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Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

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Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#61

Post by soulofmischief »

cm2012 wrote: post #19

This is incredibly meaningless reporting. Water use for all of AI is inconsequential compared to agriculture. In addition, water is almost never wasted, only moved around. Energy is the important input.

I agree that the anti-datacenter hype is not much different than anti-nuclear or anti-vaccine insanity, and uses the same tactics of deception and obfuscation.

But there is definitely an impact to pulling too much water out of one place too fast, which must be ethically addressed when building datacenters.

Beyond potential impacts to other local residents in terms of reduced access to local water or price increases to meet demand, there is also the danger of disturbing the local environment and reducing the quality of local water.

We've seen the stories about increased sediment in local residents' water supply after a new datacenter moves in next door, but I'd like to share an example from my own city.

Our city is known for its soft water. It's one of the only nice things about the city. Well, we have a local Exxon plant that sits right on top of the highest point in our water table. For oil refinement, the purer the water, the better.

For decades, the vacuum created by this plant's continuous suction has created fault lines that have been leeching increasing amounts of sediment and salt water into our water table, ruining the drinking water and in some cases making it entirely undrinkable.

"In Louisiana, industry uses more groundwater than in any other state except California, according to the US Geological Survey. For decades, industrial users have been able to pump water out of Baton Rouge’s aquifer effectively without limitations – no withdrawal caps on individual wells and no metering requirement"

When you try to push against them and raise awareness, you get discredited or sued. They are dedicated to protecting their unfettered access to our clean drinking water through whatever means necessary. I do not for a moment think Amazon any different. They are an ethically bankrupt company.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/08/louisian...

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#62

Post by rtaylorgarlock »

triceratops wrote: post #33
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.

> are we going to include the water used to grow the almonds you ate? Beef too. It uses the same amount of water but people eat 30x as much annually.

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.

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#63

Post by gruez »

macinjosh wrote: post #60
triceratops wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> are we going to include the water used to grow the almonds you ate? Beef too. It uses the same amount of water but people eat 30x as much annually.

Beef is more nutrient efficient though and has better macros for human consumption. It has 4 times more protein, less fat, and no carbs. Seems to me at least Americans could do well to eat more beef and less products created from processed almonds mixed with refined vegetable oils and sugar. Beef and milk are harvested ready to eat. Vegan substitutes are all highly processed. Processed food consumption is associated…

Pork and chicken have better feed conversion ratios and water consumption

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#64

Post by lclarkmichalek »

alxmdev wrote: post #58
cm2012 wrote: post #19

This is incredibly meaningless reporting. Water use for all of AI is inconsequential compared to agriculture. In addition, water is almost never wasted, only moved around. Energy is the important input.

Isn't agriculture objectively more important and more beneficial to humanity than Big data centers?

In absolute terms, yep. In marginal terms, not so much. See also: paradox of value

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#65

Post by jppittma »

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.

That's a fair point. If you want to calculate the real total water usage of any person, you must first invent the universe. You have to cut it off somewhere.

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#66

Post by vjvjvjvjghv »

rtaylorgarlock wrote: post #62
triceratops wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> are we going to include the water used to grow the almonds you ate? Beef too. It uses the same amount of water but people eat 30x as much annually.

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.

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#67

Post by imgabe »

jasonlotito wrote: post #49
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.

We can. We do. It depends on what you are trying to count. If you think there is a single number that will answer everything, no. Are you going to include all the water ancestors used? After all, without that water, I wouldn't be here. You seem to think there is only one way to count. That's completely wrong. The important thing is whether you are clear about what you are counting and why. Your comment is odd. But le…

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 at the data center or not.

Likewise, the power company is going to generate electricity regardless of whether a data center is there or not. The power company has various means of generating electricity available which use more or less water. The amount of water used in generating electricity is attributed to the power company, not the data center.

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#68

Post by moooo99 »

cm2012 wrote: post #19

This is incredibly meaningless reporting. Water use for all of AI is inconsequential compared to agriculture. In addition, water is almost never wasted, only moved around. Energy is the important input.

> In addition, water is almost never wasted, only moved around.

You can literally day the same thing about energy. Electricity is never wasted, its just different afterwards.

Water use absolutely does matter, because „being moved around“ in the quantities we do, is far from trivial. Its also different than agriculture. Agriculture still has a somewhat closed local water cycle while the water used for evaporative cooling is basically gone locally.

It matters a whole lot for where you are. If you‘d do evaporative cooling with salt water from the ocean, nobody would bat an eye. The problem is that it is done with fresh water, which is becoming increasingly scarce in an increasing number of regions around the world.

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#69

Post by throwaway-42808 »

zemvpferreira wrote: post #46
avalys wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Almond milk” is not milk. You know what else is less carbon-intensive than milk? Candy corn. But that is also _not milk_, and so equally irrelevant!

I don’t drink ‘almond beverage’ but given the amount of uses it has substituting milk (and the amount of people that accept them) it seems like a very relevant comparison. Maybe I’m not sofisticated enough but I’m yet to see a candy corn mlik latte be ordered.

But that's such a good idea though

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#70

Post by macinjosh »

gruez wrote: post #63
macinjosh wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beef is more nutrient efficient though and has better macros for human consumption. It has 4 times more protein, less fat, and no carbs. Seems to me at least Americans could do well to eat more beef and less products created from processed almonds mixed with refined vegetable oils and sugar. Beef and milk are harvested ready to eat. Vegan substitutes are all highly processed. Processed food consumption is associated…

Pork and chicken have better feed conversion ratios and water consumption

ok!
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