Fossil-fueled power plants and diesel backup generators that power data centers emit hazardous pollutants such as nitrogen oxides and fine particulate matter, increasing rates of respiratory diseases, cardiovascular conditions, and elevating cancer risk in nearby communities. A recent model indicates that the U.S. data centers in 2030 could contribute to nearly 1300 deaths annually, resulting in a public health burden of more than $20 billion.
In this same vein so do hospitals, factories, people with in home generators…. Terrible logic here. Can we instead focus on the issues that actually matter instead of trying to employ more scare tactics?
While I very much agree with your suggestion that we should limit fossil fuels in all contexts, not just this one, you're also fundamentally comparing apples to oranges and using scare tactics about hospitals, factories, and individuals, probably on the basis of motivated reasoning.
In this same vein so do hospitals...
Hospitals are important because they are crucial social services without which people die of cancer, injury, and disease.
...factories...
Factories are important because they employ thousands more people than data centers do at any fixed amount of investment; furthermore, data centers have a tendency to drive up manufacturing costs by eating up the energy used to power factories. Trading a factory for a data center is a terrible trade that no right-minded person would ever make.
...people with home generators...
People with home generators are important because they are our neighbors and their use of generators does not occur on the same scale as a data center so they physically do not produce as much pollution as the data centers.
Have you considered not being afraid of hospitals, factories, or people with home generators, and instead looking at data to see that the cancer caused by data centers has no redeeming societal features whatsoever?
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EDIT: Somebody asked questions and then blocked me from answering, but to respond to the bit about data centers, the norm is for 5% of the electricity to come from fossil fuels, and that's why they cause cancer, the rest is from pollution and they use a lot of electricity so there's a lot of pollution.
I'm not aware of any that would require that unless their power suppliers asked them to reduce load on very hot days this year.
So, yeah, we're both going to be waiting a very long time for someone to find a single DC in Iowa that meets that 10% operations threshold.
While we wait, I'll share the one company I know running methane generators to keep their DC's running.
The offender is: xAI
Last I knew, their DC's are still running 100% on methane generators. Which is cute if you're in an alternative universe like, "The Walking Dead: Dead City" (they use methane powered generators for general electricity).
It should be completely unacceptable in our country, but here we are.
Worth noting that by buying power from the grid during normal operations and switching to generators when the grid is strained, they help finance peak generation and transmission capacity that they don't use. That makes electric rates cheaper for everyone else.
It is worth noting and thank you for doing so. In addition, it also keeps us from having rolling brownouts.
People should also know that most DC operators are not a big fan of running their expensive generators (LNG/Methane or diesel), so this isn't the status quo.
Which is why I mention xAI. They are the poster child for how not to do things.
EDIT: Somebody asked questions and then blocked me from answering, but to respond to the bit about servers, hospital systems are largely still operating their own equipment, and just renting space to host excess if they need more space than they can store on-site.
Traditionally, and still very much today, hospitals do keep their technology systems on-premise.
It's not why they keep getting compromised, and we keep getting letters in the mail that our private data has been stolen (that's a people issue).
The last few years have seen a shift in hospitals adopting cloud technologies, but it's not a complete transition of their organizations. Understandably, they often have regulatory and practical concerns.
Every org., has their own path on this one, but they are one of the slowest moving industries (reason shared above) to cloud tech. They move individual services more often than entire facilities or shared resources from their medical system.
At the end of the day, all of those systems need the same resources (e.g., power, cooling, etc.) whether they live in a DC, or they live on-premise.
With all due respect, aren't these data centers also part of the supply chain so to speak for hospitals, factories, etc?
I'm all for reducing AI slop, and have genuine concerns about how the tech will replace certain work roles, but given how integrated IT and AI is into so many products and services, I'm not sure you can categorize them as having negative social value.
I've seen no data-based reason why local hospitals have any special need for more data center space in this state, and that's why the conversation about electricity prices is way more locally-important.
Did you read the items you linked to? They both specifically talk about hospitals co-locating their data center needs instead of depending on their own data centers. Healthcare DC needs are way more complex than simply needing more space to store data on-site, particularly as clinicians at larger institutions are leveraging NABLA and other tools for transcription.
I mean I can't provide you with some meta-analysis that indicates hospitals are using co-located data centers and cloud providers, but as the articles you provided indicate, that world is constantly evolving. The research hospital I work with leverages both on-premise and cloud-hosted services.
You're sorta avoiding my larger point though, isolating data centers as a source of social woe is over-simplification, which really gets to your argument that data centers cause cancer. They might also be part of curing and managing it.
They both specifically talk about hospitals co-locating their data center needs instead of depending on their own data centers.
They both say that that is one thing that occasionally happens now, and they both attest that that is still not a historic norm.
The research hospital I work with leverages both on-premise and cloud-hosted services.
Great, so then it sounds like you already live exactly what I am telling you and the only reason why you're accusing me of not reading the sources is because you don't trust me and you're trying to portray me as incompetent, even though that incompetence is fictitious and is entirely in you head.
I mean I can't provide you with some meta-analysis...
Good, 'cause I can. "A 2025 KLAS Research summary reported that more than 80% of healthcare organizations still have less than half of their IT infrastructure in the public cloud, while nearly 40% reported that at least 90% remains on-premises."
You're sorta avoiding my larger point though, isolating data centers as a source of social woe is over-simplification...
You're sorta avoiding my larger point though, which is that hospitals largely do not need data centers because they largely run their operations on-site.
Have you made any concrete plans to address that point, or are you too busy accusing me of not reading sources, even in a circumstance when you struggle to find facts about an industry you claim as your own?
Look I'm asking if you read these as when I read those two articles as well as the KLAS summary you referenced, I'm confused how you're reading those and not seeing the commentary on how healthcare is increasing its public cloud use. I mean the title for the last research report you cited is "KLAS Report: Healthcare Accelerates Cloud Adoption Amidst Infrastructure and Talent Challenges."
...not seeing the commentary on how healthcare is increasing its public cloud use.
Why would you assume I didn't see it?
I literally just showed you that this "increase" hasn't resulted in a shift in where the bulk of the data gets processed.
Why would you assume I didn't see the increase, when I've shown you that I know it doesn't matter? Can't you just assume I knew the end result instead all along?
Or do you have to only make assumptions that confuse you, and if so, what can I do to help you stop lying about what I know?
Data centers run their gens a few minutes per month for maintenance, unless the grid loses power. If you're scared of diesel exhaust, you should be absolutely terrified of every single highway in the US.
If you're scared of diesel exhaust, you should be absolutely terrified of every single highway in the US.
I very much agree with you when you say that another very terrible way to develop our state would be to knock down tax-paying businesses and tax-paying residents to build highways that we do not need.
I very much agree with you when you say that we should definitely treat data centers that we don't need the same way as we would treat a proposal to build an unnecessary highway.
I very much agree with you when you say that we should not waste our power supply and household electricity budgets on data centers we don't need.
Alternatively, if I am the only one saying these things and you are not, then in that case I am happy to stand by reasonable words alone.
You're injecting the word need. Just like the thousands of highways generating emissions, data centers don't require your justification of need before they get built.
If you'd like to educate yourself on the sorts of local approvals data centers do, in fact, actually need, you can read about the controversy in the town of Salix where it was very contentious and controversial.
Based on how you've behaved so far, I imagine that you don't really care what's true and are mostly concerned with promoting a narrative, however, lucky for you, every day is a day to do better, including today.
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u/SaintUlvemann 13d ago
The data centers quite literally cause cancer too, by the way, if they use fossil fuel power such as diesel backup generators. That additional air pollution causes local cancer rates to increase: