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AWS data centers' water use tied to spike in cancer and miscarriages in Oregon

techoreon.com

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Re: AWS data centers' water use tied to spike in cancer and miscarriages in Oregon

#41

Post by kingstnap »

zbentley wrote: post #27
simianwords wrote: post #15

This article is misleading. The data centers role here was to evaporate a tiny bit of already polluted water and increase the concentration of the pollutant. The increase is estimated to be around .1% with reasonable assumptions. The primary driver of pollution was agriculture but the data centers can be attributed to .1% at most. Is it a big deal? Not in my opinion.

> .1% at most. Is it a big deal? Not in my opinion. Depends. .1% increase in the number of calories going into my body? Not a big deal. .1% increase in the number of radioactive particulates going into my body? Big deal.

Typical global yearly background radiation dose according to Canadian nuclear safety commission is around 2.5 mSv per year [0].

Ignoring the major issue that the location dependent variance is orders of magnitude more significant than 0.1% we can reason that 0.1% is an extra 2.5 uSv over an entire year.

Thats like a 20 minute flight... or half a dental xray, or if you planned to eat like 20 bananas this year you better cut them out.

Now the fact that there are all these other obvious ways to cut down your radiation before you even begin to think about datacenters, isn't unique for this radiation dose thing. It's true for the water consumption as well. Your Chatbots are not the cause of your water usage its your diet and material goods.

[0] https://www.cnsc-ccsn.gc.ca/eng/resources/fact-sheets/natura...

Re: AWS data centers' water use tied to spike in cancer and miscarriages in Oregon

#42

Post by b3lvedere »

simianwords wrote: post #39
b3lvedere wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The risk from nitrates is cumulative. .1% may not seem much, but it can be well be the trigger for enormous problems. My best guess is that the limit was already very close at its max of 10 mg/L (10 ppm) and the data center tipped the scale. Maybe they're (ab)using the findings of the data centers to get better water treatment, maybe they could have done more effort themselves? But of course money and laws are far mo…

Lets assume that .1% is cumulative, but so is the effect from agriculture which is 99.9%. Agriculture would affect the person 1000x than the data centre (if you accept the .1% figure). This sounds ridiculous so it is necessary to put it in concrete terms.

Of course. The issue could be that the previous parties combined "successfully" could uphold the legal limit, but now that suddenly the data centers also participate it's above the limit.

Who's to blame? Tricky legal question. My personal opinion is everybody involved should take their percentage of the blame, but i doubt they're willing to pay or act upon it.

Re: AWS data centers' water use tied to spike in cancer and miscarriages in Oregon

#43

Post by Frieren »

xrd wrote: post #40

The comments here make you think about whether this is an issue or not. But, regardless, I wish that Amazon execs were literally shackled to their data centers. If they move to avoid taxation, like when Bezos moved to Florida, at least they would have to drag those data centers with them. If there truly are pollution issues, at least they can share that with their new neighbors. Bezos certainly seems to care about fi…

Accountability and responsibility is necessary for any society to function. When corporations get all the profit while they externalize all the cost the result is a dystopia.

The rich should be forced to suffer the consequences of their actions, otherwise they have no incentive to respect the health or even life of the rest of citizens.

Re: AWS data centers' water use tied to spike in cancer and miscarriages in Oregon

#45

Post by maxerickson »

simianwords wrote: post #15

This article is misleading. The data centers role here was to evaporate a tiny bit of already polluted water and increase the concentration of the pollutant. The increase is estimated to be around .1% with reasonable assumptions. The primary driver of pollution was agriculture but the data centers can be attributed to .1% at most. Is it a big deal? Not in my opinion.

Putting more water on the fields is the issue. It's not clear what portion of the water Amazon is contributing or how the concentration of that water compares to other users.

Presumably untreated irrigation water is the primary use in the county, but it's pretty hard to find numbers on it.

