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Google gets OK to siphon water for South Carolina plant

thestate.com

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Re: Google gets OK to siphon water for South Carolina plant

#12

Wow using ground water to cool down computers? Is there no other water supply available? Ofc a Google rep says how they are environmentally committed. Obv they'd never say if they didn't give a shit. What a useless comment. Clean unpolluted ground water is probably the most precious resource there is.

Sewage (after treatment) can also be used to cool servers. Some big companies do this.

I'd guess groundwater was cheaper than sewage in this specific location.

Re: Google gets OK to siphon water for South Carolina plant

#14
post #4

>...granted Google permission Wednesday to pump 549 million gallons of water out of the ground each year to cool servers at its sprawling plant in Berkeley County. >DHEC’s decision is the latest development in a bitter fight over whether the company should get state approval to withdraw from a major groundwater source that, critics say, is dwindling and in jeopardy of being further depleted. Just put the warmed water…

This water will be used in evaporative coolers. There won't be warmed water to return. The water gets recycled 50-100 times, and each time a small percentage evaporates into a cloud. The cloud really does make clouds.

Like this...

https://intra.ece.ucr.edu/~sren/project/water/img/water_cool...

Re: Google gets OK to siphon water for South Carolina plant

#16

SC = The state of South Carolina, for non-American readers. It's a shame that the article doesn't define acronyms on first use.

Thanks! I was unsure whether it stood for South Carolina or Santa Clara (close to where Google is based).

Re: Google gets OK to siphon water for South Carolina plant

#17

SC = The state of South Carolina, for non-American readers. It's a shame that the article doesn't define acronyms on first use.

It’s a South Carolina newspaper.

I for one am glad that writers keep context in mind when writing things.

Otherwise your comment would have to be:

“SC = The state of South Carolina, one of the 50 states in the United States of America which is a country in the continent of North America and is often referred to as the USA, for people who don’t live in the USA.”

I think this is a good time to talk about one of my biggest pet peeves. Aggregators like HN, while extremely useful, remove context from the articles they link to. I think it’s extremely important for readers to read the links, after reading the site’s about page, and maybe quickly glancing through the Wikipedia, or bio page (of the author), if it exists.

Actively creating the context should be a skill we should be teaching children in school, since the Internet has made things that we would otherwise never have been aware of so easily accessible.

Re: Google gets OK to siphon water for South Carolina plant

#20

SC = The state of South Carolina, for non-American readers. It's a shame that the article doesn't define acronyms on first use.

It’s a South Carolina newspaper. I for one am glad that writers keep context in mind when writing things. Otherwise your comment would have to be: “SC = The state of South Carolina, one of the 50 states in the United States of America which is a country in the continent of North America and is often referred to as the USA, for people who don’t live in the USA.” I think this is a good time to talk about one of my bigg…

Reductio ad absurdum.
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