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The book “Merchants of Death” describes how science was bent/stretched/lied about to achieve corporate goals (tobacco sales) Same playbook for climate change here… Oil/gas disinformation/misinformation to create fear about the products that will end their stranglehold on our economy.

the guys who each separately have written a manifesto about how 5G and water fluoridation pass on the evil eye would never

Reminds me of an opponent to a powerline project near me years ago. Nobody wants unsightly power lines near their homes, but this person was citing all manner of pseudoscience and tinfoil garbage about electromagnetic fields (EMF) being harmful 1/4 mile away. While chain smoking the entire hearing.

Yeah, the astroturf groups going around rural communities to lie about solar and wind power certainly are an issue.

The data center is largely because of noise alongside a handful other things. It is, very much, affecting people's health. But also this shit existed prior to AI even being an idea. The idea that solar and wind cause sickness is at least a decade old

There's a well funded network of conservative astroturf groups hyping bogus health claims about renewables and stoking NIMBYism- I'd blame them rather than data center opponents www.npr.org/2023/02/18/1...

www.abc4.com/news/central...

come to think of it, i wonder how much all the "havana syndrome" bullshit helps/helped contribute to legitimizing this sort of thing? obviously it predates the HS bs, but when both parties and a bunch of "respectable" media are/were treating THAT like a real thing, surely it doesn't *help* at least

gun laws, reproductive health care, solar - they all have more than a simple majority support - and yet somehow the minority position is law, or is becoming prominent - as in the case of solar.

Actually this is the realest possible Havana Syndrome. youtu.be/_bP80DEAbuo?...

The data center turned me into a newt.

Fake health concerns about data centers (like Havana syndrome worries) are no different, and feed the same worldview, as (unjustified) worries about solar panels.

Can you explain why its harder based on your approach to rhetoric and rhetorical theory? (I'm semi taking the piss, but it's like Solar Power has a lot going for it that's already slaying cranks basis with them on the losing side of implementations right now, despite their crankdom)

you see people deliberately conflating things in the comments. people know what they're doing with this.

noise pollution and energy grid vacuum alone is absolutely a one-two punch

mark my words, under this will be paid folk from fossil fuel companies. when I was saying: Glyphosate bad in print they were all over me, they lead with their actual credentials and hide that they're taking money to be evi.

so many people seem ok with letting some BS slide if it aligns with their beliefs and values, and if you try to push back you‘re liable to get accused of being a dork or a sea-lion or a crypto-badperson it’s annoying

I think we really need to put criticism where it belongs for rational reasons, otherwise we risk people calling legitimate criticisms hysteria.

Not all that different

(Which is to say *eyeroll* at the paranoia - please try and I agree there's a need to be realistic about the harms things cause).

So mush disinformation around so many important issues. Cats and tall buildings kill more birds than wind farms ever will. Clean energy land use is just a fraction of what fossil fuels need to extract, and extract again.

Literally no one is claiming it is lmao

The point is that people are going to be out there saying stupid things about data centers and the answer is not “well, but data centers are bad so whatever…” it’s “data centers don’t cause [insert random malady]”

Because it's in their interest.

Living near light industrial is always kind of unpleasant! You only care now because it’s closer to your upper middle class neighborhoods

essentially Elon is choosing to make that one shitty on purpose to save money and get it built really really fast, which is obscene and anyone who does this should be taken to court over it. The EPA should do things about this. it's fucked

You say this, but a good many of the issues brought up around data centers also apply to other large (and esp quickly built) projects while they are being constructed. Solar fields have had very similar issues of flooding and sedimentation due to poor erosion controls & construction traffic/noise

Living near a bunch of gas turbines is unpleasant. and I'm all for banning that practice. on-site power generation is not a hard requirement of the actual "datacenter" part though, except for running backups when there are grid outages.

Which is why it’s bad to make up lies about them when there’s real issues to focus on instead of!

the worst particulate emissions come from the long tail of other shit that gets burned (contaminants, lubricants, ....). If it were actually 'burning pure methane', the situation would be substantially less bad

I'm sure the people who are having QALYs stripped from them will be pleased to hear that they are just an outlier! Phew!

is it

reactionaries love to pretend that tech has magical properties that degrade their health, especially if that tech is problematic for their other ideological committments

I spent a term on my county board and our biggest challenge in these projects was the decommissioning plan and the Farm Bureau. The Farm Bureau hates it when farmers want to use their land for ANYTHING other than farming. We eventually updated zoning rules to make it easier and avoid objection

Yeah this is frustrating. And, there are plenty of reality-based reasons to oppose building data centers. People making stuff up does not help.

this reminds me of 1. an NPR interview I heard, with someone advocating for building a data center in Eastern WA, who turned out to be a PR person hired by Microsoft, 2. Sarah Kendzior’s description of conspiracy theories as reactions to actual conspiracies perpetrated against communities.

This accusation against solar and wing generation actually predates the Data Center stuff. It has been used in several rural counties in Ohio to ban installation over the last decade.

I think that is roughly true. there is a large bloc of people who are scared of (or in denial of) any complex reliance on "society" and their politics comes from there. however, our current economy is terribly extractive and unjust, which we must fix! there are good reasons to want to burn it down

When you say "Republicans" oppose solar, who are you referring to? Bc I think different groups have extremely different motives. Donors, electeds, & Party officials oppose it for economic reasons (it undermines their extractive economy), whereas voters may oppose it for conspiracy theory reasons

that's fair, my perspective is that there are a lot of people who are low-information about technology, apathetic about climate change, but have an instinctive distrust of any large industrial buildout of *anything.* so for that group the connection btwn anti-DC and anti-solar is clear

Counterpoint:

It all ends in the same place. Its the same latent space.

Is this stupidity unique to America?

The windmills cause cancer, Ryan

We do not need to make up fake reasons why data centers harm people because we already have a large number of real ones 👍

I think it's all of a piece but the solar stuff seems more likely rooted in NIMBY and/or fossil fuel astroturfing, aimed at getting people all spun up against it. I mean they did this with wind too, right. Maybe the datacenter stuff is kinda related, with slightly different motivations.

There are plenty of real problems with data centers. We don't have to make up fake shit to oppose them.

yep a tornado tore up some solar panels here a bit ago and the comments were filled with absolutely CT shit about how dangerous it was and how they were poisoning everything

is your critique directed in any part at the infrasound claim most notably mentioned here? sounds a lot like havana syndrome do far im agnostic on it

We do not have to promote stupid bullshit arguments when we have good arguments, and we shouldn't. An ongoing series.

time.com/6982015/bitc... It’s the crypto mining that causes outrageous health and ecological disaster

i mean that's what i figured, hence the 'or similar'! but i genuinely haven't heard about people (certainly not anyone who associates with anyone on the left, or with an audience) making these sorts of claims about data centers, and would love some examples

I feel concerned that is a large portion of why this gets focused on over other causes. If this actually focused on industries people were normalized to that are often more damaging, it wouldnt spread. But ironically those industries are now being defended by the same people saying stuff like this.

Living near a data center turned me into a newt! (got better when I moved)

My favorite batshit anti-solar claim was opponents saying the galvanized steel would pollute the groundwater. So do they, also, want to prohibit farm grain bins, using galvanized steel? We need good land stewardship by solar AND by agriculture. For the most part, solar is better for soils & water.

It feels like the next generation of anti-vaxxers too