The whole data center heat/water thing is like not even in the top 100 risks/issues related to AI, but it's all people seem to care about. Why is that?
The whole data center heat/water thing is like not even in the top 100 risks/issues related to AI, but it's all people seem to care about. Why is that?
>but it's all people seem to care about.
This is a pretty weird assertion to make on HN when we've had constant AI threads about everything from mass surveillance and job threats to bio-warfare agent creation. Or just simple economic debt and risk. People clearly care about all sorts of aspects. Even in mainstream media there is tons of coverage on many aspects. But if you're talking purely in terms of the law and local activism:
>Why is that?
The way we have things structured (for good and less good reasons) in the judiciary and local politics is heavily biased towards immediate or very short term, concrete, and individualized/divergent harms vs broader societal costs and risks. Water, heat, electrical access/costs, and noise all meet those standards. They can be objectively measured, impose significant immediate burdens on a small population living near the DC while little (and over time) to nothing at all elsewhere, have clearly priceable harms and/or mitigations, and are instantly graspable by everyone regardless of education/research. On a practical level, they also involve a significant degree of local power without diffusion across as many people, including traditional things like zoning. A small motivated group living there can definitely make a difference, and definitely has standing for lawsuits too.
So of course those are the first and most immediately loud focuses in that arena. The broader stuff is also under scrutiny, but at a different scale right?
Because these new data centers were built near people's homes.
Right, but even then, why would we not discuss noise pollution?
The water figure folks cite is wildly manipulated, it really confuses me why a known piece of misinformation is so routinely used. Water usage for global data center cooling is under 30B gallons of water. You only get to the 300B number by including the estimated water required for the power generation. Data centers are the only technology where we include estimated water usage for power generation under general water requirement. And even with that fudging, global water usage by data centers is a magnitude less water than just the leaky pipes in the United States.
There are much stronger points to be made without resorting to misinformation. I think points around zoning + noise pollution is something that everyone, besides our most ardent AI stan, can get behind. Every pro-ai person I know are all pretty happy to say that data center should not be built in residential zoning
Noise pollution is definitely being discussed: https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2026-04-2...
There are many reasons to not like these things nearby (anywhere it affects power or water too). And on top of that they've been "somehow" getting massive incentives and tax cuts, despite bringing in very little money or employment, which costs the area even more in future years.
It's everything combined, and pushback has been somewhat successful. Success in a protest tends to help bring more success to the same protest elsewhere.
> The whole data center heat/water thing is like not even in the top 100 risks/issues related to AI, but it's all people seem to care about. Why is that?
Another commenter said the concerns about heat/water were because they were being built next to their houses, and I responded to that. I am specifically asking this person why they are touting water usage and not noise pollution as the main problem. I was not asking generically why no one talks about it
But, had I been, it is not all of these things because one of those things is abject misinformation - water usage is not a real problem and touting it as the issue hurts the protests. 30B gallons of water globally for data center cooling is 100x less than the leaky pipes in just the United States
If data centers are such a big issue that we must stop them, communicating that without lying is the protestor's responsibility. You'll never have a successful protest if it is motivated by falsifiable information and water usage is still the number one thing I see written about and spoken about my protestors. It is impossible to get on board so long as that misinformation is front and center of most arguments
It can be an issue for the community in the same watershed, as well as being affected by what they do with any waste water. There have been quite a lot of extremely-drawn-out lawsuits about them drawing more than claimed, dumping hot water into streams and damaging the ecosystem, and polluting other water sources by dumping dirty water into drinking water affecting areas.
I agree the total usage isn't particularly large, and any "they'll use up all the fresh water everywhere" FUD is flat out wrong. But it can be a large jump for an area, and they've broadly shown themselves to be incredibly amoral and willing to fight legal battles with infinite money just because they can. They are not good neighbors.
Agreed, it can. And by reserving that argument for when it is an actual problem, it strengths the overall position
> There have been quite a lot of extremely-drawn-out lawsuits about them drawing more than claimed, dumping hot water into streams and damaging the ecosystem, and polluting other water sources by dumping dirty water into drinking water affecting areas.
