I Was Wrong About Data Center Water Consumption • Hacker News Board

Re: I Was Wrong About Data Center Water Consumption

#31

Post by spectraldrift » Wed, Sep 03, 2025, 8:20 PM UTC

orlp wrote: post #30

spectraldrift wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The width increase (10-100x) completely overwhelms the depth increase (maybe 3-10x), so surface area increases substantially. 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…

You're confusing surface area with surface area to volume ratio.

Furthermore the fact that dams increase evaporation though this mechanism is an easily verifiable scientific fact. https://riverresourcehub.org/resources/how-dams-affect-water...

Re: I Was Wrong About Data Center Water Consumption

#32

Post by schiffern » Fri, Sep 05, 2025, 4:22 PM UTC

toofy wrote: post #6

schiffern wrote: post #3

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/…

i’ve seen plenty of people upset at golf courses, in fact it was so prominent a lot of golf courses were actively looking at ways they could use more water friendly landscaping on the sides of greens instead of the lush landscaping. either way, if a murderer says “why are you charging me? someone else was murdereded last night in the next town over!” People would rightfully laugh at the murderer and continue to charg…

TLDR Godwin's Law except every action becomes the act of murder.

Do I really need to say that ecological impacts and murder are very different things?

The funny part is your "murderer in the next town over" example is almost exactly how cap-and-trade works (plus a price mechanism), which is the most effective system yet devised to reduce smog from power plants. So in this area of public policy we already let off the "murderer" (eyeroll) with that excuse, and rightfully so...

Re: I Was Wrong About Data Center Water Consumption

#33

Post by schiffern » Fri, Sep 05, 2025, 4:49 PM UTC

stathibus wrote: post #7

schiffern wrote: post #3

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/…

People actually interested in environmental responsibility have been screaming about golf courses for decades and have succeeded at slowly improving regulations over the years. This kind of whataboutism comes off as very tired and unserious in 2025.

I'm referring to the oversaturated mainstream media coverage, not real activist.

The golf course number was surprising so I shared it. Forgive me.

It's telling that for AI we're only given impressive-sounding water numbers, but never in the context of total consumption. It has all the hallmarks of a media-driven moral panic, not serious activism.

The fact that HN's response is to compare (these particular) water users to murderers[0] and cry whataboutism and unseriousness against me... it's not exactly helping convince me that this isn't 90% motivated moral panic and 10% legitimate grievance.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45097661