51 ms·

These Angry Dutch Farmers Really Hate Microsoft

57 points by clouddrover 4y ago

htag 4y ago
[flagged]
Animats 4y ago
Terrible article. "Nitrogen, produced by cars, agriculture, and heavy machinery used in construction, can be a dangerous pollutant, damaging ecosystems and endangering people's health." Huh? Nitrogen? But since 2015, the country has also witnessed the arrival of enormous “hyperscalers,” buildings that generally span at least 10,000 square feet". They may have obtained that definition from here.[1] That's not a big data center. That's a small supermarket. Large data centers today are two orders of magnitude larger.
- KennyBlanken 4y ago
  https://www.government.nl/topics/nature-and-biodiversity/the-nitrogen-strategy-and-the-transformation-of-the-rural-areas https://www.government.nl/topics/nature-and-biodiversity/the... > Emissions of nitrogen oxides and ammonia have been too high in the Netherlands for many years. This causes excessive deposition of nitrogen, which is harmful for both nature and public health. > Transport and industry are the main emitters of nitrogen oxides. Ammonia mainly comes from livestock manure and chemical fertilisers, which are used in the agriculture sector. Reducing the amount of nitrogen deposition is vital for the sake of our health, the quality of our nature areas and for the sustainability of food production. That is why the Dutch government is introducing measures for industry, agriculture, transport and the construction sector. > A large part of the nitrogen deposition can be traced to the agriculture sector and to sources outside the Netherlands. The remainder is attributable to households, road transport, international shipping, industry, construction, energy generation and waste processing.
- jpollock 4y ago
  Nitrogen run-off can be a major pollutant in waterways. It can either be over-fertilization, or cow dung and urine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6024564/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6024564/ https://www.epa.gov/nutrientpollution/sources-and-solutions-agriculture#:~:text=Nitrogen%20can%20be%20lost%20from,is%20a%20potent%20greenhouse%20gas https://www.epa.gov/nutrientpollution/sources-and-solutions-....
  - KennyBlanken 4y ago
    While nitrogen run-off is a large problem in many parts of the world, that's not what is being referred to here. This is about air pollution from their diesel farm equipment (and likely things like heating systems for greenhouses and animal barns etc.)
    - Out_of_Characte 4y ago
      I know its confusing but 'the nitrogen problem' does indeed refer to fixed nitrogen run-off pollution
    - Scarblac 4y ago
      No, it's mostly about ammonia from lifestock. The "nitrogen" problem is about NO2, NO3 and NH3, where most of the NO is from transport and industry, but the NH3 is from bio industry. Huge factory-like pig and poultry farms. The ammonia gets in the air, spreads and hugely enriches the soil of nature that can't handle that. And way too much manure that is spread out over grass land and runs off into surface water and groundwater. We import a lot of animal feed and artificial fertilizer, then the N in those ends up in our nature.
- Out_of_Characte 4y ago
  I have lived in zeewolde near the place of the datacenter, I can tell you that its massive, especially considering how small the country is and how densely populated it is. Historically, flevoland was created for the express purpose of creating fertile land to farm on. The only reason they didn't build it on industrial land was because of anti-competitive deals with the zeewolde municipality in order to reduce the land usage costs. Also, there are no big supermarkets in the Netherlands. From an american perspective I can understand that this doesnt make alot of sense. but zeewolde is just shy of 60km from schiphol airport. Distances, building sizes and infrastructure and everything else has adapted really well to this dense country, this datacenter is not.
  - MonaroVXR 4y ago
    As a Dutch man, there is very large one near supermarket... Adres: Pampusweg 13, 1398PT Muiden, Noord-Holland
    - gpvos 4y ago
      It's basically the only one in the country.
      - gattilorenz 4y ago
        For very large values of one: https://www.ah.nl/winkels?storeType=XL https://www.ah.nl/winkels?storeType=XL
        gpvos 4y ago
        I don't know all of these, but it seems that nearly all are still inside the city, have a local function and are reasonably reachable by something else than a car. The ones I know are still smaller than the average French hypermarché, and there are far fewer than them. The Muiden mall was the first one and caused a shift in policy to strongly discourage moving shops to the city edge.
  - surgical_fire 4y ago
- elsjaako 4y ago
  Nitrogen refers to several nitrogen containing compounds. I think the proper term is "reactive nitrogen", and the main ones are NOx and NH3. These cause problems with biodiversity in dutch nature, and the problem has been in the dutch news for so long they no longer explain the term.
holoduke 4y ago
If you ask yourself what the possible benefits are for dutch people. Absolutely nothing. Companies like Microsoft have complex tax constructions so not a single cent ends up in the dutch economy. Next. These datacenters are huge energy consumers in an already scarse market. Drives prices up. Nobody wants to live close to these ugly heavily guarded places. At the same time the Netherlands faces a housing crisis often related to lack lack of suitable land. Now used by the monster buildings. There are many more important aspects why you dont want this things on your country. I wouldnt be suprised if in this case Microsoft bribed a few non voted EU representatives to put pressure on local dutch politicians. The whole process is shady and intransparant.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  >Companies like Microsoft have complex tax constructions so not a single cent ends up in the dutch economy. Why are the Dutch angry with EU and Microsoft and not with their elected Dutch government officials who set up these legal tax dodging opportunities to attract such corporations in the first place? They made the rules, Microsoft (and other companies) are just following them.
  - Joeri 4y ago
    They actually just had an election sweep where the incumbent government got punished badly for their perceived elitist policies.
  - holoduke 4y ago
    Because these companies have no morals. They dont care if their foreign factory doesnt follow American laws regarding work safety and other regulations. As long as the local laws permits them they do anything what is possible. Only when things become public and affects their reputation things might change. Only then. Thats why we dont welcome them.
    - shjake 4y ago
      Don’t make your laws more lax than even the ones in America then? We’re talking about Holland here not some poor and corrupt developing country.. It’s no great secret than corporations are generally profit seeking and will try to utilize any “legal loophole” they can find. It would not be reasonable to expect them not to when the system they operate in strongly incentivize them to prioritize profit over anything else. I mean “nice corporations” will simply be outcompeted by the ruthless ones…
waihtis 4y ago
The EU keep pumping out these absolutely ridiculous green policies that have crippling effects locally. Recently they brought out a new energy efficiency directive which could cause up to 50% (!) of Finnish flats & houses to require sizeable renovations. Brussels have been very effective in transforming a useful economic union into a centrally managed dystopian nightmare that a lot of people will soon be willing to burn down regardless of consequence - myself included.
- smcg 4y ago
  They can only make never-effective fig leaf policies because actual good green policies would upset the applecart.
  - bitwize 4y ago
    Indeed. If you really wanted to implement effective green policies, they would involve reducing the global population to around half a billion max and keeping them at pre-industrial levels of technological development.
    - bambam3000 4y ago
      Is this sarcasm?
      - bitwize 4y ago
        No, straight up, that's what needs to be done. I think that the current population-management fantasy supported by the WEF and quite a few on Hackernews -- building enormous arcologies in which to warehouse much of the world's citizenry -- is going to run into technical challenges that threaten the entire project, before they even get to the massive "people hate living there" problems. We can get to actually zero carbon emissions if we adopt simple living without any industrial technology, but we lose the capacity to feed eight billion people without Green Revolution style agtech, so we will have to make do with fewer people. We have to face up to the reality that industrial civilization is widely regarded, by people with deep understanding of the issues, as a bad move.
Why_O_My 4y ago
The farmers are just as much in the wrong as Microsoft here. Al construction is at risk of stalling because of their excessive pollution.
- spiderfarmer 4y ago
  They halved their emissions in just a couple of decades. If you truly want progress, be realistic with the deadlines you state and keep on giving them the incentives to continue this positive trend.
digitalengineer 4y ago
The datacenters are mostly air cooled but also use massive amounts of water when it gets warmer. Exactly during the times that f the year when citizens and farmers are called upon to use less water. How much? Independent studies showed up to 4 times more then Microsoft claimed. Furthermore the water they put back in the local lakes contains some unknown kind of chemical. So yeah I get why locals and farmers might be upset. https://www.rtlnieuws.nl/tech/artikel/5326566/datacenter-microsoft-hoger-verbruik-drinkwater-84-miljoen-liter https://www.rtlnieuws.nl/tech/artikel/5326566/datacenter-mic...
- masklinn 4y ago
  The farmers are mostly giant moaning hypocrites. They’re the cause of the nitrogen crisis.
  - spiderfarmer 4y ago
    No. The real issue is the fact that when Natura 2000 guidelines became a thing, we undemocratically decided on the wrong species to protect. And when we realized this would effectively kill all economic activity in NL, there was no way back. Even when all farms disappear we will not reach the goals. And right now the emissions of farms are (likely) illegally exchanged for other polluting activity like airports. We should have a hard think if it’s really necessary to ruin our country to protect species that are abundant in other countries.
  - digitalengineer 4y ago
    Did you even read the comment?
  - guilhas 4y ago
    Nitrogen fertilizers were produced with gas from Russia, now in shortage, the new environmental rules are just a guise
mozball 4y ago
Asking out of ignorance: Why build a data center in prime/contested real estate instead of some desolate, crumbling town in eastern europe (within the EU)? Could benefit from cold climate, cheap labour and real-estate; might even be green (if powered by soviet-era nuclear plant)
paulus_magnus2 4y ago
In return for costing EU members $10 billion in lost corporate tax a year, the Netherlands collects just $2.2 billion in additional corporate tax a year. For every $1 dollar the Netherlands collected from the shifted profits of US corporations, the EU as a whole lost nearly $4 in corporate tax from the corporations. [1] [1] https://taxjustice.net/press/revealed-netherlands-blocking-eus-covid19-recovery-plan-has-cost-eu-countries-10bn-in-lost-corporate-tax-a-year-2/ https://taxjustice.net/press/revealed-netherlands-blocking-e...
Vecr 4y ago
Archive: https://archive.is/2QW4R https://archive.is/2QW4R