And I support strict EPA guidelines and heavy fees for violators! I just think that we should keep the conversation clear and not introduce facts that can be easily overturned as it moves the conversation away from impact and to the argument being made
Let's say a DC is being built in my area and I read how in some locations tap water is being polluted by these DCs. Wouldn't it be better to address that before it's built rather than after?
Supporting strict Zoning/EPA guidelines is me supporting the ability to address it before it is built. If you local tap water is being polluted by a data center, then we did not have strict Zoning/EPA guidelines. The fines exist because big corporations routinely lie and screw us. They are large penalties, not the way we prevent it from happening.
I am in full support to address it ahead of time and nothing I have said goes against this.
By then it is too late, plus they never pay enough in damages. And the EPA does not have teeth currently, and damage will be done while fixing that too.
So people fight by pattern recognition: abnormally incentivized and extremely large? Kill it with fire immediately. It's mostly reasonable and more effective than anything else at the moment.
Right, but misinformation is ineffective as it forces the conversation to revolve around the misinformation and not the topic we were attempting to discuss. If we need an example, we need look no further than this thread
Beyond this, it is my opinion that people are cowards. The few who care about this issue enough to perform terroristic actions won't spur any sort of meaningful change in the general population because the general population is not made up of extremists. The general population will not do anything that endangers their lives no matter how much they praise another for doing so
Luigi kills a healthcare CEO. Endless chatter about how this is the end for big pharma, the people are rising up, they better count their days because the people are paying attention. Nothing has happened since but more dead people due to denied insurance claims. But there sure are a lot of people talking about how another Luigi will show up sometime soon
An arsonist burned down a large warehouse. Endless chatter about how this is the end for big corporations screwing us at the register, how workers will rise up and burn even MORE if they don't get treated better. Nothing has happened since to these big businesses. There is no tiktok trend for large scale arson, no worker unionization. Nothing changed but boy do people talk about i
I would rather solve it politically by strengthening the EPA. We may just disagree here and that is fine.
Honestly, anything that gets people paying attention to stuff that has been building for decades is good in my book.
I agree that'll be a much better end-state to be in, but is it the best right now? ... idk. We're in an increasingly blatant "smash and grab" phase for major corporations right now, and they need to be stopped quickly.
Sure, but what is this comment if not a plea for someone else to do something? No one can live your ideals for you, if you think something should be done, you should do it, and quickly at that. If it is that urgent, why are you not doing anything?
You've been complaining that people blocking datacenters (which is partly succeeding) is worse than fixing the EPA.
Something is being done, urgently (vastly faster than the larger legal system), and public outrage is loud and annoying and widely visible, which is indeed what I want. Beyond that it isn't especially fair to say "if you like to eat, why haven't you solved world hunger", particularly when those EPA/zoning laws aren't in place yet, so I'll just ignore that part.
No one has ever complained about people blocking data centers. Just over the top bad-faith to even type that out, this will be our final back and forth.
My points have consistently been (1) lying is the quickest way to make an issue divisive as they focus on the lies and not the cause and that (2) that you cannot trust members of the general public to undertake radical actions nor can you sit by and egg them on to achieve your goals for you.
Data centers are coming up left and right and no violent uprising has stopped them from being built. What has slowed them down in certain communities are those communities coming together, organizing, and making themselves heard via political action. Which is the avenue I am advocating for here in this conversation with you.
You are here discussing how someone must do something and how it needs to be done urgently because it is so pressing. No one challenged you to solve it. Equating any call to action, especially for an issue that you yourself declare urgent, to solving world hunger is an immediate end to this conversation. If you cannot take your own views seriously, neither can I. No one is going to take care of the bothersome priest for you as living out your ideals is your problem, not theirs.
>No one can live your ideals for you, if you think something should be done, you should do it, and quickly at that. If it is that urgent, why are you not doing anything?
