Comment by arghwhat
6 months ago
And sunlight causes skin cancer, but we don't want to boycott neither water vapor nor sunlight lest we will have no precipitation and no... life.
Water evaporates constantly in from soil, plants, and water bodies - most notably from the ocean itself, which is how ~babby~ precipitation is formed. Evaporation from a datacenter is unlikely to make any notable impact through water vapor. What it could impact is highly localized potable water availability and humidity in places with e.g. low precipitation and limited reservoir capacity.
And, again, note that other cooling methods are also in use, and that other things also use evaporative cooling.
Heck, even when evaporative cooling is used, it doesn't necessarily mean that the water escapes into the atmosphere! Both heat pipes and refrigeration cycles are forms of evaporative cooling where the gas is allowed to condense, cool and evaporate again.
All the small things that affect the climate pile up.
> Water evaporates constantly in from soil, plants, and water bodies - most notably from the ocean itself, which is how ~babby~ precipitation is formed.
And CO2 is constantly released too. The point are the additional released greenhouse gases
BTW we kind of boycott sunlight, it’s called sunscreen
That's really doesn't apply to water vapor where the natural evaporation is many orders if magnitude grater than what were dealing with, and is a required part of the natural cycle to replenish water reservoirs, with the natural cycle being incredibly short and increased evaporation shortening that cycle.
The issue with greenhouse gasses is their potent impact combined with long lifetime. CO2 has to be slowly absorbed by e.g. plants, and adding more does not speed up the process unlike for water vapor.
You also cannot evaporate past 100% relative humidity, an amount of water saturation that naturally occurs. This is unlike gas emissions, where the sky is the limit.
> BTW we kind of boycott sunlight, it’s called sunscreen
Unless you're applying it to the sun, that's not boycotting sunlight, it's adapting to it. Not to mention that your skin requires sunlight, sunscreen just avoids overexposure.