For anyone wondering, Google consumed 25% of water used in a city of 16000 people. This doesn't seem unreasonable.
Google’s water use is soaring, consume more than 25% of water used in The Dalles
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Re: Google’s water use is soaring, consume more than 25% of water used in The Dalles
#12The Dalles has a population of around 20k. This article is aimed at Oregon readers who might know that (or at least know it's not one of the few big cities in the state), but it's important context.
Re: Google’s water use is soaring, consume more than 25% of water used in The Dalles
#13This article makes several disingenuous statements to paint an entirely false, emotion provoking narrative.
First: Google is not "consuming" water any more than a water wheel or dam turbine "consumes" water as it passes by in a river. This is an objectively absurd framing.
Second: Even if the water were consumed, which it isn't, 25% of a town of 16k is not a significant amount of consumption.
Third: This article talks about drought, which is absolutely irrelevant because the water isn't being consumed. The article can't directly say that google is culpable for water shortages, because they aren't, but it tries very hard to create this implication in the mind of lazy readers.
Re: Google’s water use is soaring, consume more than 25% of water used in The Dalles
#14For anyone wondering, Google consumed 25% of water used in a city of 16000 people. This doesn't seem unreasonable.
Right. Better headline would be Google datacenters that serve half the continent consume only as much water as a few thousand houses. Or, possibly, insignificant human settlement consumes three times as much water as massive information system used by hundreds of millions of people.
Re: Google’s water use is soaring, consume more than 25% of water used in The Dalles
#15I mean so what they just pump it through and send it back to the river probably cleaner then it originally was. What’s the problem? The water is not being wasted
The heat has to go somewhere. If it’s going into the river that’s very bad ecologically. They don’t address this in the article though.
> If it’s going into the river that’s very bad ecologically
Not necessarily. I put heat into rivers every time I swim and it's a total non-issue.
Heat could potentially be an issue in sufficient quantities - if for example Google doesn't have sufficient dissipation infrastructure before the water is returned to the river. We don't know whether or not this is the case. It would be irresponsible to make that assumption with a complete absence of evidence.
Re: Google’s water use is soaring, consume more than 25% of water used in The Dalles
#16Delete your Gmail and save the planet!
Re: Google’s water use is soaring, consume more than 25% of water used in The Dalles
#17This article makes several disingenuous statements to paint an entirely false, emotion provoking narrative. First: Google is not "consuming" water any more than a water wheel or dam turbine "consumes" water as it passes by in a river. This is an objectively absurd framing. Second: Even if the water were consumed, which it isn't, 25% of a town of 16k is not a significant amount of consumption. Third: This article talk…
A lot of the water is consumed, because The Dalles makes heavy use of evaporative cooling. But this is a data enter that powers most of Google's west-coast operations; it was like #3 by number of cores in my day (though it's been eclipsed since then, and I think there's several that are several times it's size).
Cooling datacenters takes a lot of power and water, but a trivial amount compared to... Any heavy industry. Get me numbers compared to say Intel's Albuquerque fab, and then we'll talk.
Re: Google’s water use is soaring, consume more than 25% of water used in The Dalles
#18For anyone wondering, Google consumed 25% of water used in a city of 16000 people. This doesn't seem unreasonable.
Right. Better headline would be Google datacenters that serve half the continent consume only as much water as a few thousand houses. Or, possibly, insignificant human settlement consumes three times as much water as massive information system used by hundreds of millions of people.
They don't even consume it. It sounds like they're measuring water passing through the facility as "use" -- possibly including for electrical generation.
Imagine if people complained that the hoover dam used 100% of the Colorado river to power Las Vegas? In reality it uses 0%.
Re: Google’s water use is soaring, consume more than 25% of water used in The Dalles
#19This article makes several disingenuous statements to paint an entirely false, emotion provoking narrative. First: Google is not "consuming" water any more than a water wheel or dam turbine "consumes" water as it passes by in a river. This is an objectively absurd framing. Second: Even if the water were consumed, which it isn't, 25% of a town of 16k is not a significant amount of consumption. Third: This article talk…
"Water vapor rises above the cooling towers in The Dalles data center in Oregon. These plumes of water vapor create a quiet mist at dusk."
https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/locations/the-dalle...
They are using evaporative cooling so the water isn't flowing downstream or going back into an aquifer or whatever. How is that not consumption?
Re: Google’s water use is soaring, consume more than 25% of water used in The Dalles
#20This article makes several disingenuous statements to paint an entirely false, emotion provoking narrative. First: Google is not "consuming" water any more than a water wheel or dam turbine "consumes" water as it passes by in a river. This is an objectively absurd framing. Second: Even if the water were consumed, which it isn't, 25% of a town of 16k is not a significant amount of consumption. Third: This article talk…
Where's he water that passes through the facility go? Does it go into the fresh water reservoir for the city, or the sewer, or into a river? If it isn't going directly to the city's residents in some fashion without needing to be treated, I think it's pretty reasonable to say "consumed".
To say it more succinctly: the water you flush down the toilet in your house is, in fact, "consumed".