Is the shine already coming off ai & data centers?

[paindonthurt]

0 surprise you didn't read the well discussed and accepted concerns.

Being able to do something doesn't mean it should be done.

If you and leeinator are unable to acknowledge and address very real concerns, then this is yet another discussion where your comments are unserious and not worth valuing.

Maybe people would read more of your crap if you’d condense it a little

 

[paindonthurt]

Actually most of it isn’t. Only about 10%-20% makes it back into an aquifer.

So we are simply on borrowed time with water from aquifers?

 

[DesotoCountyDawg]

So we are simply on borrowed time with water from aquifers?

Yes for some at least that take a long time to recharge like the Ogalalla Aquifer in the Great Plains. The Mississippi Alluvial has seen a substantial drawdown but has slowed some.

 

[mstateglfr]

So we are simply on borrowed time with water from aquifers?

Holy shít. More react first learn second from you.
We pull 50x more water from the Ogallala than it refills. It takes a damn long time to refill.

And while that water may never disappear or whatever the 17 your dumb argument is, it is gone from that area. And other water that comes to that area from other areas sure as 17 isn't quickly seeping down and refilling the Ogallala.

 

[turkish]

It may be difficult in some areas but it’s a pretty natural process

Rainfall and snowmelt soaking directly into the ground (Infiltration)


Water leaking through the bottom and sides of riverbeds, creeks, and lakes


Standing water sitting in natural wetlands and floodplains


Surface water diverted into engineered, open-air infiltration basins


Treated water pumped directly underground via high-pressure injection wells


Stormwater funneled down shallow vadose zone (dry) wells to bypass clay barriers


Flooding dormant agricultural fields with excess winter river water (Ag-MAR)


Building check dams and leaky weirs to slow down and trap flash floods in dry riverbeds


Constructing artificial beaver dams to slow streams and push water into valley soils


Using permeable pavements and bioswales to let urban stormwater sink into the ground

You’re making us look bad.

 

[mstateglfr]

Maybe people would read more of your crap if you’d condense it a little

Nope, rejected.
It was simple to read the post's points. It takes 30 seconds to read.

Don't blame your unwillingness to learn on a post being 30 seconds of reading.

 

[LTblows]

“Closed loop cooling” and “evaporative cooling” are not mutually exclusive terms. I’m beginning to think the impasse is because you DC engrs just have your own lingo. Do data centers using closed loop cooling ALWAYS use fans to reject heat from the loop? If so, I will acquiesce and go forward with the understanding that you have nomenclature different from the rest of industry — and that’s OK.

I can show you dozens of closed loop cooling circuits that use massive amounts of evaporative cooling. Common propane and propylene (and likely ammonia) refrigeration systems in the petrochemical industry are closed loop AND use evaporative cooling. What matters is where the heat from the loop is being rejected — to air or to water.

In a closed-loop setup, liquid (usually treated water or a water/glycol mix) circulates through sealed piping to absorb heat from servers (via rear-door heat exchangers, in-row coolers, or direct-to-chip cold plates). That warmed liquid then flows to a central heat rejection system that transfers the heat to the outside air while keeping the coolant volume inside the loop for repeated reuse.
The “closed loop” refers to the IT-side or secondary loop: that fluid is not exposed to atmosphere and is not evaporated in normal operation.

In evaporative cooling setups, outside air is sucked into the data halls through big fans, misted with water to create more humid air (more humid air absorbs more heat) goes through the data hall and is blasted out fans in the roof (usually) and out into the sky.

 

[Bobby Ricigliano]

That warmed liquid then flows to a central heat rejection system that transfers the heat to the outside air while keeping the coolant volume inside the loop for repeated reuse.

Is this typically done with air (or once-through water) exchangers or evaporative water cooling towers? That seems to be the unclear point that’s causing confusion in the thread.

 

[turkish]

Is this typically done with air (or once-through water) exchangers or evaporative water cooling towers? That seems to be the unclear point that’s causing confusion in the thread.

