Live data from Hacker News

Google’s water use is soaring, consume more than 25% of water used in The Dalles

oregonlive.com

21–30 of 87 posts

Re: Google’s water use is soaring, consume more than 25% of water used in The Dalles

#21
post #10

I 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 header image for the article is a picture of steam rising up from their datacenter. Nearly all water that we use is eventually recycled. Steam will eventually come back down as rain, and rainwater works its way through the ground and into streams and rivers - the magic of the water cycle. Water is a renewable resource from that perspective. The issue is the rate at which we use it, because the water cycle is not…

By that logic nobody consumes or uses water. I think you are conflating local scarcity with global recycling. If I irrigate a new golf course in Arizona I am consuming scarce local water that will become rain in somewhere wet like Florida or Georgia or the Atlantic.

Re: Google’s water use is soaring, consume more than 25% of water used in The Dalles

#24

This 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…

Heres a link to Google's own water report calling it "consumption", linked in the article

https://www.gstatic.com/gumdrop/sustainability/2022-us-data-...

Re: Google’s water use is soaring, consume more than 25% of water used in The Dalles

#27
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%.

Every drop that evaporates from the reservoir, that would not have from the naked river, is consumed. Every drop pumped out of the reservoir to irrigate desert farms, that could not have been without the dam, is consumed.

Re: Google’s water use is soaring, consume more than 25% of water used in The Dalles

#29
I wish the article made a clearer case about what the supposed problem is. In the hydrographic context of The Dalles, 355 million gallons of water go by every couple of minutes. Given that fact, it must be that the datacenters are drawing on some local groundwater resource instead. But the article fails to tell us.

Re: Google’s water use is soaring, consume more than 25% of water used in The Dalles

#30

This 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…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN