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This is a national security nightmare. For better or worse, fossil fuels have massive energy densities, which makes economics in defense context (and others) ex

This is a national security nightmare. For better or worse, fossil fuels have massive energy densities, which makes economics in defense context (and others) extremely favorable. Even with today’s energy polices, electricity costs have skyrocketed (this was the case before the data center demand). Couple that with electrification of vehicles, phase out of natural gas/oil heaters, I think its reckless abandon to push policies which harm middle and lower class families. Not to say some of these countries even consider nuclear energy “evil”. Absolutely ridiculous.

nixon_why69 2mo ago
In the EU's case, dependence on Russian gas is already a national security nightmare.
rickydroll 2mo ago
I apologize, but I must disagree. The national security nightmare is the dependency on fossil fuel sources. If we were to lose our crude oil supplies because of a war in the Middle East, blocking a strait for tankers, we would be well and truly fucked. We don't produce enough domestic natural gas to replace it. The only options we have today are solar, wind, and, given enough time, nuclear. These three sources remove external dependencies for generating energy. I'm not sure how much uranium we have in the States, but once the blades are spinning or the sun is shining, we keep getting energy, and no war overseas can stop that. Electric prices are climbing because we're doing externalities wrong. For example, utility charges for data centers should be significantly higher than what we charge residential and non-DC businesses. The goal is for data centers to absorb the cost of the impact they have on the grid and water. They could have on-prem power plants, but those plants should belong to the local utility and charge the data centers the data center rate. It also should be a surcharge for the air pollution those fossil fuel monstrosities create. Again, paying for the externalities. They could get a break if they deployed gigawatts of solar and batteries or used their waste heat for district heating, but yeah, I'm tired of letting them get away with dumping externalities on us. We now have a nicely delineated scenario where we can focus it on them and make them pay.

nixon_why69 2mo ago

In the EU's case, dependence on Russian gas is already a national security nightmare.

rickydroll 2mo ago

I apologize, but I must disagree. The national security nightmare is the dependency on fossil fuel sources. If we were to lose our crude oil supplies because of a war in the Middle East, blocking a strait for tankers, we would be well and truly fucked. We don't produce enough domestic natural gas to replace it. The only options we have today are solar, wind, and, given enough time, nuclear. These three sources remove external dependencies for generating energy. I'm not sure how much uranium we have in the States, but once the blades are spinning or the sun is shining, we keep getting energy, and no war overseas can stop that. Electric prices are climbing because we're doing externalities wrong. For example, utility charges for data centers should be significantly higher than what we charge residential and non-DC businesses. The goal is for data centers to absorb the cost of the impact they have on the grid and water. They could have on-prem power plants, but those plants should belong to the local utility and charge the data centers the data center rate. It also should be a surcharge for the air pollution those fossil fuel monstrosities create. Again, paying for the externalities. They could get a break if they deployed gigawatts of solar and batteries or used their waste heat for district heating, but yeah, I'm tired of letting them get away with dumping externalities on us. We now have a nicely delineated scenario where we can focus it on them and make them pay.