57 points by clouddrover 4y ago

htag 4y ago

[flagged]

Terrible article. "Nitrogen, produced by cars, agriculture, and heavy machinery used in construction, can be a dangerous pollutant, damaging ecosystems and endangering people's health." Huh? Nitrogen? But since 2015, the country has also witnessed the arrival of enormous “hyperscalers,” buildings that generally span at least 10,000 square feet". They may have obtained that definition from here.[1] That's not a big data center. That's a small supermarket. Large data centers today are two orders of magnitude larger.

KennyBlanken 4y ago
https://www.government.nl/topics/nature-and-biodiversity/the-nitrogen-strategy-and-the-transformation-of-the-rural-areas https://www.government.nl/topics/nature-and-biodiversity/the... > Emissions of nitrogen oxides and ammonia have been too high in the Netherlands for many years. This causes excessive deposition of nitrogen, which is harmful for both nature and public health. > Transport and industry are the main emitters of nitrogen oxides. Ammonia mainly comes from livestock manure and chemical fertilisers, which are used in the agriculture sector. Reducing the amount of nitrogen deposition is vital for the sake of our health, the quality of our nature areas and for the sustainability of food production. That is why the Dutch government is introducing measures for industry, agriculture, transport and the construction sector. > A large part of the nitrogen deposition can be traced to the agriculture sector and to sources outside the Netherlands. The remainder is attributable to households, road transport, international shipping, industry, construction, energy generation and waste processing.
jpollock 4y ago
Nitrogen run-off can be a major pollutant in waterways. It can either be over-fertilization, or cow dung and urine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6024564/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6024564/ https://www.epa.gov/nutrientpollution/sources-and-solutions-agriculture#:~:text=Nitrogen%20can%20be%20lost%20from,is%20a%20potent%20greenhouse%20gas https://www.epa.gov/nutrientpollution/sources-and-solutions-....
- KennyBlanken 4y ago
  While nitrogen run-off is a large problem in many parts of the world, that's not what is being referred to here. This is about air pollution from their diesel farm equipment (and likely things like heating systems for greenhouses and animal barns etc.)
  - Out_of_Characte 4y ago
    I know its confusing but 'the nitrogen problem' does indeed refer to fixed nitrogen run-off pollution
  - Scarblac 4y ago
    No, it's mostly about ammonia from lifestock. The "nitrogen" problem is about NO2, NO3 and NH3, where most of the NO is from transport and industry, but the NH3 is from bio industry. Huge factory-like pig and poultry farms. The ammonia gets in the air, spreads and hugely enriches the soil of nature that can't handle that. And way too much manure that is spread out over grass land and runs off into surface water and groundwater. We import a lot of animal feed and artificial fertilizer, then the N in those ends up in our nature.
Out_of_Characte 4y ago
I have lived in zeewolde near the place of the datacenter, I can tell you that its massive, especially considering how small the country is and how densely populated it is. Historically, flevoland was created for the express purpose of creating fertile land to farm on. The only reason they didn't build it on industrial land was because of anti-competitive deals with the zeewolde municipality in order to reduce the land usage costs. Also, there are no big supermarkets in the Netherlands. From an american perspective I can understand that this doesnt make alot of sense. but zeewolde is just shy of 60km from schiphol airport. Distances, building sizes and infrastructure and everything else has adapted really well to this dense country, this datacenter is not.