This is the world-hunger-equivalent bit fwiw. It's rather explicitly "if you care about this, why haven't you solved it", an over-the-top bad-faith argument.
You are quoting my passage for you to do something, not solve it. You then go on to reinterpret it through your own quotes to dream up me saying something I never said.
Telling you to live out your own ideals vs committing stochastic terrorism online is, rather explicitly, not asking why haven't you solved that. We know that because no where in my text do you find me asking you to solve it or asking why haven't you solved it.
It works better to read the text written then to read it, get mad about an imaginary statement, and justify your outrage via a quote you create out of thing air. If you can't do that, you don't need me to include me in your imaginary argument between you and yourself.
But if you truly cannot do that, and we have no proof to say otherwise, maybe log off and take a breather. No one should be so upset that reading becomes a challenge.
>You are quoting my passage for you to do something, not solve it.
Which is claiming I'm doing nothing because you haven't seen it. The implication is that you're disregarding "my ideals" unless I do something so impactful that you would have passively noticed.
I fully believe that's not what you intended, but that is a rather straightforward read of what you typed out, so I pointed it out.
> I am specifically asking this person why they are touting water usage and not noise pollution as the main problem.
You are lying here.
> it's all people seem to care about.
You were specifically asking why what "all people seem to care about" is "the whole data center heat/water thing," and when somebody told you that's this is not the only thing people care about, you immediately lied about what you just said.
Even by the end of the comment:
> water usage is still the number one thing I see written about and spoken about my protestors.
So you're still not talking specifically to this person, but making easily falsifiable generalizations. And you still haven't claimed why water and power usage are not problems, you've just decided that people must only talk about "the main problem" but somehow not being the "main problem" becomes "falsifiable information" by the end.
It's just garbled when it's not dishonest.
I have "mixed" feelings about data centers, although they're pretty clear. I do not think that we will get the utilization out of data centers that we are expecting, I do not think there is as much revenue as needed in it, so I think this is a massive waste of resources. But if I am wrong and we do, I think noise pollution, heat pollution, power usage and water usage are worth it. I also think that poor and powerless people are being victimized by the placement of these things, just like they are in most large polluting capital expenditures. This should be compensated for. I also think that the longer data centers are delayed, the better idea we will have of their potential utilization.
The idea that current data center water use is as much as 1% of all of the leaky pipes in the US is not a statement of its insignificance, it's a statement of its massive significance. You might as well say that all of the shootings in the world are only 1% of all of the deaths from heart disease.
Yes, comments can make points and then support those points with their own anecdotal evidence. Maybe take a break, you are acting unhinged.
> The idea that current data center water use is as much as 1% of all of the leaky pipes in the US is not a statement of its insignificance, it's a statement of its massive significance. You might as well say that all of the shootings in the world are only 1% of all of the deaths from heart disease.
Google what fallacies are. You should start with False Equivalence
I've seen lots of talk about noise pollution with them? There's infrasound concerns and etc. No idea how real that impact is, but it's apparently measurable for a few miles away.
It mostly needs zoning as you say and maybe require each project put down a bond to supply a power plant expansion / new plant that covers their projected energy uses, imo. That sorts out a lot of issues. Maybe put some kinda tax on them and use it to pay for local infrastructure or schools for PR too
I'm not saying the noise pollution concerns aren't real, but these are often the same people who had "concerns" with 5G.
Most datacenters I've been to around the world are barely noticeable. Most of them are in warehouse districts and the AC chillers are barely noticeable over the chillers on other nearby buildings. Often, they WANT to be nondescript.
That being said, I've not been to any of these new ones which are both significantly larger and also can have onsite turbines that run all the time and not just during power outages.
> The whole data center heat/water thing is like not even in the top 100 risks/issues related to AI, but it's all people seem to care about. Why is that?
