If you are trying to keep something cool why would you put it in Arizona
this post was submitted on 19 May 2026
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Because as humans we are insanely stupid. I think we all know the answer. Money is why Arizona. We don't do what's right. We do what is cheap and effective. It just happens that sometimes that is right too.
I recently watched a video about the first electronic synthesizer. It was built in 1897, and was housed in the basement of an entire city block in NYC. Several decades later, and it would fit in a suitcase, with far more functionality. It worked, but it was huge and unwieldly, to the point of being completely impractical. It needed to wait until the technology caught up to it, and made it a truly viable instrument, and not just a concept.
Data Centers are like that 1897 synthesizer. It works, sure, but at what cost? It's expensive in every way, from the building costs, the energy costs, the environmental costs, etc. We have a concept and a prototype, but not a truly viable product yet. Maybe in a decade or two, with a proper goal in mind, we can get there, but right now, Data Centers are just that big, dumb synthesizer that takes up a city block.
Ah but that's where you're mistaken. The electronic Synthesizer actually had a use. Data centers are a waste the whole way around, and they always will be.
Valid.
Good thing it's not hot in Phoenix.
Debating a data center IMO is the same as debating a Nazis right to exist. They should've been stopped before they could get going and now that its too late to stop them we just gotta kill them instead.
I wonder how muchv it raises from you know, ever multi giga watt power plant?
Suppose it depends how much gas they each fire to keep the slop boiling
Sadly we actually need power plants, the Data Centers though are trash.
This will help fighting the global colding we've had going on… wait, something's off. Am I reading the charts upside down again?
Once again I am shocked that you always have these big ass heat exchangers on these data centers but no talk of even trying to use some of the waste heat to offset the power use.
my crazy ass idea since 2015:
let's install mini data centers on residential buildings:
- use excess heat to get hot water for pavement heating in winter and get hot water for domestic usage
- buildings get free high speed fiber
- local edge servers
- employ local people for maintenance
cons:
- management hell, but if small teams get split locally in quarters/towns then I don't see problems
Nebius is doing it in Finland
They are wasteful on purpose. they could have closed circuit cooling systems where they condense the water from the vapor and reuse it. But they are a giant middle finger to all of us.
Nah, evaporation removes multiple times more heat than regular air cooling. It's because water has high specific heat
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Typical waste in the USA. I believe Sweden or Finland pump the heat out for residential use.
I don't think the main problem of Phoenix is the lack of heating
Use it to heat water for home use and a desert does become cool at night.
You need hot water in Phoenix, don't you?
Waste heat is high entropy alredy. You can't extract any meaningful energy out of it.
Ah yes, famously we have never been able to do anything with heat energy....
It's not my fault you don't understand physics and think that all heat=free energy. You can't extract shit without big temperature difference.
Yeah if only you had enough excess heat in one area to increase the local temperature of an already very hot place by 4 degrees.
If you plug the numbers into the Carnot equation, it looks like the maximum theoretical efficiency of a thermoelectric generator or heat engine operating at that temperature gradient is about 0.75%. And, I could be wrong, but my assumption would be any attempt to reclaim that energy would slow its exchange and potentially bottleneck a cooling system to some extent.
The issue is you are using 4 degrees as the delta of temp, when that is the ambient area temp change. The very localized heat being generated on site (and already nicely conveyed in heat management systems) is going to be a lot more then 4. Also why would you be always using a thermometric generator? They are not know to be efficient.
Good point about the local temperature delta.. I kind of lost sight of that in the discussion. But my understanding of that equation is it would be the maximum theoretical efficiency of any thermal generator as it represents an idealized heat engine.
I mean good, we should do everything possible to make these data centers as unnefficient as they are unnecessary.
4 degrees Fahrenheit is nothing. For all practical energy production puropses it's worthless
They could boil seawater, condense the steam into drinking water
its more expensive since you will need to deal with corrosion and heat degrading the equipment overtime.
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Not only that... but Lake Tahoe is being abandoned by their power company to power data centers because its more profitable.
https://fortune.com/2026/05/12/lake-tahoe-data-center-49000-residents-power-source/
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"Data centers are inherently an important part of our society, and they're going to become even more necessary going forward,"
God, fuck this shit
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