Either or both. That’s why “closed loop” doesn’t really tell us about overall water consumption. As LT clarified well, it tells us only about water consumption for the fluid that touches the chips. It’s a hollow buzzword they use to sound smart, innovative and responsible. And Im also in the business. And small town officials are none the wiser.

These facilities should be near coasts or rivers and purify that water for heat rejection. Not fans. Not groundwater. This would add capital cost, but the pace of buildout implies the incremental cost wouldn’t be a showstopper.

And let us not forget that the incremental electricity usage is also a huge additional water consumer.

 

[paindonthurt]

Yes for some at least that take a long time to recharge like the Ogalalla Aquifer in the Great Plains. The Mississippi Alluvial has seen a substantial drawdown but has slowed some.

You know what is depleting aquifers 100 times more than data centers? Even f we tripled the amount of data centers?

farmers!

So maybe we don’t have a data center problem but we need to start working on ways to recapture water which people are already doing.

 

[paindonthurt]

Holy shít. More react first learn second from you.
We pull 50x more water from the Ogallala than it refills. It takes a damn long time to refill.

And while that water may never disappear or whatever the 17 your dumb argument is, it is gone from that area. And other water that comes to that area from other areas sure as 17 isn't quickly seeping down and refilling the Ogallala.

Again you are stupid.

If data centers quadrupled farming would still be killing aquifers at 100 times the rate of data centers.

you wanna shut down farming?

 

[paindonthurt]

These facilities should be near coasts or rivers and purify that water for heat rejection. Not fans. Not groundwater. This would add capital cost, but the pace of buildout implies the incremental cost wouldn’t be a showstopper.

This is kind of the point I’ve been wanting someone to say

data centers are the devil. They just need to be planned better.

better planning comes with experience.

 

[paindonthurt]

Nope, rejected.

You are a super douche

It was simple to read the post's points. It takes 30 seconds to read.

Don't blame your unwillingness to learn on a post being 30 seconds of reading.

But hey I’m glad you kept this clear and concise!

and nothing you ever post allows me to learn other than how not to be a super douche bag

 

[DesotoCountyDawg]

You know what is depleting aquifers 100 times more than data centers? Even f we tripled the amount of data centers?

farmers!

So maybe we don’t have a data center problem but we need to start working on ways to recapture water which people are already doing.

That’s exactly what we are trying to do.

 

[turkish]

This is kind of the point I’ve been wanting someone to say

data centers are the devil. They just need to be planned better.

better planning comes with experience.

We have over a century of experience locating industries that hog water, power, and makes noise. The only reason this seems new is because of folks telling half-truths like “closed loop.”

 

[paindonthurt]

That’s exactly what we are trying to do.

Got it

my point in this thread is that data centers aren’t going anywhere and they shouldn’t

we need to innovate to solve problems

necessity is the mother of invention? Or something like that

 

[paindonthurt]

We have over a century of experience locating industries that hog water, power, and makes noise. The only reason this seems new is because of folks telling half-truths like “closed loop.”

So why are we so bent out of shape about data centers? Let’s blame the ones that hog the most water!!

or let’s solve the GD problem

 

[Bilbo69]

I’m in the industry and need to hop in here to correct a lot of misinformation.

Noise: do data centers make lots of noise? Yeah they can. You don’t want to live 300 feet from one, but most of the complaints are overblown. I’m half a mile from an interstate, and I can hear traffic from it. It just fades into the background and I rarely notice it. If you’re a 1/4 mile away from a campus, maybe it’ll be like that; maybe you won’t hear it at all.

water: Evap uses tons more water than closed loop. Pretty much everyone now uses closed loop except for Amazon. They’ll move that way within the next couple of years. The largest Evap campuses use a similar amount of water to a soybean or corn farm on the same property. Uses less than what a rice farm would use. But since most are closed loop now, they use as much as an office building. It’s nothing. Fast food restaurants use more water.

