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How does the US use water?

construction-physics.com

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Re: How does the US use water?

#81

Post by gdubs »

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…

A huge part of the American economy (to take an example) is information services. Yes, we're also incredibly productive farmers, etc. But, a huuugge part of our wealth as a nation is making 'stuff' that isn't really 'stuff'.

Re: How does the US use water?

#82

Post by gdubs »

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…

I think the water-usage stuff regarding data centers is really lacking context in online discourse – and yet, I still believe that freshwater usage really needs to be more of a concern for people, generally. I'm not 'anti-AI' but, I cringe a bit every time someone dismissively says "water cycle" to dismiss concerns around freshwater because, some aquifers are not going to recharge in a meaningful timeframe. That water isn't 'destroyed' – but if a town is tight on water already, it's not necessarily coming back, practically speaking.

Re: How does the US use water?

#83

Post by FredPret »

hinkley wrote: post #69
guhidalg wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not technically wrong, but you are economically wrong. The water cycle _could_ require spending grid energy to filter/pump water into an economically usable state. Instead if water was better managed, we would not need to build additional grid capacity for water management. Your argument basically boils down to "If energy was unlimited, we could be wasteful!", which, again, is technically true, but ignores th…

And we couldn’t anyway because we’d bake the surface of the planet with all the waste heat from that free energy.

Doesn't pass the sniff test:

From what I can glean from Google, the sun moves 1500 cubic kilometers of water from the ocean into the air every day, around 500,000 cubic kilometers a year (ie, a stupendous amount).

Apparently around 10% of that makes it up the various mountains and comes back down as rivers - that's 50,000 cubic kilometers.

And for scale, human "consumption" is 5000 cubic kilometers.

I agree we should be careful and intelligent about how we use water and where we get it from, but I fail to be alarmed.

Re: How does the US use water?

#84

Post by Aperocky »

dexterdog wrote: post #74
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 water that cools the datacenter is one minor ingredient in the process. For the cotton plant it is one of the few, critical ingredients.

How is it a minor ingredient if the data center will not work without it? No datacenter can operate normally without a cooling system.

Re: How does the US use water?

#85

Post by seanalltogether »

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.

I remember doing the calculations on the Nestle plant that caused a big storm a few years ago. The plant sat on several acres of land, which if converted into an alfalfa farm, would have consumed the same amount of water. The surrounding area was littered with alfalfa farms so it wasn't an unfair comparison. Meanwhile that bottling plant employs dozens of people, far more then a farm would have.

Re: How does the US use water?

#86

Post by School-Cotton »

testing22321 wrote: post #65
lxe wrote: post #13

> Average per-capita domestic water use in the US is 82 gallons per day. By comparison, German homes use around 33 gallons per person per day, UK homes use around 37 gallons, and French homes use around 39 gallons. I want to know way more information about these figures... like, are there significant outliers? Drastically different usage profiles?

A pretty common stat is that the us is ~5% of the world’s population and uses up ~95% of the world’s resources that are used annually.

That can't possibly be true. Yeah the US is inefficient but there's no way Europe + Japan + China collectively use only 5% of the world's resources.

Re: How does the US use water?

#87

Post by newfocogi »

testing22321 wrote: post #61
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…

It staggers me you’ve never wondered these things before. You’re paying money and using resources and you’ve never looked into the details? Living in Australia where both are expensive and very finite it’s a must.

I track my water usage and electricity usage every month. I'm confused why the cost ratio is off by an order of magnitude from the author. The base monthly charge of my water bill ignoring any usage is more then 10% of my largest electricity bill (so maybe that's the answer right there).

Re: How does the US use water?

#88

Post by Manuel_D »

FredPret wrote: post #78
Manuel_D wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like saying fossil fuels don't actually pollute or emit greenhouse cases, because we're just X joules away from sequestering it back from the atmosphere. Desalination, and pumping water over thousands of miles is extremely expensive. Sure, you're not wrong, but the values of X and Y are uneconomical.

I don't think they're uneconomical. Fresh, clean water is astonishingly cheap; of course people are using it to grow almonds and alfalfa in the desert. Just charge people what the water is worth and they'll stop, or water companies will be able to afford much more treatment capacity. You have a point about sequestering CO2 molecules, but: a) I'm sure this will get cheaper over time, just like every other technology b…

While I do agree the hysteria around water use is unfounded, it's just patently false to say that fresh water cannot be wasted, pointing out that the molecule is just in a harder to access state is pedantry.

Re: How does the US use water?

#89

Post by ethan_smith »

rawgabbit wrote: post #11

It said 41% of the water used in the US is for thermo electric cooling. Albeit, it didn't break this down into saltwater vs freshwater. It also said the vast majority of this water usage is due to older plants that did not recirculate the water. The newer plants that recirculate the water only used a tiny fraction of water in comparison. So...if the US replaces all of its old nuclear power plants, we would free up al…

Thermoelectric cooling's 41% includes all thermal plants (coal, gas, nuclear), and most of this water is withdrawn but returned to source, not consumed - so modernizing would reduce withdrawals but not free up that water for other consumptive uses.

Re: How does the US use water?

#90

Post by hinkley »

FredPret wrote: post #83
hinkley wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And we couldn’t anyway because we’d bake the surface of the planet with all the waste heat from that free energy.

Doesn't pass the sniff test: From what I can glean from Google, the sun moves 1500 cubic kilometers of water from the ocean into the air every day, around 500,000 cubic kilometers a year (ie, a stupendous amount). Apparently around 10% of that makes it up the various mountains and comes back down as rivers - that's 50,000 cubic kilometers. And for scale, human "consumption" is 5000 cubic kilometers. I agree we should…

Every degree of global warming raises the amount of water the air can hold by 7%. That's what's going on in California recently. We only need to put our finger on the scale to really fuck things up. We don't have to stand on it.

Also heat island effect. We don't have to move the needle in Yosemite to make downtown LA into a death trap.

What's your tidy "Me worry?" explanation for aquifer depletion?

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