The huge data center that Utahns are upset about, need some help on if it's a good idea.

[Tacenda]

Here's a KSL article about it. And also, why has the church been silent, or maybe they haven't but I thought the Great Salt Lake was a big priority and the humongous data center, the largest in the country I believe, being shoved through the system and not letting the citizens know much about it, is not only horrible but I think life altering in a bad way. https://www.ksl.com/article/51491313/cox-backs-box-elder-county-data-center-proposal-in-part-due-to-national-security-factors

Gov Cox said it's needed, but is it, with all the other data centers in Utah? Also, I'm probably oblivious, but why do we need them? Is it all about AI and some conspiracy thing that will enable our lives to be spied on?

I appreciate your input on the MDDB. You usually know your stuff, unlike me! 

BTW, it's the Mr. Wonderful guy on Shark Tank that is the leader on this. Who is profiting the most I wonder.

 

[webbles]

The news article says that the water for the data center is from existing water shares.  If those have previously been used and this is just redirecting its use, I don't have that big of a problem.  But if those shares were currently not used and are being developed for the project (like a well is being dug or a pipe is being built to take water out of a river), then I would have problems.

The use of the cross-state gas line to power it is interesting.  It should have enough power for the data center without affecting other communities but who knows the future.

The big push for data centers right now is because of AI.  Both training AI and then using AI consume a lot of power.

I doubt this data center would spy on people.  Utah already has a data center that does that down near Lehi and Saratoga Springs - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center.  That is managed by NSA and stores a ton of data that probably includes everything about everyone.

[GoCeltics]

Humans are so smart. They would never build something like Skynet 🤫

[Rain]

On 5/1/2026 at 11:42 AM, Tacenda said:

Here's a KSL article about it. And also, why has the church been silent

It's not strictly a moral issue.

On 5/1/2026 at 11:42 AM, Tacenda said:

 

, or maybe they haven't but I thought the Great Salt Lake was a big priority and the humongous data center, the largest in the country I believe, being shoved through the system and not letting the citizens know much about it, is not only horrible but I think life altering in a bad way. https://www.ksl.com/article/51491313/cox-backs-box-elder-county-data-center-proposal-in-part-due-to-national-security-factors

Gov Cox said it's needed, but is it, with all the other data centers in Utah? Also, I'm probably oblivious, but why do we need them? Is it all about AI and some conspiracy thing that will enable our lives to be spied on?

I appreciate your input on the MDDB. You usually know your stuff, unlike me! 

BTW, it's the Mr. Wonderful guy on Shark Tank that is the leader on this. Who is profiting the most I wonder.

 

 

[Tacenda]

Just saw this in Insta! Is this true? If so we need to limit our usage of Chatgtb. 

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1XLmaucqcq/

[webbles]

1 hour ago, Tacenda said:

Just saw this in Insta! Is this true? If so we need to limit our usage of Chatgtb. 

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1XLmaucqcq/

It is based off of this study - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2304.03271.  The study is over a year old and based on the ChatGPT 3.  The numbers in the study look all right.  They grab actual datacenter water usage and the calculations from energy usage and water usage look sane. 

So, yes, 10-50 prompts with chatgpt probably consume about 500ml of water.  That's why I talked about if this new datacenter is going to use water shares that are actively being used (so already being used and consumed), I don't have that much of a problem.  But I have a problem with developing unused water shares for this.

[longview]

33 minutes ago, webbles said:

So, yes, 10-50 prompts with chatgpt probably consume about 500ml of water.  That's why I talked about if this new datacenter is going to use water shares that are actively being used (so already being used and consumed), I don't have that much of a problem.  But I have a problem with developing unused water shares for this.

Thus making the surrounding ecosystem a lot more humid?

Quote

In Cool Runnings, loosely based on the true story of the Jamaican bobsled team at the 1988 Winter Olympics, the character Irv Blitzer (played by John Candy) delivers the line with perfect comic timing. The Jamaican team, accustomed to tropical warmth, arrives in chilly Calgary, Canada, stepping out into a blizzard. As they shiver in the cold, Irv sarcastically remarks: ‘It’s not so much the heat, it’s the humidity that’ll kill you.’

 

[The Nehor]

The water allocation system needs to be revisited. It was built on best-case estimates that aren’t sustainable but it is political suicide to try to change anything to fix the problem.

[Calm]

I don’t know how accurate this is, but supposedly the current data centers use less than 1% of the water we use to water our lawns in the US.  Seems like an easy solution would be to go to xeriscaping instead of lawns. I have been trying to get my husband to do that since we moved back to Utah, but he insists we need lawns to play on plus it keeps out weeds.  Pretty much for twenty years the only play has been him mowing the lawn and cursing it.

