Monday, August 18, 2025
Explosion Rocks Cargo Ship Departing Baltimore Harbor
An explosion has been reported on a cargo ship traveling through the outbound shipping lane of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor near the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge.
According to shipping expert Sal Mercogliano, the cargo ship MV W Sapphire “suffered an explosion in its forward hold” and was “fully loaded” at the time of the incident.
Mercogliano said the W Sapphire “had just departed from the CSX Curtis Bay coal piers in Baltimore” and suggested “this may have been a coal explosion in the forward hold.”
Shipping expert John Konrad notes, "Coal can create methane and is subject to self-heating and liquefication. Bulkers can explode..."
Baltimore City Fire spokesperson John Marsh told local station WBAL-TV that the explosion occurred around 6:28 p.m. local time. No details were provided about the source of the blast.
*Developing...
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/explosion-rocks-cargo-ship-departing-baltimore-harbor
How Much Energy Does ChatGPT's Newest Model Consume?
by Haley Zaremba via OilPrice.com,
The energy consumption of the newest version of ChatGPT is significantly higher than previous models, with estimates suggesting it could be up to 20 times more energy-intensive than the first version.
There is a severe lack of transparency regarding the energy use and environmental impact of AI models, as there are no mandates forcing AI companies to disclose this information.
The increasing energy demands of AI are contributing to rising electricity costs for consumers and raising concerns about the broader environmental impact of the tech industry.
How much energy does the newest version of ChatGPT consume? No one knows for sure, but one thing is certain – it’s a whole lot. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, hasn’t released any official figures for the large language model’s energy footprints, but academics are working to quantify the energy use for query – and it’s considerably higher than for previous models.
There are no mandates forcing AI companies to disclose their energy use or environmental impact, so most do not offer up those kinds of statistics publicly. As of May of this year, 84 percent of all large language model traffic was conducted on AI models with zero environmental disclosures.
“It blows my mind that you can buy a car and know how many miles per gallon it consumes, yet we use all these AI tools every day and we have absolutely no efficiency metrics, emissions factors, nothing,” says Sasha Luccioni, climate lead at an AI company called Hugging Face.
“It’s not mandated, it’s not regulatory. Given where we are with the climate crisis, it should be top of the agenda for regulators everywhere,” she continued.
Sam Altman, the Chief Executive Officer of OpenAI, has thrown out some figures into the public sphere – saying that ChatGPT consumes 0.34 watt-hours of energy and 0.000085 gallons of water per query – but has left out key details like what model these numbers refer to, and has offered no backup or corroboration for his statements.
Experts from outside the OpenAI fold have estimated that ChatGPT-5 may use as much as 20 times more energy as the first version of ChatGPT, and at the very least uses several times more.
“A more complex model like GPT-5 consumes more power both during training and during inference. It’s also targeted at long thinking … I can safely say that it’s going to consume a lot more power than GPT-4,” Rakesh Kumar, a professor at the University of Illinois, recently told The Guardian. Kumar’s current work focuses on AI’s energy consumption.
While a query to ChatGPT in 2023 would have consumed about 2 watt-hours, researchers at the University of Rhode Island’s AI lab found that ChatGPT-5 can use up to 40 watt-hours of electricity to configure a medium-length response (around 1,000 tokens).
On average, they estimate that the model uses slightly over 18 watt-hours for such a response.
This places ChatGPT-5 at a higher energy consumption rate than any other of the AI models they track save for two: OpenAI’s o3 reasoning model and Deepseek’s R1.
Calculating these estimated energy consumption rates was no easy feat, considering the severe lack of transparency in the sector, in spite of increasing scrutiny.
“It’s more critical than ever to address AI’s true environmental cost,” University of Rhode Island professor Marwan Abdelatti told The Guardian.
“We call on OpenAI and other developers to use this moment to commit to full transparency by publicly disclosing GPT-5’s environmental impact.”
While tech companies consume more and more energy each year to power their AI ambitions, common consumers are suffering the consequences. It’s consumers who are footing the bill for skyrocketing energy usage. The New York Times warns that “electricity rates for individuals and small businesses could rise sharply as Amazon, Google, Microsoft and other technology companies build data centers and expand into the energy business.”
"We are witnessing a massive transfer of wealth from residential utility customers to large corporations—data centers and large utilities and their corporate parents, which profit from building additional energy infrastructure," Maryland People's Counsel David Lapp recently told Business Insider.
