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
>The big issue is power and the fact that most of it comes from fossil fuels
This has almost zero to do with the data centers themselves and instead the politicians we vote in.
Simply put we need more 'clean' power generation any way you go about it. Economic growth and production is based on ones ability to produce power. We've been coasting on increasing efficiency for a long time, but we've been in need of larger sources of power and distribution for decades, data centers or not.
With that said DC's shouldn't be built in west texas where it's dry. East of the Mississippi gets enough rain that you build a reservoir and you'll have more than enough water to feed the DC for decades.
The way they measure water consumption is genuinely unbelievably misleading at best. For example measuring the water evaporated from a dams basin if any hydroelectric power is used.
Counting water is genuinely just asinine double counting ridiculousness that makes down stream things look completely insane. Like making a pound of beef look like it consumes 10,000L of water.
In reality of course running your shower for 10 to 15 hours is no where near somehow equivalent to eating beef lasagna for dinner and we would actually have a crisis if people started applying any optimization pressure on these useless metrics.
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."
"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.
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
>The big issue is power and the fact that most of it comes from fossil fuels
This has almost zero to do with the data centers themselves and instead the politicians we vote in.
Simply put we need more 'clean' power generation any way you go about it. Economic growth and production is based on ones ability to produce power. We've been coasting on increasing efficiency for a long time, but we've been in need of larger sources of power and distribution for decades, data centers or not.
With that said DC's shouldn't be built in west texas where it's dry. East of the Mississippi gets enough rain that you build a reservoir and you'll have more than enough water to feed the DC for decades.
1 reply →
The way they measure water consumption is genuinely unbelievably misleading at best. For example measuring the water evaporated from a dams basin if any hydroelectric power is used.
Counting water is genuinely just asinine double counting ridiculousness that makes down stream things look completely insane. Like making a pound of beef look like it consumes 10,000L of water.
In reality of course running your shower for 10 to 15 hours is no where near somehow equivalent to eating beef lasagna for dinner and we would actually have a crisis if people started applying any optimization pressure on these useless metrics.
5 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
Areas of "high water stress" sound very sunny, which presumably is great news for renewable power generation.
"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.