Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers • Hacker News Board

Re: Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers

#161

Post by nancyminusone » Tue, Aug 18, 2026, 7:00 PM UTC

mediaman wrote: post #123

stryan wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of it's a panic, but I'm leaning towards many of the concerns being true or at least partially true due to the sheer scale of the construction. The figures I've been seeing are something like half of all current private construction projects are data center related these days and it's the biggest single sector of construction in terms of money spent. It's also a lot easier to protest data centers then AI compani…

What I don't understand is why communities want to block the data centers. Just make them pay! Your electricity price shouldn't go up because of them. So just make a rate card for data centers that ensures the burden doesn't fall on residents. That's what Oregon started doing, and residents' electricity prices actually started falling, because the fixed costs of energy production were being spread across more kilowat…

My community tried that. They were coerced into a tax break instead.

https://www.wemu.org/wemu-news/2026-07-18/saline-township-re...

Re: Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers

#162

Post by techpression » Tue, Aug 18, 2026, 7:00 PM UTC

dgellow wrote: post #58

dwoldrich wrote: post #35

I cannot figure out if this data center panic is legit or trumped up. There are legitimate nation-state and political entities that would love to create pressure for degrowth in this area. And, pollution and natural resources are a concern, yes, fine, sure. NIMBY happens, I get it ... *BUT*, we've been building huge data centers for decades and they are minuscule compared to the size of the earth. My skeptic meter ma…

AI inference and training GPUs require way, way more power than anything manufactured before. Like, between 2020 and 2026 we went from ~400W for an A100 to ~1400W for an NVIDIA B300. And you cannot make that happen without changing the datacenter itself. More noise, way more complicated cooling setup, new power sources, etc. Not all datacenters are created equal. The financing for datacenters is also very shady and i…

This is very important, filling racks with GPU's instead of CPU's is vastly more power hungry (and hence will generate a lot more heat). Vera Rubin is 1800-2300W, mind boggling, these data centers even have new power architectures coming.

And I know what people will say, Vera Rubin is vastly more efficient, but that only matters if you have saturated your needs, it's meaningless if you need that capacity, and I'm sure it will run pretty much at a 100% 24/7.

Re: Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers

#163

Post by onjectic » Tue, Aug 18, 2026, 7:00 PM UTC

Lerc wrote: post #111

dwoldrich wrote: post #35

I cannot figure out if this data center panic is legit or trumped up. There are legitimate nation-state and political entities that would love to create pressure for degrowth in this area. And, pollution and natural resources are a concern, yes, fine, sure. NIMBY happens, I get it ... *BUT*, we've been building huge data centers for decades and they are minuscule compared to the size of the earth. My skeptic meter ma…

Well they say *As high as 2.2 °C, with average downwind air temperatures 0.7–0.9 °C warmer than corresponding upwind areas. Thermal signatures were detectable at distances up to 500 m" "As high as", combined with "up to" show two upper limits, but you can be sure if they were simultaneous they would have said so, especially when considering their prhasing of downwind being warmer comes after mentioning the upper limi…

You are right this seems to be misleading in a calculated way. And just because this is a junk paper doesn’t mean the groundwater issues aren’t real. I don’t really know who would be incentivized to publish this because as you say if it’s environmentalists they risk discrediting themselves.

Re: Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers

#164

Post by duplessitous » Tue, Aug 18, 2026, 7:02 PM UTC

Groxx wrote: post #112

duplessitous wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, it can. And by reserving that argument for when it is an actual problem, it strengths the overall position > There have been quite a lot of extremely-drawn-out lawsuits about them drawing more than claimed, dumping hot water into streams and damaging the ecosystem, and polluting other water sources by dumping dirty water into drinking water affecting areas. And I support strict EPA guidelines and heavy fees f…

By then it is too late, plus they never pay enough in damages. And the EPA does not have teeth currently, and damage will be done while fixing that too. So people fight by pattern recognition: abnormally incentivized and extremely large? Kill it with fire immediately . It's mostly reasonable and more effective than anything else at the moment.

Right, but misinformation is ineffective as it forces the conversation to revolve around the misinformation and not the topic we were attempting to discuss. If we need an example, we need look no further than this thread

Beyond this, it is my opinion that people are cowards. The few who care about this issue enough to perform terroristic actions won't spur any sort of meaningful change in the general population because the general population is not made up of extremists. The general population will not do anything that endangers their lives no matter how much they praise another for doing so

Luigi kills a healthcare CEO. Endless chatter about how this is the end for big pharma, the people are rising up, they better count their days because the people are paying attention. Nothing has happened since but more dead people due to denied insurance claims. But there sure are a lot of people talking about how another Luigi will show up sometime soon

An arsonist burned down a large warehouse. Endless chatter about how this is the end for big corporations screwing us at the register, how workers will rise up and burn even MORE if they don't get treated better. Nothing has happened since to these big businesses. There is no tiktok trend for large scale arson, no worker unionization. Nothing changed but boy do people talk about i

I would rather solve it politically by strengthening the EPA. We may just disagree here and that is fine.

