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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

#501

Post by testerteert000a »

quickthrowman wrote: post #414
testerteert000a wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The problem, while your data is probably accurate enough conceptually, is that DCs showed up too late to the scene - the water isn't accounted for.

DCs, new golf, new homes, new alfalfa, new ranching - the math isn't there.

Tech people saying ignore the water problems are saying implicitly that AI, despite showing up late in line for access to a resource that's an old, old problem in the western US, is more important than hearth and home considerations fighting for the same dwindling resource.

The average western farmer/rancher, their own judgement and contributions to this problem aside, definitely love coastal tech people sniping their pre-colorado compact water rights via all that goes into getting water rights like that.

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

#502

Post by palmotea »

dwoldrich wrote: post #496
palmotea wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you seen pictures of Los Angeles from space? It's a grey speck. I grew up in the smog layer, let me tell you it was disgusting and I'm sure it gave me respiratory disease. But from space, the smog blowing off every day looks like a tiny little fart because the world is huge. Alright then. So I suppose you think that was "a backyard issue... [and] it [was] politics to hate on [smog]," and so the expensive effor…

I love how you're working through all this! There are indeed two sides to every coin. > Alright then. So I suppose you think that was "a backyard issue... [and] it [was] politics to hate on [smog]," and so the expensive efforts to mitigate it, like requiring catalytic converters and NOx mitigation should be repealed? Or not enacted in the first place? The gotcha here is that I must hate politics that address the dest…

> The gotcha here is that I must hate politics that address the destruction of the planet so i am self-destructive. But you seem reluctant to ascribe working brain cells to people you disagree with, so your gotcha is worded to get a dummy to think. I wonder who told you people you disagree with are fools. Maybe those people aren't your friends. Maybe they secretly hate you.

No, the point is the logic of your initial dismissal was asinine: e.g. the problem doesn't look big from space, therefore it must not be a really big deal, (and later, a conspiratorial) therefore the concern about and opposition to the problem must be "non-organic."

Then you went back into space again to talk about smog.

What you need to do come back to Earth, look at things from the ground, sometimes from others' POV. Your space angle isn't deep or insightful, it may seem so on first glance, like the prose of an LLM instructed to say something deep, but it's similarly empty.

> Emotional arguments and trusting snakes who hate you are what got you to where you are in the first place mentally. Time to be critical OF EVERYBODY. What is their angle? Are they paid?

1. Honestly, that reads like a hallucination. It either literally is one or you assume too much.

2. You're giving vibes like you lack anchors and are trending towards paranoia.

> ...and feel i've said hurtful things. Being disagreed with IS hurtful in a way, it hurts to have your ideas picked on.

heh

> I just hope you can be more discerning and be more suspicious when panic is delivered into your feed trying to spin you up again for the thousandth time. Let your dopamine receptors finally burn out completely. ;)

See point 1 above. But if you're trying to convince me to shut up, you've failed.

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

#503

Post by dwoldrich »

palmotea wrote: post #502
dwoldrich wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how you're working through all this! There are indeed two sides to every coin. > Alright then. So I suppose you think that was "a backyard issue... [and] it [was] politics to hate on [smog]," and so the expensive efforts to mitigate it, like requiring catalytic converters and NOx mitigation should be repealed? Or not enacted in the first place? The gotcha here is that I must hate politics that address the dest…

> The gotcha here is that I must hate politics that address the destruction of the planet so i am self-destructive. But you seem reluctant to ascribe working brain cells to people you disagree with, so your gotcha is worded to get a dummy to think. I wonder who told you people you disagree with are fools. Maybe those people aren't your friends. Maybe they secretly hate you. No, the point is the logic of your initial…

> asinine

See? You think people who disagree with you are stupid! When you run a simulation of what what is going on in others' heads, do you envision a sucking void? You ascribe no nuance to me at all.

In fact, what if your entire belief system on climate is based on moneyed interest greed and pernicious lies? Is that possible? How many more decades will you wait for the sky to fall until you question?

The mind boggling size of the earth reminds me that we are a type 0 civilization that burns stuff for power. Smog for me was not in space, I lived on a hillside and looked straight out into the smog layer and suffered personally for it.

To be against pollution is just logical, to think we're capable of destroying the biosphere with our current pollution levels is hubristic. You are capable of hubris, I know big shock!

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

#504

Post by renata »

philipkglass wrote: post #497
renata wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Although to be fair, when was the last time we actually managed to build a new nuclear plant?

The newest American nuclear reactors to enter service were Vogtle units 3 and 4, in 2023 and 2024: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Pla...

