It's a fun contrast to see how AI apologists say that criticism of data center water use is overblown, while the actual water utility companies loudly point out that data centers plans are a problem to the water supply.
5
Replies
·
0
Boosts
@hzulla Ah, just learned how one can bypass the paywall. One method is using web archives. Now I can actully read the article: https://archive.ph/s1Aic
Safari's 'hide distracting items' also works for this one. The article is rendered underneath the pop up, so you can just tell the browser to not render the pop up.
Another fun thing is remembering how the people who complained about EVs and heat pumps being an unreasonable burden on the grid's infrastructure are now the very same people betting on an obviously unrealistic goal of data center buildout FOMO that overwhelms both the local grid and the local water supply and will leave us with stranded assets of never completed or abandoned data center ruins.
@hzulla It's an interesting numbers game. Because you can calcultae the water usage in a way that it looks somewhat small, but a datacenter uses water _extremely locally_ which overloads supply
I always assumed datacentres would circulate their supply of coolant, which would probably double the power requirements but largely obviate their need for fresh water. Maybe they did, some thirty years ago when I visited a couple that were completely air-cooled and no where near bodies of water to dump their waste heat (and water) into?