Re: AWS data centers' water use tied to spike in cancer and miscarriages in Oregon

#46

Post by eel »

api wrote: post #10

I’m a dummy: why do data centers have to consume water again? I have both computers and air conditioning and neither consume water. I’m assuming of course that evaporation cooling is cheaper and consumes less energy than closed cycle cooling with a forced air heat sink.

Evaporative cooling (like a "swamp cooler" for residential homes) is how most data centers in the US are cooled. The water is primarily consumed by evaporation. When you continually evaporate water from a system, eventually the remaining water in the system gets concentrated in salts and other minerals and is dumped and replaced with fresh water.

Much of the day/season, evaporative cooling is not needed and data centers can pull in outside air. Ultimately you state the main reason in your comment: using outside air + evaporative cooling is cheaper and consumes less power than any other approach.

In a lot of cases, even if the server chips themselves are liquid cooled (for example, in an NVIDIA GB200 rack), then liquid is then air cooled through a cooling distribution unit (basically a giant radiator.

Re: AWS data centers' water use tied to spike in cancer and miscarriages in Oregon

#47

Post by jnmandal »

Data centers should do everything they can to reduce water usage.

That said, this is masterful scapegoating. The ag lobby must be gleeful if they're not directly responsible for this narrative.

In 2003 my middle school in Central Pennsylvania had this exact same problem. All our water fountains had to have signs posted stating that the water was not safe to drink. Many of my classmates had the purple-tinged skintone that is characteristic symptom of consuming the polluted water.

The issue stems from high input, fossil-fuel based farming, and most of society simply looks the other way because no one has figured out a cheaper way to produce enough food. Data centers are just a red herring.

Re: AWS data centers' water use tied to spike in cancer and miscarriages in Oregon

#48

Post by gruez »

monerozcash wrote: post #37
gruez wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>.1% increase in the number of radioactive particulates going into my body? Big deal. So... a short flight? There's background radiation everywhere, and less radiation protection higher up.

The increase during the flight is nowhere close to .1%, many many orders of magnitude more.

According to this chart, it's approximately correct?

https://xkcd.com/radiation/

Background radiation is 10msv per day, so 3650 in a year. A cross country flight (6hrs according to google flights) is 40msv, so 1% of yearly background exposure. However I did mention a "short" flight, so if you scale it down for a 2 hr flight, you get 0.3%, which is admittedly higher than 0.1%, but not too far off.

Re: AWS data centers' water use tied to spike in cancer and miscarriages in Oregon

#49

Post by monerozcash »

gruez wrote: post #48
monerozcash wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The increase during the flight is nowhere close to .1%, many many orders of magnitude more.

According to this chart, it's approximately correct? https://xkcd.com/radiation/ Background radiation is 10msv per day, so 3650 in a year. A cross country flight (6hrs according to google flights) is 40msv, so 1% of yearly background exposure. However I did mention a "short" flight, so if you scale it down for a 2 hr flight, you get 0.3%, which is admittedly higher than 0.1%, but not too far off.

If we're looking at yearly exposure, as opposed to realtime exposure then sure.

Re: AWS data centers' water use tied to spike in cancer and miscarriages in Oregon

#50

Post by monerozcash »

b3lvedere wrote: post #42
simianwords wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets assume that .1% is cumulative, but so is the effect from agriculture which is 99.9%. Agriculture would affect the person 1000x than the data centre (if you accept the .1% figure). This sounds ridiculous so it is necessary to put it in concrete terms.

Of course. The issue could be that the previous parties combined "successfully" could uphold the legal limit, but now that suddenly the data centers also participate it's above the limit. Who's to blame? Tricky legal question. My personal opinion is everybody involved should take their percentage of the blame, but i doubt they're willing to pay or act upon it.

> Who's to blame? Tricky legal question

The polluters.

Datacenters didn't put the pollutants in the water. Datacenters used water, but as their process does not use the pollutants the concentration of pollutants in water increased very slightly.

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