91–100 of 183 posts
Most of the southwest should not have people living in it. It's a fake place that is enabled to exist by massive and unnatural engineering projects, like dams on the Colorado river. We need to create a long term plan to relocate the population to other parts of the country.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Although delicious, alfalfa is not required for life. A lot of it goes to Saudi Arabia, who use it for horses and cattle, as the Saudis banned it domestically for being wasteful for water usage.
> alfalfa is not required for life This quote doesn't do much for me. It is like saying that the insane amounts of corn and soy that US (and Brazil and Canada) farmers produce "is not required for life". If you think a little deeper, it is used to feed livestock, that are used for meat, that are "required for life". (Please don't respond with something dumb like "you can stay alive without meat". Yes, we know that.)…
That part is actually the weakest part of your argument. You are dismissing a valid counterargument before addressing it.
Something being part of a current food production system does not make it a biological necessity. People can live without meat, therefore alfalfa is not "required for life" in the literal sense.
You are also shifting the meaning of "required": from "necessary for humans to survive" to "necessary for maintaining our current livestock industry." Those are very different claims.
Preemptively calling an obvious counterargument "dumb" is not a way to win the argument; it is a way to avoid having it.
Is it rational to dedicate enormous amounts of land, water, and energy to producing animal feed when those same resources could feed more people directly?
Using crops as feed and then eating the animals is an inherently inefficient way of converting resources into food. That may be acceptable when resources are abundant, but it becomes increasingly difficult to justify as we face limits in freshwater, arable land, and ecological capacity. That is the true argument, and what the discussion should be about, not if we can (very obviously) survive without meat.
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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. The…
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And yes, despite your industry talking points, water waste is absolutely a major concern. Unlike residential use, where 80% of the water is reclaimed, open loop data centers (which are over 90% of data centers) allow almost all the water to evaporate. Similarly, about 30-40% of water used in agriculture filter back down to the water table. Agriculture use is also dispersed over large areas whereas data centers draw from a single pipe. Closed loop systems also have their own environmental concerns and need to "bleed the lines" every month or so to get rid of the toxic sludge that builds up. They also use dramatically more electricity which requires a lot of water to generate.
The point being, if you live somewhere where a new data center is getting built, you WILL see a massive spike in your electricity bill. What do you get in return? Sam Altman buying another politician? Another elementary school bombed? I agree that agricultural waste is out of hand but at least people get a tangible benefit out of it.
You keep trying to ignore all the points and change it to a topic you think you can win but you're still misinformed on that issue.
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-ai-impacts-data-cent...
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…
Even worse, my understanding is that much of that alfalfa gets put into shipping containers and sold overseas. The agricultural drain on the aquifers does not even benefit US ranchers.
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…
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…
Million, billion, and trillion sadly sound kind of the same when you talk about it.
Unfortunately most people also don't really care until the problems come hitting them so extremely close you have absolutely no coiche to act upon it. Then the massive outrages start. It's a very predictable cycle.
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…
84.1% of people have With AI that minimum is expected to increase.
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The necessity of alfalfa exports from water-scarce US states is certainly not obvious. Why do you believe this is essential?
> alfalfa exports from water-scarce US states Which states are those?
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The whole pension fund concept only works because it declares how much is going to be paid out. Who’s going to pay in if the fund expects a guaranteed commitment but refuses to give such in return?
401ks don’t guarantee results for a given amount of input, and people still stuff away lots into them?