This study is crap.
No statistical significance, control groups, numbers, or models. Just rolling average temperature vs temperature.
They don’t say how they filter out trends or seasonality. They don’t look at switch point models or do difference in difference. And it’s a non reviewed preprint.
This research needs an actual statistician to use their data and fix it, because as is, this is not worth seriously discussing.
Edit: okay downvotes. I’m not saying there isn’t something here, I’m saying this study does nothing to support the hypothesis seriously.
We have data picking and choosing to throw out data, we have no statistical rigour, and we have no comparison against other rural land transformation activities.
We already know about urban heat islands, is this just that? That’s an important question when trying to say data center use is the issue.
It probably is an issue, the chart is compelling, but without better work none of this is actionable.
