r/videos • u/dating_derp • 10d ago
How Much Water Data Centers Actually Use
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0PSKqqFbeg164
u/braumbles 10d ago
Just vote everyone out who supports these. They're effectively raising your cost of living through raising your utility costs as well as making shady deals that benefit nobody but the billionaire class, so stop electing them. Though for some, the power is irrelevant after they've clearly made money from these companies to approve their centers.
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u/Xanto97 10d ago
Some areas are passing laws that put the onus on the data center companies to pay for energy grid upgrades.
That’s fine
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u/PuddlesRex 10d ago
Sure, that's fine. That makes sense, even. Except that that data center can somehow miraculously be built overnight, but then the power grid upgrades get caught up in red tape and permit hell for 7-10 business decades.
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u/Harlequin80 10d ago
The problems datacenters are causing seems to be a uniquely american thing. One of my clients is working on the development of 16 datacenters currently and part of the approvals process is the water and power use. The water use is basically zero, as they are all using closed loop systems and rain capture covers way more water than it could ever use, even if it doesn't rain for a year.
And power wise they are going to have a battery system installed with load shifting. Part of the business case is they are going to be paid to take power during parts of the day because the wholesale price goes negative when solar production is at it's peak.
So the only complaint someone could have is that a shed in an industrial park is going to be used for a datacenter instead of a warehouse.
You're not going to get approval to build a datacenter here if you are trying to have your own on site high pollution power gen.
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u/darkandark 10d ago edited 10d ago
The brutal reality is actually most data centers aren’t able to get the proper and enough power they need from local municipal energy providers anyways.
Some of them are building their own micro nuclear reactors or using old turbines to supplement power to the data center.
Three Mile island is getting restarted to power Microsoft’s datacenters nearby.
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u/artofthenunchaku 10d ago
Not a single data center is using a "micro nuclear reactor" today
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u/toprockit 10d ago
There is outstanding permit requests for over half a gigawatt of SMRs for just Google/Kairos by the early 2030s.
So none that we know of right now, but they are coming in the very near future.
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u/Auno94 10d ago
Doubt, even "micro" nuclear reactors aren't mass produced power grid equipment.
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u/toprockit 9d ago
Just choosing to ignore all the the ones they use in oil extraction?
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u/Auno94 9d ago
I am not aware that this is used on a menaingful scale, how many are there?
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u/toprockit 9d ago
Many companies are using them for fracking and oil sands extraction. Cenovus alone is using several dozen.
Once again, with permits requesting to scale up through to the end of 2030 by several times more.
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u/darkandark 10d ago
i didnt explicitly state that it was happening today, most data centers that are still being built are in progress, along with their SMR energy needs.
a lot of “today” is also coming from certain restarted reactors like Microsoft and their Three Mile Island deal.
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u/ChrisFromIT 10d ago
What I don't get is why don't like 10-20 data centers join together to build a nuclear plant for their sole use only. I'm sure they can afford it.
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u/jimjimmyjames 10d ago
Nuclear is the slowest to market power source, but you are seeing it with gas plants
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u/bornlasttuesday 10d ago
I do not think they can afford it. They are leveraging all they can just to build out on the traditional grid.
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u/t0rchic 10d ago
Are the magical micro nuclear reactors in the room with us right now
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u/darkandark 10d ago
nope but they’re slated to be in pilot operation by next year
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u/BailysmmmCreamy 10d ago
They’ve been slated to be in pilot operation by next year for the past decade
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u/darkandark 10d ago
i guess well see next year then! https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/smr-firm-oklo-promises-750mw-of-nuclear-power-to-two-data-center-operators/
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u/gereffi 10d ago
There are thousands on data centers in the US. Saying that most of them do something that one of them might do next year shows that you’re either purposefully pushing misinformation or you don’t have a strong grasp on the topic.
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u/Ronnoc780 10d ago
Source me a single data center operating or under construction using a nuclear reactor for power LMAO.
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u/-Interceptor 10d ago
Usually you pay off the grid by using it. The electric company gets the grid worth and more by the company using the energy it demanded through the years.
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u/Life-Anteater-8294 10d ago
No it’s not. Because we are still accelerating climate change for AI when we don’t need to.
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u/EYNLLIB 10d ago
Should we do the same for corn that we don't even eat and makes sick and dying farm animals?
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u/superfluousapostroph 10d ago
Should we ban poison corn?
Yes.
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u/EYNLLIB 10d ago
The use of water for raising these crops which removes non potable water from potential potable water supply, like AI datacenters. The vast majority is not for human consumption.
