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U.S. gov't moves to suppress pushback on data centers

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Re: U.S. gov't moves to suppress pushback on data centers

#111

Post by GPerson »

Zambyte wrote: post #24

It seems like there will be a collapse in building data centers, to the point that a large amount of the newly built ones will be reclaimed for other things. There is a very large group of people who are against building new data centers because they hate AI (and any pollution related arguments these people make are in support of their primary concern, being AI). But on the flip side of that, even people that I know…

You don’t get to 25 or 30 trillion total addressable market by providing AI for the people who like AI. The whole plan is to replace all white collar work with AI. This requires more data centers. The people who benefit the most from this will see the least of the negative effects.

Re: U.S. gov't moves to suppress pushback on data centers

#113

Post by goda90 »

budman1 wrote: post #76
goda90 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no bounds to how much electricity humans need, and the more we have the more prosperity we will have There are bounds to the Earth's capacity for our consumption. We won't be prosperous if ecosystems collapse.

Dyson Sphere is the end game. Once you capture and use all of the sunlight hitting the earth, what do you do?

On our present course we're probably not going to reach Type I on the Kardashev scale, let alone Type II, because of collapse. We need to embrace long term planning instead of short term profits if we want to avoid that.

Re: U.S. gov't moves to suppress pushback on data centers

#114

Post by financetechbro »

Guthwine wrote: post #99
whatsThisBtn4 wrote: post #79

[flagged]

Your account was created <1 month ago, you have made ~25 comments and at least 4 of them mention China. You doth protesting too much?

Pro data center propaganda paid for by US govt probably

Re: U.S. gov't moves to suppress pushback on data centers

#115

Post by al_borland »

cmiles8 wrote: post #7

There isn’t much the federal government can do here. Planning permission is very local in the US. If local officials don’t want a data center it isn’t happening. In most communities these days you’d have better luck proposing to build a toxic waste processing facility than a data center.

> If local officials don’t want a data center it isn’t happening.

Until the company behind the data center sues the small town, who can’t afford the fight, and are forced to roll over. That seems to be what happened in Michigan.

Re: U.S. gov't moves to suppress pushback on data centers

#116

Post by fuzzfactor »

ravshan wrote: post #110
budman1 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data Centers is the only time in my memory that Greg Abbott has even thought about listening to citizen concerns. And of course, when the citizens selling THC beverages were concerned about the legislature making the product illegal. Me thinks the Data Center people have been stingy with the checkbook.

Isn't he talking about data centers because he is up to reelection in november?

He declared a surprise moratoriun on new data centers one day not too long ago.

It was such a stark about-face it seemed like a dramatic response to some new polling data his campaign was not expecting.

I would think if he is not re-elected he would immediately drop the moratorium right after the election, than pull out all the stops to accelerate permitting and building as much as possible before his term is up, against the peoples' will who voted in a non-Trumpard of some kind.

OTOH if he is re-elected he would probably do the exact same thing :\

Re: U.S. gov't moves to suppress pushback on data centers

#117

Post by Gormo »

defrost wrote: post #102
Gormo wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it seems like confirmation that this really is a case of disingenuous conflation of power-generation concerns with data centers per se. I don't think it's reasonable to regard concerns about emissions from banks of continuously running jet engines as "opposition to data centers" any more than concerns about, using the same jet engines to power charging stations in remote areas would, for example, amount to "opposi…

> I don't think it's reasonable to regard concerns about emissions from banks of continuously running jet engines as "opposition to data centers" Clearly you don't. For others, it's opposition to power hungry, polluting, noisy, developments that are concentrating digital power in the hands of a few, raising local heat levels (if topology domes heat), consuming memory and GPU resources to the detriment of the commons.

> Clearly you don't.

Obviously, since I'm the one discussing it here. The broader question is whether the people who are conflating them together are doing so out of honest confusion or out of ulterior motives.

> For others, it's opposition to power hungry, polluting, noisy, developments that are concentrating digital power in the hands of a few, raising local heat levels (if topology domes heat), consuming memory and GPU resources to the detriment of the commons.

This seems like a hodgepodge of concerns that are all quite distinct from each other. None of them is necessarily invalid in its own right, but lumping them all together and treating them as irresolvable problems in order to oppose data centers per se -- rather than issues that can and should be mitigated independently of anything related to AI -- seems to be disingenuous.

Re: U.S. gov't moves to suppress pushback on data centers

#118

Post by fuzzfactor »

Gormo wrote: post #61
vintagedave wrote: post #2

> The latest proposal applies to permits for a "minor source" of air pollution ... [the Vantage data center was estimated to contribute] between $53 million and $99 million in annual health damages, the largest estimate for any single facility ever. 'The largest estimate for any single facility ever.' 'Minor source.' I give you double-speak, gentlefolks of HN. Name it something - anything - and you frame it in those…

I'm seeing a lot of these sorts of articles talking about things like air pollution, but something seems a bit off, given that, to my knowledge, computers do not produce any emissions at all. The article lumps data centers in with landfills, laundromats, and steel mills. But landfills, laundromats, and steel mills all involve physical waste products that can have chemical or biological effects on the surrounding envi…

>to my knowledge, computers do not produce any emissions at all.

>is there something more to these arguments that I'm missing?

Yes.

You can't be expected to know everything that comes into play, each person rarely has a very good grasp of the big picture.

Have you ever smelled the type of acids and toxic gases that need to be handled before you even get computer chips to build computers with?

Where do people think the toxic wastes from these processes end up?

Plus the emissions from the freight across different modalities which scales linearly with massiveness of the tonnage.

And that's before you even consider the power needs of development when it exceeds the clean energy available at any one time.

Re: U.S. gov't moves to suppress pushback on data centers

#119

Post by cute_boi »

ModernMech wrote: post #5

It’s funny as Greg Abbott says the data center industry did this to themselves and people’s complaints are justified; the feds say it’s “paid protestors”, the same way they say any protests are inorganic paid leftist agitators. Meanwhile “real” American patriots know data centers make America great, and can’t wait to have one built down the road.

Feds can say anything, but majority of people wouldn't hate AI if they weren't losing their jobs.

Re: U.S. gov't moves to suppress pushback on data centers

#120

Post by eclipticplane »

randusername wrote: post #92

How naive I was to hope that the strain data centers will place on the electric grid would spur very big, very public investment in renewable energy and nuclear. Somebody has to realize that gas turbines are backordered to the 2030s meanwhile the ROI on solar is getting impossible to ignore.

Hopefully that 'somebody' that realizes is this US Administration, which to date has paid billions in fees to wind energy companies to not build wind farms. They are quite literally paying companies to not build renewable energy.
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