Power: they use massive amounts of power. So what? You aren’t paying for it. No deals are actually getting completed in the industry unless the data center user is paying for all the infrastructure upgrades and is guarantying the power contract with investment grade credit. The costs aren’t being passed on to the public. A portion of the infrastructure costs were being passed on to the ratebase roughly 5-10 years ago in places like northern Virginia, but it’s not happening now. The users are footing the bill for everything. I wish that weren’t the case- it would make my life easier.

jobs: data centers create a relatively small amount of permanent jobs compared to the overall investment and building sizes. But the jobs that are provided are very well paying. And there’s also indirect support industries that create jobs that are never calculated into data center job figures. They do create thousands of great commercial construction jobs for several years. Have a teenage son- tell him to skip college and become a commercial electrician. He’ll make a fortune fast.

taxes: this is the reason why you want data centers in your town. They pay massive local taxes. There’s a reason why Loudoun County, VA went from “in the sticks” to one of the most desirable counties in the whole country. Their school systems were transformed and massively invested through the data center taxes. Think about it- the county with the most data centers in the world (over 100) happens to be one of the most desired places to live. If data centers were so awful for the community, Loudon would be avoided like the plague.

News: the reason why so much anti data center sentiment is popping up on your newsfeeds and algorithms is in a large part from Chinese actors wanting to slow US AI progress and global NGOs who have pivoted from climate change propaganda peddling to data center propaganda peddling. They’ve realized that they can be effective by leveraging their protest organizations to organize local populations and saturate Facebook feeds with BS, it’s really cheap to get the masses to bite because the industry is not very known.

bottom line: no development type is better for your community. It puts little to no strain on local infrastructure (roads, schools, hospitals, etc), pays more taxes than anything else by orders of magnitude, and brings a few high paying jobs to go with it. It boggles my mind the current state of discourse around data centers. My industry has completely lost the messaging war. The states and localities which champion data centers will become immensely more wealthy as a result from geographic competition getting annihilated across the country.

Society rejecting AI is not Chinese propoganda. It’s just common sense.

And concerning the strain on the grid I would be willing to bet people are paying the additional cost on our monthly power bills.

 

[paindonthurt]

Society rejecting AI is not Chinese propoganda. It’s just common sense.

And concerning the strain on the grid I would be willing to bet people are paying the additional cost on our monthly power bills.

Society rejecting AI is just stupid

 

[Bilbo69]

Society rejecting AI is just stupid

People by in large don’t want to see less jobs and wealth concentration. These college kids booing all these execs recently encapsulates the issue pretty well.

 

[paindonthurt]

People by and large don’t want to see less jobs and wealth concentration. These college kids booing all these execs recently encapsulates the issue pretty well.

Explain to me what you think is gonna happen over the next 20 years with AI.

And it’s funny college kids booing execs considering most people go to college to get good jobs like “exec” positions.

Otherwise why not go do what many of them should have in the first place? Go learn a trade. Skip out on the debt and make good money right away?

 

[Bilbo69]

Explain to me what you think is gonna happen over the next 20 years with AI.

And it’s funny college kids booing execs considering most people go to college to get good jobs like “exec” positions.

Otherwise why not go do what many of them should have in the first place? Go learn a trade. Skip out on the debt and make good money right away?

I mean I can do you one better and quote the founders of both OpenAI and Anthropic stating that AI will lead to massive job losses.

You’re bone to pick with college grads aside. Go become a plumber or mechanic is not a great pitch for AI.

No shade to plumbers and mechanics tho I know they make straight $$$.

 

[paindonthurt]

I mean I can do you one better and quote the founders of both OpenAI and Anthropic stating that AI will lead to massive job losses.

You’re bone to pick with college grads aside. Go become a plumber or mechanic is not a great pitch for AI.

No shade to plumbers and mechanics tho I know they make straight $$$.

Are you dumb?

if college kids are afraid of AI, adapt. You think AI is gonna take plumbing jobs? Construction? Etc?

