alt Hacker News> If you put a 1GW datacenter there, that is equivalent to full daylight, with zero albedo, 24/7. Hmm, I’d rather live at a considerable distance from just the dissipated heat.
Doesn't this comparison fall apart when you consider that the heat is going to be dissipated across a large area? The reason why stuff gets so hot during the day is that the surrounding areas also get heated, so there's nowhere for the heat to escape other than up. If only 1sq km is getting heated, and that's getting dissipated, the effect is going to be far less than your implied comparison of 2 suns. To bring it back to your example, a patch of payment in the sun (ie. 1kW/m^2) can get scorching hot. But in absolute terms it's less than the output of a space heater (typical one is 1.5KW), not even enough to keep a room warm.
Yes, absolutely, but it will depend on where one is, the surrounding geography, etc.
A hairdryer pointed at me from 1m away running 24/7 will make me notably warmer. A hairdryer 20m away is probably unnoticeable. A 1GW datacenter is a lot of hairdryers. At some scale, there is probably a buoyancy effect such that cooler air will be drawn in near the surface, get heated, and convect upwards, so I could even believe that a monster datacenter would cool some surrounding areas. (The sun inland from the west coast in the US has this effect during certain seasons, and AIUI this is a good part of the reason that the areas very near the coast tend to be dramatically cooler than inland areas in the spring and early summer.)