’s current power-generating capacity.[ii] And it will also endanger over 17 species in that region, but if you care about all of this, you suddenly get labeled a wacko-environmentalist or someone who is against property rights.

Here’s the scam…for power companies and politicians to lure data centers to their service areas, the power and water utilities are cutting sweetheart deals with Big Tech companies like Meta. Research into 50 different regulatory proceedings across the country revealed that data centers are underpaying the utilities and these deals are being kept from the public. They keep it from us because in the end, those utilities will pass on their financial shortfalls to us “regular folks” in our monthly power and water bills.

An example of this scenario occurred in Louisiana in 2025 when a utility company proposed spending $3-4 billion on a new power plant to meet the electricity demand from a new Meta data center. They tried to keep the details secret[iii] but unredacted regulatory filings revealed that the public will be paying for half of Meta’s new power plant.[iv] Meta signed a 15-year deal that only obligates them to pay for half the $3-4 billion of new power infrastructure.

I wonder what sweetheart deals Alabama Power made with Meta that will ultimately fall on the people of Alabama to subsidize through our power bills while Meta and Alabama Power make obscene amounts of money? Now, you know why the crooked politicians in Montgomery want to take over the Public Service Commission by stacking it with appointees and a Secretary of Energy position. And some of the appointees will stay on until 2031 which is coincidentally (or is it?) long enough to accomplish the United Nation’s Agenda 2030. So you see, SB360 (now known as HB475 after the bait and switch by wicked legislators on 3/31) was never about lowering your power bills or regulating the monopoly of Alabama Power.

Thank God, the residents of Baldwin County found out and started resisting this stealthy attempt to put massive solar farms in their community. AL.com reported, “Residents in the unincorporated community of about 350 to 500 residents expressed frustration at the potential environmental impacts of building a solar farm on the property, which sits along the Mobile-Tensaw River Delta. It’s an area known for its biodiversity…There are wetlands on the property, which feed into the delta. Those wetlands help keep the water in the delta—and then Mobile Bay—clean, residents argued. In addition, endangered species like the gopher tortoise and Alabama red-bellied turtle call it home.”

These concerns do not come from handwringing, ultra-left environmental wackos, the concerns about the negative impact of solar farms in south Alabama are real and serious. These solar panels come primarily from China, and they are full of toxic chemicals that are dangerous to wildlife, humans, the water table and the soil. They contain cadmium, silicon tetrachloride, and lead. Damaged panels could leak these contaminants into the soil. “Exposed to humid air, silicon tetrachloride turns into acids and poisonous hydrogen chloride gas. Ren Bingyan, a professor of material sciences at Hebei Industrial University, contacted by the Post, told the paper that ‘the land where you dump or bury it will be infertile. No grass or trees will grow in its place … It is poisonous, it is polluting. Human beings can never touch it.’” [v] Thus, putting these solar panel farms in a place that is so close to the Gulf of America where hurricanes are known to make landfall is way too risky. In fact, it is irresponsible and stupid.

The Bigger Picture

However, the bigger picture seems to elude most of our politicians in Alabama. Their ignorance and/or kickbacks received have blinded them to the most disturbing facts about this push for more solar farms and data centers. First, neither solar farms nor data centers create a lot of long-term job opportunities. Secondly, companies like Silicon Farms are completely “woke agenda” far-left companies pushing ESGs, carbon credits, and the United Nation’s sustainable development goals (which includes the idiotic idea that carbon emissions are causing a climate crisis that must be addressed by switching from fossil fuels to solar panels and windmills only).

