On a side note, all this Data Center stuff has pulled the rug out from under the climate change crowd.

Wont data centers always be built near cities? Makes sense to me.
If you havent seen the movie Idiocracy you should. Its where we're headed.

They're never going away. They'll just demand that you pay/sacrifice more. You know, set your thermostat to 78 for the good of the collective...

Like they tell Sr Citizens every year for the past 30 yrs, just gonna have to cut back somewhere.

Surely you can't believe that. Do you really not realize how the internet has infiltrated every pore of our daily lives? Most every company you deal with has spent millions if not billions of dollars implementing software systems...AI or otherwise.... that run their businesses.... from payroll to inventory management to logistics....... all of that is being done these days by computers and increasingly by AI. The data centers produce the processing capacity that supports all that. There is a phenomenal amount money to be made by data centers that has absolutely nothing to do with selling your information.

I am on my County P & Z here in Nebraska. We are in the process of setting regulations for Data Centers. First off a moratorium is set to be put in place by our commissioners after our recommendation in a week or two giving us time to put in place regulations for our area. I retired from my full time job in Jan and after a couple surgeries I have had a lot of time to make phone calls to many "experts" in the tech world.. and have spent a lot of time online researching these data centers. I am coming to the conclusion they are a necessary evil...... There are kazillions (lots and lots) of transactions on the world wide webb every second. Who is driving the need for such centers..... I am pretty sure the answer is WE ARE ! If you breathe and have a heart beat you are a part of the cause for the need for such centers. They will be built somewhere. Can we stop them....probably not unless you and I want to live in a cave and do nothing.......... That said there are different ways they can be built..... different ways to satisfy their cooling demand....and different ways to feed their appetite for electricity with the technology we have today. Technology of the future will probably be way different. I will say in my observation of many comments and from hours and hours of research.... maybe days and weeks even... there are a very high percentage of comments that are based on one's emotions and fears that are simply a bunch of BS. I find it ironic when someone comes to me and expresses their opinion of data centers they have no clue how servers or the webb works. But yet they want all the fancy gadgets and instant services the webb provides and they want even more of the very thing they are against.... if they researched how things work and give some thought to the needs we want today they possibly could be a part of the process to accomplish great results for our wants and needs. Maybe the way we are heading with all this technology will cause the destruction of mankind,,,, and yet it has the potential to do some great things for mankind. .......... Kinda of like what has happened since God created Adam and Eve.... there is good and bad in everything. Hopefully we as a species are smart enough to figure it out and not get too much wrong....

And to think that with all this data, they will then be able to catagorize and retrieve every key stroke you've ever made, every website you've ever searched, and every word you've ever spoken while in the presence of a device.

You have more faith in mankind than I do.

They want to put a data center near me, just outside of Urbana, Ohio. The city counsel rejected it, but the data center owners are suing them. It is supposed to use around 1800 million gallons of water a year, which would just be dumped in retention ponds and allowed to trickle back into the ground. There's a nearby park called Cedar Bog, that has cold weather plants from Canada, that rely on Artesian wells, that keep the climate cold. Their is fear that the released hot water will warm the groundwater, killing all the rare plants.

Keith

Suing them on what grounds?

Excellent post!

Not sure what I think about data centers, or maybe I just don't care, but there's one thing I do find interesting. For years we have been shown old photo's and film clips about how huge the original computers were, taking up entire buildings. The message was how great technology has been to reduce everything they could do, and a whole lot more, down to the size of a cell phone. Now it seems we are heading in the opposite direction.
Whatever.

I’m still waiting to hear one persons opinion who actually has skin in the game.

I have significant investments in several companies that deal directly or indirectly with data centers, does that count, or does it have to be dirt?

No, I mean someone who has willingly sold or had their immediate property affected by the construction of one.

You do have skin in the game, and I get it, just not the perspective I’m looking for.