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The vast data centers that power artificial intelligence guzzle huge amounts of energy but they also have another alarming impact, according to new research. They are creating “heat islands,” warming the land around them by up to 16 degrees Fahrenheit, and making life hotter for more than 340 million people.

There are still big gaps in our understanding of the impacts of data centers, even as they boom in number, said Andrea Marinoni, associate professor with the Earth Observation group at the University of Cambridge, and an author of the study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed.

Marinoni and his colleagues decided to dig into one under-researched impact: the heat they release through their energy-intensive processes, including computation and powering cooling systems.

To do this, they looked at temperature data over the last 20 years from remote sensors and mapped it against the locations of AI “hyperscalers” — vast data centers that house thousands of servers and can stretch over a million square feet, which have mostly been built within the last decade.

They focused on more than 6,000 data centers located away from highly dense urban areas, as surface temperatures around these were less likely to have been affected by other factors, such as manufacturing or the heating of homes. The researchers also filtered out seasonal impacts, global warming trends and other influences.

They found surface temperatures increased by an average of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit after a data center started operations. In extreme cases, nearby temperatures increase by up to 16.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

These increases were consistent across the globe, the researchers found. In Mexico’s Bajio region, for example, which has become a data center hub, the study found unexplained temperature rises of around 3.6 degrees over the last 20 years. A similar situation was seen in Aragon, Spain, a European center for hyperscale AI data centers, which recorded a temperature increase of 3.6 degrees which was not replicated in neighboring provinces.

Strikingly, the impacts weren’t limited to a data center’s immediate surroundings; temperature increases affected areas up to 6.2 miles away, the research found, affecting more than 340 million people.

The findings are particularly alarming, the scientists say, because AI data centers are set to boom over the next few years, and these temperature rises come as planet-warming pollution is already making heat waves more extreme around the world.

The planned scale up of data centers “could have dramatic impacts on society” in terms of the environment, people’s welfare and the economy, Marinoni said.

Deborah Andrews, emeritus professor of design for sustainability and circularity at London South Bank University, who was not involved in the research, said there are plenty of concerns over the impacts of data centers but this was the first paper she’d seen focusing on the heat they produce.

“The ‘rush for AI-gold’ appears to be overriding good practice and systemic thinking,” she said, “and is developing far more rapidly than any broader, more sustainable systems.”

Other experts say more research is needed to verify the results. The study provides “some interesting figures” but the effects reported “seem very high,” said Ralph Hintemann, a senior researcher at the Borderstep Institute for Innovation and Sustainability. “As far as climate change is concerned, the emissions generated by power generation for data centres remain the more alarming aspect,” he added.

Marinoni wants the research to spark more discussion about how to reduce AI’s impacts. “There still might be time to consider the possibility of a different path … without affecting the demand of AI and its ability to provide progress for mankind,” he added.

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Welp… (lemmy.nz)
submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by heavyboots@lemmy.ml to c/tucson@lemmy.ml

Pretty much earliest 100° on record by like 3 weeks. o_O

Stay cool, everyone!

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(Not my house, just a super cool truck I ride by on Blacklidge all the time.)

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Tucson Lights (lemmy.nz)
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[-] heavyboots@lemmy.ml 77 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Like an order of magnitude worse?

  • No sitting president before him has been a convicted felon.
  • No sitting president before him has been involved in the sheer volume of sexual scandals from assault to cheating to being implicated in possible pedophilia.
  • No sitting president before him has refused to return literally boxes and boxes of classified documents which he kept as trophies (or possibly as items for sale) while storing them in extremely inappropriate ways. (This is extremely different from Biden, btw, who promptly returned a few accidentally retained documents. Trump was playing shell games with them, repeatedly swearing he had returned them all while doing things like loading them on planes to move to other locations, etc.)
  • No sitting president before him has attempted to overthrow the government when they lost an election.
  • The level of bribery and corruption in his administration is off the charts.
  • The number of lies he tells has always been off the charts. ("I've never heard of Project 2025!" while having given a speech to its members and now following its plans to dismantle the federal government.)
  • His department heads have all been picked to dismantle the departments they're in. (Project 2025 again)

And then of course there is the christofascism angle, which is extremely disturbing because he definitely plans to never leave power again. He's currently trying hard to normalize use of military force against US citizens so he can seize control of the elections to make sure they go his way.

