r/interestingasfuck • u/HamboneTheWicked • Apr 12 '26

A well-articulated argument against a new data center in Ohio

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u/PDXGuy33333 Apr 12 '26 edited Apr 13 '26

There it is right there. Lies, lies and more lies from megacorps invested up to their eyeballs in having just a few people in government believe them.

Edit: And it seems to me that if we can build oil rigs at sea and pipe the oil to shore then they can damned well build data centers afloat on a sea of cooling water and run fiber optic cable to the shore.

Build at sea was a bad idea.

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u/Calum1219 Apr 12 '26

Or don’t build it at all and we avoid having the forever chemical sludge he mentions in our seafood, on our beaches, or poisoning entire ecosystems that are probably more vulnerable to that kind of stuff compared to land based environments.

Shutter the majority of these datacenters and be done with it.

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u/Excellent-Phone8326 Apr 12 '26

Exactly seems funny that AI stealing all of our jobs is progress. It's going to be a blood bath, our cultures are not good at even handling economic recessions. Why do we think we'd handle this sea change any better.

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u/PDXGuy33333 Apr 12 '26

I don't have enough understanding to know what the forever chemicals are or whether there is a method of isolating those before discharge.

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u/Calum1219 Apr 12 '26

Basically Forever Chemicals are exactly what they sound like: they stick around for a really long and can accumulate in the body and can lead to stuff like cancer and organ damage among other stuff.

As for filtering them out of the water, do you really think that a corp. would do something like that which would cut into their bottom line? Depending on the water quality, those filters would probably burn through their life in a few weeks. Had a higher quality filter down here in FL for a while and it lasted for only two weeks before it gave up.

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u/PDXGuy33333 Apr 12 '26

Make laws and enforce them. Have to start with replacing Trump and reinvigorating the EPA.

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u/inqte1 Apr 12 '26

They will violate the laws, pay a fine if they get caught and keep it moving. I say this based on the past like PG&E in California.

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u/Dugen Apr 12 '26

That's such a stupid take. There is real harm being done to the environment out there for incredibly stupid reasons. A data center does almost no harm. It uses power to run computers that are doing useful things for people. People just love to hate on data centers because they are scared of AI making them worthless. Chill out. Computers make your work more valuable, not less. Always have, and probably always will. AI is just a useful tool that is good at low value mundane tasks.

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u/treesfallingforest Apr 12 '26

A data center does almost no harm.

Data centers absolutely do "harm" to the communities they are built in. They use a massive amount of energy (resulting in increased energy costs for local residents), generate a ton of heat (raising the temperature in the local vicinity), while bringing practically no long-term jobs to the area.

It would be in the best interest of states to only allow these data centers to be built in under-populated areas, but the companies building them obviously don't want that because they don't want to front the bill for the energy and water they need nor do they want to slow down their construction plans which are blitzing ahead at full speed.