Comment by dlord
6 months ago
I think the water usage argument can be pertinent depending on the context.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2ngz7ep1eo
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/nov/10/data-cent...
https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/feature-in-latin-...
That BBC story is a great example of what I'm talking about here:
> A small data centre using this type of cooling can use around 25.5 million litres of water per year. [...]
> For the fiscal year 2025, [Microsoft's] Querétaro sites used 40 million litres of water, it added.
> That's still a lot of water. And if you look at overall consumption at the biggest data centre owners then the numbers are huge.
That's not credible reporting because it makes no effort at all to help the reader understand the magnitude of those figures.
"40 million litres of water" is NOT "a lot of water". As far as I can tell that's about the same annual water usage as a 24 acre soybean field.
I agree that those numbers can seem huge without proper context.
For me, that BBC story, and the others, illustrates a trend; tech giants installing themselves in ressource-strained areas, while promoting their development as drivers of economic growth.
Yes, a 24 acre soybean field uses a lot of water.
And an average US soybean farm has 312 acres (13x larger than 24 acres): http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/soybeans-and-oil-crops/...
Which means that in 2025 Microsoft's Querétaro sites used 1/13th of a typical US soybean farm's annual amount of water.
It's a lot of water for AI waifus and videos of Trump shitbombing people who dare oppose him.
It's not a lot of water for AI weather modeling to ensure the soybean crops throughout the country are adequately watered and maximize yield.