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Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

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Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#81

Post by jodrellblank »

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.

> I’m yet to see a candy corn mlik latte be ordered.

Not exactly the same, but can I interest you in a caramel-waffle-oat-milk latte?

https://mightydrinks.com/cdn/shop/files/Barista-CW.png

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#82

Post by bryanlarsen »

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

Cattle water consumption should be meaningless. If a cow is drinking water from a surface water source and breathing/sweating/peeing it out in a pasture, that's the same process that would be happening if humans didn't exist.

It isn't meaningless due to industrial farming. Chickens and pigs are even more likely to be industrially farmed than cattle are.

If we lowered our meat consumption by about 90% then we wouldn't need to industrially farm meat and the 10% would be much more ecologically justifiable.

Then the problem is that the soy we've replaced our meat with is industrially farmed...

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#83

Post by RA_Fisher »

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?

That’s a good idea. Like nutrition facts but for everyday economic climate decisions.

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#84

Post by ricardbejarano »

sxp wrote: post #80
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.

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.

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#85

Post by davidw »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #75
rtaylorgarlock wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wonder if cow milk products would be more expensive if people ate less beef. Presumably, after a cow is done being used for milk, it can then be sold for meat.

My guess is that they have specialized breeds and how they're raised and fed and such, so that dairy cattle wouldn't make for good beef and vice versa. They probably do use them somehow, but maybe for dog food or some similar use.

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#86

Post by wikibob »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #75
rtaylorgarlock wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wonder if cow milk products would be more expensive if people ate less beef. Presumably, after a cow is done being used for milk, it can then be sold for meat.

Dairy cows don’t taste good. They’re used for the bottom of the barrel low grade ground meat. Think dog food.

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#87

Post by LgWoodenBadger »

avalys wrote: post #2

Is this water even “used” in the same sense that water is used for bathing or agriculture? Where does the water go? If they simply take in cold water and release hot water, that water is still available for other uses. Or do data centers use evaporative cooling just like power plants?

If the data-center depletes the water table used for surrounding wells, whether the "released water" is still "available" is irrelevant to those dependent on wells for water.

e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/14/technology/meta-data-cent... https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy8gy7lv448o

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#88

Post by wongarsu »

mcntsh wrote: post #54
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.

Agriculture produces food... it feels silly to compare the two.

Both in terms the amount of food we grow and the types of food we choose to produce we are way past the necessity of feeding ourselves and firmly in the territory of producing luxury goods that harm both ourselves and our environment. It's not as different as it seems at first glance

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#89

Post by lukeschlather »

marcellus23 wrote: post #48
Faelon wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thought the problem is that that growing almonds is usually done in arid regions, so the issue is not that it uses lots of water, but that it uses lots of water in areas that frequently experience droughts. This is an honest question (I truly don't know, although I suspect I can guess): are dairy farms also common in those areas?

Just for a single point of comparison, California's alfalfa consumes 15% of the state's water. All that alfalfa is going to feed cattle. California only produces 9% of the USA's alfalfa so it's easy to say that this is a tremendous amount of water.

Almonds also consume 15% of California's water. But California produces 80% of the world's almonds. We're talking about an order of magnitude difference in water consumption, almonds are far more efficient and beef is both far more wasteful and far more common.

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#90

Post by HowardStark »

marcellus23 wrote: post #48
Faelon wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thought the problem is that that growing almonds is usually done in arid regions, so the issue is not that it uses lots of water, but that it uses lots of water in areas that frequently experience droughts. This is an honest question (I truly don't know, although I suspect I can guess): are dairy farms also common in those areas?

It’s been some years but I recall that at one point probably around 2016-2017, California produced 80% of the world’s almonds. This was notable because at the same time, California was experiencing historic droughts.
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