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Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

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Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#191
post #164

I find it really odd this recent push for discussions around the development of new datacenters. There is a plan for constructing a new high-capacity datacenter [edit: near my city]. And a lot of discussions in the media are done through an emotional tone around water and electricity usage. The media generally frames it as if installing a new datacenter would put the neighbors in risk of not having water or electrici…

Let’s use a little logic. What are the “both sides” here? Megacorps with billions vs “local media”? Citizens?

Yes, that’s a balanced equation.

Now, do we have any evidence to back complaints?

Lack of water, unclean water due to data centers:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy8gy7lv448o

Data centers causing energy prices to increase:

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-ai-data-centers-elec...

Data center natural gas generators flooding communities with pollution:

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/06/elon-musk-xai-memph...

Yes, “both sides”.

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#192
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an honest way to count and that is to count the water directly used by the person or process in question. There are many other ways to count to make big scary number for clickbait article. I suppose we could also count all the water used by data center employees to take showers as "data center water usage" but that is dishonest. Those are people who exist and they are going to take showers whether they work…

Kind of surprised I have to point this out. Power companies do not generate the same amount of power regardless of whether that power would be consumed on their grid or not. They increase generation based on demand. Whether that power comes from high water consumption generation is based on location which determines which power sources are available in the local grid. A major part of why indirect water consumption fr…

A power company builds a generation plant of a certain size. That plant is going to run whether there is a data center or not. Maybe there is some incremental additional water usage if it is running at 85% capacity instead of 75% capacity but this is probably marginal compared to the plant running or not running at all.

Depending on the method of power generation, it might also need a certain consistent base load to run most efficiently, so adding in a data center that will be a consistent load running 24/7 could actually increase the efficiency.

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#193
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]

Sure, but:

1. Farmers oftentimes make zero effort to reduce their water usage. There's water reduction strategies they could employ, if they cared, but instead the vast multi-farm conglomerates invest their efforts in securing below-market, oftentimes monopolistic, control over water rights in their area, so they can use use an excess amount. Meanwhile, data center operators are (rightly) expected to engineer extremely sophisticated multi-millions of dollar systems to reduce their usage by even single digit percentages; an amount that some farms might consume in just one day.

2. Not all crops are built the same. Some, we rightly question "why are we growing this". Almonds are the canonical example; they consume utterly insane amounts of water, and the end result is: Almonds. A non-critical food that sits in some back corner of your grocery store. But, farmers like them because they sell for magnitudes more per pound than the more staple crops; its niche produce like almonds that can be the difference between a farm being profitable and unprofitable each year.

3. Many regions in the US have a climate that is just close enough to being able to grow things, like Alfala and Rice, year-round, so long as you utterly drench them in artifically-sourced water during the dry season when we shouldn't otherwise be able to grow them. There's a massive difference in natural sustainability of the seasonal farms in, say, the American midwest, versus the year-round industrial mega-farms of California.

Having grown up around farms my whole life: More people need to realize that the aw shucks poor farmer routine is just a play these usually extremely wealthy people use to justify any greedy, shitty behavior they can. Monopoly on water rights? Oh, so you want to starve? Yeah that's what I thought, as they sip a $400 bottle of wine in Nappa. Farms are quite possibly the most subsidized industry in all of America; while near-universally all farmers will fight tooth and nail for the elimination of subsidies and handouts for everyone else, if you even insinuate you'll take away their handouts, its war and "you're all going to starve" because you "don't appreciate farmers". They complain about America outsourcing all of its labor to other countries, while farming itself has become one of the most automated, labor-eliminating industries in the country, massive mega-conglomerate farms are now ran by three people piloting remote tractors and drones from their barn.

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#194
post #184
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.

Knee jerk reaction for me every time I see "almonds" One gallon of cow milk uses more water than one gallon of almond milk.

Almond milk is 2% almond. Cow milk is 100% cow milk.

An gallon of raw almonds requires a massive amount of water.

Using numbers to create illusions of comparison is the marketing equivalent of parsley in your tooth.

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#195
post #93
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.

Categorical rejection of alternatives is premature without context.

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#196
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To put this in context, it takes about 1 gallon of water per 1g of almond [1]. And in California's dry climate, this water comes from groundwater that doesn't renew as fast as it's depleted. So the next time someone chastises you for your non-low flow showerhead that uses more than 2 almonds of water per minute, remember to put the numbers in context. 1. Numbers from a pro-almond group: https://www.almonds.org/why-al…

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

Is that the Almond Front of California, or the Californian Almond Front?

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#197
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One went in 1/4 mile from my home a couple years ago. I ignored the notices of development because I thought it was far enough that it wouldn't affect me, but it blocks the view of the mountains that I used to enjoy, and sometimes I can hear noise from its cooling system (I assume). I wish I'd known what was coming, and gone to the meetings to oppose it.

Hopefully we will emerge from this with a legislative framework that says "fuck your view"

I appreciate that my view isn't the only consideration for that kind of decision, but when a new building goes up much larger than anything else in the area, and affects the skyline for thousands of people, I think that should be one of the considerations.

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Factory-farmed beef is the worst source of pollution in the food industry. We definitely need less of that.

"Factory-farmed beef" doesn't even exist. All cows get raised in fields for their first 12-18 months. The ""factory-farming"" is just a feed lot they get taken to for 3-6 months to eat grain before slaughter. If you want to talk about pigs or chickens, that's an entirely different story. Those do get raised full life cycle in factory-like industrial facilities. But those aren't cows.

You're going to have to cite strong sources or else this is either heavy cope or straight-up denial.

It is inconceivable that American's consume as much beef as they do, yet production has been able to scale without resorting to factory-farming. Every other commodity food is factory farmed. It's asinine to think beef is immune to that.

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#199
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]

You don't have to eat everything.

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#200
post #35
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.

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 think the almond talking point takes hold because, like a lot of complaining about LLM usage, large parts of the blame gets directed elsewhere rather than the choices that we're all way more likely to be making and could influence. Like, it's 2025. Even the people most likely to be drinking almond milk have largely moved to oat, whose water usage is great.
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