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Comment by peterldowns | Hacker News Reader

As a Pennsylvanian I think this is idiotic and I completely blame the press, who have breathlesslly amplified baseless negative claims. Such as that datacenters are somehow bad for the environment, have negative impacts on water supply, will raise energy and water rates for residential customers, etc.

I HATE that this is somehow becoming a culture war issue.

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I remember the fracking roll out here. The companies involved directly handed checks to local residents, promised to train locals for new jobs, paid to fund schools, and so on.

These companies have a lot of money behind them - if they're not willing to put in the effort to convince local residents that the data center will be good for them, I feel like that's on them. They could easily do some handouts and fix this. Offer to pay extra taxes to the state or whatever, fund a new power plant, pay everyone who lives nearby the DC some thousands of dollars, whatever.

The older I get the more and more convinced I become that the media is the actual real enemy of the country. Their lifeblood is creating controversy and drama about everything so they can show ads. So insane that so few call them out (probably because most people are already "captured" by them).

Dictatorships abolish all free press, they don't like it. There was a quote where I live "Free press dies along democracy" and it did.

But our press isn't free, it's bound by what gets dumb human brains to put their eyes on ads.

Perfect is the enemy of good. Oligarchy is still better than Monarchy

> As a Pennsylvanian I think this is idiotic and I completely blame the press, who have breathlesslly amplified baseless negative claims.

But have they disproportionately amplified them? I follow some energy experts, and the consensus for AI-focused mega-datacenters seems to be "no". Some interesting reports:

• Artificial Intelligence: Generative AI's Environmental and Human Effects - https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-107172

• FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission): "…approximately half of this [$5.1 billion] cost will be borne by customers…" - https://www.ferc.gov/news-events/news/commissioner-clements-...

• Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas: Processing Power: The Effect of Data Centers on Wholesale Electricity Markets - https://www.dallasfed.org/~/media/documents/research/papers/...

Exactly this.

If people were just honest with their objections, then we could be unified, but currently we're fighting misinformation that are trying to stop 5MW computer closets and projects that are trying to be a drop in replacement for a _steel mill_ (which should be an automatic approval)

we can probably generalize and say that anything that's a culture war issue has become disconnected with useful actionable reality.

This is not a culture war issue. And there are people posting real data ITT.

it certainly seems to be. if it were just a matter of noise, or discharging contaminated water, or waste gasses we're supposed to have rules for these things. any facility that does these things is supposed to adhere to them.

so the issue isn't about data centers at all, but the fact that we've decided to stop enforcing even minimal environmental standards.

water consumption is another one, we just haven't done a very good of realizing that its a limited resource and trying to manage it.

the other is raising electrical rates. it should just be a real problem to raise rates to pay for Capex for other non-residential customers.

those are all real issues. 'people are going to get screwed' is a culture war thing, particularly if their opinion seems to be against environmental regulation as a matter of course. if a data center isn't noisy and polluting, and doesn't impact water or electrical consumption, then there is no sane reason to be against it. there are data centers that use close loop cooling. there are those that don't effect your rates. there are ones that are not really close to residences.

Ok where are all three that satisfy your last paragraph requirements?

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