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Original comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1uyyywv/comment/oy3cgd7/
Trees vs. Data Centers
Photo 1: Memphis, TN (top)
Photo 2: Sandston, VA
Photo 3: Abilene, Texas
Photo 4: New Albany, OH
Photo 5: Fayetteville, GA
To be fair. This isn’t an AI issue. Or a data center issue. It’s an everywhere issue. If there is a plot of land, it will be leveled and something will be built. Strip mall. Gas station. Houses. So many houses. It’s never ending. If that piece of land can make money, it will be clear cut and built on.
The use of passive voice throughout your comment is almost impressive.
What do those other buildings provide that data centers don't?
I get what you are saying. I know. But that strip mall is gonna have a parking lot the size Montana. It will contain 2 mattress stores, a noodle place and a denture store. The noodle place will go out of business and shutdown. The other 3 will remain open for the next 12 years by magic or something, cause you never see a single person there. We need housing yes. Affordable housing. The houses that the forest was cleared for will be 500k plus, contractor grade, where you get to choose from 3 designs, and its built off a two lane road that is never improved to handle a 1000 home neighborhood. At least, that is all that is popping up around me.
Id rather have the forest any day.
Not OP, but houses provide housing. Strip malls provide spaces for local businesses. Data center literally provide nothing to the local community they are built in other than stress on existing utilities. It's not like factories of yore where 1k jobs would be created and lives were built around it.
Winner, winner, chicken dinner!
Haha yeah that's exactly what I was getting at.
Traffic and excessive stormwater runoff.
Honestly amazing that these tech companies are able to make a building full of computers look like an open strip mine. They don't even try to beautify the campuses or anything, just bare dirt and ponds full of acrid water. I live in taconite country and have seen active mining operations put in more care for the communities they invade then big tech does
Not even solar panels on the roofs.
There's all this talk of solar-powered space-based orbital data centers , but they can't be bothered to put up cheaper, simpler, grid-relieving ground-based solar, on the real estate they've already got, when that would start producing some juice like right now? How does this make any sense?
Because solar on the roof won't even be noticable against their power footprint. Given current practices, each square foot of a datacenter would need about 1,000 times more square footage worth of solar.
It's just that somehow if they get to go to space, they decide they suddenly just need like two servers in a 'datacenter' instead of thousands. And they need to go to space because Elon says (checks notes) that it's too hard to make more natural gas turbine parts....
Because solar on the roof won’t even be noticable against their power footprint. Given current practices, each square foot of a datacenter would need about 1,000 times more square footage worth of solar.
But (as I'm sure you realize) this would mean every watt from on-premises solar could get put to use immediately, no batteries, no power-grid buy-back schemes. Making those solar panels an unusually good investment.
Unless they're not planning to keep it running for very long.
It smells un-serious, somehow.
Even if it's nowhere near a majority of the power, I'm surprised passive cooling from solar plus some electricity isn't worthwhile enough to be universal. It's a small impact, but also cheap enough it'll pay for itself, and many orders of magnitude more efficient than trying to get a datacenter into space, and figure out how to cool it
Especially since they're looking for space for solar installations, farmers have started installing them, power companies and coops. Seems financially stupid to leave that much space unused when solar farms would go right on top.
As long as they continue to spout pie-in-the-sky for-realsies gonna-be-fantastic totally-not-gonna-fall-apart-like-half-Elon's-schemes plans for the future, they don't have to spend ANY money on stuff like ground-based solar panel arrays, and they get more investors who get suckered by the pitch too!
Solar panels produce 36.6% more energy in space than on earth at noon with ideal atmospheric conditions (clear sky). As it's not always clear and not always day on earth, so I suspect the difference to be 300-400%, plus storage inconvenience.
VC money
Not even panels over the parking lots.
Is there a /c/extremelydepressing? This would go perfectly there.
That's just world news.
This disgusts me and angers me beyond words
There is no greater threat to humanity, than humanity itself. There is so much evidence of this throughout history, and yet we have collectively learnt nothing from it. As a species, we are the most destructive force in existence, and time and time again the value of the almighty dollar, that we ourselves have created, is put first above all else. Even the existence of the only known planet that we can successively survive on, is put behind the priority of the dollar.
On the plus side, at least there’s no bloody rain in Melbourne this weekend!
Yesyes but have you seen that shareholder value??
To me, the problem seems to be bad regulators. They could have mandated that data centers have solar panels on their roof. They could have mandated a certain amount of greenery around the warehouse, so that the area was less impactful. It's been a known issue that unregulated Capitalism will cause mass destruction quite frequently for decades if not centuries. You can't expect every business to 'do the right thing' every time...that would be stupidly optimistic of regulators.
It's a bit unfortunate the second xAI is taken in the winter, so we can't really see how much of the trees are gone, but looks like a lot.
This is violence against the bulk of humanity
Let’s just all die
Some day, the people may rise up... And maybe all of these will burn.
I like to think the employees will do it. Who knows, though...
I just know it needs to be done.
Summer vs winter picture, not a very honest take
It would look the same for any commercial building - a warehouse, shopping center (would be even worse), etc.
No need to be disingenuous, it just weakens the argument and gives someone who disagrees with you valid ammunition.
Destroying a forest area for a concrete jungle is never a good thing
This behaviour is exactly why parts of the world are literary on fire right now. It's not just the loss of trees, its the other impacts of these data centers too, such as increased use of fossil fuels.
And the sprawl encouraged by such development leads to a longer interface between wild and built environments which is more space to defend from wildfires
Forest fire always was a thing even without humans. It even heals forest from old trees that blocks space for new one
And still no jobs..
Makes me sad
Why are the trees red in the first picture?
Is it just the season (summer vs fall) or another reason?
Are these places extremely patrolled and secure? I'm just surprised people aren't burning them to the ground or disrupting them some way or somehow
This in exchange for something that just invented nonsense words and inserted them into my science presentation?