I'm just not sure I understand what point they're trying to make.
Honestly, 6500 households of water a day is nothing. Individual cities often write more than this off in a day when rain overwhelms their watershed systems.
Even with perfect watershed recovery our ability to treat, utilize, and transport it back without losses is a far bigger concern. The average age of pipes in the US is approaching 50 years old. I've seen reports project the US will need to invest nearly 1T in the next 15 years to sustain the current system and rate of growth.
Hell, there was a 54 inch water main break in Detroit this winter that flooded ~120 homes. A conservative estimate for a pipe of that size leaking all of its water for 5-6 hours is 20-25,000,000 gallons of water. We're going to be seeing a lot more of that.
Another thing I see overlooked constantly is that many of these DCs are augmented with their own filtration systems which allow them to primarily consume greywater for a net gain.
maxerickson · 1h ago
Municipal water drawn from the Great Lakes is mostly borrowed for a short time. There's energy costs to treating it for potability and then treating the wastewater, but not really a change to how much water is available.
nativeit · 46m ago
I'm not inclined to endorse continued data center construction for much of anything, AI especially, but I was a little curious about how they determined what areas qualify as "high-stress" water conditions? Because they show red squares where I live (near Charlotte, NC) and we are pretty firmly within the normal range of precipitation and water levels. If anything, it's been wetter in the last 10-years than at any point in my lifetime.
Osyris · 2h ago
I was under the impression data centers use closed loop cooling.
archon1410 · 1h ago
I had the same impression, but apparently not.
> Many data centers rely on evaporative cooling, or “swamp cooling,” where warm air is drawn through wet pads. Data centers typically evaporate about 80% of the water they draw, discharging 20% back to a wastewater treatment facility, according to Shaolei Ren, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Riverside.
ijustlovemath · 2h ago
It's much cheaper just keep pulling in cool water than it is to cool it yourself
bilsbie · 2h ago
Welcome to Gelman amnesia.
rpmisms · 1h ago
So put datacenters in Tennessee. We have tons of water and hydroelectric power.
Havoc · 1h ago
Surprised there isn't more of a push to align compute with suitable geography frankly.
A lot of stuff doesn't need 10ms latency. Why not move it somewhere that has geothermal, or abundant water, or say an ocean to dump heat into.
Seems like the approach is always to bring the resource to the datacenter instead
Well I guess they should not be building these data centers in areas with no water and high ave Temps. Where they are building having these issues are a surprise to no one.
There are areas with lots of land, water and much lower ave air temps in the US and some have empty buildings that can be retrofitted for use as data centers. But no, lets build in places that allow the company treat their employees as slaves.
bobbylarrybobby · 2h ago
Eh, I'd focus on agriculture first. AI is a drop in the bucket compared to what it takes to grow a cow or an almond.
bb88 · 1h ago
Step 1 is simpler. Get rid of farming in the desert first.
I'd rate basic necessities like food 4000x more important than data centers too
wintermutestwin · 1h ago
Of course! But what about all of the agriculture that gets exported? In CA, it is over half of almonds and ~15% of alfalfa (cattle feed).
No comments yet
mmoskal · 2h ago
I don't know. I suspect most people rate data centers higher than almond milk...
osigurdson · 1h ago
If we could just get rid of these darn living creatures we would use much less water.
anthk · 2h ago
That's what I'd love Markov bullshit generators make these crawlers implode with metacircular nonsense. That and Gzip bombs.
roschdal · 1h ago
Artificial Intelligence is for people without enough natural intelligence.
bilsbie · 2h ago
I’m hugely pro conservation, clean air and water, etc.
But modern environmentalism is a religion and this is how it works. Any human advancement needs a narrative on how it hurts the planet.
healsdata · 1h ago
Have you considered you have cause-and-effect backwards? Any human advancement hurts the planet and then the burden is on environmentalists to bring awareness?
Why would a for-profit not hurt the environment for more profit if it isn't illegal and won't get them sued (for more than they profited)? There's a rich history of them doing exactly that. Similarly, governments have done horrific environmental damage and it was up to environmentalists to create the awareness to make it stop.
I honestly don't know how you can look at a world with record numbers of wildfires, communities fighting over water supplies, and for-profit companies say that water beyond subsistence levels isn't a human right and think "oh yeah, environmentalists are looking for a reason why this water-consuming thing is bad".
Especially when the same technology could be powered in a way that doesn't pollute as much and cooled in a way that doesn't consume as much water -- if only the environment was more important than shareholders.
josu · 2h ago
We already went through this with crypto mining; the oceans didn't boil, the world didn't end.
bb88 · 2h ago
Etherium also went to proof of stake. Apparently it's going swimmingly.
add-sub-mul-div · 1h ago
Tell me more about your impression of the timescale that climate change would progress at.
mschuster91 · 2h ago
Yeah because the crypto world underwent a bunch of disastrous rug-pulls and large scale scandals that scared people off. And frankly I'm happy about this, the moment I started (and I'm not joking here) taxi drivers and hairdressers talking about NFTs I was pretty certain (and hopeful) that the bubble was about to burst.
Honestly, 6500 households of water a day is nothing. Individual cities often write more than this off in a day when rain overwhelms their watershed systems.
Even with perfect watershed recovery our ability to treat, utilize, and transport it back without losses is a far bigger concern. The average age of pipes in the US is approaching 50 years old. I've seen reports project the US will need to invest nearly 1T in the next 15 years to sustain the current system and rate of growth.
Hell, there was a 54 inch water main break in Detroit this winter that flooded ~120 homes. A conservative estimate for a pipe of that size leaking all of its water for 5-6 hours is 20-25,000,000 gallons of water. We're going to be seeing a lot more of that.
Another thing I see overlooked constantly is that many of these DCs are augmented with their own filtration systems which allow them to primarily consume greywater for a net gain.
> Many data centers rely on evaporative cooling, or “swamp cooling,” where warm air is drawn through wet pads. Data centers typically evaporate about 80% of the water they draw, discharging 20% back to a wastewater treatment facility, according to Shaolei Ren, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Riverside.
A lot of stuff doesn't need 10ms latency. Why not move it somewhere that has geothermal, or abundant water, or say an ocean to dump heat into.
Seems like the approach is always to bring the resource to the datacenter instead
There are areas with lots of land, water and much lower ave air temps in the US and some have empty buildings that can be retrofitted for use as data centers. But no, lets build in places that allow the company treat their employees as slaves.
This a fight going on in Idaho right now:
https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/community/boise/ar...
https://archive.ph/X9nTS
If you look at a google map of Ada County Idaho, the only viable agriculture land requires watering from the Snake and Boise Rivers.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/TFPgA6nG6hMBfPcx5
No comments yet
But modern environmentalism is a religion and this is how it works. Any human advancement needs a narrative on how it hurts the planet.
Why would a for-profit not hurt the environment for more profit if it isn't illegal and won't get them sued (for more than they profited)? There's a rich history of them doing exactly that. Similarly, governments have done horrific environmental damage and it was up to environmentalists to create the awareness to make it stop.
I honestly don't know how you can look at a world with record numbers of wildfires, communities fighting over water supplies, and for-profit companies say that water beyond subsistence levels isn't a human right and think "oh yeah, environmentalists are looking for a reason why this water-consuming thing is bad".
Especially when the same technology could be powered in a way that doesn't pollute as much and cooled in a way that doesn't consume as much water -- if only the environment was more important than shareholders.