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A California aquifer may have crossed the point of no return

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Re: A California aquifer may have crossed the point of no return

#61

Post by topato »

rayiner wrote: post #30

Why can't we work up the political outrage over water-wasting agriculture in California that we managed to gin up over data centers: https://finance.biggo.com/news/202508220112_Data_Centers_vs_... > Alfalfa irrigation (Colorado River): 1.6 trillion gallons annually > Google data centers (global): 6.4 billion gallons in 2023 > Thermoelectric power plants: 41% of total US water use EDIT: that page has a correction to s…

lol, if you bothered to check the reference your “article” stole from, you’d find a medium post that includes ANOTHER link to a follow up medium post entitled, “I was wrong about data center water consumption”

It’s not 6 billion per day. It’s 650 billion per day. In the United States alone.

https://www.construction-physics.com/p/i-was-wrong-about-dat...

lol

Re: A California aquifer may have crossed the point of no return

#62

Post by toomuchtodo »

notabotiswear wrote: post #59
toomuchtodo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s unlikely strip malls and data centers will be built on the land, but utility solar PV is an acceptable use that requires no water, is beneficial to the local environment, and gives the land 20-30 years to recover from agricultural use. It takes 600 to 3,000 years for 6 inches of topsoil to develop naturally, as it generally requires 100 to 500 years to form just a single inch. Underground water aquifers operate…

Planting more PV farms isn't better, it just convolutes the equation and hides the true sources of damage behind things with a less negative image, and would eventually just prove Jevon's law, one way or the other. Not preceding "using better" with "consuming less" (on a system-wide basis) would get you the same result as going for recycling while forgoing the first R: empty, marketing points in green-coloured font.

It gives the land time to recover and requires nothing from it, nor human labor. All racking and conductors can be removed from the land in the future to return it to its original condition. All components can be recycled today, through metal and ewaste streams. It hides no externalities or harm. It quietly produces energy more efficiently than any crop, with no inputs besides the sun shining.

As my links demonstrate, California plans on developing 21GW of solar on farmland that no longer has water available for it.

Re: A California aquifer may have crossed the point of no return

#63

Post by JumpCrisscross »

marking-time wrote: post #15

>In an aquifer that’s permanently collapsed, artificial recharge—pumping water forcibly back underground—is the only option, according to Shirzaei. That’s expensive and carries the risk of triggering earthquakes. I have spent most of my life in the San Joaquin Valley and what I have been wondering about over the past few years is what is the effect removing all that water from the faults. Specifically, does this wate…

> does this water removal cause the stresses along the faults to build making the resulting earthquakes larger?

Water lubricates fault zones [1]. Putting it into an inactive fault makes it active. Taking it out of an active fault makes the quakes less frequent and more powerful.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00137...

Re: A California aquifer may have crossed the point of no return

#64

Post by tesnorindian »

As the Super El-Nino is at its peak, South India is facing an acute water crisis

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/cauvery-water-managem...

#SaveWater #SaveElectricity #SaveFuel

Interestingly none of our Govts. or Leaders are talking about conservation yet and the ancient water laws/standards don't take climate change into consideration. For eg. as per BIS IS 1172: 1993 standards an average Indian is entitled to 135 Liters of water per day when the actual supply is not even close to 50 liters per Indian per day. This is level of water crisis India is facing today.

Re: A California aquifer may have crossed the point of no return

#65

Post by throwaway2037 »

rayiner wrote: post #30

Why can't we work up the political outrage over water-wasting agriculture in California that we managed to gin up over data centers: https://finance.biggo.com/news/202508220112_Data_Centers_vs_... > Alfalfa irrigation (Colorado River): 1.6 trillion gallons annually > Google data centers (global): 6.4 billion gallons in 2023 > Thermoelectric power plants: 41% of total US water use EDIT: that page has a correction to s…

    > Thermoelectric power plants: 41% of total US water use
I did some research on this statistic. More than 90% of this is returned to source. So if the power plant is drawing water from a river (or aquifer), it is returned after being used to generate electricity (create steam, turn turbines).

For example, if you have a 1GW coal powerplant on a river, it might draw 4 billion liters of water per day, but will only evaporate about 5-10% of that amount. The rest is returned to the river. Of course, this is much less exciting (click-baity) than writing "41% of US water use is for thermoelectric power plants".

Re: A California aquifer may have crossed the point of no return

#66

Post by rayiner »

topato wrote: post #61
rayiner wrote: post #30

Why can't we work up the political outrage over water-wasting agriculture in California that we managed to gin up over data centers: https://finance.biggo.com/news/202508220112_Data_Centers_vs_... > Alfalfa irrigation (Colorado River): 1.6 trillion gallons annually > Google data centers (global): 6.4 billion gallons in 2023 > Thermoelectric power plants: 41% of total US water use EDIT: that page has a correction to s…

lol, if you bothered to check the reference your “article” stole from, you’d find a medium post that includes ANOTHER link to a follow up medium post entitled, “I was wrong about data center water consumption” It’s not 6 billion per day. It’s 650 billion per day. In the United States alone. https://www.construction-physics.com/p/i-was-wrong-about-dat... lol

Thank you for the note. But the article I linked to above relies on the page you linked for the Alfalfa number, not the data center number. The data center number in my article, 6.2 billion gallons annually for Google's data centers, is consistent with Google's numbers elsewhere: https://www.latitudemedia.com/news/data-center-water-use-bla...

