Although it is important to oppose data centres based on the detrimental effect of their water usage on local communities, in the end I fear this will simply lead to an increase in CO2 emissions: the data centres will still be built but they will be cooled using a closed circuit so that the water usage is no longer an issue.
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This is inefficient compared to evaporation cooling, so the data centre's power usage effectiveness goes up. The result is that it uses more energy for the same compute task. And in the short term, that energy is still majority from fossil fuel and increasingly likely to be provided by gas rather than by renewables, in particular in the US. So overall CO2 emissions will increase as a result.
@wim_v12e If the data center uses more energy for the same compute task, the power efficiency goes down.
@mnordmeyer Thanks for flagging, that should have read "power usage effectiveness", I've corrected it now.
@wim_v12e These idoits all watched Patheon. At the start of the second act, all the AI and Uploaded Minds have been in conflict with humanity over resource usage. The AI's have been trying to push the humans for increased capacity in their orbital ring and to explore deep space.
These dipshits all watched that show cause the timing is so suspect.
@wim_v12e
And this is also location dependent, the biggest relative gain of evaporating water for cooling is in warm and dry places. Which also are the places where the use of water is most problematic.