21–30 of 33 posts
Author seems to be still remiss in correcting the over zealous behavior. > Does it make sense to include this water evaporation in the share of water consumed by data centers? I think it’s debatable.
“Please don't sneer” https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I find it interesting that people go to such great lengths to come up with anti-environmental positions, even when the issue they're talking about it overwhelmingly obvious without doing deep research into it . Even without pawing over the exact numbers, having a cursory understanding of how a datacentre works should highlight to you that excessive water consumption is going to be a problem. I couldn't imagine writin…
This is true when examining the environmental impact of anything.
> On the one hand, a huge dam reservoir does increase the level of water evaporation relative to an undammed river by increasing the amount of water surface area. That depends entirely on the depth of the river and the depth of the reservoir. If the average depth of the reservoir is deeper than the average depth of a river there is less surface area.
I had the same initial thought as well, but I realized this caveat would only be true if dams just made rivers deeper. But dams flood valleys and they make the water body much wider, not just deeper. A river that was 300 feet wide becomes a lake that’s miles wide. The width increase (10-100x) completely overwhelms the depth increase (maybe 3-10x), so surface area increases substantially. Given that Earth averages tow…
I find it interesting that people go to such great lengths to come up with anti-environmental positions, even when the issue they're talking about it overwhelmingly obvious without doing deep research into it . Even without pawing over the exact numbers, having a cursory understanding of how a datacentre works should highlight to you that excessive water consumption is going to be a problem. I couldn't imagine writin…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Golf courses also get de-facto tax subsidies under a property value tax, because they're basically empty lots. If you bought that golf course and built something productive that produced value for the community, like apartments, detached houses, a factory, a store, anything at all, you'd suddenly have to pay more tax on it. A land value tax would push golf courses further from city centers.
I have never played golf but why do you say it does not produce value for the community? Why is it better to have homes at the cost of lost recreational space?
In the comments someone mentioned 400 golf courses in Arizona, and it got me to wondering... In the US, golf courses consumed 1.68 million acre-feet of water in 2022[0] (down 29% from 2006, they are pleased to report), which works out to 1,499 million gallons per day. So golf courses consume three times as much water as AI. Were's the proportional level of outrage over that issue, I wonder? [0] https://gcmonline.com/…
https://www.twdb.texas.gov/innovativewater/desal/doc/2024_Th...
The current projection is ~200k acre/ft by 2070 from seawater sources. It'd be cool if the AI/data center folk would combine our three ares of strength: (1) wind; (2) seawater desalination; and, (3) mass liquid piping. We'd use excess offshore wind to desalinate seawater and pump it inland.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Golf courses also get de-facto tax subsidies under a property value tax, because they're basically empty lots. If you bought that golf course and built something productive that produced value for the community, like apartments, detached houses, a factory, a store, anything at all, you'd suddenly have to pay more tax on it. A land value tax would push golf courses further from city centers.
I have never played golf but why do you say it does not produce value for the community? Why is it better to have homes at the cost of lost recreational space?
In the comments someone mentioned 400 golf courses in Arizona, and it got me to wondering... In the US, golf courses consumed 1.68 million acre-feet of water in 2022[0] (down 29% from 2006, they are pleased to report), which works out to 1,499 million gallons per day. So golf courses consume three times as much water as AI. Were's the proportional level of outrage over that issue, I wonder? [0] https://gcmonline.com/…
> On the one hand, a huge dam reservoir does increase the level of water evaporation relative to an undammed river by increasing the amount of water surface area. That depends entirely on the depth of the river and the depth of the reservoir. If the average depth of the reservoir is deeper than the average depth of a river there is less surface area.
I had the same initial thought as well, but I realized this caveat would only be true if dams just made rivers deeper. But dams flood valleys and they make the water body much wider, not just deeper. A river that was 300 feet wide becomes a lake that’s miles wide. The width increase (10-100x) completely overwhelms the depth increase (maybe 3-10x), so surface area increases substantially. Given that Earth averages tow…
No it doesn't.
The only thing that matters (in this oversimplified calculation which only takes into account surface area) is average depth of the freshwater while it is on land. If the reservoir is on average deeper than the rivers the freshwater otherwise would be flowing in, there will be less evaporation per liter of freshwater available for use.
Now a dam also increases the total amount of freshwater that's kept on the land in a steady state situation compared to if the water flowed free into the sea. It would be absurd to count this as "extra evaporation" when this extra freshwater otherwise would've simply be lost when it would flow into the sea instead of being kept in the reservoir.