ReCursing@feddit.uk 1 week ago
The point you are DELIBERATELY missing is that farms use so much water than AI data centres that the amount data centres use is irrelevant. The water usage claims are so ridiculously overblown and so obviously stupid that it’s appalling that people believe them! I have seen people genuinely claim that water used in data centres is destroyed and can never be recovered, or that it’s polluted so badly it can never be cleaned. Farms not only use multiple orders of magnitude more water, they also pollute it a hell of a lot more so it’s far more difficult to clean and more damaging to the environment. A lot of the claimed numbers come from one person who got gallons and megalitres confused! Just stop spreading this utter nonsense! <haters will not respond with downvotes for calling them out, and more repeatedly debunked nonsense, because they always do, they’re really dull as well as annoying!>
What powers data centers ?
oh that’s right. Power plants.
Power plants that now use 10x the water and produce 10x the pollution than previous levels.
It’s not just direct pollution and water use. They use way more water than they report through their demand on local power plants.
And what they can’t get from power plants they make up for by burning natural gas or diesel in generators.
saigot@lemmy.ca 1 week ago
I think there is some nuance here. Data centers are being put in cities that cannot support them at the expense of their citizens, this is a corruption problem in my opinion. Data centers could also be much more water conservant than they are, and significantly less polluting and I appreciate the public pressure they are on to improve here. The warm water being released can damage the local ecosystem as well.
I have definitely seen some absurd claims about water usage, but it also isnt totally unconcerning either.
Imo its a pr strategy, water usage is a much more solvable issue than the immense energy usage, and the ai companies would rather actovists attack them for that than for the significant power consumption.
I think the power usage is also going to go down, either because they make ai more efficient, or because they can’t make it more efficient and it continues to make no economic sense and mostly goes away. Hopefully that latter scenario leads to a lot of eccess green energy to be constructed which would make electrifying the world a little easier. But that is probably wishful thinking.