Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

tomshardware.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 149 posts

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

#61

Post by Gormo »

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 environment. What waste products do data centers output?

The article talks about expanding a fossil fuel plant as the source of the pollution question in the Virginia example. This seems only tangentially related to data centers, which don't care what specific technologies are used to generate fungible electricity.

Are these disingenuous attempts to attribute pollution originating from power plants to one specific, cherry-picked application of electrical power (despite the increasing prevalence of clean generation technologies over polluting ones, and despite lots of other, unrelated drivers of increased demand for electrical power)? Or is there something more to these arguments that I'm missing?

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

#62

Post by detourdog »

cmiles8 wrote: post #25
detourdog wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FERC is some sort of law that takes control of local ordnances to force local municipalities to accept energy infrastructure. https://ferc.gov/

In theory yes. In practice if the local congressman wants to keep their job they’ll block it at any cost if there’s local opposition.

I watched Massachusetts fail at this opposition about a decade ago. Courts sided with the feds.

https://ferc.gov/ https://nofrackedgasinmass.com/massachusetts-pipelines/

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

#63

Post by digitaltrees »

flanked-evergl wrote: post #4

This degrowth anti-technology mindset just does not make sense to me, and I think it's mostly astroturfed from TikTok.

It’s not degrowth. It’s anti monopoly, anti wealth concentration. Anti tax avoidance. Anti price on water and electricity. Anti raising the ambient temperature of a community.

Let’s put the data center in Palo alto or Atherton.

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

#64

Post by digitaltrees »

flanked-evergl wrote: post #33
ozlikethewizard wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure the luddites got all their ideas from TikTok aye? At least were not at this point yet: "Mill and factory owners took to shooting protesters and eventually the Luddites were suppressed by legal and military force, which included execution and penal transportation of accused and convicted Luddites." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddites

"The luddites were right" seems like an odd position to have on HN.

HN isn’t a monoculture. And the Luddites weren’t against tech. They were against the avoidable harm by thoughtless adoption of automated looms. Their argument was distorted and smeared much like is happening here.

Hackers used to be counter culture and want to push power down to individuals. If anything this techno fascist push to merge big tech with government while steamrolling humans is not hacker culture.

We should home brew data centers for open weight models and open labelled datasets.

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

#65

Post by Tyr42 »

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…

Behind the meter power generation is being included on site with the data centers.

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

#66

Post by mrlonglong »

internet_points wrote: post #6
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…

https://www.pecva.org/wp-content/uploads/Health-Impacts-Vant... the report > Based on Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (VA DEQ) air permit No. 74242, the facility is authorized to operate eight natural-gas simple-cycle turbines and more than fifty diesel generators, including emergency and black-start units

Good luck with that. Order books for gas turbines are full for decades. Diesels will probably get used and pollute everything with their stink and noise.

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

#67

Post by budman1 »

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.

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.

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

#68

Post by AnneTrotter »

docdeek wrote: post #57
ropbear wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this reasoning is exactly how we got here in the first place. “It’s not that bad, just a little bad, so it’s okay” We’re talking about air pollution and death rates, not financial risk.

I’m not suggesting it is OK or not OK, just that ‘minor source’ of air pollution is probably the right term to use in context for this single site.

On a scale of billions of years, what's an extra death or two?

/s

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

#69

Post by tosapple »

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…

[dead]

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

#70

Post by pjc50 »

consensus1 wrote: post #41
consp wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it is a low efficiency power station with some servers attached to it.

People complain when you hook them up to the high efficiency generators that power the grid, so this is what they get.

People complain when you violate the rules and externalize harms, yes. They should be made to turn off the generators and pay enough for the electricity so as not to impact everyone else's prices.
Post reply on HN