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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

#521

Post by dwoldrich »

palmotea wrote: post #516
dwoldrich wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 s…

It's amazing how much discourse is just people pretending not to understand things, thus making discourse impossible.

Asinine means "utterly silly or stupid" and "ass-like".

You can't separate criticizing the person making an argument from criticism of the argument when using a charged put down like 'asinine'.

I have made reasoned arguments, nowhere near asinine tier. If you want to appeal to authority/experts or cite lefty prop, okay I guess. Otherwise, I've heard it all and done the research. I've lived too long and watched decades of doomer predictions fail. It's exhausting! Be tired with me, collapse! :)

Finally, I never want you to shut up, I just want the grift you prefer (or at least tolerate) to end. The best I can offer you is political exile to the wasteland of failed ideas forever. ;)

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

#522

Post by ben_w »

throw10920 wrote: post #518
ben_w wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 conversat…

> 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.

No, it inherently incorporates all natural processes that capture carbon.

Artificial, sure, if you want to point at them I believe current effots might reduce the required reductions from 99.9% to 99.8%. However, I wrote "emissions", and the overwhelming majority of CCUS systems are reditecting what would otherwise be emissions directly to capture, i.e. what I wrote would include that as reducing "emissions".

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

#523

Post by ben_w »

watwut wrote: post #520
throw10920 wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 e…

> 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.

What they write and say is all over the place. Some of it (IMO, everything in the last few years by Musk and Zuckerberg) is obviously nonsense.

Altman, much as people like to hate him, is presenting himself as wanting governments to figure out the rules by which this should all be restrained. Amodei put his money where his mouth is on attempted morality, and got burned by the Trump administration for his efforts.

> 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.

It's fine to care about the stated negative consequence. I sure do.

You a software developer? If so, where do you put your efforts on optimising code, the bit with 5% of the problem, or the bit with 95%?

Likewise: If you care at all about the stated negative consequence, you do not stick your fingers in your ears and moan about the people telling you the origin of 95% of those negative consequence, just because everyone's favourite target of hate this year is 5% of the total problem.

Meat in particular is way, *way* worse than most people think it is. I presume this is due a mixture of "but I like the taste" and PETA having about the same level of political nous as Liz Truss.

For most of the environmental issues under discussion, the total impact of meat production by itself has a *much* greater impact on both local and global environment than even what happens if all the currently planned data centres get built, though of course "how much" varies by both specific location and specific measure. Greenhouse gasses? Meat is 20x worse; Electricity? Meat's worse by a factor of 2; Fresh water? Meat's worse by 4000x in aggregate, with specific local stresses going both ways, wars have even started over fresh water supplies for agriculture; Biodiversity, eutrophication, deforestation, for these things DCs are obviously negligible, not so for meat; Mining/material extraction is hard to compare, given how much mineral fertiliser we go through, but the extraction of mined fertiliser has basically killed off some ecosystems; Local air pollution? Specifics matter, though planet-wide meat's still worse.

And then there's all the other things people do, and demand the right to do.

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

#524

Post by throw10920 »

watwut wrote: post #520
throw10920 wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 e…

[flagged]

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

#525

Post by throw10920 »

ben_w wrote: post #522
throw10920 wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 conversat…

> 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. No, it inherently incorporates all natural processes that capture carbon. Artificial, sure, if you want to point at them I believe current effots might reduce the required reductions from 99.9% to 99.8%. However, I wrote "emissions", and the overwhelming maj…

> No, it inherently incorporates all natural processes that capture carbon.

It literally cannot, because it's not parameterized on the amount of additional plants being planted.

> Artificial, sure, if you want to point at them I believe current effots might reduce the required reductions from 99.9% to 99.8%.

Goalpost moving (i.e. fixing a particular value in hypothetical future assumptions that was not fixed or agreed-upon previously in order to support an otherwise-false point), which solidly sets the original claim as false.

> However, I wrote "emissions", and the overwhelming majority of CCUS systems are reditecting what would otherwise be emissions directly to capture, i.e. what I wrote would include that as reducing "emissions".

Technically compatible with your statement but not how the vast majority of individuals would interpret it as you originally wrote it.

To be clear: I'm not arguing that we don't need to substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions or that carbon capture is necessary. I'm arguing that last point, that "we need to reduce emissions by 99.9%" is extremely misleading and much more harmful than hurtful for those ends.

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

#526

Post by everdrive »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #296
everdrive wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What I don't understand is why communities want to block the data centers. Noise, pollution, energy costs (which you cover in your comment!) and water usage / contamination. I don't want more of those things. I don't want a bunch of strip malls of golf courses in my community, either.

> Noise, pollution Both of these are complaints about gas turbines rather than data centers. Data centers can pretty easily do the opposite by offering to curtail load during energy supply shortfalls, both through region shifting and by temporarily operating backup generators, which allows the grid to add more renewable generation without having intermittency issues, and thereby operate fewer gas turbines. Obviously…

>Do the math on what percentage of any given region's available water is consumed by data centers. Compare this to e.g. agriculture. This one isn't even a plausible concern, it's manufactured outrage.

Is it more than zero? I need to eat (although I do wish we all paid more for cleaner and more ethical food) but I explicitly don't want data centers.

I think this compares to pesticide to control malaria vs. herbicide to to prevent me from noticing two kinds of grass. Both put poison in the environment, but spraying for malaria has a clear benefit to outweigh its costs. But spraying herbicides so my lawn "looks nice" is really only a downside. What are the benefits to more data centers?

>Unless NIMBYs or captured regulators

If we're just doing ad-hominen we need a name for your group. Do you have any suggestions?

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

#527

Post by DrewADesign »

Sabinus wrote: post #513
DrewADesign wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

People aren’t complaining about the idea of data centers, abstractly. They’re complaining about the actual way they’re being built. To ignore the reality of what living next to GPU data centers is like, and the amount of resources they actually demonstrably use, and instead paint this as a theoretical argument is completely disingenuous.

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

#528

Post by palmotea »

dwoldrich wrote: post #521
palmotea wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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 s…

It's amazing how much discourse is just people pretending not to understand things, thus making discourse impossible. Asinine means "utterly silly or stupid" and "ass-like". You can't separate criticizing the person making an argument from criticism of the argument when using a charged put down like 'asinine'. I have made reasoned arguments, nowhere near asinine tier. If you want to appeal to authority/experts or cit…

[dead]

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

#529

Post by dwoldrich »

dwoldrich wrote: post #521
palmotea wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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 s…

It's amazing how much discourse is just people pretending not to understand things, thus making discourse impossible. Asinine means "utterly silly or stupid" and "ass-like". You can't separate criticizing the person making an argument from criticism of the argument when using a charged put down like 'asinine'. I have made reasoned arguments, nowhere near asinine tier. If you want to appeal to authority/experts or cit…

I didn't flag you @palmotea, I prefer to keep the conversation going. I am sympathetic to your frustration, but your words have meaning, whether you are conscious of them or not and those meanings are as far as I can go to meet your mind.

One of the last definitions of empathy is to possess a supernatural mind reading ability to understand what others are thinking. I must admit to my inability to read your mind in person or over the internets.

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

#530

Post by mapsmith »

duplessitous wrote: post #10

> The mean air temperature on the upwind side of the facility was approximately 42.7 °C, increasing to 43.5 °C in the neighborhood near the eastern boundary of the data center campus on the downwind side. The observed ΔT of approximately 0.8 °C extended roughly 500 m downwind Seems like we do observe heating but a much smaller average delta T than the title would hint at; I didn't see a max distance they evaluated ov…

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