Has it dawned on anyone other than me that the huge data centers that are being built around here may not end up being a good thing for us? Facebook, Google and all the big boys are busy building these huge data centers in the Northland, and everyone is all giddy about the investment, but I’m a cynical kind of guy and decided to think this through. Why exactly are they building here? It’s not like data needs an interstate and Midwestern location for easy access to both coasts.
My cynical intuition tells me that they are here because of cheap electricity, plentiful electricity and giddy political officials that see nothing but good things in big buildings from billion-dollar corporations.
I do not like doing research, but I did enough to be dangerous. One opinion piece that I read validated my opinion. Jack Rogers wrote, “The exponential growth of data centers with a tremendous appetite for electricity rapidly is outpacing the capacity of utilities to meet their needs, pushing data center developers to prioritize new markets where they can be sure they can hook up to the grid,” in Globest.com.
He went on to say electrical utilities across the U.S. are doubling their forecast of how much additional power they’ll need by the end of this decade to meet surging demand for data processing facilities.
My prediction is that within a decade, you’ll be shocked at electrical rates and “rolling blackouts” and such talk will be added to our Midwestern vocabulary.
Guys, I really appreciate how Joe Biden has unified this country, pretty impressive.
Have you noticed that humans have a never-ending cycle of producing an innovation that then needs a solution? We came up with food preservatives and additives that have made the entire world obese and to counter that we have now produced medications to make the world not obese.
Pretty sure human existence is simply a Simpsons episode.
We’ve had some short deadlines at The Landmark lately as Foley racks up the HSA charges. He offered that I could skip a week and publish a “best of” column. I thought that was a heck of an idea until we both decided there is no “best of” this column and without saying that aloud, we both decided that I should just keep pecking away at this keyboard.
Speaking of taxes, I’m an early filer, so this week does not matter to me much, except for the fact that the older I get, the less I believe in the tax system. Seems rather sketch to me. The government basically tells us “We know what you owe us, but we are not telling you. You send in what you think you owe and then if you don’t get reasonably close to what we think you owe, and we have ample time, we will climb up your butt with an electron microscope.”
I’ve never been probed by an electron microscope, but it cannot be pleasant. Anyway, may God be with you and your guess on what you owed this year.
On the bright side, even if you have to pay a lot, at least the government will have enough money to shoot Iranian drones out of the Israeli sky.
(Guy Speckman can be reached writing this “best of” column in the coming weeks)