Comment by HL33tibCe7
6 months ago
The fact that certain specific data centres are being proposed or built in areas with water issues may be bad, but it does not imply that all AI data centres are water guzzling drain holes that are killing Earth, which is the point you were (semi-implicitly) making in the article.
What is it that you imagine happens to the water after it goes through the data center?
Clearly it vanishes without a trace and simply leaves the water cycle.
Just because it doesn’t leave the cycle doesn’t mean it’s not an issue. Where it comes back down matters and as climate change makes wet places wetter and dry places drier, that means it’s less distributed
That said, the water issue is overblown. Most of the water calculation comes from power generation (which uses a ton) and is non-potable water.
The potable water consumed is not zero, but it’s like 15% or something
The big issue is power and the fact that most of it comes from fossil fuels
8 replies →
Drinking water does not magically appears in the water cycle the next day.
[0] - "And what we found is is that up to 43% of data centers, and this is our largest data centers, are located in areas of high or extremely high water stress. And that's really shocking because data centers require huge amount of drinking water to be able to cool their servers."
[0]- Business Insider | Exposing The Dark Side of America's AI Data Center Explosion - https://youtu.be/t-8TDOFqkQA?t=1201
1 reply →
"I took all your money and gambled it away, but don't worry because it wasn't destroyed, it's still circulating in the economy and will come back someday."
A reduction in what can be used from the summer snowmelt is a problem, regardless of whether equivalent atoms are redeposited in the winter snowfall.
I’m sure there was some planning commission process involved with the development of these sites. I’m curious if anyone has bothered to look at those meeting minutes to see if there are some material misrepresentation of the water and power needs. I’m going to guess that answer is no.