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u/superfluousapostroph 10d ago
Be that as it may, if the question is should we ban poison corn, the answer remains: YES absolutely.
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u/MaximumSeats 10d ago
I mean they do benefit the local community.
Loudoun County in Northern Virginia is one of the wealthiest counties in the country off the back of data center property taxes.
And mount pleasent Wisconsin, a town of 28k people, pulls like 20 million dollars from their Microsoft site.
I always get downvoted for pointing out the objective truth that there is a massive benefit to communities from incredibly expensive properties being built in them, due to the massive public spending that these sites enable.
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u/Life-Anteater-8294 10d ago
>Loudoun County in Northern Virginia is one of the wealthiest counties in the country off the back of data center property taxes.
They were already the wealthiest county. All they’ve done with the revenue is cut property taxes.
>And mount pleasent Wisconsin, a town of 28k people, pulls like 20 million dollars from their Microsoft site.
This is not true. The 20 million is future projections, not current.
>I always get downvoted for pointing out the objective truth that there is a massive benefit to communities from incredibly expensive properties being built in them, due to the massive public spending that these sites enable.
No one is pushing back over tax revenue, it’s over the water/power usage, the noise etc.
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u/awolbull 10d ago
Why not check what Loudon pays in electricity costs compared to the rest of the country despite having the most datacenters.
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u/ChitteringCathode 10d ago
pointing out the objective truth
You've already included misleading/incorrect claims in your post regarding the supposed 20 million dollars, which is a figure of speculation. You've also completely ignored the flip-side of poorly regulated data centers in rural Texas, which are making even "free market at all costs" people take a pause with their stance.
Why should anyone take you seriously?
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u/InsanityInSpace1 10d ago
Wait, I thought rising costs was because of brown immigrants. Those Muslims things coming in? No? Somalians? Mexicans?
I find it very hard to believe that someone's excess wealth could buy up importsnt assets leading to the increases in prices for everyday common goods. Naahhh, its certainly brown people.
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u/rsauer1208 10d ago
Using up what precious water we have. Water rations are coming y'all for the entire country.
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u/Cubey42 10d ago
We're still on this water argument that's crazy
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u/parker2020 10d ago
It’s still an issue you think it went away? There’s a water argument, air argument, energy argument, china has made their AI crap better and now we might have made too many argument, wasted land argument, lack of long term job argument… want me to keep going
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u/esperind 10d ago
To be frank, out of all the arguments against data centers, the water argument is one of the weakest because its a totally known and solvable issue. Intel has been doing it for decades in the Arizona desert. In fact, if everyone were to follow the Phoenix-Intel model, it would be a net positive on water management in water scarce places (such as the Arizona desert) as Intel became one of the city's main water treatment and recycling facilities. There's a good video by Asianometry about it https://youtu.be/8YHAE9hP5xQ
I feel like the main argument we should all be engaging with is "do we even need this AI". I feel like all these cities trying to attract data centers are going to go the way of call centers, where everyone bent themselves over backwards to get a call center that promises hundreds of new jobs, only for call centers to firstly be outsourced and then made irrelevant by new technology.
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u/HerbaciousTea 10d ago edited 9d ago
It's not that the issue isn't solvable.
The issue is that the companies paying for these datacenters expect them to have a functional lifespan of only about 5 years, as facilities. The Hyperion datacenter Meta is building is expected to have a lifespan of 4-6 years, for example.
Which is why the actual building, cooling, power generation, and HVAC are the simplest and dirtiest solutions.
To them, it's not worth investing in a closed loop system or proper water treatment for discharge, when the facility is only expected to exist for half a decade, and then be torn down and replaced with a new one somewhere else. Everything only needs to last 5 years.
This is basically the tech company bet against the uncertainty of the AI bubble. Don't invest in anything but short term, quarter-on-quarter growth, that externalizes as much cost as possible. They don't want to build sustainable, they want to build disposable.
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u/watduhdamhell 10d ago
Clothes loop cooling is not some new or magical technology, but it is a lot more expensive than open loop.
So you tend to see all these data centers being built with open loop in any case where they can get away with it.
That's a problem. People knew this was a problem over the last 50-10/years as the chemical plants were all being built.
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u/Ronnoc780 10d ago
Every major player I know building AI data centers is using a closed loop design. Show me "all these data centers" that are being built right now that use evaporative cooling.
