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Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

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Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#91

Post by Ekaros »

ricardbejarano wrote: post #84
sxp wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is corruption for everything money touches...

I actually wonder if there is not single moderately sized industry that does not have some interest group...

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#92

Post by ipsento606 »

avalys wrote: post #40
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...

“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!

Almond milk is not dairy milk, but it is absolutely "milk", in the sense of a white liquid derived from plants - a definition that has existed in English for hundreds of years.

The name "almond milk" has been used since at least the 1500s.

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#93

Post by 827a »

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.

Yes: my understanding is that it’s rather common practice to at least make a best-effort estimation of all these secondary impacts.

It’s also absolutely true that “agricultural usage dominating data center usage” is a dirty little secret that a lot of people are very, very incentivized to keep secret. Amazon can’t outright say that, because uh whutabuht mah poor farmers.

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#94

Post by bryanlarsen »

wikibob wrote: post #86
lotsofpulp wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Old cows are generally very flavorful. They're more beefy and gamy than the young cattle we're used to eating. They're also stringy and tough.

So you wouldn't want an old cow steak, but a stew or burger made from an old cow can be awesome.

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#95

Post by jandrewrogers »

This is a reaction to the unwarranted fear-mongering in the media over water usage by data centers. The amount of water is utterly inconsequential. Growing corn on the same land the data centers currently occupy would consume more water and provide far less value.

We should question the motives of whoever orchestrated a "story" out of this non-story and is pushing it in the media. It obviously isn't being done in good faith.

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#96

Post by gruez »

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?

You might have a point if it was wheat for human consumption vs datcenter, but those aren't the water hogging plants, which are stuff like almonds, alfalfa (for export)[1]. Comparing those instead, it's unclear whether those are "more important and more beneficial to humanity" than AI, which also genuinely provides utility to people (as evidenced by its popularity).

[1] https://www.npr.org/2023/08/09/1192996975/amid-a-water-crisi...

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#97

Post by Faelon »

ilamont wrote: post #52
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...

Account created 10 minutes ago, hitting talking points of the almond growers industry association.

I've read here for a long time but just made my account because I have been feeling very compelled by the data surrounding the huge economic effects of the animal agriculture industry and how otherwise pro-science and pro-data people find themselves with deeply entrenched unscientific viewpoints. Should I link my Google scholar to prevent people from seeing conspiracies everywhere??

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#98

Post by symbogra »

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.

[flagged]

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#99

Post by lukeschlather »

semiquaver wrote: post #22
londons_explore wrote: post #3

Water use is a pretty close proxy for power use which is a pretty close proxy for how much computation is happening. I can totally see why a company wants to keep this info secret. Competitors would really like to know.

> pretty close proxy for how much computation is happening. [citation needed]. See the vastly different power budget and cost of AWS graviton ARM vs x86 compute. Looking even at power use directly is only going to give a very low precision proxy for aggregate compute, with water usage even more indirect.

Looking at power use directly and making some educated guesses about average FLOPs/watt is probably the most effective way to estimate aggregate compute.

Even at Amazon I wouldn't be surprised if it's the primary way they do it, and I would be interested in some research. I'm trying to think of other ways, and accurately aggregating CPU/GPU load seems virtually impossible to do in a very rigorous way at that scale.

And yes, as an outsider you might have trouble knowing the relative distribution of ARM/x86, but that's just another number you want to obtain to improve your estimate.

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#100

Post by orwin »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #95

This is a reaction to the unwarranted fear-mongering in the media over water usage by data centers. The amount of water is utterly inconsequential. Growing corn on the same land the data centers currently occupy would consume more water and provide far less value. We should question the motives of whoever orchestrated a "story" out of this non-story and is pushing it in the media. It obviously isn't being done in goo…

Agree in spirit, but 'Growing corn on the same land the data centers currently occupy would consume more water and provide far less value' makes the argument weak because those 'agriculture is barely 2% of GDP' argument are like 'brain is barely 2% of your mass'.
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