Earlier quoted context omitted.
Almond farming - ~1.5 trillion gal (1.1 gal per almond)
Holy shit, so much precious water used just for almond?
Only 0.5 trillion gallons is precious water, the rest is just regular water
US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons
51–60 of 171 posts
Re: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons
#52It's weird how all these statistics could end if the owners of these data centers would just simply release the numbers for the public to learn from. Instead they are keeping these figures private and we have people trying to best-estimate the reality. Mostly for reasons we all understand: true figures would cause an even larger public backlash.
Fun fact, citizens of The Dalles, OR had to sue their own government to get them to release numbers on how much Google data centers were consuming (info Google stipulated should be kept "proprietary"):
https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2022/12/the-dalles...
Re: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons
#53Is anybody working on using all this waste heat for desalination?
I think cold seawater can be used for the external loop, through a heat exchanger where it would meet the heated pure water from the internal cooling loops. This would cause evaporation of the salt water which could be captured.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination#Multi-stage_flash...
Re: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons
#54Re: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons
#55Irrespective of how this number is calculated, whether is blue/green water etc here is some comparison data for context, since I personally think that hearing big numbers without any point of reference is pointless. Annual withdrawals (2015) - Thermoelectric power: ~48.5 trillion gal - Irrigation: ~43.1 trillion gal - Public supply: ~14.2 trillion gal - Self-supplied industrial: ~5.4 trillion gal - Aquaculture: ~2.76…
HN Thread with a whataboutism comment as top voted? Must be the datacenter water thingy again. It's always a rhyme of the same comment.
Re: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons
#56Irrespective of how this number is calculated, whether is blue/green water etc here is some comparison data for context, since I personally think that hearing big numbers without any point of reference is pointless. Annual withdrawals (2015) - Thermoelectric power: ~48.5 trillion gal - Irrigation: ~43.1 trillion gal - Public supply: ~14.2 trillion gal - Self-supplied industrial: ~5.4 trillion gal - Aquaculture: ~2.76…
> Livestock: ~730 billion gal
This is a good illustration how cursed the datacenter topic has become when people go out of their minds on computer cooling while continuing to eat meat which lets be perfectly clear - is mostly for entertainment purposes. I had someone berate me for defending datacenter water use and their last post was literally a cheese burger.
Re: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most of those partisans have no idea what other sources of water consumption are by magnitude. They seem to quote any number as if it is a lot. A billion gallons is a lot. 500000 gallons is not a lot.
Each datacenter uses as much water as 1,000 homes. You're welcome to put such resource constraints in your own local community if you don't care about the increased demand.
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Re: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons
#58 Support for data centers jumps a net 31 points after voters are told modern facilities can reuse the same cooling water for up to 10 years, new poll finds. -- https://x.com/Polymarket/status/2092209623583404461For a closed loop cooling project:
Fluid renewal occurs only every 7–15 years and is performed in a fully contained process that meets state and federal environmental standards. This design ensures zero water withdrawal, zero discharge, and continuous operation — fully aligned with TeraWulf’s commitment to sustainable digital infrastructure. -- https://www.lakemarinerdata.com/closed-loop-coolingRe: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons
#59One gallon of almond milk requires 1,600+ gallons of water (likely much more — given some estimates are each almond requires up to 3 gallons of water). US almonds are almost entirely grown in California and consume 1.5T to 2T gallons of the state’s water. It’s pretty dumb to compare AI/data center usage to water usage when something that’s actually wasteful such as almond milk exists. There’s better metrics to make o…
As a reference, one gallon of cow milk requires about 250 gallons of water.
I feel like we need some citations for these figures. Our World In Data [1] disagrees. I've not seen any analysis that puts any plant milk at a higher water use figure than dairy.
Re: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons
#60Support for data centers jumps a net 31 points after voters are told modern facilities can reuse the same cooling water for up to 10 years, new poll finds. -- https://x.com/Polymarket/status/2092209623583404461 https://www.raineycenter.org/polling/data-centers-voters-are... For a closed loop cooling project: Fluid renewal occurs only every 7–15 years and is performed in a fully contained process that meets state and…
Would support still jump if voters were told that cooling towers which don't use water need to use significantly more electricity instead?