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After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

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Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#51

Post by Wowfunhappy »

Waterluvian wrote: post #42
dkga wrote: post #5

I grew up in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, a region full of natural resources and, thankfully, aquifers and natural water reservoirs. However, centuries of extraction mismanagement and, more recently, over exploration of mineral resources puts these water resources into jeopardy. (Other problems include mining in open pits and with sludge dams that led to two of the worse environmental disasters in the world i…

Wow. That’s a hydrological feature I’ve never come across in my studies. Thanks for sharing. Short tangent: I want to stop and admire that you shared an article in Portuguese and in seconds I could read it with Safari’s translation feature. It even translated labels on the images, and got the hydrologic cycle figure right! (However, I think “Rio de 28 Old Women” is probably an error.) This makes me feel connected wit…

I feel like machine translation is the unsung hero of the recent AI wave. Gone are the days of just barely being able to discern the meaning of Google Translate. Now I can just read it.

I don't know how useful LLMs will ultimately turn out to be for most things, but a freaking universal translator that allows me to understand any language? Incredible!

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#52

Post by moooo99 »

everdrive wrote: post #48
meindnoch wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize the cooling system in a data center is a closed loop that circulates a fixed volume of water, right? Your kidneys are filtering 200 liters of blood per day. OMG, where's all that blood coming from?!

If this is true, why have I heard about data centers demolishing local water supplies? Is this incorrect?

Its a thing that cannot be generalized. However, many datacenters use evaporative cooling. Especially when the DC is built in a region with relatively warm outside temperatures, it‘s basically the only viable way to get rid of all that heat.

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#53

Post by nephihaha »

meindnoch wrote: post #43
nephihaha wrote: post #35

Water is going to be needed to cool all these data centres going up around the world. They will gobble up electricity and water.

You realize the cooling system in a data center is a closed loop that circulates a fixed volume of water, right? Your kidneys are filtering 200 liters of blood per day. OMG, where's all that blood coming from?!

The blood comes from liquids I ingest (and some food and air). If I don't drink, I'll die quite quickly.

That isn't a closed loop exactly although there is a complex system connecting my digestive/urinary tract with my bladder etc.

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#54

Post by Waterluvian »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #51
Waterluvian wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. That’s a hydrological feature I’ve never come across in my studies. Thanks for sharing. Short tangent: I want to stop and admire that you shared an article in Portuguese and in seconds I could read it with Safari’s translation feature. It even translated labels on the images, and got the hydrologic cycle figure right! (However, I think “Rio de 28 Old Women” is probably an error.) This makes me feel connected wit…

I feel like machine translation is the unsung hero of the recent AI wave. Gone are the days of just barely being able to discern the meaning of Google Translate. Now I can just read it. I don't know how useful LLMs will ultimately turn out to be for most things, but a freaking universal translator that allows me to understand any language? Incredible!

Yeah! I don't know what methods Safari on iOS uses, but in general translation has become pretty magical. It feels like we've kind of slepwalked through the invention of the Universal Translator. I just haven't heard as much gushing about it as I feel it deserves. I can just effortlessly read a sciency news article originally written in Portuguese!

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#55

Post by alistairSH »

neoromantique wrote: post #40
nephihaha wrote: post #35

Water is going to be needed to cool all these data centres going up around the world. They will gobble up electricity and water.

Clean water use for data center use has literally zero impact on water situation in Iran. Datacentres don't consume water.

Yes, they do.

For example, only 60% of Equinix’s DCs use closed loop, non-evaporative cooling systems…

https://www.cdotrends.com/story/4492/balancing-energy-and-wa...

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#56

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

jack_riminton wrote: post #32
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #27

Sounds like it would be cheaper to build desalination plants on the coast, and pipe the water in. Iran certainly has the technology and brainpower to do that.

I suggest you read the article it talks about the viability of that very point

> I suggest you read the article

I wasn't talking about what they were discussing (desalination for farming). I was talking about moving an entire city, as opposed to getting enough water to deal with just that city.

I suggest you read this: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#comments

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#57

Post by Cthulhu_ »

chris_wot wrote: post #3

So... given that the Iranian regime is not paying any heed to the experts, does this mean that the end of their regime will be because of their own arrogance and incompetence?

I can't answer that, but for a long time, there have been predictions that water and foot shortages will trigger (civil) wars and / or mass migrations. Whether it'll be the one or the other depends, I think, on how free a country is. A non-free country will have a strong police / military force that may resort to deadly violence in the case of an uprising. A truly free country will vote the regime out. Somewhere in the middle it'd be said police / military that would take over.

For my uninformed take, Iran is not a free country, the US is somewhere in the middle but I don't think an insurrection against the current regime (which has been deploying the military to mass-abduct people) would end well.

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#59

Post by darkoob12 »

renegade-otter wrote: post #9

I am not saying there is no crisis coming, but I recall reading that Tehran will be out of water in two weeks, two months ago. What's up with that?

Back then they said Tehran will go out of water if there is no rain in coming weeks and it is raining in Tehran, now. Also they rationed water for a few weeks. Many regions of Tehran only had water during the night.

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#60

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

nerdsniper wrote: post #37
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #27

Sounds like it would be cheaper to build desalination plants on the coast, and pipe the water in. Iran certainly has the technology and brainpower to do that.

They share the same gas field with Qatar, who does all their desalination with all the excess gas production they can’t sell. Qatar has no surface freshwater or groundwater. So all of their water is desalinated. It’s often still quite salty to the taste though - the last few ppms would be an exorbitant cost to remove. However, Qatar has 3 million people. Iran has 92 million people - 9 million in Tehran alone. So thei…

I have read about experimental desalination techniques that do a better job, and use less energy, but I haven't heard much about that, lately.

I'd think that this kind of research would be a priority. It won't be long, before we start having water wars (like olden times, but with nastier weapons).

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