Experts discover a hidden hazard from AI data centers—and people are angry, Newsweek, 5/27/26

Data centers in Phoenix raised the temperature of the surrounding area by a significant amount, a new study finds.

They found that neighborhoods downwind of the data center saw their temperatures go up by up to four degrees in a city that already boasts some of the hottest temperatures in the country.

Brad Paisley, a Grammy Award-winning American country music singer and songwriter, urged his followers to sign a petition to stop the construction of a 69,000-square-foot data center that would be 50 yards from the Nashville Zoo, which he called “an absolute nightmare scenario” in an Instagram Reel.

“First of all, they don’t have the power to build this. They don’t have the water. It doesn’t belong there. It would be an enormous monstrosity, an absolute eyesore, and detract in every way from not only that zoo, but that area,” Paisley said in his video, which he posted collaboratively with the zoo Saturday. The Nashville Zoo, which had 1.4 million visitors last year, has over 3,700 animals and represents over 350 species. It is “one of the top zoos in the world,” Paisley said in his post.

The video comes days after the zoo created a petition and promoted it on social media, which brought national attention to the dispute and had amassed 331,824 signatures and over 126,599 shares Monday afternoon. The zoo’s president and CEO, Rick Schwartz, said in an interview Friday he was particularly concerned about its impact on rare and vulnerable species at the facility, such as the clouded leopard, whose population the zoo is working to conserve.

Paisley, a Nashville resident, is so far the most widely recognized figure to push back against the project.

“No one has shared studies or environmental impact assessments. Just their word. That’s why the Nashville Zoo is asking the community to join in vehemently opposing the proposed data center being built adjacent to the Zoo,” the petition says.