But look how I can make a kitty wear a uniform in the white house and post it to Facebook!!!
AI Data Centers’ Water Consumption Breaks 264 Billion Gallons in 2025 as Devastating Drought Hits Nearly 63% of U.S.
Submitted 6 days ago by remington@beehaw.org to technology@beehaw.org
Comments
The_Che_Banana@beehaw.org 6 days ago
CPMSP@midwest.social 6 days ago
It never ceases to amaze me how people justify their rent seeking and profiteering at the expense of literally everyone else.
I hope when the bubble pops the sentence for boiling the planet and killing billions is similar to the situation that brought us there.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 6 days ago
this time AI isnt rent seeking/profiteering, they are hoping to have those. but they just wan to continue the grift taking it from shareholders.
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 6 days ago
Ai Data Centers’
No. Water-cooled Data Centers did this.
Call out the transgressors for their transgression and stop the dilution and transferrence of the real problem.
Cool your shit with air.
kunaltyagi@programming.dev 6 days ago
Majority of water use in US is for agriculture and meat production. A significant portion of the agriculture is for producing animal feed like Alfa Alfa in water stressed regions.
Data centers use water but they are a symptom of the broken water allocation in USA
gandalf_der_12te@feddit.org 5 days ago
the site has surprisingly no charts despite its name “barchart.com”, unfortunately
it would be good to have estimates for various sectors to check their electricity / water consumption and compare it towards each other, i.e. how much energy does airplanes need? how much water do nuclear reactors need? how much does agriculture need? etc
xylol@leminal.space 6 days ago
We will just prompt the bits to generate waters
kibiz0r@midwest.social 6 days ago
But have you considered that people also consume water? Checkmate, Luddites.
dan@upvote.au 6 days ago
Doesn’t the water evaporate and become part of the water cycle? Water can’t just disappear? Maybe I’m missing something.
It would be good to cut down water usage… Not just for data centers but also for things like lawns and golf courses.
Fifrok@discuss.tchncs.de 6 days ago
Yes, the hydrological cycle is global, of course none of the water just disappears. What you’re missing is that the usage is local, data servers use mains water most of the time.
Mains water must come from somewhere, the local area has limited processing capabilities, and heavy industrial consumption severely depletes local groundwater reserves faster than natural rainfall can ever replenish them, forcing nearby communities to bear both the ecological and financial costs of a utility network that was almost never designed to handle such strain.
gandalf_der_12te@feddit.org 5 days ago
i mean, a regulation could be made up that requires data center operators to bring their own supplies, i.e. make up additional plumbing for the village.
its_me_xiphos@beehaw.org 6 days ago
Let’s go to the Dalles in lovely Oregon. There is a Google data center there that draws water from the public supplies. It draws so much in a day, that at times the need for water in the whole community outstrips the ability of infrastructure to supply water. So people in the area see their water slow or cease altogether. The water is drawn so fast and in such amounts, wells dry up as the water table drops.
Water does eventually evaporate or get discharged from said data center, but its not like adding it in is an instantaneous event. It also doesn’t reenter the same system. Like picking up flour and trying to drop it back in the bag. Some ends up on your counter.
The data center in the Dalles is one hell of a story, too, for reason beyond that.
gandalf_der_12te@feddit.org 5 days ago
Like picking up flour and trying to drop it back in the bag. Some ends up on your counter.
M1nds3nd@lemmy.ca 5 days ago
Why can’t they pull water from the Columbia river? The buildings are less than 100 yards from the water.
bryndos@fedia.io 6 days ago
If their wastewater is clean and goes back into the usable water supply straight away then that's fine. But if it flushes into drains or evaporates then you might have to wait a while for it to come back as fresh rain - and land in the right places to fill up the reservoirs.
It might matter how they're designed/regulated and whether they keep the water clean and usable - which I assume costs more of other resources.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 6 days ago
they also pollute water at some point, and the water comes out hotter, and then the datacenter needs to consume water from the area to cool down thier servers. they dont give any water back.
gandalf_der_12te@feddit.org 5 days ago
water does evaporates, goes into the atmosphere and comes down again as rain somewhere else. basically no water leaves the planet because the gravitational field is strong enough to retain practically all of it, even over billions of years.
typically, due to trade winds, winds generally blow towards the west in mid-latitudes. so if water evaporates in florida, it probably rains down over the midwest. if it evaporates over the midwest, it comes down in the great desert west of the midwest. in these cases, water isn’t lost as it falls down again over soil.
Earth’s wind systems
bigchungus@piefed.blahaj.zone 6 days ago
No money for healthcare and no water for showering but endless money and water for datacenters.
Triumph@fedia.io 6 days ago
Healthcare and showers are cost centers.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 6 days ago
what they convince people to do is “not use water or electricity at certain times”.