It is no coincidence that the leadership of Silicon Ranch is a bunch of left-wing Democrats. Their founding chairman is the former Democrat Governor of Tennessee, Philip Bredesen. He served as Tennessee’s Governor from 2003 until 2011 and Mayor of Nashville from 1991 until 1999. The co-founder of Silicon Ranch who served as CEO of the company until becoming Chairman of Board in July 2019 is former Democrat Matt Kisber. Kisber served ten two-year terms in the Tennessee House of Representatives. And their current president, co-founder and CEO Reagan Farr is a bigtime Democrat that served in Governor Bredesen’s administration. On Farr’s Facebook page he openly supported Democrat David Briley for Mayor of Nashville.[vi] This is the same David Briley that “…during the 2000 presidential election, was a Tennessee state co-chair of GoreNet. GoreNet was a group that supported the Al Gore campaign with a focus on grassroots and online organizing as well as hosting small dollar donor events.” [vii] And what was Democrat Al Gore all about? The former vice president and senator from Tennessee has been pushing the ridiculous theory that C02 causes global warming and therefore, the earth must be covered with solar panels. I also learned from Mr. Farr’s Facebook page that he voted Joe Biden in 2020.

In January 2022, Reuters reported that Silicon Farms received $775 million in equity capital and their CEO Reagan Farr said in remarks about the carbon-credit money from Royal Dutch SHELL and other companies, “It really enables us to continue to grow and scale and execute being not just a renewable energy solution provider, but increasingly a carbon solution and ESG (environmental, social and governance) provider as well.” [viii]

Silicon Ranch also owns a company by the name of Clearloop which states on their webpage, “Over the next ten years, we need to stop burning fossil fuels—like coal and gas—to power the things we do every day—charge our phones, light our homes, and cook our meals. Clearloop helps companies and communities accelerate the cleaning of the U.S. electricity in the hardest to reach places…Your investment today helps build new solar projects that will permanently clear the carbon out of the U.S. electricity grid by replacing fossil fuels with clean energy for at least the next 40 years.” [ix]

This is nothing more than the world governance organizations like the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, the World Government Summit Organization, and woke left-wing companies like Meta, Amazon, IBM, Visa, Microsoft, and 637 other signatories of the Climate Pledge pushing one of the biggest lies ever perpetrated on mankind to control us. It is the lie that carbon emission (CO2) is pushing the earth to a climate disaster that can only be avoided by stopping the use of all fossil fuels by 2040.

Thank God that a group of over 1,900 scientists have come out and exposed this great climate change hoax. However, the masses have been deceived and even our own Lt. Governor of Alabama has fallen right in line with this UN “climate crisis” by defending the Silicon Farms projects in Alabama. Here’s what several of those 1,900 scientists stated about this fake narrative:

“Deeply flawed logic, obscured by shrewd and unrelenting propaganda, actually enabled a coalition of powerful special interests to convince nearly everyone in the world that Co2 from human industry was a dangerous plant destroying toxin. It will be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world – that Co2 the life of plants was considered for a time to be a deadly poison.” – Professor Richard Lindzen, Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Sciences at MIT.

Dr Nils-Axel Mörner was a former Committee Chairman at the UN International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He was an expert involved in reviewing the first IPPC documents. He says the UN IPPC is misleading humanity about climate change. He tried to warn that the IPPC were publishing lies and false information that would inevitably be discredited. In an interview, he stated: “This is the most dangerous and frightening part of it. How a lobbyist group, such as the IPPC, has been able to fool the whole world. These organized and deceitful forces are dangerous” and expressed shock “that the UN and governments would parade children around the place at UN Climate summits as propaganda props.”

He states, “Solar activity is the dominant factor in climate and not Co2… something is basically sick in the blame Co2 hypothesis…It was launched more than 100 years ago and almost immediately excellent physicists demonstrated that the hypothesis did not work.”

Mörner went on to say, “I was the chairman of the only international committee on sea levels changes and as such a person I was elected to be the expert reviewer on the (UN IPPC) sea levels chapter. It was written by 38 persons and not a single one was a sea level specialist… I was shocked by the low quality it was like a student paper… I went through it and showed them that it was wrong and wrong and wrong…The scientific truth is on the side of the sceptics… I have thousands of high ranked scientists all over the world who agree that NO, CO2 is not the driving mechanism and that everything is exaggerated.”

