31–40 of 92 posts
Going to go ahead and recommend Paolo Bacigalupi's The Water Knife . And The Windup Girl is even better, but not on topic.
But I still enjoyed the book.
I think the biggest question here is how can a public municipality sign an NDA written by a private corporation?
Yeah, the proper response here is: NO U Especially when the entity requesting the valuable resource (water they don't yet have permission to use), is the one prompting for the NDA. Sorry, private corporation. Take your NDA elsewhere, and go swat at your lowly job applicants with it, as they grovel for permission to waste their youth away in your flourescent dungeons and air conditioned nightmares.
Imagine if I went to go build a house and demanded the county & city sign NDAs covering all permits and plans for my building. They'd be having none of it, esp. since I'm not a massive company like Google.
Why would anyone need to use potable water as a coolant, and why is potable water completely ruined and transformed into grey water by its use as a coolant?
It needs treatment so it doesn't destroy the pipes
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, duh. If I had to pay nothing for water, I would also just run the tap through a radiator all day and save on the AC electricity. But then I also have a conscience and realize what a gigantic waste that is, so I don't.
This is basically how we cool our house in Montana during the summers. Cold water is pumped up one well and hot water is returned down another well. It uses much less electricity than a conventional AC system.
Giant Nestle is pumping tens of millions of gallons in a rural Northern Michigan county in exchange for a $200 yearly permit. Even though the promised jobs never materialized they want to pump even more water threatening the aquifer. The community and the state say no but Nestle is not backing down.
http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2017/04/19/ne...
I think the biggest question here is how can a public municipality sign an NDA written by a private corporation?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It needs treatment so it doesn't destroy the pipes
But it doesn't continuously need new water right? If I read the article correctly, it's not just once to fill the cooling system. That's what I don't get, seems hugely expensive and wasteful.
Water has an exceptionally high heat capacity, I get it. But using drinking water to cool our servers (in the interest of seeing the very best ads) seems like an exceptionally short-sighted choice for us to make. If there is a less worthwhile thing for us to be doing with potable water, I can't think of it.
Economics beats morality. Making it about morality is counter-productive. Water is a resource with a price, just like land or gasoline. If Google had a cheaper way to cool their servers, they would. If we have plenty of cheap water then we should use it to cool the server or for watering lawns or whatever. If the price of water is too low, then we should raise the price of water so that it's cheaper for Google to use…
Looking at everything as a psychopathic economic agent is fun!
On the other hand, Yahoo is constantly shat on (sometimes validly), yet they solved this years ago. Their Lockport, NY data center does not need air conditioning because of its design and the cool local weather. It uses 50 percent less electricity and 99 percent less water compared with traditional data centers.