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

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.

1. Summer vs winter picture, not a very honest take

2. 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.

Is there a /c/extremelydepressing? This would go perfectly there.

Not even solar panels on the roofs.

This in exchange for something that just invented nonsense words and inserted them into my science presentation?

Or a /c/mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world

I don't like AI data centres, but try to get photos of the same month/season to make this point.

Not all development that removes trees are created equally, just saying. If it's a new interstate power transmission line, solar or wind farm, new non-market housing, passenger rail line, it would be better than a data centre, ICE concentration camp, oil pipeline, intensive agriculture, etc. The end use matters more to weigh against, than saying clearing trees is never worth it as a blanket statement. If it is worth developing, officials have to weigh the importance the forest as a natural habitat compared to natural bogs, lakes and meadows as alternatives, to maintain biome diversity.

I wouldn’t really categorize rampant ecological destruction as something calling for merely mild annoyance

I’m genuinely confused about why the season matters?!

I can't tell from this far away, but if those trees are deciduous then they lose their leaves in the cold weather

So a winter photo might not be as good of a comparison as a summer photo because even if there were exactly as many trees in each photo, the winter one would look like there are fewer.

This is not mild. This is infuriating.

Not even panels over the parking lots.

Nothing mild about this

Yeah it needs to be c/extremelyinfuriating

You can do the same with solar panel farms, orphanages, hospitals, community owned grocery stores, or any number of things that you would be happy with being built. Things need space to be built on. More at 8.

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?

Things need space to be built, but all of those other things you mentioned have value. It's upsetting to cut down a shitload of trees for something that is going to be useless in 3 years when the AI bubble pops.

Sorry shady, I meant trees causing shade

That's just world news.

Yeah I'm gonna defend this

lmao what a clown. There's plenty of abandoned stores in every city and empty lots. You don't have to go tear up mother nature when we don't even use the land we already have.

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!

VC money

The roof might be used for cooling, which is probably be a better use of space for a datacenter roof.

Ah yes Elon savior of the environment....

You can still see the trees on the left and the right 🤔 like outer border is identical, just a swath cut through the middle. Season can have an effect but it seems pretty clear here.

Housing developments and apartment blocks are built on former forests in a similar timeframe too

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....

I guess the point would be what does the local area get in exchange for losing their forest?

A lot of other developments at least provide the local populace some service or jobs. These are just "give me your land, your power, and water and we will use it to advance our business interests and do nothing for the locals", oh and btw, give us a tax break for the privilege of having us build a datacenter in your area.

Now I'm being bombarded by ads saying 'um, actually datacenters give you tons of permanent jobs and makes power cheaper', so they are just flat out lying instead of actually doing anything to make it worth the local community. Well, except key people on local town councils who somehow end up with NDAs forbidding them from disclosing what conversations they are having with these developers...

Agree

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!

Using the data centers when you posted this, classic sign of these times

Looks like they cleared the area with agent orange 😌

Makes me sad

Destroying a forest area for a concrete jungle is never a good thing

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

c/pants-shittinglymaddening

You took this from Reddit’s r/interestingasfuck and posted it to c/mildlyinteresting? Clearly neither is a good fit because this isn’t interesting at all.

In that region they typically hold on to their leaves and they slowly come off but keep most of it through the winter, depending on wind to blow them off.

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.

Devils advocate, I don’t agree with this, but maybe because first to market and innovating quickly gets more money? The solar panels would be a bigger up front cost (they gotta make sure the building is rated for it, buy a bunch of wires if it’s out in a field, etc) than just paying the city for 6 months-3 years of electricity vs how much the return will be in the timed bubble we have?

I don't think that’s a good business decision unless you think what you're making isn’t going to last…. But maybe they know the bubble will pop and don’t wanna invest long term? It’s just dumb or evil.

at least there's no bloody rain in Melbourne this weekend!

I should hope there's no bloody rain...

(Sorry not sorry I had to. I needed a chuckle)

And still no jobs..

This is violence against the bulk of humanity

At least here in the US the people arguing against data centers are also against housing developments and want to reduce urban sprawl (by say tearing down all the empty malls and building apartments there for example). At least that's what it seems like to me, someone against the never ending suburbia.

You're joking right? These are AI data centers and such. They aren't hosting general public cloud servers.

Solar panel farms actually work really well with rewilding projects. Not forests sure but if instead of where we grow fuel corn we instead dropped solar and rewild them for more power than the corn can provide plus biodiversity.

And as others said there's plenty of empty spaces already existing that most of what you list can use. There's two malls near me with half the shops or more empty, an abandoned hotel (though it was recently announced it would be converted into apartments so, ya know, proving my point) and a field bought by a hospital just being left as bare dirt (because they say they might need it some day).

This disgusts me and angers me beyond words

Let’s just all die

Obvviously.
What's the thing?

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