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How does the US use water?

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Re: How does the US use water?

#121

Post by dyauspitr »

recallingmemory wrote: post #26
adrr wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biggest alarmist is movement against Nestle using water for bottled water in California. They don’t even use as much as an average golf course. How much water is wasted on golf courses in these arid regions? Or growing water intensive crops like alfalfa that isn’t even directly used to feed people.

Yep, 1.6 trillion gallons of water from the Colorado river goes into irrigation for alfalfa[1]. Google's total water consumption across all data centers in 2023 was 6.4 billion gallons[2]. People are sounding the alarm about water usage in AI data centers while ignoring the real unsustainable industries like animal agriculture. 1: https://coloradosun.com/2024/04/04/research-colorado-river-w... 2: https://www.datacent…

Solar powered desalination seems like a no brainer in places like California.

Re: How does the US use water?

#122

Post by thereisnospork »

nine_k wrote: post #107
SapporoChris wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A cooling system can operate without water.

This would require a much larger area, because servers could not be mounted so densely. Air cooling can't achieve the same amount of heat transferred per unit volume as water cooling. Water has uniquely high specific heat.

Data center water consumption isn't due to it's use as a heat transfer medium, it's due to the evaporative cooling which cashes in water's enthalpy of vaporization.

Thr alternative would be to use a heat pump and spend electricity to cool the water that cools the servers.

Re: How does the US use water?

#123

Post by kjkjadksj »

jeffbee wrote: post #70
ryandrake wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People who oppose housing construction often invoke "but what about the water??" as their argument, while the fact is that California cities use less water per capita and overall than they did 50 years ago, almost entirely because of better toilets. Those people aren't talking about water use, but all the infrastructure around water. If you take a plot of land that used to be occupied by a couple of single family h…

You, like them, are wrong, for reasons that I already explained. These urban systems were designed to deliver and were in fact delivering more water 50 years ago than they do currently. Much more. They are underutilized! Building the apartments only takes them marginally up in the direction of their design capacity.

In the case of LA they are underutilized compared to the past because of laws mainly. Hollywood reservoir was lowered in capacity due to the perceived risk of the dam design. Silverlake reservoir was disconnected from the drinking water system due to bromate buildup. LA aqueduct pulls less water than it did in the 1970s in effort to protect Mono lake and mitigate dust in the Owens valley.

Recent advances have been in using spill basins and other infrastructure to recharge groundwater after seasonal storms. During the last storm season, LA county captured 117 billion gallons of stormwater which they claim is enough for the yearly need of almost 3 million homes. Many projects are ongoing to improve this rate of catchment as the state is pushing for LA to meet most of its water needs locally over the next century.

Re: How does the US use water?

#124

Post by RandallBrown »

alright2565 wrote: post #114
arp242 wrote: post #57

> We can also think about it in economic terms. The 2.5 billion gallons per day required to grow cotton in the US created about six billion pounds of cotton in 2023, worth around $4.5 billion. Data centers, by contrast, are critical infrastructure for technology companies worth many trillions of dollars. Anthropic alone, just one of many AI companies, is already making $5 billion dollars every year selling access to…

The average American discards 80lb/year of clothing. That absolutely isn't serving a human need, that's plain overconsumption.

That number sounds impossible but I guess there must be some people that throw away a lot more clothes than I do.

I'm not sure I even own 80lbs of clothes.

Re: How does the US use water?

#125

Post by datatrashfire »

adrr wrote: post #19
newfocogi wrote: post #8

I found a lot of value in this article. Out of frustration with people who are alarmist over how much water a datacenter "consumes" compared to households, I've probably erred too often towards: 'People sometimes invoke the idea that water moves through a cycle and never really gets destroyed, in order to suggest that we don’t need to be concerned at all about water use. But while water may not get destroyed, it can…

Biggest alarmist is movement against Nestle using water for bottled water in California. They don’t even use as much as an average golf course. How much water is wasted on golf courses in these arid regions? Or growing water intensive crops like alfalfa that isn’t even directly used to feed people.

Why is water used for golf a waste vs other uses?

Re: How does the US use water?

#126

Post by orthoxerox »

NegativeLatency wrote: post #21
password4321 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to know how much water is taken by a datacenter vs. the same size space of apartments. I can see why it could be considered a bad choice for communities long term if a datacenter takes more.

Apples and oranges, you can compare the water usage, but places for people to live aren't in the same category as datacenters.

Yes they are. Both can be built in areas with abundant water supply.

Re: How does the US use water?

#127

Post by orthoxerox »

alright2565 wrote: post #114
arp242 wrote: post #57

> We can also think about it in economic terms. The 2.5 billion gallons per day required to grow cotton in the US created about six billion pounds of cotton in 2023, worth around $4.5 billion. Data centers, by contrast, are critical infrastructure for technology companies worth many trillions of dollars. Anthropic alone, just one of many AI companies, is already making $5 billion dollars every year selling access to…

The average American discards 80lb/year of clothing. That absolutely isn't serving a human need, that's plain overconsumption.

Doesn't this value include unsold clothing?

Re: How does the US use water?

#128

Post by rogerrogerr »

recallingmemory wrote: post #32
Aurornis wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a great example of using large numbers without context to scare people. Say “6.4 billion gallons” in isolation and people will be horrified. Put it in context relative to something like alfalfa farming and it doesn’t even appear on the same scale.

Absolutely, not to mention the difficulty people have in grasping the difference between a billion and a trillion.

What’s the difference between a million and a billion? A billion.

Re: How does the US use water?

#129

Post by dbuxton »

Interesting that the infographic (which I thought was exceptionally well-designed, well done USGS) found it necessary to call out that 0 billion gallons/day goes to Mexico. Was this done by previous or this administration I wonder? I do recall reading something about disputes between US and Mexico over abstraction. (Presumably from Rio Grande or similar).

Re: How does the US use water?

#130

Post by hvb2 »

dbuxton wrote: post #129

Interesting that the infographic (which I thought was exceptionally well-designed, well done USGS) found it necessary to call out that 0 billion gallons/day goes to Mexico. Was this done by previous or this administration I wonder? I do recall reading something about disputes between US and Mexico over abstraction. (Presumably from Rio Grande or similar).

It might be because there used to be a significant flow from the Colorado river into Mexico. But we extract so much that that's gone dry before it reaches the border.

Also, it might be just to show that the other landmass neighboring is not getting anything.

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