- MonaroVXR 4y ago
  As a Dutch man, there is very large one near supermarket... Adres: Pampusweg 13, 1398PT Muiden, Noord-Holland
  - gpvos 4y ago
    It's basically the only one in the country.
    - gattilorenz 4y ago
      For very large values of one: https://www.ah.nl/winkels?storeType=XL https://www.ah.nl/winkels?storeType=XL
      - gpvos 4y ago
        I don't know all of these, but it seems that nearly all are still inside the city, have a local function and are reasonably reachable by something else than a car. The ones I know are still smaller than the average French hypermarché, and there are far fewer than them. The Muiden mall was the first one and caused a shift in policy to strongly discourage moving shops to the city edge.
- surgical_fire 4y ago
elsjaako 4y ago
Nitrogen refers to several nitrogen containing compounds. I think the proper term is "reactive nitrogen", and the main ones are NOx and NH3. These cause problems with biodiversity in dutch nature, and the problem has been in the dutch news for so long they no longer explain the term.

holoduke 4y ago

If you ask yourself what the possible benefits are for dutch people. Absolutely nothing. Companies like Microsoft have complex tax constructions so not a single cent ends up in the dutch economy. Next. These datacenters are huge energy consumers in an already scarse market. Drives prices up. Nobody wants to live close to these ugly heavily guarded places. At the same time the Netherlands faces a housing crisis often related to lack lack of suitable land. Now used by the monster buildings. There are many more important aspects why you dont want this things on your country. I wouldnt be suprised if in this case Microsoft bribed a few non voted EU representatives to put pressure on local dutch politicians. The whole process is shady and intransparant.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago
>Companies like Microsoft have complex tax constructions so not a single cent ends up in the dutch economy. Why are the Dutch angry with EU and Microsoft and not with their elected Dutch government officials who set up these legal tax dodging opportunities to attract such corporations in the first place? They made the rules, Microsoft (and other companies) are just following them.
- Joeri 4y ago
  They actually just had an election sweep where the incumbent government got punished badly for their perceived elitist policies.
- holoduke 4y ago
  Because these companies have no morals. They dont care if their foreign factory doesnt follow American laws regarding work safety and other regulations. As long as the local laws permits them they do anything what is possible. Only when things become public and affects their reputation things might change. Only then. Thats why we dont welcome them.
  - shjake 4y ago
    Don’t make your laws more lax than even the ones in America then? We’re talking about Holland here not some poor and corrupt developing country.. It’s no great secret than corporations are generally profit seeking and will try to utilize any “legal loophole” they can find. It would not be reasonable to expect them not to when the system they operate in strongly incentivize them to prioritize profit over anything else. I mean “nice corporations” will simply be outcompeted by the ruthless ones…

waihtis 4y ago

The EU keep pumping out these absolutely ridiculous green policies that have crippling effects locally. Recently they brought out a new energy efficiency directive which could cause up to 50% (!) of Finnish flats & houses to require sizeable renovations. Brussels have been very effective in transforming a useful economic union into a centrally managed dystopian nightmare that a lot of people will soon be willing to burn down regardless of consequence - myself included.