Also, your correction needs as correction:

> If you simply take the Berkeley estimates directly, you get around 628 million gallons of water consumption per day for data centers, much higher than the 66-67 million gallons per day I originally stated. However, the methods used to produce these estimates are debatable, and seem to have been chosen to give the maximum possible value for data center water consumption. If you exclude the water “consumed” by hydroelectric plants via reservoir evaporation, you get something closer to perhaps 275 million gallons per day.1 And if you take into account the fact that lots of data center operators use renewable energy PPAs (mostly from wind and solar sources), my guess is that you get something closer to 200-250 million gallons per day (though I haven’t run a detailed calculation here).

It's not 675 billion gallons a day, it's 675 million, which is about 246 billion gallons a year.

Re: A California aquifer may have crossed the point of no return

#67

Post by arjie »

supriyo-biswas wrote: post #56
rayiner wrote: post #30

Why can't we work up the political outrage over water-wasting agriculture in California that we managed to gin up over data centers: https://finance.biggo.com/news/202508220112_Data_Centers_vs_... > Alfalfa irrigation (Colorado River): 1.6 trillion gallons annually > Google data centers (global): 6.4 billion gallons in 2023 > Thermoelectric power plants: 41% of total US water use EDIT: that page has a correction to s…

Farming is a necessary activity and in most countries, they are also a politically influential group. The case for data centers in the age of AI is weaker, and the only effects for the average person are noise, pollution, higher electricity costs, higher water costs, for the ultimate "benefit" of losing your job.

The necessity of alfalfa exports from water-scarce US states is certainly not obvious. Why do you believe this is essential?

Re: A California aquifer may have crossed the point of no return

#68

Post by pstuart »

rayiner wrote: post #30

Why can't we work up the political outrage over water-wasting agriculture in California that we managed to gin up over data centers: https://finance.biggo.com/news/202508220112_Data_Centers_vs_... > Alfalfa irrigation (Colorado River): 1.6 trillion gallons annually > Google data centers (global): 6.4 billion gallons in 2023 > Thermoelectric power plants: 41% of total US water use EDIT: that page has a correction to s…

There has been outrage. It's yet another tragedy of the commons.

Water pricing should be revisited to be closer to its true value -- and while food production should be recognized as essential, even that has to be rethought: is growing alfalfa for dairy less vital than growing vegetables? Especially if that dairy is produced and consumed in Saudi Arabia?

The other thing that we should be doing all over is better management of our watersheds so we can try to replenish those aquifers.

Re: A California aquifer may have crossed the point of no return

#69

Post by Rzor »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #53
rayiner wrote: post #30

Why can't we work up the political outrage over water-wasting agriculture in California that we managed to gin up over data centers: https://finance.biggo.com/news/202508220112_Data_Centers_vs_... > Alfalfa irrigation (Colorado River): 1.6 trillion gallons annually > Google data centers (global): 6.4 billion gallons in 2023 > Thermoelectric power plants: 41% of total US water use EDIT: that page has a correction to s…

Nobody actually cares about water use. It's a totem for other activism efforts. Data-centre protests aren't about water, they're about wealth inequality and Altman, Musk and Zuckerberg being hated men.

>Data-centre protests aren't about water

I suspect the people facing rising electricity cost and air-noise pollution beg to differ.

Re: A California aquifer may have crossed the point of no return

#70

Post by culi »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #53
rayiner wrote: post #30

Why can't we work up the political outrage over water-wasting agriculture in California that we managed to gin up over data centers: https://finance.biggo.com/news/202508220112_Data_Centers_vs_... > Alfalfa irrigation (Colorado River): 1.6 trillion gallons annually > Google data centers (global): 6.4 billion gallons in 2023 > Thermoelectric power plants: 41% of total US water use EDIT: that page has a correction to s…

Nobody actually cares about water use. It's a totem for other activism efforts. Data-centre protests aren't about water, they're about wealth inequality and Altman, Musk and Zuckerberg being hated men.

They're about the environment. They're about corruption and local city councils being bought out. They're about white collar crime and all the skirting of regulation these developers are getting away with. They're about the affordability crisis. They're about one more tool that promises a massive concentration of wealth. They're about tools of war that have already resulted in the bombing of an elementary school. They're a backlash to silicon valley ideology. And imo, most of all, they're about class. I can't remember the last time the poor of all the political spectrum have been so united against something and the rich on both sides have been this apathetic to supportive.
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