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AI Data Centers Use More Water Than Most Tech Giants Report

wsj.com

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Re: AI Data Centers Use More Water Than Most Tech Giants Report

#61

Post by FloorEgg »

lostmsu wrote: post #43
FloorEgg wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are the one who is missing the point.

Am I? What point? In my comment I stated the missed point, yours is entirely devoid of real meaning.

My comment conveyed the meaning that you aren't adequately interpreting the point of GP.

To ask "What point?" Is disingenuous, since the point was laid out pretty clearly in the lineage of comments you were responding to.

I don't/can't know why you are struggling to grasp the point. It may be because you don't want to, or it may be because you are missing some other knowledge or perspective - the only way to sus that out is for you to engage with genuine curiosity. That's outside my control. I can confirm as an external party that you are missing the point of the GP, but I can't force you to want to understand it.

Re: AI Data Centers Use More Water Than Most Tech Giants Report

#62

Post by FloorEgg »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #41
bradleyjg wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Radical Luddite posting on the internet is … something.

What's your argument here? I would love to hear why you think food is not actually more important than data centers.

Random passerby here...

There is a term for your argument, it's called a "suckers choice".

Re: AI Data Centers Use More Water Than Most Tech Giants Report

#63

Post by bradleyjg »

verdverm wrote: post #57
bradleyjg wrote: post #2

Google’s just-released 2025 sustainability report is an instructive example. The company said it consumed 10.9 billion gallons of water—a 34% increase from 2024—almost all for data-center cooling. … Google consumes around three times as much water indirectly as directly, according to a paper published earlier this year by Alex de Vries-Gao, a researcher at the Netherlands-based university VU Amsterdam. — My take: the…

I saw a criticism of the alfalfa comparison because, given the circumstances, there isn't anything better to plant where alfalfa grows. That you'd spend more water growing corn in other places or something like that. If we want to deal with alfalfa water use, eat less red meat. Not sure how legit it is, but there is certainly more nuance to water usage. I prefer the golf course analogy, which uses 2-3x the water of d…

You can just not plant anything. It’s not required that every inch of desert is used for irrigated cultivation.

Alfalfa is the cleanest case of a crop that would not be planted nearly as much if western water law (prior appropriation) wasn’t so colossally stupid.

Re: AI Data Centers Use More Water Than Most Tech Giants Report

#64

Post by muwtyhg »

beng-nl wrote: post #44
bayindirh wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s by far not the biggest problem! Yeah, you're right. Some parts of the world is running out of fresh/clean water. We can drink coke instead.

The water isn’t destroyed, though, is it? It evaporates, right? So it isn’t lost?

Where it goes after it's used is the problem.

Oil is mainly carbon, the carbon isn't destroyed by burning it. It just changes form. But now it's in the atmosphere instead of inside the earth. That's still a problem.

Re: AI Data Centers Use More Water Than Most Tech Giants Report

#65

Post by lostmsu »

FloorEgg wrote: post #61
lostmsu wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I? What point? In my comment I stated the missed point, yours is entirely devoid of real meaning.

My comment conveyed the meaning that you aren't adequately interpreting the point of GP. To ask "What point?" Is disingenuous, since the point was laid out pretty clearly in the lineage of comments you were responding to. I don't/can't know why you are struggling to grasp the point. It may be because you don't want to, or it may be because you are missing some other knowledge or perspective - the only way to sus that…

You bothered to write 3 paragraphs close to the original comment length 100% being a personal attack, and failed to articulate the point in context of my comment, let alone explain how the original comment answers the eat bit.

Re: AI Data Centers Use More Water Than Most Tech Giants Report

#66

Post by FloorEgg »

lostmsu wrote: post #65
FloorEgg wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My comment conveyed the meaning that you aren't adequately interpreting the point of GP. To ask "What point?" Is disingenuous, since the point was laid out pretty clearly in the lineage of comments you were responding to. I don't/can't know why you are struggling to grasp the point. It may be because you don't want to, or it may be because you are missing some other knowledge or perspective - the only way to sus that…

You bothered to write 3 paragraphs close to the original comment length 100% being a personal attack, and failed to articulate the point in context of my comment, let alone explain how the original comment answers the eat bit.

I pointed out the question you asked seemed disingenuous and how it appeared you weren't being intellectually curious (which is the point of HN). If you treat every criticism as a personal attack then you're likely to stagnate in terms of your growth.

Here is the point from the comment you responded to, copy and pasted for your convenience. Please prove to me that spoon feeding you makes a difference:

> You could make an argument that agriculture is different because we need agricultural products to live. But we don't need those specific products to live (alfalfa, almonds, etc), and they could be grown far more efficiently if water were priced by market rates.

Re: AI Data Centers Use More Water Than Most Tech Giants Report

#67

Post by senordevnyc »

bix6 wrote: post #49
loudmax wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agriculture uses orders of magnitudes more water than data centers. A 50% cut in water use by data centers will have nowhere near the impact of a 5% cut in water use by agriculture. But data centers can generate orders of magnitude more revenue. Say rain water is leaking into your house from two holes in the roof: one is 1 meter in diameter, the other is 1cm. Any effort you spend plugging the 1cm hole is a distractio…

That 1cm leak is going to lead to mold in my house so both need to be addressed.

Yes, but we have a whole cohort of people hopping around and screeching about the 1cm hole while basically no one cares about the 1m hole. Distraction.

Re: AI Data Centers Use More Water Than Most Tech Giants Report

#68

Post by senordevnyc »

xnx wrote: post #50
bix6 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That 1cm leak is going to lead to mold in my house so both need to be addressed.

Maybe imagine your in a canoe with a hole the size of your fist and another hole the size of a pin. Where do you spend your time to keep from sinking?

You have to understand that this isn't really about leaks. It's a holy war against pinholes, so empiricism or pragmatism isn't remotely relevant.

Re: AI Data Centers Use More Water Than Most Tech Giants Report

#69

Post by senordevnyc »

bix6 wrote: post #48
bradleyjg wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t really know how to rephrase it. It’s a distraction. This article could have been about shipping alfalfa to the Middle East and Asia, but instead it was about this.

That’s not a distraction. It’s one of the many ways in which data centers are problematic. Why shouldn’t it be talked about as such?

Because it's not really problematic, in the same way that the pollution from campfires isn't a problem. Sure, there's some theoretical pollution from that, but there's about a billion things on the list above it, and you clearly don't give two shits about any of those. You're on a crusade against campfires, not actually interested in pollution, and thus you can be safely ignored.

Re: AI Data Centers Use More Water Than Most Tech Giants Report

#70

Post by j45 »

bayindirh wrote: post #13
j45 wrote: post #7

I wish these articles would clarify that there are climates where datacenters exist where water is not used food for cooling including evaporative cooling. Just because the U.S. uses it doesn’t mean the rest the world does in every build. Buildings are built for the climate of where they exist. If a building can’t cool itself above 120 degrees Fahrenheit, that sounds like it could be common in the U.S. there are othe…

U.S. can also do closed loop liquid cooling, though. No? With drycoolers or chillers, you can pump out enormous amount of heat energy out of water, even in hot climates.

Maybe, my point is that there's a lot of misinformation, misdirection and noise on this on default assuming everyone builds datacenters like the hottest parts of the US.

Datacenters will always be efficiency driven, and that includes putting them in places that need less heating, less energy/power, etc.

There's probably interests in datacenters that might not want attention going to other locations that might be more viable than the ones they have.

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