smcg 4y ago
They can only make never-effective fig leaf policies because actual good green policies would upset the applecart.
- bitwize 4y ago
  Indeed. If you really wanted to implement effective green policies, they would involve reducing the global population to around half a billion max and keeping them at pre-industrial levels of technological development.
  - bambam3000 4y ago
    Is this sarcasm?
    - bitwize 4y ago
      No, straight up, that's what needs to be done. I think that the current population-management fantasy supported by the WEF and quite a few on Hackernews -- building enormous arcologies in which to warehouse much of the world's citizenry -- is going to run into technical challenges that threaten the entire project, before they even get to the massive "people hate living there" problems. We can get to actually zero carbon emissions if we adopt simple living without any industrial technology, but we lose the capacity to feed eight billion people without Green Revolution style agtech, so we will have to make do with fewer people. We have to face up to the reality that industrial civilization is widely regarded, by people with deep understanding of the issues, as a bad move.

Why_O_My 4y ago

The farmers are just as much in the wrong as Microsoft here. Al construction is at risk of stalling because of their excessive pollution.

spiderfarmer 4y ago
They halved their emissions in just a couple of decades. If you truly want progress, be realistic with the deadlines you state and keep on giving them the incentives to continue this positive trend.

digitalengineer 4y ago

The datacenters are mostly air cooled but also use massive amounts of water when it gets warmer. Exactly during the times that f the year when citizens and farmers are called upon to use less water. How much? Independent studies showed up to 4 times more then Microsoft claimed. Furthermore the water they put back in the local lakes contains some unknown kind of chemical. So yeah I get why locals and farmers might be upset. https://www.rtlnieuws.nl/tech/artikel/5326566/datacenter-microsoft-hoger-verbruik-drinkwater-84-miljoen-liter https://www.rtlnieuws.nl/tech/artikel/5326566/datacenter-mic...

masklinn 4y ago
The farmers are mostly giant moaning hypocrites. They’re the cause of the nitrogen crisis.
- spiderfarmer 4y ago
  No. The real issue is the fact that when Natura 2000 guidelines became a thing, we undemocratically decided on the wrong species to protect. And when we realized this would effectively kill all economic activity in NL, there was no way back. Even when all farms disappear we will not reach the goals. And right now the emissions of farms are (likely) illegally exchanged for other polluting activity like airports. We should have a hard think if it’s really necessary to ruin our country to protect species that are abundant in other countries.
- digitalengineer 4y ago
  Did you even read the comment?
- guilhas 4y ago
  Nitrogen fertilizers were produced with gas from Russia, now in shortage, the new environmental rules are just a guise

mozball 4y ago

Asking out of ignorance: Why build a data center in prime/contested real estate instead of some desolate, crumbling town in eastern europe (within the EU)? Could benefit from cold climate, cheap labour and real-estate; might even be green (if powered by soviet-era nuclear plant)

paulus_magnus2 4y ago

In return for costing EU members $10 billion in lost corporate tax a year, the Netherlands collects just $2.2 billion in additional corporate tax a year. For every $1 dollar the Netherlands collected from the shifted profits of US corporations, the EU as a whole lost nearly $4 in corporate tax from the corporations. [1] [1] https://taxjustice.net/press/revealed-netherlands-blocking-eus-covid19-recovery-plan-has-cost-eu-countries-10bn-in-lost-corporate-tax-a-year-2/ https://taxjustice.net/press/revealed-netherlands-blocking-e...

Vecr 4y ago

Archive: https://archive.is/2QW4R https://archive.is/2QW4R