where there is a demand for results, academia will meet the supply

Right, yes, if people want something studied, grants usually are made available to study it.

i think we both know that this is not what i meant

HN guidelines are that I should choose the most generous interpretation of your comment, not the most likely one. It would be uncharitable and insulting to you to take your comment at face value.

HN guidelines also say something about flamebait but I guess you read past that part :) cheers, obviously not going to continue replying to you

Right, but didn't that one go out the window with your original comment? People follow all the rules some of the time, and some of the rules all the time.

Luckily, modern cooling techniques like heat pumps are much more efficient than resistive heating, 300% to 500% efficiency is easily attainable. You can keep the inside of a data center nice and chilly at room temperature even in the middle of a heat wave.

Then there is also the heat island effect. Concrete boxes will heat up an area more than dirt or wood, even if those boxes are completely empty inside. If you build them near where people live, people are gonna notice. Houses have gardens, industrial complexes such as data centers and factories don't.

Also, the effect is more concentrated downwind, so the heat effect is not some kind of uniform distribution in all directions.

That's surprising to me. You think a gigawatt of heat cannot be felt 500 meters downwind? How near before you experience the temperature rise in the article, if not that?

I’m confused. Rejecting one GW of heat to the building exterior with heat exchangers is going to heat up the area around the heat exchangers.

If you had a hypothetical 1 GW generator and used a hypothetical 1 GW loadbank with 1 GW of resistive heating and a fan that was outdoors, the air temperature would rise.

The air temperature would rise near the heat source, and that hot air would rise in a plume and disperse, not seep out laterally.