“In the field of physics 80 to 90% of physicists know that the Co2 hypothesis is wrong… Of course, metrologists they believe in this because that is their own profession – they live on it.… I suspect that behind-the-scenes promoters… have an ulterior motive… It’s a wonderful way of controlling taxation controlling people” – Dr Nils-Axel Mörner, a former Committee Chairman at the UN IPPC, and former head of the Paleo Geo-physics and Geo-dynamics department in Stockholm.

Another climate scientist with impeccable credentials that has broken ranks with this UN 2030 climate crisis nonsense is Dr Mototaka Nakamura. He asserts, “Our models are mickey-mouse mockeries of the real world.” Dr. Nakamura received a Doctor of Science from MIT, and for nearly 25 years specialized in abnormal weather and climate change at prestigious institutions that included MIT, Georgia Institute of Technology, NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, JAMSTEC and Duke University. Dr Nakamura explains why the data foundation underpinning global warming science is “untrustworthy” and cannot be relied on and that: “Global mean temperatures before 1980 are based on untrustworthy data.”

Dr. Nakamura states, “The whole climate crisis is not only fake news its fake science… of course climate change is real it’s been happening since the beginning of time, but it’s not dangerous and it’s not caused by people… climate change is a perfectly natural phenomenon and this modern warming period actually began about 300 years ago when the little ice age began to come to an end. There is nothing to be afraid of and all they are doing is instilling fear. Most of the scientists who are saying it’s a crisis are on perpetual government grants.”

“I was one of the (Greenpeace) founders… by the mid-80s… we were hijacked by the extreme left who basically took Greenpeace from a science-based organization to an organization based on sensationalism, misinformation and fear… you don’t have a plan to feed 8 billion people without fossils fuels or get the food into the cities…” – Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace. [x]

The United Nations 2030 Agenda

Sadly, even though several thousand very credible scientists continue to expose the lies of the climate change propagandists, the fearmongering about a fake “climate crisis” never ceases from the United Nations and their secretary general. For instance, UN Secretary General António Guterres stated in 2022, “Greenhouse gas emissions keep growing. Global temperatures keep rising. And our planet is fast approaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible. We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator. A window of opportunity remains open, but only a narrow shaft of light remains.” [xi]

In a February 2023 briefing to the UN general assembly, Guterres made it clear that their 2030 goal is to eliminate the use of fossil fuels (hence the term net-zero) by creating a renewable (solar panel) revolution, “I have a special message for fossil-fuel producers and their enablers, scrambling to expand production and raking in monster profits: If you cannot set a credible course for net-zero, with 2025 and 2030 targets covering all your operations, you should not be in business. Your core product is our core problem. We need a renewables revolution, not a self-destructive fossil fuel resurgence.” [xii]

Here are some of the United Nations stated goals for 2030:

B) Rapidly accelerate the global clean energy transition, with the goal of reaching net-zero emissions in a just, orderly, inclusive and equitable manner, with a view to achieving the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement, including by tripling the renewable energy capacity globally and doubling the global average annual rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030;

C) Dramatically scale up finance and investments, especially by tripling global investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency towards 2030, paying particular attention to the most vulnerable countries, including African countries, the least developed countries, landlocked developing countries and small island developing States.[xiii]

That means that the UN wants to cover the earth with solar panels and windmills and they are going to fund their agenda. They also claim that cattle farts are increasing the amount of CO2 and must be reduced. That’s why they have been trying to convince us to eat less meat. It’s also the reason the global governance crowd has zero concern over covering our precious farmland and cattle pastures with solar panels.

This is the way globalists get control of land, natural resources, and the food supply. Their fabricated “climate crisis” is just a ruse to give them a moral high ground to establish their goal of a worldwide totalitarian government that will be enforced through Artificial Intelligence. And if we take a look at what is happening in Alabama right now it seems evident that some of our politicians/leaders have been duped into supporting this evil 2030-net-zero-carbon-emissions agenda. They are offering farmers ridiculous amounts of money to sell their land so what exactly are the local and state politicians getting for their support? There should be nothing worth the future of Alabamians and our food security!

