I'm pro-information and believe generally that anti-data-center activists are chasing a Glonzo on par with anti-5G electrosensitives. That said given the tide of opinion I'm overjoyed that Trump and his allies want to step into the fusilade to defend the unpopular.

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cogman10 6 hours ago | parent [-]

That data centers need a lot of power and some cases a lot of water isn't some sort of conspiracy theory. When you have data centers like the box elder county DC that is planed to consume more power than the entire state of Utah and it wants to do that by burning natural gas, that's not some sort of conspiracy theory that it would be tremendously bad for the environment and the regional gas and electric bills (particularly since a decent amount of power already is generated via natural gas there).

I'm not wholesale against data centers, but there are more than a few projects that are downright irresponsible.

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scottyah 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I figured that one was non-serious and just used as anchoring and to take the heat whilst other large ones were ok to go under the radar.

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cogman10 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's not the only GW datacenter planned [1]. AFAIK, a majority of these big datacenters are going to produce their power via natural gas turbines. I don't know of any that are actually planning on powering themselves via renewables or even nuclear power.

The sub 100MW data centers are mostly relying on the grid, but even a number of them plan on having natural gas turbines.

[1] https://cleanview.co/data-centers/us

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jeffbee 5 hours ago | parent [-]

The way to regulate that impact is with a wellhead severance tax, though. The whole fact of the data center is incidental.

	▲	cogman10 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I agree, that'd be a great way to approach things. The problem is a lot of the regulators are instead looking at doing tax breaks for these data centers when they should be taxing them (and other businesses) for the externalities of the problems they'll cause.

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jeffbee 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

A person who has never built anything before, who claims to be about to build the world's largest building, can be treated with some skepticism.

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LeBit 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I have no idea and one can trace a parallel between the construction of resource hungry data centers and 5G crack pots.