Edited June 5 by Calm

[BlueDreams]

Biases going in:

I'm a natural ludite and have always been a little slow to adopt certain new tech (smartphones, social media, and now AI especially) 

I rely on tech for much of my daily life interests and job

My husband's income in based in tech and he uses AI on the reg for work and specifically forms of brainstorming. I don't. I use it rarely and feel resentful that it shows up automatically on my Google searches.

I'm a hobby gardener and environmentally conscious person. When people ask me what I like to grow, I say ecosystems. I love seeing the cycles of life, hundreds of insects, etc that I've welcomed into my yard by growing a ton of things.

 

All that to say I am seriously concerned about data centers, particularly in the southwest/mountain west. Particularly in UT. My reasons are heavily around environmental cost and stress on already stressed systems. We are projected to have longer periods of drought, less snowpack, and inconsistent rain moving into the future. While also having rising demands and a consistent fight over water rights that has left the fed stepping in to make a short term compromise of trying to reconfigure water rights every 2 years. We do not have water for the things we already have in the state. Let me emphasize this again. We do not have enough water for what we already do in the state. That's why the salt lake is shrinking. It's part of why most reservoirs are often low on water. Our current practices are unsustainable. 

AI is planting their data centers in some of the lower water areas in drought heavy spaces. They're high polluters, significantly heat up local areas, and are heavy water users. And much of that fuels things people don't need or even want. 

 

Now I'm not saying there's no use. My husband is in computer engineering and it's seriously streamlined his work. He's used it for several projects, including home ones, as a drafting project or research miner. It is useful. But we need to respect that AI comes with a heavy cost and that it can't be used willy nilly as another large-scale experiment on humans minds, societies, and well being. I'm a millennial and have watched said experiment backfire on my Gen and especially younger in several key ways. Some that we will be paying for for generations to come.I would prefer we move more cautiously than what's happening now.

 

Ps. There's a great release from Elder Gong on the spiritual ethics that released today. I was only 20-30 minutes in but found is super powerful. 

 

https://youtu.be/Ts5Z64A0Vv4

[marineland]

"The water the development would use would not be taken away from the Great Salt 
Lake, he said, but rather would be a reallocation of water rights currently earmarked 
for other uses. The project developers, he went on, would have to abide by state 
air standards".

This reallocation has not been identified.

[Tacenda]

On 6/7/2026 at 5:56 PM, BlueDreams said:

Biases going in:

I'm a natural ludite and have always been a little slow to adopt certain new tech (smartphones, social media, and now AI especially) 

I rely on tech for much of my daily life interests and job

My husband's income in based in tech and he uses AI on the reg for work and specifically forms of brainstorming. I don't. I use it rarely and feel resentful that it shows up automatically on my Google searches.

I'm a hobby gardener and environmentally conscious person. When people ask me what I like to grow, I say ecosystems. I love seeing the cycles of life, hundreds of insects, etc that I've welcomed into my yard by growing a ton of things.

 

All that to say I am seriously concerned about data centers, particularly in the southwest/mountain west. Particularly in UT. My reasons are heavily around environmental cost and stress on already stressed systems. We are projected to have longer periods of drought, less snowpack, and inconsistent rain moving into the future. While also having rising demands and a consistent fight over water rights that has left the fed stepping in to make a short term compromise of trying to reconfigure water rights every 2 years. We do not have water for the things we already have in the state. Let me emphasize this again. We do not have enough water for what we already do in the state. That's why the salt lake is shrinking. It's part of why most reservoirs are often low on water. Our current practices are unsustainable. 

AI is planting their data centers in some of the lower water areas in drought heavy spaces. They're high polluters, significantly heat up local areas, and are heavy water users. And much of that fuels things people don't need or even want. 

 

Now I'm not saying there's no use. My husband is in computer engineering and it's seriously streamlined his work. He's used it for several projects, including home ones, as a drafting project or research miner. It is useful. But we need to respect that AI comes with a heavy cost and that it can't be used willy nilly as another large-scale experiment on humans minds, societies, and well being. I'm a millennial and have watched said experiment backfire on my Gen and especially younger in several key ways. Some that we will be paying for for generations to come.I would prefer we move more cautiously than what's happening now.

 

Ps. There's a great release from Elder Gong on the spiritual ethics that released today. I was only 20-30 minutes in but found is super powerful. 

 

https://youtu.be/Ts5Z64A0Vv4

Thanks for your input, I align with these thoughts.

[Calm]

On 6/8/2026 at 9:15 AM, marineland said:

"The water the development would use would not be taken away from the Great Salt 
Lake, he said, but rather would be a reallocation of water rights currently earmarked 
for other uses. The project developers, he went on, would have to abide by state 
air standards".

This reallocation has not been identified.

And what water will be allocated when the “other uses” need more water?

[The Nehor]

9 hours ago, Calm said:

And what water will be allocated when the “other uses” need more water?

