YHK - yet another hacker news clone

Texas data center boom could erase decades of progress on air quality

36 points hn_acker 2 hours ago 12 comments

parineum 1 hour ago | parent

The trendy desire to blame data centers for everything is nauseating. Data centers aren't poluting the air. Power plants are.

Since Texas has been leading the nation on renewables because it has a fairly free power market amd renewables are the cheapest power available, I'd expect this surge in demand to be eventually replaced by more renewables. In the meantime, extra capacity comes from old plants that can be spun up quickly.

deaton 1 hour ago | parent

Data centers often come with their very own natural gas turbines right outside to provide power the grid can't supply. This is what happened at xAI's data center in Memphis.

officeplant 1 hour ago | parent

>Data centers aren't poluting the air. Power plants are.

Currently for Datacenter's to move forward in Texas they must have some local power production so you see some of the newer upcoming ones featuring 20+ portable gas turbines on site. Others feature mixed solar/portable gas turbine.

LogicFailsMe 1 hour ago | parent

Natural gas is better than coal. Natural gas exhausts can be sequestered. But since we can't even break the coal habit let alone embrace renewables and clear the path for nuclear as needed, good luck! Stupid meatbags.

Love to know who this actually triggers and what's inaccurate about the above? Coal is super good and clean? Natural gas emissions can't be sequestered despite numerous examples of exactly that? How dare I even suggest nuclear? Or is it just downright America-hating unpatriotic and letting the evil drag queens win? Genuinely curious.

sippingabonedry 1 hour ago | parent

It's election season, and data centers are being thrown around ads continuously to scare the olds into voting.

It's one bridge away from selling them Old Glory robot insurance.

"Data centers are everywhere and they consume old people's medicine for fuel."

alphawhisky 12 minutes ago | parent

The trendy desire to blame obesity for preventable death is nauseating. Obesity doesn't kill people. Heart attacks and cancers do.

FFS.

FergusArgyll 1 hour ago | parent

Alternative headline:

Decades of progress on air quality could erase jobs

tablarasa 1 hour ago | parent

That this feels like such a representative statement is disheartening. Remember, in a functioning free-market (behold. bow.) negative externalities, like socializing the burden of reduced air quality resulting from for-profit enterprises, are considered inefficient (boo. hiss.) and deleterious. Even people with jobs have to breath air.

wood_spirit 59 minutes ago | parent

It is also a regular criticism of data centers that they don’t bring jobs to the area. There are some contractors who come in from externally to build the center and that drives up local rents and shopping bills (influx of high earners mean prices go up to extract that money) temporarily which is bad for residents and then when it’s built they move on?

watwut 27 minutes ago | parent

The promiss of AI is to kill all the jobs.

sippingabonedry 1 hour ago | parent

Another article full of weasel words. Lots of could's and if's.

officeplant 1 hour ago | parent

sippingabonedry is a great username for the current datacenter rollout.