Let’s assume 15% of the work force is lost to AI. wtf do you think that’s gonna do for the companies making all of the money from AI? You think it’s not gonna affect their revenue when 15% of the population can’t afford to buy the stuff?

Here is how AI is going to actually help American workers.

Automation isnt new. It’s been here and it’s not leaving.
you know why jobs left and went overseas? Bc they were labor intensive and companies wanted to make more money by getting cheaper labor.

Now imagine you bring a lot of that work back here but with automation vs tons of assembly man power. You still need people to run the equipment like you have in highly automated lines now. You still need electricians and maintenance people to work on it.

So yes you lose a lot of low skilled jobs but you gain high skilled jobs.

why would companies come back? Bc they can save on shipping costs. Now they have low labor and less freight cost.

OR

we could let China win the AI race and we could just buy everything from them? How does that sound?

 

[mstateglfr]

Are you dumb?

if college kids are afraid of AI, adapt. You think AI is gonna take plumbing jobs? Construction? Etc?

Let’s assume 15% of the work force is lost to AI. wtf do you think that’s gonna do for the companies making all of the money from AI? You think it’s not gonna affect their revenue when 15% of the population can’t afford to buy the stuff?

Here is how AI is going to actually help American workers.

Automation isnt new. It’s been here and it’s not leaving.
you know why jobs left and went overseas? Bc they were labor intensive and companies wanted to make more money by getting cheaper labor.

Now imagine you bring a lot of that work back here but with automation vs tons of assembly man power. You still need people to run the equipment like you have in highly automated lines now. You still need electricians and maintenance people to work on it.

So yes you lose a lot of low skilled jobs but you gain high skilled jobs.

why would companies come back? Bc they can save on shipping costs. Now they have low labor and less freight cost.

OR

we could let China win the AI race and we could just buy everything from them? How does that sound?

It’s funny to see such a long post from you, given your inability to read posts that are shorter.

 

[OG Goat Holder]

I’m in the industry and need to hop in here to correct a lot of misinformation.

Noise: do data centers make lots of noise? Yeah they can. You don’t want to live 300 feet from one, but most of the complaints are overblown. I’m half a mile from an interstate, and I can hear traffic from it. It just fades into the background and I rarely notice it. If you’re a 1/4 mile away from a campus, maybe it’ll be like that; maybe you won’t hear it at all.

water: Evap uses tons more water than closed loop. Pretty much everyone now uses closed loop except for Amazon. They’ll move that way within the next couple of years. The largest Evap campuses use a similar amount of water to a soybean or corn farm on the same property. Uses less than what a rice farm would use. But since most are closed loop now, they use as much as an office building. It’s nothing. Fast food restaurants use more water.

Power: they use massive amounts of power. So what? You aren’t paying for it. No deals are actually getting completed in the industry unless the data center user is paying for all the infrastructure upgrades and is guarantying the power contract with investment grade credit. The costs aren’t being passed on to the public. A portion of the infrastructure costs were being passed on to the ratebase roughly 5-10 years ago in places like northern Virginia, but it’s not happening now. The users are footing the bill for everything. I wish that weren’t the case- it would make my life easier.

jobs: data centers create a relatively small amount of permanent jobs compared to the overall investment and building sizes. But the jobs that are provided are very well paying. And there’s also indirect support industries that create jobs that are never calculated into data center job figures. They do create thousands of great commercial construction jobs for several years. Have a teenage son- tell him to skip college and become a commercial electrician. He’ll make a fortune fast.

taxes: this is the reason why you want data centers in your town. They pay massive local taxes. There’s a reason why Loudoun County, VA went from “in the sticks” to one of the most desirable counties in the whole country. Their school systems were transformed and massively invested through the data center taxes. Think about it- the county with the most data centers in the world (over 100) happens to be one of the most desired places to live. If data centers were so awful for the community, Loudon would be avoided like the plague.