Presumably you just pray for rain and hope for the best at that point.

[longview]

8 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Presumably you just pray for rain and hope for the best at that point.

Bring back the deluge of 1983:

[marineland]

22 hours ago, Calm said:

And what water will be allocated when the “other uses” need more water?

It's a battle between humans, farmland, crypto, and AI.  Not enough water to go 
around.

[rodheadlee]

On 6/15/2026 at 11:13 AM, marineland said:

It's a battle between humans, farmland, crypto, and AI.  Not enough water to go 
around.

So why are the Greenies fighting putting these data centers in space? I take it they don't need water up there because it's so cold?

[Calm]

They aren’t that green yet to put up there.  There is the cost in resources and pollution for launching it, for example.  That would likely take years before the balance shifts from negative to positive savings.  Tech isn’t obviously at a point where space is significantly better in terms of the environment yet.

They could use solar power to run it, including pumps to move the coolant around and out to the heat radiation panels or whatever they use.  Apparently they would have to be quite large, even larger than the solar panels as a vacuum isn’t a great way to pull heat off of something massive. 

Edited Tuesday at 06:42 AM by Calm

[rodheadlee]

20 hours ago, Calm said:

They aren’t that green yet to put up there.  There is the cost in resources and pollution for launching it, for example.  That would likely take years before the balance shifts from negative to positive savings.  Tech isn’t obviously at a point where space is significantly better in terms of the environment yet.

They could use solar power to run it, including pumps to move the coolant around and out to the heat radiation panels or whatever they use.  Apparently they would have to be quite large, even larger than the solar panels as a vacuum isn’t a great way to pull heat off of something massive. 

Elon Musk  already filed for the permits to put up to a million satellites in orbit to create a data center out of a swarm. Just Google is Elon Musk putting a data center in orbit.

[Calm]

1 hour ago, rodheadlee said:

Elon Musk  already filed for the permits to put up to a million satellites in orbit to create a data center out of a swarm. Just Google is Elon Musk putting a data center in orbit.

I was just explaining why some environmentalists are against it.

[marineland]

On 7/14/2026 at 1:56 AM, rodheadlee said:

So why are the Greenies fighting putting these data centers in space? I take it they don't need water up there because it's so cold?

I never heard about that.

[The Nehor]

On 7/14/2026 at 12:56 AM, rodheadlee said:

So why are the Greenies fighting putting these data centers in space? I take it they don't need water up there because it's so cold?

There are a lot of problems. Space is cold (sort of) but because there is no air stuff in space cools slowly. Incredibly slowly. One of the big problems with spacecraft and satellites that generate heat is radiating that heat away from the object. You would need a lot of radiator panels or some other form of heat dissipation and that stuff is heavy for a normal spacecraft. For a data center you have to up that weight by several orders of magnitude. You also have to harden the whole thing against radiation way beyond what would be required on Earth which increases the launch weight even more. Data centers are also regularly upgraded in terms of hardware and this would be very expensive. Also if something breaks you have to launch a mission to fix it which is, again, very expensive.

The big bright side is that with solar panels you could run one 24/7 with no gaps due to the ease with which you can collect solar energy ad stay on the sun’s side of the planet.

It is not the environmentalists keeping this from happening though there are worries about damage to the planet from that many launches into orbit. Astronomers also know that that many satellites will mess with earth based telescopes and make astronomy much more difficult. But it is the corporate bean counters who won’t fund this. We would need to see a huge reduction in the cost of moving each kilogram into orbit before this is at all commercially viable.

16 hours ago, rodheadlee said:

Elon Musk  already filed for the permits to put up to a million satellites in orbit to create a data center out of a swarm. Just Google is Elon Musk putting a data center in orbit.

He did but this is not a feasible or sane plan. I suspect this was just a run of the mill stock manipulation tactic before that recent IPO with no real plan to actually do it. Musk is a grandstander that loves to over-promise and under-deliver. It is kind of his brand.

A million satellites is also a potential Kessler effect nightmare.

And all this for Grok? Why?

[longview]

2 hours ago, The Nehor said:

He did but this is not a feasible or sane plan. I suspect this was just a run of the mill stock manipulation tactic before that recent IPO with no real plan to actually do it. Musk is a grandstander that loves to over-promise and under-deliver. It is kind of his brand.

How to explain the Starlink phenomena? Hundreds of those satellites swarming in space? How many GPS satellites are there?

[webbles]

1 hour ago, longview said:

How to explain the Starlink phenomena? Hundreds of those satellites swarming in space? How many GPS satellites are there?

GPS only has 31 satellites.  Starlink is the first mega constellation and there is over 10,000 satellites.  But the valuation of SpaceX is not based on Starlink.  If it was just Starlink, it would not be a valuable.