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Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

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Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#101

Post by Faelon »

marcellus23 wrote: post #48
Faelon wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangential to the point, I think we should be careful about the almond talking point. Insofar as it is used for milk, almond milk uses almost half as much water as dairy milk, uses 1/18 the land and emits 1/5 the amount of carbon. As food, it is eaten in such a vanishingly small quantity compared to other water-hungry foods (meat) as to be insignificant. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/environmental-footprint-m...

I thought the problem is that that growing almonds is usually done in arid regions, so the issue is not that it uses lots of water, but that it uses lots of water in areas that frequently experience droughts. This is an honest question (I truly don't know, although I suspect I can guess): are dairy farms also common in those areas?

Yes- about half of the total water siphoned from the Colorado river goes to cows. This number astounded me when I first read it, and I hope it has a similar effect on you. I don't like almond milk, for what it's worth, and I don't think we should ignore plant-based foods with a high climate impact, but animal agriculture is the most environmentally devastating institution we have individual power to transition from. https://www.npr.org/2024/09/09/nx-s1-5002090/colorado-river-...

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#102

Post by Chris2048 »

symbogra wrote: post #98
rtaylorgarlock wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And cheaper cow production, focused on grain-feeding, uses even more water than grass feeding; after spending a month in Switzerland, it's wild to see how addicted we Americans are to cheap beef.

[flagged]

Did you miss a /s tag here?

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#103

Post by dylan604 »

Ekaros wrote: post #91
ricardbejarano wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why, but the fact that a "pro-almond group" exists chuckled me up.

There is corruption for everything money touches... I actually wonder if there is not single moderately sized industry that does not have some interest group...

If there is and you name it, the interest group will be formed.

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#104

Post by triceratops »

vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #66
rtaylorgarlock wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And cheaper cow production, focused on grain-feeding, uses even more water than grass feeding; after spending a month in Switzerland, it's wild to see how addicted we Americans are to cheap beef.

We need our protein or we will die immediately.

Do we need beef protein? What's wrong with chicken or eggs or beans?

And also, what? You'll die if you don't eat meat today? Because that's what "immediately" means. That's news to all the world's vegetarians.

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#105

Post by ahmeneeroe-v2 »

Ekaros wrote: post #91
ricardbejarano wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why, but the fact that a "pro-almond group" exists chuckled me up.

There is corruption for everything money touches... I actually wonder if there is not single moderately sized industry that does not have some interest group...

Industry advocacy groups ≠ corruption.

They're basically necessary to do business in an advanced society that has rules governing every aspect of life. Those rules (even if good) often have unintended consequences and advocacy groups can help ensure that their industries are considered when rule-making.

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#106

Post by triceratops »

symbogra wrote: post #98
rtaylorgarlock wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And cheaper cow production, focused on grain-feeding, uses even more water than grass feeding; after spending a month in Switzerland, it's wild to see how addicted we Americans are to cheap beef.

[flagged]

They might just be normal weight people.

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#107

Post by artursapek »

Ekaros wrote: post #91
ricardbejarano wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why, but the fact that a "pro-almond group" exists chuckled me up.

There is corruption for everything money touches... I actually wonder if there is not single moderately sized industry that does not have some interest group...

Almond trees are stuck as almond trees forever. They can't switch to something else. Anywhere an investment in something is entrenched like this, you'll find lobbying.

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#108

Post by cogman10 »

xhkkffbf wrote: post #36

This isn't really about using water as much as dealing with all of the heat that comes out of computation. The water is just the simplest way to dispose of the heat. Isn't there some better way we can, perhaps, turn some of the heat back into something useful? Maybe heat a building? Or turn it back into electricity. It doesn't have to be an efficient conversion because it's now 100% wasted.

> Maybe heat a building?

I'm a big fan of district heating, but it's something that needs to be built before the datacenter is. It also doesn't really work well if the datacenter isn't in an already cool region.

> Or turn it back into electricity.

The temps aren't high enough to do that easily. You need boiling water to generate electricity, and chips don't like running at or above 100C.

It's possible you could use a heat pump to turn hot water into boiling water, but that will stop working when temps get out of band. You might be able do it with a sterling engine, but you'd, ironically, need a supply of cool water to keep those running.

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#109

Post by ahmeneeroe-v2 »

827a wrote: post #93
imgabe wrote: post #10

> noted that it would be harder to reach its internal target if its calculations included “secondary” use—water used in generating the electricity to power its data centres, according to the document. Ok, when we're considering how much water a person uses, are we going to include the water used to grow the almonds you ate? Because agriculture is going to dwarf anything that data centers use.

Yes: my understanding is that it’s rather common practice to at least make a best-effort estimation of all these secondary impacts. It’s also absolutely true that “agricultural usage dominating data center usage” is a dirty little secret that a lot of people are very, very incentivized to keep secret. Amazon can’t outright say that, because uh whutabuht mah poor farmers.

[flagged]

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#110

Post by artursapek »

triceratops wrote: post #104
vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need our protein or we will die immediately.

Do we need beef protein? What's wrong with chicken or eggs or beans? And also, what? You'll die if you don't eat meat today? Because that's what "immediately" means. That's news to all the world's vegetarians.

Yeah people who eat beef are actually healthier than vegetarians.
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