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US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons

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Re: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons

#131

Post by WarmWash »

skinfaxi wrote: post #118
shimman wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I use LLMs at work because I'm "highly encouraged" to as a condition to keep my job. All I see is more paying customers finding more bugs and having a worse experience using our products.

You don't see the issues with your line of thinking? You get to absolve yourself of the responsibilities of your choice because "someone is making you" use it? How can you say you value almonds more than LLM slop when your individual choices don't reflect those values?

They live in a country where you are not allowed to change jobs.

Re: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons

#132

Post by ghunio »

jp191919 wrote: post #74
zug_zug wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the thing with the livestock is that you have to give a cow water. Datacenters do not need water . It is just slightly cheaper for them than cooling with electricity. Datacenters should be required by law to pay to build adequate power generation and infrastructure to pay for their consumption, and ideally in a way where it isn't a ghastly eyesore.

We do not need meat.

True. I was going to hate the environmental destruction being wrought for the purpose of funneling more of our wealth to a handful billionaires who will use the AI against us, but then I remembered how bad meat eaters are for the plight of the common man, and now data centers don’t seem so bad after all.

Re: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons

#133

Post by WarmWash »

stonogo wrote: post #44
zachwill wrote: post #16

One 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…

It's really weird to me that datacenter fans all have detailed knowledge of almond farming, but never seem to notice that the nutritional value of ChatGPT is not on par with your average box of almond milk.

Too late.

Re: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons

#134

Post by trentor »

myrmidon wrote: post #71
trentor wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you need to denigrate pure context as "whataboutism", then maybe your core argument is trash? I mean, sure, lets not build datacenters that are 100% evaporation-cooled into each desert-oasis. But if general water availability is your concern, than datacenters are so far down the priority list that any argument involving them is just laughable. And if you are against datacenters, then find a proper argument instead…

Datacenter water usage exploded over the last year… “Here, look how much water gets used by everyone flushing their toilets.”

I don’t even care about that comparison. They’ll do whatever they’re going to do. But throwing around random numbers about water usage doesn’t make the point you think you’re making. It’s deflection, and nothing more. Not every random datapoint is context just because it uses the same metric.

It’s basically: “Frank is 8 years old and still poops his pants. So if he can do it, I can poop my pants too, Mom.”

Re: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons

#135

Post by atmavatar »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #84
zug_zug wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the thing with the livestock is that you have to give a cow water. Datacenters do not need water . It is just slightly cheaper for them than cooling with electricity. Datacenters should be required by law to pay to build adequate power generation and infrastructure to pay for their consumption, and ideally in a way where it isn't a ghastly eyesore.

You don't need a law to force people to pay for resources they consume; basic economics already ensures that. If there are externalities not already accounted for by that (increased demand for water/electricity driving up costs for others, noise, "eyesores", etc.) you could pass laws to ensure those costs are paid by the responsible party but that's not a datacenter-specific issue.

Alas, we do, because in the case of water, basic economics are stymied by pre-existing water-rights laws that are batshit insane. As such, we need legislative action to (at minimum) clean up that mess.

Re: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons

#136

Post by wraptile »

zug_zug wrote: post #65
wraptile wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Well the thing with the livestock is that you have to give a cow water. Datacenters do not need water . It is just slightly cheaper for them than cooling with electricity. Datacenters should be required by law to pay to build adequate power generation and infrastructure to pay for their consumption, and ideally in a way where it isn't a ghastly eyesore.

> Datacenters should be required by law to pay to build adequate power generation and infrastructure to pay for their consumption

I think we can all agree on this one yet this is not what's being argued in most discussions. What hangs up the discussion is the complexity of development e.g.: to build a datacenter it takes 1 year but to build energy infra it takes 5. So this complexity needs equally complex policy and people just don't have time for that when there's free range raging served right to your palm screen.

Re: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons

#137

Post by stonogo »

naasking wrote: post #121
stonogo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really weird to me that datacenter fans all have detailed knowledge of almond farming, but never seem to notice that the nutritional value of ChatGPT is not on par with your average box of almond milk.

Because nutritional value is not the only thing of value. We invented this clever way of uniformly valuing things called "money" that abstracts over all of those differences though.

Indeed! Especially relevant because almond milk is sold at a profit, which is something the LLM industry has yet to achieve.

Re: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons

#138

Post by RajT88 »

otterley wrote: post #129
RajT88 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a number that gets quoted, but I just ran the latest numbers for my local city. A couple of dozen planned data centers, with an estimated combined use of 160k gallons per day. Apparently the average household uses 300 gallons a day, which seems insane to me. I guess a lot of people water their lawns. That gets us to a mere 23 households per data center. Even with 100 gallons per day per household or less, the…

The Colorado water system is a disaster that long predates the invention of computers. The way water rights are implemented in the western US (doctrine of prior appropriation) meant that anyone who owned land through which the river flowed could take enough of it to plant lettuce in the desert. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuma_Lettuce_Days That's nuts. These practices took so much water that native populations coul…

> The Colorado water system is a disaster that long predates the invention of computers.

Totally agree, and that's part of why I was bringing it up. I recently was going down the rabbit hole of the story of the Salton Sea. Absolutely insane.

Re: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons

#139

Post by LaSombra »

wraptile wrote: post #87
zug_zug wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the thing with the livestock is that you have to give a cow water. Datacenters do not need water . It is just slightly cheaper for them than cooling with electricity. Datacenters should be required by law to pay to build adequate power generation and infrastructure to pay for their consumption, and ideally in a way where it isn't a ghastly eyesore.

> Well the thing with the livestock is that you have to give a cow water. you don't _need_ a cow though

As you don't _need_ a datacenter as well

Re: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons

#140

Post by elil17 »

theultdev wrote: post #114
elil17 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A little evaps? It's like 80%

The worst designs evap up to 80%. New designs use closed-loop system where very none to little evaps (0-6%) depending on the system. Many designs in-between with air cooling, hybrid, etc. Still a non-issue, it's going back into the water cycle. Any water issue would be specific to the municipality, it's not a national issue, nor is it an issue specific to datacenters, it's true for anything being built in the town (g…

Okay I feel like maybe I'm missing something. In a closed loop system, nothing evaporates. If you use an air cooled design, nothing evaporates.

If you use a hybrid design, you still evaporate ~80% of your cooling water - you just use less overall cooling water.

The water going back to the water cycle doesn't mean it's potable.

And yes, I do understand that it is a very small fraction of overall water use. I am actually in favor of using water where it will reduce electricity use. But let's not be inaccurate - the water used for cooling is absolutely evaporated or sent to sewage, with the exception of whatever sits inside the system's closed loop (which exists whether or not the system is cooled evap/dry/hybrid).

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