Food and Water Security Is National Security

Of course, the argument of Lt. Governor Will Ainsworth and other duped (or bribed?) politicians is that “…we must maintain the freedom of property rights,” meaning that the state, county, or local governments should not try to restrict any property owner from selling their land to one of these solar farms or data center companies. And though that sounds good on the surface, we must consider that Alabama and other states have made it illegal to sell land (especially farmland) to China. Why? Because our nation’s food and water security is a national security issue. We cannot allow our enemies to buy up and control our ability to grow our own food and raise our own cattle. We cannot allow them to use up or contaminate our water supply. And yet this is exactly what is happening via these left-wing corporations like Silicon Farms, Meta, Amazon, and other socialistic international organizations like the United Nations and the World Economic Forum.

What our leaders do not seem to understand is this… if we lose our farmland and water supply to those who have plainly stated their goal is to take away our freedoms “to save the planet” then we have allowed an enemy worse than China to take over. And as Americans and Alabamians, we better wake up and stop this globalist agenda from progressing in our country. We need our political leaders to get educated about this, get a backbone, and stop this globalist takeover… or we need to run them out of office.

Voters in Alabama also need to start asking these self-proclaimed, conservative Republican politicians in our red state why they want to defend and work with left-wing, woke companies that are owned and operated by Democrats. Why are they paving the way for companies that push the extreme environmental goals of the United Nations in order to build the very surveillance system that will be used to use to enslave us?

Recently, a large farm owner in Kentucky turned down a $26 million offer from an unnamed AI company to build a massive data center. Ida Huddleston and her family spoke to a CBS affiliate in Cincinnati, WKRC, about the big offer…

“They call us old stupid farmers, you know, but we’re not,” Ida Huddleston said. “We know whenever our food is disappearing, our lands are disappearing, and we don’t have any water—and poison. We know we’ve had it.” The family owns about 1,200 acres of farmland outside Maysville, about two and a half hours east of Louisville. Last April, an unnamed company approached them about purchasing roughly half the property for a proposed data center. “If it’s my way I’ll stay and hold and feed a nation,” said Delsia Bare, Huddleston’s daughter, told WKRC. “$26 million doesn’t mean anything.”

Bare said her family’s ties to the land span generations. “My grandfather and great-grandfather and a whole bunch of family has all lived here for years, paid taxes on it, fed a nation off of it,” she said. “Even raised wheat through the Depression and kept bread lines up in the United States of America when people didn’t have anything else.”

Bare said she is among dozens of landowners approached by an anonymous buyer described as a "major artificial intelligence company…” Land in Mason County is valued at about $6,000 per acre, she said, while the offer she received was roughly ten times that amount.” [xiv]

The bottom line is this…Alabama needs more farmers like this family in Kentucky who refuse to sell out, and we need political leaders to pass legislation to stop the sale of our farmland to these globalist corporations who are loyal to the United Nations and their delusional plan to stop the world from using fossil fuels and the raising of cattle between now and 2050. Our state government should be helping Alabama farmers succeed instead of helping left-wing, globalist corporations get richer. If they don’t do this, we are going to be in big trouble in the very near future.

Dean Odle is the Founder of Fire & Grace Church and FGSM (Fire & Grace School of Ministry) in Opelika Alabama. He is the author of four books. He is a former Republican candidate for Governor and Lt. Governor of Alabama. He is also the founder of Awake Alabama, which is a Christian, conservative, grassroots organization that does serious research and educates, informs, and mobilizes true conservatives to speak out and get involved in the political arena. Pastor Odle lives in Lee County with his wife Nancy and their youngest daughter. They have five children between them and six grandchildren. AwakeAlabama.org