If opposition to concrete buildings full of computers is this intense, that leads me to believe that a pipeline from Alberta to Sarnia is never going to happen. It beggars belief that Wab Kinew would kill the idea of a data center in Manitoba, yet propose a pipeline to Churchill. The bad economics of that aside, does he think that the greenies will sign off on a pipeline crossing the tundra?
Olds residents have been rallying against a proposal for a 10-building campus with a total of 1.4 gigawatts of gas-fired power generation. In June, opponents held a protest in Vancouver to demonstrate against the opening of AI data centres. In Hamilton, a proposal to put a data centre campus on the harbourfront has sparked fierce pushback.
If you want to know who’s working for the Chicoms, just pay attention to who is against data centers. That’s the force driving all this.
I am not going to defend Big Data, I think it’s a stupid idea. But almost everything we hear about the evils of data centers is a lie. The water use, the pollution, the electricity, blah blah blah, it’s all BS.
And the people saying it KNOW it is BS, but there they are, still saying it. Therefore they’re being paid to lie. Who’s paying them? China. That’s who. Chinese AI is the new Chinese electric car.
Not too different than Russia and the Muslim Oil exporters spending oodles of money directly and in internet propaganda about the evils of fossil fuels in Western countries as well as funneling money to anti oil/gas/coal NGO’s.
It is the Chicoms trying to get these data centres built, at least in Moose Jaw. Carpere, a Chinese company based in Richmond, BC, bought a 350 acres site south of town (Tommy Douglas’ old Valleyview centre) promising seniors housing and a wellness centre. Less than two years elapsed before Carpere said it would build a data centre on the land (two km’s from the air base, but whatever). When citizens circulated a petition against the data centre they were kicked out of the mall (also owned by a Chinese company situated in Richmond, BC). The mall’s owner says they’re 100% Canadian but his name is Bing Wang and he just tried to buy an agri business for $34 million. Tell me what’s wrong with data centres?
I am solidly against data centers and AI because they are tools of surveillance. The collateral damage they are doing to memory markets is part of the kink.
Screw you and your Phantom chicom crap, no sane person should believe there’s anything positive to come from these “ai data centres”. The speed that these are getting approved should send a chill down the spine of anyone who lived through the rushed Covid “vaccine”. Nothing good will come of this, Mark my words. I remember the early days of Covid and a shocking number of you here couldn’t get your life saving vaccine soon enough.
Elaine on the original title of “War and Peace”.
“WAR …. What’s it good for? Ab-so-lute-ly nothing”.
I confess to knowing nearly nothing about this stuff (I’m in early tune-out) so you’ll understand why I ask: “Why are these campus size computers (aka data centers) so urgently needed? Why all this data? What’s it GOOD for?
“Why are these campus size computers (aka data centers) so urgently needed?”
Geez, I don’t know. Here I was, thinking all along that our priority should be fixing our f****d health care systems, but I guess I was wrong.
You fail to differentiate between public projects and private projects. Private enterprise has no obligation to fix something that your government broke.
I rarely see any distinction between public or private enterprise in any large scale undertakings in Canada. Whether it’s pipelines, EV battery plants, data centers, or high speed rail, you can rest assured the taxpayer will get hosed and screwed.
Wan Kinew’s pipeline is modeled on California’s high speed rail line. It will never be finished but will suck up lots of money.
Just like the Liberals proposed ALTO High Speed Rail for the Laurentian elite.
That thing is rolling with over a dozen VP’s making over 6 figures each.
The main issue with data centres is the lack of infrastructure to properly support them. They require a lot of water and a lot of electricity. Plus they are noisy. In the US, poor planning and execution have created a lot of problems for residents. The article is saying that an additional 22.2 GW of electricity will be needed to run all the new data centres. Ontario, for example, is only planning to add about 10 GW over the next ten years, and most of that is already spoken for.
Canada needs the data centres, but governments need to look beyond rubber stamping some building permits.
1.4 gigawatts of gas turbine power is the problem.
I used to work near a a gas turbine peaker plant that size. It was rarely used, but when that thing fired up…. They are insanely loud.
The building full of computers is not the problem.
I was reading about noise complaints from people living near a data centre. The audible noise was above acceptable levels for hours at a time. Plus there were subsonic emissions that kept families awake at night. This was a bit of a special case, the data centre was built close to a residential neighbourhood, probably because it was cheaper to get the water and hydro hookups. I would think data centres should be located in industrial parks and remote locations just so people don’t have to hear them.
Note I said remote, not rural. Farmers shouldn’t have to put up with the noise either.
My only concern about these Data Centers is the secrecy behind what they are being used for, and governments reluctance to disclose their purpose. There are already hundreds operating in Canada and thousands in the USA and around the world.
https://www.datacentermap.com/north-america/
GRM,
There is this insignificant little thing called “AI” that requires gazillions of Giga whats in order to make human research and study obsolete. I suspect libraries are doomed.
Why does government have an obligation to disclose (and do they even know) what private companies are doing in their data centers?
They’re looking to build a datacentre a couple of miles from my house. Opposition to these in Alberta has been purely grassroots. There is no ChiCom conspiracy funding activists, it’s literally farmers and housewives from the area taking a look at what’s happened elsewhere, and saying we don’t want that here. The downsides to these monsters is not fiction. The province obviously is all in on it for royalties from the natural gas usage. So the province and the feds are both all in, Carnage is all in with Brookfield, the CPP is investing, and here we are with social media pages and letter writing campaigns and no funding for legal action, fighting to be able to live where are in our rural homes.
If these things are so great, you go live beside one. Or build one next to wherever Carnage or Danielle Smith live.
Thinking about it, the main goal of war is to bankrupt the enemy, I would think the PRC would be throwing support behind getting as many ruinously expensive datacentre projects built as quickly as possible. Otherwise, the only people for these things seem to be investors in AI and those suffering from heavy AI psychosis.
These people would be protesting hot and cold running water and indoor plumbing if they hadn’t been invented already.
A data center is a location for storing, processing and redistributing digital information. They have been around since the 1980s and now number over 600,000 worldwide. The problem today (if there is one) is that data centers are becoming extremely large and one center requires a lot of local resources. While it makes sense to locate these centers near large population centers but off to the side (usually in rural areas), the locals get little to no benefit from having a data center near them and they get all the headaches. Throw some cheese to the locals.
” in rural areas), the locals get little to no benefit from having a data center near them and they get all the headaches.”
Sounds like windmills.
GRM; Thank you for the link. Will have to do some exploring.
https://www.datacentermap.com/north-america/
Why should we ratepayers and taxpayers be paying for Billionaire’s Energy Use!
I amuse myself with the Socialists narrative