Another commenter said the concerns about heat/water were because they were being built next to their houses, and I responded to that. I am specifically asking this person why they are touting water usage and not noise pollution as the main problem. I was not asking generically why no one talks about it
"residential zoning" looks like an intentional misunderstanding of the problem. Putting one outside of "residential zoning" surely isn't a problem even if it robs an entire residential zone of power, right? Or then governments can't just re-allocate residential zones to industrial zones to get those juicy deals, right?
The way you're using language here is putting the problem so close to the edge that abuse, ignoring the quality of lives of residents, would seem just so logical.
> Or then governments can't just re-allocate residential zones to industrial zones to get those juicy deals, right?
Which is why we need laws around where data centers can and cannot be built. Something I clearly alluded to in my first comment. Do you want to make up things I never said such that you can make some snarky comment and feel good about yourself or have a real conversation? If it is the former, fuck off.
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It's possible to avoid interacting with AI in every day life but it's impossible not to be affected by second order effects. The impact from a data center boom fuelled by dirty electricity is real.
The impact is highly geography dependent.
For example, the lower Colorado River basin is facing heavy drought, extremely low reservoirs, and federally mandated cuts in water shares. Awkward time to build water intensive infrastructure, even if the usage is relatively low.
> it's all people seem to care about.
You shouldn't try to assess what people care about from what you see in the media, including social media. Focused thought and gigantic resources go into shaping the public perception of reality through media.
Because "the water thing" is make or break for for the southwest, which includes LA, and LA's water system includes NorCal consequences, and California water issues include all-country impacts due to the farming there.
If you haven't been paying attention to the "water thing," that doesn't mean it's not serious af.
California and Arizona use literally orders of magnitude more water for alfalfa farming than they do for data centers.
> Because "the water thing" is make or break for for the southwest
no, it's a thing because you can put water in terms that even a hair dresser can be convinced to get scared and angry about. No technical knowledge required.
Millions of acre-feet of water, far more than all of the data centers use in the United States combined for evaporative cooling, are used to flood irrigate alfalfa crops in California and Arizona to feed cows. 5% of this is exported. It’s orders of magnitude more water.
All of the irrigated golf courses combined use more water than all of the US data centers combined.
if we were seeing a big increase in building new golf courses in those areas, we'd have the same protests
same if increasing alfalfa farming was increasing significantly
it's harder to stop something that already exists (shutting down existing golf courses or alfalfa farms has consequences for the local communities) than to stop something from coming into existence in the first place
Its a proxy fight - the data centers represent AI in most peoples mind, and any animosity towards a nebulous idea of "AI" can be redirected to these concrete, physical data centers.
All that being said, if your actual goal was to hinder AI growth in some way, slowing the data center buildout in the US would probably work towards that end reasonably well.
Noise and increased electricity costs. I feel like the people balking at anti-datacenter rhetoric are just intentionally missing the most obvious and directly impacting complaints from residents.
Pretty sure everyone cares about their power bills and water bills going up. The people living next to them care about this other stuff.
It's much more tangible for your average person than circular financing deals or chip supply constraints. And unfortunately social media is an amplifier for tangible misinformation.
When you have no arguments on your side you have to make them up.
People are terrified of AI, for a big number of both silly and serious reasons.
That fear and rage needs to be expressed somehow, ang going NIMBY on local data center construction is probably the only real way most people can do anything remotely affecting the AI boom.
Industry build-out in the USA? It's raising our energy and water costs.
Lack of industry build-out in the USA? We're losing our industrial base to the Chinese.
Social media always promotes the angry take because that's what maximizes engagement, so everything that happens (or doesn't happen) is always bad. Doesn't matter what it is. Everything is bad and we're all gonna die. Better keep scrolling to find out more!
There's a certain group of people (the kind of people who used to spend a lot of time on twitter and now spend a lot of time on bluesky) that's convinced that their environmental activism is what defeated NFT and are trying to repeat that to defeat AI because it's the same "tech bros we hate".
Because they are hitting people's water and electricity bills (and or ability to get either at all) RIGHT NOW
Yea decreasing them