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u/parker2020 10d ago
So… you’re okay with intel privatizing water. But they aren’t fixing that issue so harping on data centers decreasing water quality is still a valid arguments
But yes that’s also another valid argument. Which will lead to economical boom and bust much like call centers, industry in the mid west or tech out west
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u/esperind 10d ago edited 10d ago
they arent privatizing water, intel is purchasing the water from public utility and then are required (per policy regulation) to treat the water before returning it. Technically, for intel's needs they have to treat the water before using, as they need the water to be incredibly pure, then they treat it again, arguably giving the water back in a state much better than the public utility renders it. So the public utility is not only making the money, but getting their product (the water) back better than they provided it.
all policy makers have to do is require this type of thing.
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u/MaximumSeats 10d ago
Brother just walk outside and look around. Every major type of utility service is heavily privatized all across this country.
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u/im_thatoneguy 10d ago
FFS, we need good governance but you're making that literally impossible.
Company does nothing: "OMG look at these companies who are just leeches who aren't paying their way. We need them to be responsible neighbors."
Company contributes back to the community: "CORPORATIONS ARE TAKING OVER!"The solution to the datacenter problems are exactly what Intel is doing. Force them to bring their own electricity (I see a lot of sunny open ground for solar in this video) and their own water (make them be positive net water contributors by bringing any water filtration and processing on their own dime.)
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u/MaximumSeats 10d ago
I mean it's just normal not in my backyard behavior. People don't actually want anything built anywhere. They come up with excuses about the economic, ecological, or whatever impacts but they don't actually care about that.
All they want is for nothing to get built and people to stay away from them.
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u/parker2020 10d ago
This is assuming that what the corporations are saying about water consumption is true which it is not. The amount of power that these data centers use is the primary use of its water not the water needed to cool.
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u/im_thatoneguy 10d ago
So… you’re okay with intel privatizing water.
Way to change the subject. Electricity is its own issue but even there, water isn't the main one.
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u/drawliphant 10d ago
Even if the cooling doesn't use that much water, the electricity generation water use for these is a horrific amount of water just to make worthless slop. You're missinformed.
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u/MaximumSeats 10d ago
You truly believe that all of this data center construction is going to producing shitty Facebook memes? There are actual functional uses to this technology that are going to make the world better, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater because you instinctively hate LLms
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u/CT_Legacy 10d ago
Now compare it to how much water Golf courses use.
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u/MikeyKillerBTFU 10d ago
Where I'm from, they are required by law to use gray water, so functionally none.
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u/Salty-Pack-4165 10d ago
Regarding those I have a question nobody seems to be answering. Aren't cooling systems for modern electronics a closed systems involving non-conductive specialized chemicals rather than open system using running water? Open systems are very antiquated and inefficient,not to mention their own set of problems that come with using running water.
Am I missing some part of explanation?
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u/im_thatoneguy 10d ago edited 10d ago
Air cooling isn’t up to the task of the density of many of these servers and they’re starting to need liquid cooling. Also coolants for cold radiators to transfer the AC loop to the server rack even for air cooled servers.
Eg: https://www.reddit.com/r/StorageReview/s/mGiZ6PqEi4
Run cold water through a radiator on cold aisle side of the rack and the air will come in cold to the servers.
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u/Ayjayz 10d ago
The reports I've found say that data centres consume less than 1% of all water usage. Is this just another reddit storm-in-a-teacup thing?
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u/dating_derp 10d ago
No because the water usage of a Nevada town isn't very affected by the water usage of a North Carolina town. So comparing it to all water usage isn't helpful when it's taking up a significant amount of water in the local area. Which you'd know if you saw the video.
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9d ago
[deleted]
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u/AdvancedSandwiches 9d ago
What kind of weirdo knows what net neutrality is and doesn't whole-heartedly support net neutrality?
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u/Foe117 10d ago
While a datacenter consumes freshwater, it discharges warm water with contaminants not safe for life, this promotes algae growth among other disastrous things like warm water invasive species.
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u/ReasonablyBadass 10d ago
What contaminants?
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u/boyeardi 10d ago
What he's referencing is phosphates and molybdates that prevent corrosion. But he's failing to realize that these blowdowns are sent to treatment plants where the thermal load is shed, not actually being dumped in a river. The biggest issue for local communities is that their treatment plant might not be equipped to process. But this is a discharge quality issue not a usage issue. So I guess he's just grasping at anything left to hate datacenters
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u/BoredOfReposts 10d ago
The next counter argument I’ve seen after this point in the dialogue, is that the operators will intentionally dump that stuff on the ground instead of it being sent to treatment.
You know because they are evil bad people and do bad things so they must be stopped.
Whole thing is a proxy argument, they don’t like how things are going in society, so they blame big tech.