News: the reason why so much anti data center sentiment is popping up on your newsfeeds and algorithms is in a large part from Chinese actors wanting to slow US AI progress and global NGOs who have pivoted from climate change propaganda peddling to data center propaganda peddling. They’ve realized that they can be effective by leveraging their protest organizations to organize local populations and saturate Facebook feeds with BS, it’s really cheap to get the masses to bite because the industry is not very known.

bottom line: no development type is better for your community. It puts little to no strain on local infrastructure (roads, schools, hospitals, etc), pays more taxes than anything else by orders of magnitude, and brings a few high paying jobs to go with it. It boggles my mind the current state of discourse around data centers. My industry has completely lost the messaging war. The states and localities which champion data centers will become immensely more wealthy as a result from geographic competition getting annihilated across the country.

Appreciate yours' and @ababyatemydingo's points in this thread. I think you're 80% correct. You have to admit to at least a little bias, though. You don't get away with these things scot-free. Again, people in Southaven aren't mad because of Chinese propaganda.

 

[Bilbo69]

Are you dumb?

if college kids are afraid of AI, adapt. You think AI is gonna take plumbing jobs? Construction? Etc?

Let’s assume 15% of the work force is lost to AI. wtf do you think that’s gonna do for the companies making all of the money from AI? You think it’s not gonna affect their revenue when 15% of the population can’t afford to buy the stuff?

Here is how AI is going to actually help American workers.

Automation isnt new. It’s been here and it’s not leaving.
you know why jobs left and went overseas? Bc they were labor intensive and companies wanted to make more money by getting cheaper labor.

Now imagine you bring a lot of that work back here but with automation vs tons of assembly man power. You still need people to run the equipment like you have in highly automated lines now. You still need electricians and maintenance people to work on it.

So yes you lose a lot of low skilled jobs but you gain high skilled jobs.

why would companies come back? Bc they can save on shipping costs. Now they have low labor and less freight cost.

OR

we could let China win the AI race and we could just buy everything from them? How does that sound?

If 10-15% of the workforce is displaced in any way then we have already hit a Great Depression level disaster. You live in a fantasy land if you think you can just funnel all those jobs into trades without flooding those markets.

You’re using a lot of mental gymnastics to jump to automation bringing jobs back from China somehow lol. Would love to see that studies on that one. Automating 1000 low skilled jobs to bring back 10 high skilled jobs is a win for some corps bottom line only. They have some of you guys gulping that kool aid.

 

[OG Goat Holder]

Are you dumb?

if college kids are afraid of AI, adapt. You think AI is gonna take plumbing jobs? Construction? Etc?

Let’s assume 15% of the work force is lost to AI. wtf do you think that’s gonna do for the companies making all of the money from AI? You think it’s not gonna affect their revenue when 15% of the population can’t afford to buy the stuff?

Here is how AI is going to actually help American workers.

Automation isnt new. It’s been here and it’s not leaving.
you know why jobs left and went overseas? Bc they were labor intensive and companies wanted to make more money by getting cheaper labor.

Now imagine you bring a lot of that work back here but with automation vs tons of assembly man power. You still need people to run the equipment like you have in highly automated lines now. You still need electricians and maintenance people to work on it.

So yes you lose a lot of low skilled jobs but you gain high skilled jobs.

why would companies come back? Bc they can save on shipping costs. Now they have low labor and less freight cost.

OR

we could let China win the AI race and we could just buy everything from them? How does that sound?

I honestly hope it takes YOUR job. This whole angry "be hard on everybody" bullshlt from you has gotten well beyond old. Real easy for you to tell kids to go get a construction job, while your cushy asss sits around in an office acting like you work hard.

 

[leeinator]

I took time to type out legitimate and documented reasons why not.

It sucks that you didn't read any of it.

Sucks that you don't think about it.

 

[mstateglfr]

Sucks that you don't think about it.

Sucks that I dont think about what?
Surely you arent referring to your suggestion to pump water from the Mississippi to the Colorado, since my response which lists very real concerns clearly shows I thought about that.

So what dont I think about?

