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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

#511

Post by wat10000 »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #507
wat10000 wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Totally the opposite for me. I suppose we’re both getting small, biased samples of the population.

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

#512

Post by DrewADesign »

Sabinus wrote: post #478
Ydarbleoj wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that value is subjective. If my tap water is brown as a result of a DC, I may not agree with your positives. If my neighborhood is humming all night because of a DC, again, I might not have the ability to see what you see as positive. So, my take is that maybe the pro-DC side can do better at seeing multiple perspectives instead of acting like anything negatively said about DCs is a psychosis.

>If my tap water is brown as a result of a DC, I may not agree with your positives. If my neighborhood is humming all night because of a DC Those things are both a result of a failure of government, not the existence of data centres. If there are externalised costs the company wants to put on people then your government should extract them from the company as a condition of permission. Data centres are factories that…

So if I build a heavily protested foundry that spews carcinogenic lead smoke into a residential neighborhood, it’s not my fault and the operation of my foundry is unimpeachable. It’s the government’s fault for not stopping me from doing it. Since the people affected are responsible for compelling government to limit business, businesses are not responsible for anything. Privatize the gains, then socialize the losses, then blame the government for not stepping in, and ignore the company actively undermining the public’s leverage in the process. Ok, got it. That makes complete sense. It’s decidedly not nihilistic justification for doing obviously unethical things in pursuit of profit.

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

#513

Post by Sabinus »

DrewADesign wrote: post #512
Sabinus wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If my tap water is brown as a result of a DC, I may not agree with your positives. If my neighborhood is humming all night because of a DC Those things are both a result of a failure of government, not the existence of data centres. If there are externalised costs the company wants to put on people then your government should extract them from the company as a condition of permission. Data centres are factories that…

So if I build a heavily protested foundry that spews carcinogenic lead smoke into a residential neighborhood, it’s not my fault and the operation of my foundry is unimpeachable. It’s the government’s fault for not stopping me from doing it. Since the people affected are responsible for compelling government to limit business, businesses are not responsible for anything. Privatize the gains, then socialize the losses,…

The third paragraph of my comment already addressed this. A data centre is not a foundry.

In a metal foundry some of the physical externality is intrinsic to doing the process. It's a continuous industrial chemical operation emitting smoke, metal fumes, VOCs, dust, sound etc. You can capture 99% of pollution, but you're still melting, casting, shaking out and finishing tonnes of hot metal and sand. Complete physical isolation is expensive and imperfect.

With data centres, most local externalities are engineering choices. With enough money and sensible siting, you could plausibly build one whose effect on neighbouring residents is extremely close to nil. The biggest remaining externalities occur upstream in the electricity/water/grid system - and those are unusually amenable to being charged directly to the operator.

If a local data centre is impacting you negatively it's a failure of your government because it didn't need to be that way. It's not an intrinsic part of data centre operation. They turn electricity into heat and money, a comparatively simple factory to have completely deal with its own externalities.

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

#514

Post by throw10920 »

ben_w wrote: post #468
watwut wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

We (humanity worldwide) need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 99.9%. Of the two, use of air con in the US is a bigger source than current data centres, and in the middle of the range of extimates for how many new data centres will actually get built over the next few years. It would of course be much better if both AC and DC (in both senses) were powered by renewables, but y'all elected someone who thinks they'r…

> We (humanity worldwide) need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 99.9%.

Citation needed.

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

#515

Post by Sabinus »

dylan604 wrote: post #280
lenerdenator wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, to a point. I honestly don't get why, for example, we're building anything that requires a lot of water in Arizona.

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.

Because farming in a desert means you have as much sun as you could want, and can (with the aid of groundwater and water transport infrastructure) add as much water as you need, when you need it, and at no other times (harvest etc).

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

#516

Post by palmotea »

dwoldrich wrote: post #503
palmotea wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 bogg…

>> No, the point is the logic of your initial dismissal was asinine

> See? You think people who disagree with you are stupid!

No. What I wrote was your "argument" was asinine. Read it again.

However, the pattern of your reactions to what I've written are leading me to form certain opinions of you personally, but I don't generalize those to the class of "people who disagree with [me]."

You're going off the rails. I suspect you're not actually engaging with what I'm writing, but a character you've created in your head.

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

#517

Post by ben_w »

throw10920 wrote: post #514
ben_w wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We (humanity worldwide) need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 99.9%. Of the two, use of air con in the US is a bigger source than current data centres, and in the middle of the range of extimates for how many new data centres will actually get built over the next few years. It would of course be much better if both AC and DC (in both senses) were powered by renewables, but y'all elected someone who thinks they'r…

> We (humanity worldwide) need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 99.9%. Citation needed.

IPCC.

It is based on the mean lifetime of a CO2 pulse being order-of a thousand years, which is itself approximation of what IPCC says; actual decay rate behavious is not even as simple as exponential decay.

At 1000 years exactly, steady-state requires 99.9% reduction in the long term.

Good news is that in the short term, the higher partial pressure in the air means it leaves faster at first, so things stop getting worse much sooner than that.

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

#518

Post by throw10920 »

ben_w wrote: post #517
throw10920 wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We (humanity worldwide) need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 99.9%. Citation needed.

IPCC. It is based on the mean lifetime of a CO2 pulse being order-of a thousand years, which is itself approximation of what IPCC says; actual decay rate behavious is not even as simple as exponential decay. At 1000 years exactly, steady-state requires 99.9% reduction in the long term. Good news is that in the short term, the higher partial pressure in the air means it leaves faster at first, so things stop getting w…

> It is based on the mean lifetime of a CO2 pulse being order-of a thousand years, which is itself approximation of what IPCC says; actual decay rate behavious is not even as simple as exponential decay.

> At 1000 years exactly, steady-state requires 99.9% reduction in the long term.

So, that's ignoring carbon capture by means natural or artificial, and therefore is a totally irrelevant number, both to this conversation, and to most others.

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

#519

Post by throw10920 »

watwut wrote: post #431
ben_w wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Eating meat fills my belly. So do many other things which use less water. The estimates I've seen place the water consumption of water at such a low level that a whole month subscription consumes roughly as much water as 1-120 grams* of beef. > Setting my AC to 68 keeps me cool. What, is 70 not good enough? Air con, and basically all things connected to the power grid, also "costs [your] community money, damages th…

[flagged]

> These bad faith "but you exist and do unrelated things" fallacies are a.) bad faith b.) make people have ai people more.

> Bringing uo AC while you defend datacenters making global warming worst is just a cherry on top.of it. Just underlines anti-human fck you all ideology of it all.

You are badly breaking the HN guidelines in a dozen different ways. You should refamiliarize yourself with them:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#520

Post by watwut »

throw10920 wrote: post #519
watwut wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> These bad faith "but you exist and do unrelated things" fallacies are a.) bad faith b.) make people have ai people more. > Bringing uo AC while you defend datacenters making global warming worst is just a cherry on top.of it. Just underlines anti-human fck you all ideology of it all. You are badly breaking the HN guidelines in a dozen different ways. You should refamiliarize yourself with them: https://news.ycombin…

> Bringing uo AC while you defend datacenters making global warming worst is just a cherry on top.of it. Just underlines anti-human fck you all ideology of it all.

This one is factual on both counts. All you need is to read what CEOs we talk about write and listen to what they say.

> These bad faith "but you exist and do unrelated things" fallacies are a.) bad faith b.) make people have ai people more.

This one was entirely correct assessment of the situation and proper response. It was a fallacy. It used the "but you exist and do unrelated things" argument. And yes, it makes people hate ai culture more.

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