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

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

#411

Post by quickthrowman »

missedthecue wrote: post #339
dylan604 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are we growing crops that depend on monsoon amounts of water in the desert? Because people with money and power have decided that's what they want to do.

The explanation has never made intuitive sense to me and the political power of almond and alfalfa farmers continues to elude me. Yes, almond farmers have money but Larry Ellison, Musk, and Sergey Brin have a shitload more. As do non-tech industries like Californian real estate developers. California has ~40 billionaires from real estate alone. That industry, and tech, and manufacturing, and everyone else is also com…

I don’t even know if they need to maintain political influence, they own water rights which are worth a ridiculous amount of money which entitles them to a share of water based on when the water usage began. It’s complicated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior-appropriation_water_righ...

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

#412

Post by gazebo2 »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #25

The whole data center heat/water thing is like not even in the top 100 risks/issues related to AI, but it's all people seem to care about. Why is that?

Noise and increased electricity costs. I feel like the people balking at anti-datacenter rhetoric are just intentionally missing the most obvious and directly impacting complaints from residents.

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

#413

Post by maxerickson »

sjoedev wrote: post #65
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…

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...

A nuclear power station puts out many times the waste heat of the sites mentioned in the article. We've apparently mostly made peace with the local impacts of those.

Thermal efficiency is in the 30s, so roughly 2x the electrical output as waste heat. Looks like waste heat from nuclear is still quite a bit more than from data centers.

Data centers are growing quickly and that's not including the waste heat from generating the energy the consume, just taking a quick look at the relative direct emission.

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

#414

Post by quickthrowman »

testerteert000a wrote: post #374
atleastoptimal wrote: post #25

The whole data center heat/water thing is like not even in the top 100 risks/issues related to AI, but it's all people seem to care about. Why is that?

Because "the water thing" is make or break for for the southwest, which includes LA, and LA's water system includes NorCal consequences, and California water issues include all-country impacts due to the farming there. If you haven't been paying attention to the "water thing," that doesn't mean it's not serious af.

Millions of acre-feet of water, far more than all of the data centers use in the United States combined for evaporative cooling, are used to flood irrigate alfalfa crops in California and Arizona to feed cows. 5% of this is exported. It’s orders of magnitude more water.

All of the irrigated golf courses combined use more water than all of the US data centers combined.

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

#415

Post by quickthrowman »

adamsb6 wrote: post #267

Something smells wrong. You could dump a gigawatt into resistive heating and not see such temperature rises so far away.

I’m confused. Rejecting one GW of heat to the building exterior with heat exchangers is going to heat up the area around the heat exchangers.

If you had a hypothetical 1 GW generator and used a hypothetical 1 GW loadbank with 1 GW of resistive heating and a fan that was outdoors, the air temperature would rise.

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

#416

Post by jst1fthsdys »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #328
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...

One thing I never see pushback about: Northern Virginia has the highest density of data centers in the United States. Google tells me there are over 600 data centers in Virginia (that is nuts!). This build-out has been happening for more than 25 years. Until very recently, I have not heard any pushback from people in that area. What am I missing?

Better question, why don't they just build them in N. Virginia then?

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

#417

Post by duxup »

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…

It feels like there's some legit bad practices that some folks have been hit with and legit complaints.

But yes online there's a populist panic about it that seems disconnected and completely driving itself without basis in reality... Locally there's folks terribly angry about fairly small data centers and they don't realize how many are around them and they never notice. But they don't want to hear it, if anyone is anything but fervently anti data center then you're Elon's friend or something.

The panic reminds me of how the Great Fear in the French revolution was described folks believed everything was an indicator they were right, and denying it meant you were the bad guy ... and thus more evidence that their fear is true...

Some data centers in my area I would love to live near because on the property they have big green space and wetlands surrounding them.

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

#418

Post by jst1fthsdys »

chasd00 wrote: post #338
throwaway2037 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I never see pushback about: Northern Virginia has the highest density of data centers in the United States. Google tells me there are over 600 data centers in Virginia (that is nuts!). This build-out has been happening for more than 25 years. Until very recently, I have not heard any pushback from people in that area. What am I missing?

> What am I missing? nation states trying to slow progress. I was pretty perplexed as well, now we're concerned about data centers? They're everywhere already. Oh wait, it's a FUD campaign sewn by competing nations using social media so they can, hopefully, catch up. That makes a lot more sense. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/09/business/china-russia-ai-...

Yeah man, I'm sure the largest industrial mfg country in the world is desperate to buy time to outbuild the decaying husk of a mfg country that can't even build the transformers needed to power these data centers.

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

#419

Post by duplessitous »

Groxx wrote: post #400
duplessitous wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one has ever complained about people blocking data centers. Just over the top bad-faith to even type that out, this will be our final back and forth. My points have consistently been (1) lying is the quickest way to make an issue divisive as they focus on the lies and not the cause and that (2) that you cannot trust members of the general public to undertake radical actions nor can you sit by and egg them on to ac…

> No one can live your ideals for you, if you think something should be done, you should do it, and quickly at that. If it is that urgent, why are you not doing anything? This is the world-hunger-equivalent bit fwiw. It's rather explicitly "if you care about this, why haven't you solved it", an over-the-top bad-faith argument.

You are quoting my passage for you to do something, not solve it. You then go on to reinterpret it through your own quotes to dream up me saying something I never said.

Telling you to live out your own ideals vs committing stochastic terrorism online is, rather explicitly, not asking why haven't you solved that. We know that because no where in my text do you find me asking you to solve it or asking why haven't you solved it.

It works better to read the text written then to read it, get mad about an imaginary statement, and justify your outrage via a quote you create out of thing air. If you can't do that, you don't need me to include me in your imaginary argument between you and yourself.

But if you truly cannot do that, and we have no proof to say otherwise, maybe log off and take a breather. No one should be so upset that reading becomes a challenge.

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

#420

Post by jst1fthsdys »

jayGlow wrote: post #176
qarl2 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oregon just passed a law saying data centers will pay more for electricity than normal people, and the math says that everyone's rates will be going down. So, again, I think it depends on whether you live in a red or blue state. https://www.opb.org/article/2026/06/04/data-centers-utility-...

that seems odd, do other industries pay a higher rate for electricity or is this specifically targeting data centers?

"HB 3546 creates a new classification for data centers, cryptocurrency and other large industrial energy users using more than 20 megawatts, or 20 million watts of power, to pay for their share of electricity use and costs."

https://www.opb.org/article/2025/06/05/oregon-data-centers-c...

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