Re: Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers

#165

Post by TheTaytay » Tue, Aug 18, 2026, 7:02 PM UTC

dwoldrich wrote: post #35

I cannot figure out if this data center panic is legit or trumped up. There are legitimate nation-state and political entities that would love to create pressure for degrowth in this area. And, pollution and natural resources are a concern, yes, fine, sure. NIMBY happens, I get it ... *BUT*, we've been building huge data centers for decades and they are minuscule compared to the size of the earth. My skeptic meter ma…

Yes! This is very suspicious and feels like TikTok -inspired outrage. Imagine describing the current 2026 state of the world/USA to an environmental activist or heck - an activist of ANY sort in the past 50 years. Include all environmental and political concerns. And then ask them to guess where a lot of outrage airtime and protest time was going. Data centers would be WAY down the list. Even if you told them to only consider things that affect water or energy consumption or environmental concerns…

It’s gotten so bad that it almost makes SENSE to launch data centers in space at this point, just to avoid the insanity.

People literally live next to data centers RIGHT now and don’t know it or care.

Imagine what a good investment it would be for a competing nation-state to rally and funnel all anti-growth and and anti-energy-consumption propaganda into the hand-wringing American doom-scroller…

Re: Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers

#166

Post by himata4113 » Tue, Aug 18, 2026, 7:02 PM UTC

kennywinker wrote: post #146

WarmWash wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but when we account for that scale, and look at resource usage, datacenters aren't topping the charts, or even really getting in the top 5, for anything. You have people who eat meat at every meal losing their mind over water usage and people who set their AC to 68 panicking over energy usage.

Eating meat fills my belly. Setting my AC to 68 keeps me cool. A data center costs my community money, damages the environment directly and indirectly, and further enriches a few already rich people. Can you spot the difference?

It directly and indirectly increases your quality of life and it is something you use every single day.

Re: Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers

#167

Post by dasil003 » Tue, Aug 18, 2026, 7:03 PM UTC

mr_00ff00 wrote: post #155

kennywinker wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eating meat fills my belly. Setting my AC to 68 keeps me cool. A data center costs my community money, damages the environment directly and indirectly, and further enriches a few already rich people. Can you spot the difference?

People say this and then use AI for literally everything they do.

Consider that there may be large populations doing both, but the overlap might be less than the internet jockey concludes via finger-in-the-wind hypocrisy check.

Re: Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers

#168

Post by larpingscholar » Tue, Aug 18, 2026, 7:03 PM UTC

mr_00ff00 wrote: post #113

sjoedev wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’re building data centers in the U.S. at an unprecedented and increasing rate [1]. Is it so hard to imagine that something which was fine at one scale may begin to cause issues at some massively higher scale? If I drink one glass of wine per day, it’s probably fine. If I drink three bottles per day, I’m gonna start having problems. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/monthly-spending-data-cen...

Valid point, but this looks like (roughly) 1 billion to 5 billion in a period of 10 years. 5x in a decade. The way it’s talked about you would think it’s orders of magnitude.

Rack densities have also more than doubled just in last 5 years

Re: Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers

#169

Post by nancyminusone » Tue, Aug 18, 2026, 7:04 PM UTC

dwoldrich wrote: post #35

I cannot figure out if this data center panic is legit or trumped up. There are legitimate nation-state and political entities that would love to create pressure for degrowth in this area. And, pollution and natural resources are a concern, yes, fine, sure. NIMBY happens, I get it ... *BUT*, we've been building huge data centers for decades and they are minuscule compared to the size of the earth. My skeptic meter ma…

You may have underestimated the degree to which normal, non-software people detest and hate AI, for whom it has little or no value, making the overall return fully negative.

Re: Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers

#170

Post by stryan » Tue, Aug 18, 2026, 7:04 PM UTC

mediaman wrote: post #123

stryan wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of it's a panic, but I'm leaning towards many of the concerns being true or at least partially true due to the sheer scale of the construction. The figures I've been seeing are something like half of all current private construction projects are data center related these days and it's the biggest single sector of construction in terms of money spent. It's also a lot easier to protest data centers then AI compani…

What I don't understand is why communities want to block the data centers. Just make them pay! Your electricity price shouldn't go up because of them. So just make a rate card for data centers that ensures the burden doesn't fall on residents. That's what Oregon started doing, and residents' electricity prices actually started falling, because the fixed costs of energy production were being spread across more kilowat…

I'm also in favor of making them pay, and in the end I'm expecting/hoping that's what will happen. But either way, when negotiating it's better to start from a harder position (no building) and soften up (limited building, cover the cost of extra electricity) then vice versa. Plus I'm sure some DCs would just pick another spot if forced to compromise; there's always some red county out there willing to do whatever just for a company to build there, that's why a lot of the DCs are being build in LA/AL/MS etc.

It might also be more complicated than you might think though due to the complexities of increasing power supply. Power companies also use prices raises to discourage residential use and conserve the existing supply for larger customers. They can't refuse to service residential but they also can't increase supply yet, so they just raise the prices until residential users "choose" to lower their power consumption.

My old power company told me it would be a temporary increase until supply was increased, but they said that the last time and it never happened. which, speaking of NOVA, was caused by the Loundon County allowing more data centers to be built. They get the money but since the power grid is regional everyone gets the bill :) .