 

[johnson86-1]

I mean I can do you one better and quote the founders of both OpenAI and Anthropic stating that AI will lead to massive job losses.

You’re bone to pick with college grads aside. Go become a plumber or mechanic is not a great pitch for AI.

No shade to plumbers and mechanics tho I know they make straight $$$.

I hope it's not like the industrial revolution. Really sucks that we can't all live on subsistence wages while acting as blacksmiths, seamstresses, furriers, farm labor, etc. That was a massive 17up when we lost all those jobs.

 

[mstateglfr]

I hope it's not like the industrial revolution. Really sucks that we can't all live on subsistence wages while acting as blacksmiths, seamstresses, furriers, farm labor, etc. That was a massive 17up when we lost all those jobs.

Furriers will never die...

 

[johnson86-1]

Furriers will never die...

I actually saw I misspelled it after the fact. But I didn’t change it because I realized farriers are still a thing and we don’t have machines out there putting horseshoes on, but furriers, which is apparently a real trade and not another weird sexual deviancy thing, have more or less been replaced like other clothes and craft makers.

 

[paindonthurt]

It’s funny to see such a long post from you, given your inability to read posts that are shorter.

Thats cute but glad you read and understood!

 

[paindonthurt]

If 10-15% of the workforce is displaced in any way then we have already hit a Great Depression level disaster. You live in a fantasy land if you think you can just funnel all those jobs into trades without flooding those markets.

No crap you dumb@$$. thats my point. you think corporations are gonna just wipe out all those jobs so we hit a depression that..........wait for it......HURTS COPORATIONS!!!

You’re using a lot of mental gymnastics to jump to automation bringing jobs back from China somehow lol. Would love to see that studies on that one. Automating 1000 low skilled jobs to bring back 10 high skilled jobs is a win for some corps bottom line only. They have some of you guys gulping that kool aid.

Well guess what dip ****. I'm a project engineer that works in a ton of plants that slowly upgrade to automation. The more they are able to produce the more they expand those factories which creates jobs.

Jobs in the factory including equipment operators, material handlers and mainteance jobs
outside of the factory - contract labor, shipping, supplies needed to run the factory

 

[paindonthurt]

I honestly hope it takes YOUR job. This whole angry "be hard on everybody" bullshlt from you has gotten well beyond old. Real easy for you to tell kids to go get a construction job, while your cushy asss sits around in an office acting like you work hard.

Are you dumb? Yes you are.

I'm not the angry person in this thread. A bunch of you whiny @$$ bitches are angry at actual progress called AI.

And if it takes my job? So? I'll adapt or I'll starve, but i won't be a communist, socialist, beech about it.

 

[paindonthurt]

I hope it's not like the industrial revolution. Really sucks that we can't all live on subsistence wages while acting as blacksmiths, seamstresses, furriers, farm labor, etc. That was a massive 17up when we lost all those jobs.

Yes it totally would have been better if we still lived like that!!

 

[Bilbo69]

No crap you dumb@$$. thats my point. you think corporations are gonna just wipe out all those jobs so we hit a depression that..........wait for it......HURTS COPORATIONS!!!

Well guess what dip ****. I'm a project engineer that works in a ton of plants that slowly upgrade to automation. The more they are able to produce the more they expand those factories which creates jobs.

Jobs in the factory including equipment operators, material handlers and mainteance jobs
outside of the factory - contract labor, shipping, supplies needed to run the factory

All respect to you but your POV is embarrassingly naive as to the nature of what companies are aiming to do with this tech

 

[paindonthurt]

All respect to you but your POV is embarrassingly naive as to the nature of what companies are aiming to do with this tech

Oh so you think they wanna wreck the economy so they can lose money? Got it!

 

[oompa]

Oh so you think they wanna wreck the economy so they can lose money? Got it!

 

[Bilbo69]

Oh so you think they wanna wreck the economy so they can lose money? Got it!

Companies aren’t building AI to increase their payrolls lol