"Utility regulation is failing to protect residential customers, contributing to an energy affordability crisis.”
Moreover, Silicon Valley's backtracking on climate pledges will directly impact global communities, whether or not they ever use AI.
https://www.zerohedge.com/ai/how-much-energy-does-chatgpts-newest-model-consume
Brooklyn pols call for act of war on the feds — a pathetic new low in NYC politics
Wacko Brooklyn politicians want New York to declare war on the US government by “turning off the power” to 26 Federal Plaza: Assemblyman Robert Carroll and City Councilman Justin Brannan claim it’s the only way to counter “the soft launch of a fascist regime.”
Carroll (D-Park Slope) and Brannan (D-Bay Ridge) are mad that ICE is detaining illegal migrants for deportation inside the Jacob Javits building, which houses the Social Security Administration, HUD and other agencies.
Their solution: Have city government lay siege to force the feds to release the criminal aliens being held “illegally.”
Never mind that the first victims of this idiocy would be the detainees, who would lose light, A/C and probably drinking water.
Time for everyone who called the Jan. 6 Capitol riot an “insurrection” to check their dictionaries: Intentionally cutting off the power to interfere with federal law enforcement surely fits the bill, every bit as much as the Confederates firing on Ft. Sumter.
This would be outright sedition — if the Brooklyn bozos were serious.
Even if they’re unfamiliar with the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution, Brannan and Carroll have to know that neither the city nor state has any authority to disrupt the US government as it carries out the policies of the president: Fighting this out has to happen in the courts,or at the ballot box — period.
But the rebel yells demonstrate their loyalty to the extremism that now defines the Democratic Party in New York, right up there with Zohran Mamdani’s vow to be “Trump’s worst nightmare.”
Heck, Brannan lost his bid for comptroller and is off the City Council come January, while Carroll’s probably a decade from having enough seniority to do much in the Assembly: This call for open rebellion looks mostly like a bid for City Hall positions under a Mayor Mamdani.
Local politics is in a sad state indeed when calling for insurrection is how pols apply for new jobs.
AIG, Chubb Beat CVS in Delaware on Opioid Litigation Claims
In a blow to commercial policyholders, Delaware’s high court ruled that
The underlying suits don’t seek damages “because of any specific person’s bodily injury or damage to any specific property” and therefore don’t trigger coverage under liability insurance policies sold by carriers including units of
Litigation against retail pharmacy operators, drugmakers, and other companies over their alleged contributions to the opioid epidemic has sparked insurance fights across the country.
The state’s high court delivered a landmark ruling in 2022 siding with
On appeal, CVS argued insurance provisions for pharmacist liability afforded broader coverage than the policies at issue in the Rite Aid case.
The justices disagreed, however, writing that the pharmacist endorsements don’t modify the threshold requirement that damages must be “because of bodily injury or property damage.”
The high court also disagreed with CVS about the nature of the damages sought in some of the underlying suits.
Even suits with allegations specifying the numbers of residents treated, the medication provided, the number of doses, and the cost per dose, and suits with more general allegations of treatment expenses, didn’t seek recovery for any specific, individualized bodily injury, Chief Justice Collins J. Seitz, Jr. wrote for the court.
The Delaware Supreme Court also shot down CVS’ argument that property damage should be treated differently than bodily injury claims.
“It would be inconsistent to require specific and individualized personal injury damage but permit general economic property damage,” Seitz said.
“We disagree with the Delaware Supreme Court’s decision today,” a spokesperson for CVS said in a written statement.
Public Nuisance Claims
The ruling, which largely relies on and expands the high court’s position in Rite Aid, comes as other corporate policyholders are litigating general liability coverage for opioid and similar public nuisance claims in Delaware.
McKinsey & Co. was sued by AIG and Chubb units in Delaware Superior Court earlier this year over coverage for opioid lawsuits, though the consulting giant is pushing to litigate the dispute in New York state court instead.
Insurers, on the other hand, will likely welcome the Delaware justices’ latest decision.
Units of Chubb and Hartford Insurance Group Inc. that sued Meta Platforms Inc. last year over public nuisance litigation alleging the social media giant got minors hooked on its platforms were likely hoping to rely on Rite Aid to deny coverage.
Blank Rome LLP and Berger McDermott LLP represent CVS. The insurers are represented by firms including Holwell Shuster & Goldberg LLP, Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, BatesCarey LLP, Clyde & Co., and Kennedys Law LLP.