Comment by belter
6 months ago
> The water issue really is a distraction which harms the credibility of people who lean on it
Is that really the case? - "Data Centers and Water Consumption" - https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-co...
"...Large data centers can consume up to 5 million gallons per day, equivalent to the water use of a town populated by 10,000 to 50,000 people..."
"I Was Wrong About Data Center Water Consumption" - https://www.construction-physics.com/p/i-was-wrong-about-dat...
"...So to wrap up, I misread the Berkeley Report and significantly underestimated US data center water consumption. If you simply take the Berkeley estimates directly, you get around 628 million gallons of water consumption per day for data centers, much higher than the 66-67 million gallons per day I originally stated..."
Also from that article:
> U.S. data centers consume 449 million gallons of water per day and 163.7 billion gallons annually (as of 2021).
Sounds bad! Now let's compare that to agriculture.
USGS 2015 report: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45926469#45927945
Agriculture feeds people, Simon.
It's fair to be critical of how the ag industry uses that water, but a significant fraction of that activity is effectively essential.
If you're going to minimize people's concern like this, at least compare it to discretionary uses we could ~live without.
The data's about 20 years old, but for example https://www.usga.org/content/dam/usga/pdf/Water%20Resource%2... suggests we were using over 2b gallons a day to water golf courses.
The vast majority of water in agriculture goes to satisfy our taste buds, not nourish our bodies. Feed crops like alalfa consume huge amounts of water in the desert southwest but the desert climate makes it a great place to grow and people have an insatiable demand for cattle products.
We could feed the world with far less water consumption if we opted not to eat meat. Instead, we let people make purchasing decisions for themselves. I'm not sure why we should take a different approach when making decisions about compute.
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I called out golf in my first comment in this thread.
If data center usage meant we didn't have enough water for agriculture I would shout that from the rooftops.
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Growing almonds is just as essential as building an AI. Eating beef at the rate americans do is not essential. Thats where basically all the water usage is going.
Agriculture is generally essential but that doesn't mean that any specific thing done in the name of agriculture is essential.
If Americans cut their meat consumption by 10%, we would use a lot less water in agriculture and probably also live longer in general
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I am surprised by your analytical mistake of comparing irrigation water with data-center water usage...
They are not equivalent. Data centers primarily consume potable water, whereas irrigation uses non-potable or agricultural-grade water. Mixing the two leads to misleading conclusions on the impact.
That's a really good point - you're right, comparing data center usage to potable water usage by towns is a different and more valid comparison than comparing with water for irrigation.
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This is not a distinction that your second link (that has the 628M number) was making either
> water evaporation from hydroelectric dam reservoirs in their water use calculations
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What counts as data center water consumption here? There are many ways to arguably come up with a number.
Does it count water use for cooling only, or does it include use for the infrastructure that keeps it running (power generation, maintenance, staff use, etc.)
Is this water evaporated? Or moved from A to B and raised a few degrees.
This is the real point. Just measuring the amount of water involved makes no sense. Taking 100 liters of water from a river to cool a plant and dumping them back in a river a few degrees warmer is different from taking 100 liters from a fossil acquifer to evaporatively cool the same plant.
Humans don’t consume much water used by humans. Cows do.