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Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

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Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

#51

Post by qarl2 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #39
adamrezich wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yeah nobody wants their local water supply to be either disintegrated into subatomic particles or polluted with every harmful substance known to man (whichever one they're supposed to do changes from day to day).

It's not just about water. It's about the noise, little to no benefit to the community besides a handful of jobs, air pollution where they're colocated gas turbines for power, and pushing up electricity prices. They are a net negative for most communities. "Winning" in this context is simply slowing down permitting and construction until the capital bubble pops, at which point a great deal of these projects simply ev…

> little to no benefit to the community besides a handful of jobs

NBER w35194 (Alvarez et al., May 2026) instruments for siting and finds the opposite: +6.2% establishments and +8.2% AGI at 25 years.

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w35194/w351...

Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

#52

Post by [deleted] »

oceanplexian wrote: post #49
toomuchtodo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tracking at: https://aidatacentermap.org/ https://www.datacenterbans.com/ https://www.datacenterwatch.org/ https://www.brockovichdatacenter.com/

Side note: Now's a fantastic time get into industrial processes or oil & gas since all of the fake propaganda against buildings with computers in them has distracted people from facilities built on a daily basis that cause 1000x the pollution and noise of a datacenter.

[deleted]

Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

#53

Post by skywhopper »

oceanplexian wrote: post #49
toomuchtodo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tracking at: https://aidatacentermap.org/ https://www.datacenterbans.com/ https://www.datacenterwatch.org/ https://www.brockovichdatacenter.com/

Side note: Now's a fantastic time get into industrial processes or oil & gas since all of the fake propaganda against buildings with computers in them has distracted people from facilities built on a daily basis that cause 1000x the pollution and noise of a datacenter.

You think the folks who are successfully organizing against datacenters can’t use the same techniques and support networks to do the same thing against other nuisance uses?

Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

#54

Post by vrganj »

ertgbnm wrote: post #20
coldbrewed wrote: post #4

This is a collection of "OpenAI will boldly act in the abstract to provide air coverage for Texas leadership." With data centers under construction one would think they would have examples of successes or projects in progress available for reference. They'd claim credit if they had it so the silence is telling. Big tech has consistently valued profit and growth above good stewardship; the onus is entirely on OpenAI t…

Yeah if they were so committed to doing good, you'd think the billions of dollars they have spent would bear some evidence of that by now.

They must be "effective" "altruists".

The only way to do good is to first do all the bad and consolidate power, so you can then use all that power to do good, pinkie promise!

Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

#55

Post by skywhopper »

jwlake wrote: post #41
toomuchtodo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just about water. It's about the noise, little to no benefit to the community besides a handful of jobs, air pollution where they're colocated gas turbines for power, and pushing up electricity prices. They are a net negative for most communities. "Winning" in this context is simply slowing down permitting and construction until the capital bubble pops, at which point a great deal of these projects simply ev…

Has no one heard of the concept of industrial zoning? When you live next to an industrial zone you get all the consequences. I love how literally all these projects are on shuttered sites of various plants that were presumably louder and more polluting than these new data centers.

You don’t seem to know much about where these datacenters are being built. They are usually greenfield sites, often in relatively rural areas where there may not actually be any local zoning regulations. Or when they are on brownfield urban sites, they are using “temporary” gas turbines that are incredibly loud and break all air pollution laws, taking advantage of loopholes and a complete lack of enforcement by the current EPA.

Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

#56

Post by amanaplanacanal »

WarmWash wrote: post #36
polski-g wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the federal government made it effectively illegal to build nuclear reactors, and there are no more rivers to be dammed.

People will run to point to the spate of new nuclear plans, but the point be made here is that nuclear regulation is so suffocating and costs so extreme that it's "effectively illegal" to build reactors.

Is it safety regulation that makes nuclear so hard, or is it just that we can't seem to do large projects of any kind any more?

Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

#57

Post by [deleted] »

qarl2 wrote: post #51
toomuchtodo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just about water. It's about the noise, little to no benefit to the community besides a handful of jobs, air pollution where they're colocated gas turbines for power, and pushing up electricity prices. They are a net negative for most communities. "Winning" in this context is simply slowing down permitting and construction until the capital bubble pops, at which point a great deal of these projects simply ev…

> little to no benefit to the community besides a handful of jobs NBER w35194 (Alvarez et al., May 2026) instruments for siting and finds the opposite: +6.2% establishments and +8.2% AGI at 25 years. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w35194/w351...

[deleted]

Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

#59

Post by newsoftheday »

dyauspitr wrote: post #12

Why can’t these idiots just mandate that you have to build out clean energy to power the data centers. It’s such a simple bit of legislation that they just will not do.

https://www.texastribune.org/2026/08/03/texas-data-center-pr...

"Abbott is asking the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to ensure data center developers provide information on tax breaks they will receive; power use and generation; water use and cooling operations; efforts to reduce impacts on local communities; and ownership of the facility. Any projects that fail Abbott’s ordered “comprehensive verification and audit” should be denied connection to the grid, the governor said."

https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-directs-comp...

"“Our top priority is to protect Texans’ safety and quality of life,” said Governor Abbott. “Any project that fails to comply with the requirements set forth by the PUCT and ERCOT, and by state law, must be denied connection to the Texas grid. Simply put, Texans must come first.”"

https://environmentamerica.org/texas/center/media-center/new...

"The Lone Star State generated the equivalent of 37% of its electricity from solar, wind and geothermal power in 2025"

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