Hmm, I hadn't considered additions to existing plants versus greenfield plants, fair point. Presumably those have less local resistance and permitting issues considering it only took fifteen years from application to generating power. Guess there's probably a market in selling existing datacenters to the hyperscalers to expand them!

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

#505

Post by vmchale »

archagon wrote: post #467
vmchale wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans are quite fond of frivolous consumption that damages the environment. People who go apoplectic at the suggestion that they put down the hamburger are part of the problem. If the our world in data report is correct, "AI" data centers (apparently metaphysically morally inferior to noble pornhub servers) are just a scapegoat: https://ourworldindata.org/how-much-energy-do-data-centers-a...

Individual consumption is but a blip compared to industrial resource utilization.

The industrial resource utilization is being done to serve the consumer.

Pinning carbon emissions on a steel mill (which sells to airplane manufacturers who take people on vacation flights) is logically incoherent and motivated reasoning.

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

#506

Post by archagon »

vmchale wrote: post #505
archagon wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Individual consumption is but a blip compared to industrial resource utilization.

The industrial resource utilization is being done to serve the consumer. Pinning carbon emissions on a steel mill (which sells to airplane manufacturers who take people on vacation flights) is logically incoherent and motivated reasoning.

Very obviously, wagging your finger at consumers and hoping they change their behavior en masse will be far less effective than targeting the actual polluters directly. (Talk about motivated reasoning!)

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

#507

Post by Forgeties79 »

wat10000 wrote: post #442
Forgeties79 wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“It’s a lot bigger now” just means we have to deal with realities of scale, that’s a true statement so I’m not sure why that’s different from my scale argument. The whole point is “yes these 2 things are the same, except scale, which can make it very different.” 1 bee sting is one thing, 1000 is another. 1 piece of candy is one thing, 1000 is another. You are assigning additional value to my comments - I get it but I…

My main point is that this goes both ways: there are those who act as if scale is not a part of the conversation, and those who act as if scale is the only part of the conversation, and neither one is sensible.

It seems to me that we have far more people who think it is not a part of the conversation than people who think it is the only part of the conversation that matters. The latter is far more simplistic and unreasonable.

Honestly we’re getting off track IMO. I think we’re just running in circles here. Appreciate the conversation nonetheless, have a good rest of your week

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

#508

Post by watwut »

EdiX wrote: post #486
watwut wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, no. Actually most people do not want everyone else to be jobless or suffer etc. There are subgroups who enjoy harm to others, but most dont.

Do most people buy their airplane tickets at a physical travel agent? Do they do most of their shopping at physical stores? Do they send paper mail instead of email or messages? Do they worry about buying from assembly lines that are least mechanized? Do they buy a car or take a horse carriage? It isn't about hurting others, it's about convenience and price.

> they want them to replace other peoples jobs.

This is literally what was said. There was nothing about "convenience", but there were words about "wanting others to loose the jobs".

On the other hand, AI people cheer when someone looses their job. They use it as brag point. Very literally. And "obsolete humans" and "permanent underclass" are selling points of AI.

In reality, in cases you write about, people did changed jobs. These techs did not caused mass unemployemnt.

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

#509

Post by mawadev »

dwoldrich wrote: post #475
mawadev wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post is quite hilarious to read, it has to be satire

I try to be a fun person. But, no it wasn't satire. I find this latest satanic panic to be so cringe. If you crave religion, I suggest you find a bible and get to know Jesus because the post-modernist stuff blows.

I think I know what you mean, but that is a side effect of how eyeballs are collected with all the doomsday stuff, but lets be real here, what's the point of more data centers only for LLMs? I work with cloud stuff and you cannot, and I mean it, cannot believe how much compute is wasted on the tiniest of things just because.

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

#510

Post by dwoldrich »

mawadev wrote: post #509
dwoldrich wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I try to be a fun person. But, no it wasn't satire. I find this latest satanic panic to be so cringe. If you crave religion, I suggest you find a bible and get to know Jesus because the post-modernist stuff blows.

I think I know what you mean, but that is a side effect of how eyeballs are collected with all the doomsday stuff, but lets be real here, what's the point of more data centers only for LLMs? I work with cloud stuff and you cannot, and I mean it, cannot believe how much compute is wasted on the tiniest of things just because.

I value your experience! I agree with you the insane buildout does not make sense. The rapidly approaching optimizations in the inference space will eliminate 99% of the current compute requirements. So what do they really need all the general compute for??

I work with cloud everyday and am disgusted by the waste - not cracking 5% utilization on huge clusters. It feels like globocorpo money laundering to me.

Every once in awhile you get to see good utilization in cloud with distribution and amazing scaling and failover with big data and it all seems worthwhile. :)

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