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Comment by tzs | Hacker News Reader

> I've not seen a single politician calling for statewide bans on golf courses.

I've not seen a single state where anyone is trying to build a ton of new golf courses. There are around 140 being built in the whole country, and I think the most in any one state is under a dozen in Florida.

There are more than an order of magnitude more data centers under construction with some states having more data centers under constructions than the whole country has golf courses under construction.

I bet if you tried to build 2-300 golf courses at the same time in one state it would become an issue for state level politicians.

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I seem to recall that data centers require orders of magnitude less water than a golf course too if you want to compare apples to apples.

Look, just say what you mean. If you think "AI is BAD" just say that, don't try to couch it in some disingenuous argument about water usage or climate change.

I did say what I meant. You overlooked the context.

The person I was replying to was trying to make inferences from the fact that data centers have become a statewide issue in some states but golf courses have not.

My point is that because golf courses are being built at a much lower rate than data centers they remain just local issues in most places. Try to build 200 golf courses at the same time in some state and I bet you'll see that get statewide attention.

The fact that golf courses use an order of magnitude more resources than a data center should certainly factor into the context.

No one would give a shit about two hundred golf courses being constructed in Texas.

Even with the massive data center build out, existing golf courses today use more water than all projected data centers globally are expected to use in 2030.

The water issue is completely farcical.

The issue isn't so much about water usage, but water pollution. Golf courses don't usually make the tap water undrinkable.

Golf courses do pollute:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...

Also, the "pollution" from data centers is just "major construction project temporarily disrupts water table" not "facility is pumping random chemicals into the water".

That is to say, nothing about next door neighbors to a major construction project getting mud out of their well for a little while is unique to datacenters.

I think you misunderstand me.

I did not say that golf courses are pollution free, but there is many degrees of magnitude difference between the mere possibility of illnesses becoming more common around golf courses and data centres that have to pay millions in fines as they are not following the rules.

I feel like you're constructing straw men arguments here despite the very obvious polluting behaviour of datacentres.

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