[-] heavyboots@lemmy.ml 83 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This really says it all. I don't give a crap who's in the Epstein files—they should all be investigated.

[-] heavyboots@lemmy.ml 50 points 1 year ago

I’d have ever so much more sympathy if they hadn’t just spent over a year genociding Palestine…

[-] heavyboots@lemmy.ml 61 points 2 years ago

Relevant to your interests: As a straight, male mountain biker, I swear like three quarters of the cute women I meet and get interested in are lesbians. (And the other 25% are out biking with their husband, boyfriend, etc.)

[-] heavyboots@lemmy.ml 58 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Last post that I can find by her is on Mastodon, promoting a new electronics book she helped co-author, I think?

But yeah, she has been super quiet since they "clipped her wings". But she said she would be too. Censorship sucks and I can't believe we let an entire country get away with it and still did business with them the whole time.

[-] heavyboots@lemmy.ml 67 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)
  • They attended a ceremony in a part of the cemetery off-limits to photography and political events, due to some sort of dealings instigated by House Speaker Mike Johnson.
  • Trump was told he could only attend in a personal capacity and that no hangers-on would be allowed in.
  • When an official tried to enforce these limitations on his visit, a large staffer physically pushed her aside, claiming that photography was allowed, so he and at least one or two staffers were there instead of just Trump himself.
  • Trump has (of course) posted this crap all over his social media, using it for political purposes, in spite of the conditions under which his visit was supposed to take place. (Honoring a fallen soldier in a civilian capacity.)
  • And after it is all over and starting to blow up in his face, his response is unsurprisingly to lie about it all, despite photographic evidence (of the politics and extra staffers) and eye witness confirmation of the physical aspect (by Army personnel) that it happened.
[-] heavyboots@lemmy.ml 56 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I would absolutely send him an email to the effect of

"Per our multiple verbal conversations, this is just to serve as notice that, in my professional opinion, your refusal to allow me to upgrade a system at risk of multiple security vulnerabilities on a platform that is no longer supported is a risk that you are choosing to accept against my advise."

with a list of known major vulnerabilities attached if possible.

That way at least if this comes back to bite the company on the ass, he can't say "Well he never told me this was a problem!"

[-] heavyboots@lemmy.ml 61 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Let's do it slightly differently, let's make the mandatory retirement age for political office the median life expectancy age for the entire country. If the politicians, etc can manage to make everyone live longer, they can hold office longer.

Similarly, take away their separate and different medical coverage and put them on the same Medicare system everyone else in the country has to use.

[-] heavyboots@lemmy.ml 78 points 2 years ago

To be fair if you’re anything past Boomer, at this point you should be too embarrassed to vote for any GOP candidate. When the party decided to support Trump—a guy with proven sexual assault charges, pending fraud charges, pending classified document charges, a penchant for insurrection that he happily acknowledges, and more and more video surfacing of him unable to be coherent, hopefully most everyone with any connection to reality has realized it’s time to kick him and the GOP to the curb.

[-] heavyboots@lemmy.ml 50 points 3 years ago

Let 3 or 4 go under as an example to the rest and see if they suddenly find they can make it happen after all? I do feel like there’s some merit to the idea they are gaming the system with lowball bids.

[-] heavyboots@lemmy.ml 56 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago)

Sure sure, and by that logic, I also submit that the Supreme Court lacks the power to impose their own ethics on an entire gender.

[-] heavyboots@lemmy.ml 57 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago)

Oh definitely Mastodon. I'm having a blast over there, tons of fun people. Plus, the fact you can follow hashtags makes it super, super easy to populate your timeline with interesting content and then if it's too much, you can pick a few people you like who are interested in that topic and just start following them instead, which gradually translates into a very organic feeling timeline without a long period of crickets while you look for friends and make new friends.

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