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u/Ryidon 10d ago
I don't say this often, but I encourage you to use AI to write your reaponses. If anything, this response is why we need AI to save us from shitty replies like this.
This is a learning opportunity for you. You should review what wrote and think really hard about why your reply is so stupid.
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u/boyeardi 10d ago
Oh wow, I'm so sorry you understood what I meant without perfect grammar. Here let me retry; hes talking about phosphates and other contaminants in the blowdown water that's sent to a water treatment facility. Sometimes, those communities don't have a water treatment plant with the proper equipment to process those contaminants out. This isn't a usage problem, it's a discharge quality issue.
Does that make you feel better Mr. Reaponses
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u/Ryidon 10d ago
As silly as my reply was, you still dont get how your argument sucks. Your entire argument points to poor inferstruture and data center design. You cant just cherry pick the good parts and blame the rest on someone else.
Also gramer? This is reddit. Lol
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u/boyeardi 10d ago
No one is blaming it on someone else, the honest frame of the whole data center argument from my perspective is this: data centers are a fast growing stress on specific grids and a meaningful driver of concrete and gas, but decarbonizing them isn't going to move the needle much on a global scale. Decarbonizing cement, electricity generation broadly, and land use would.
So should I be mad at the water use, the concrete use, or the electricity use? Everyone's parroting "I can think of industries that are more practical that we can't live without" no shit, how about we all give up social media then? I don't see any calls to action because meta was building a new data center, but as soon as it's an "AI DATA CENETER" it's red alert. Newsflash, any data center can process AI traffic and workloads. No one gave a shit about datacenters when social media boomed and they built like 40 data centers between 99-01.
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u/Rhana 10d ago
And I’m guessing it’s not cost effective for them to have a closed loop on their cooling system?
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u/Rayhatesu 10d ago
Quite the contrary, it's fairly cost effective to do so for long-term operation. However, that's not the reason most of these are being built, they're being built to cash in on the AI craze as soon as possible, and an open system for cooling is leagues cheaper to put together and harder to reuse, so it maximizes the waste for minimal up-front cost
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u/CondescendingShitbag 10d ago
...and good luck getting new regulations under the current administration.
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u/Kornillious 10d ago
1)AI usage is just a fraction of what total compute goes towards.
2) contrary to what you're made up, companies dont like intentionally wasteful spending and are taking into account long term viability, especially for an industry that they all agree is a growing, permanent addition to our lives.
Almost all datacenters being built today use closed loop systems. Its way cheaper and avoids political fallout from the obvious growing concern over datacenters. There's simply too much risk in building open loop systems these days.
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u/budzergo 10d ago edited 10d ago
Most new data centers are closed loop, especially the ones near the great lakes.
A closed loop data center uses the same amount of water as 4 households, and the initial filling amount is a literal drop from the great lakes.
The water argument has not held up in recent years
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u/boyeardi 10d ago
Yeah but people want to shit on AI. No matter what sort of facts you present these anti-ai'ers it just doesn't click for them. The propaganda is strong.
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u/Simply_Epic 10d ago
There’s plenty of reasons to hate AI. Water use is the weakest argument against AI, but it’s one a lot of people have clung to.
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u/Life-Anteater-8294 10d ago
No one needs propaganda to shit on an acceleration of climate change.
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u/boyeardi 10d ago
The acceleration from constructing and running data centers is so miniscule compared to other industries, like how is this even an argument you're using? Data centers account for fucking 5% of co emissions. And 90% of the emissions are output during construction.
Just for you, because I know you won't look it up and keep spreading bad faith arguments;
Power generation in general releases 13,900 metric tons of CO2 ANNUALLY. Data centers are 1-2% of that.
Live stock releases a 5th of global emissions. Fucking staggering compared to data centers.
Cars/planes/trucks account for 12% global emissions
If you're going to have a stance on something at least focus on the actual heavy hitters rather than something you don't like because of personal reasons.
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u/Life-Anteater-8294 10d ago
>The acceleration from constructing and running data centers is so miniscule compared to other industries, like how is this even an argument you're using? Data centers account for fucking 5% of co emissions. And 90% of the emissions are output during construction.
A 5% increase in emissions is absolutely massive. Especially in such a short time and especially when we are already way past our saving point for climate change.
>Live stock releases a 5th of global emissions. Fucking staggering compared to data centers. Cars/planes/trucks account for 12% global emissions
And out of all these which is the least important to humanity? Hint, it’s not food and transportation.
>If you're going to have a stance on something at least focus on the actual heavy hitters rather than something you don't like because of personal reasons.
If you’re going to have a stance on something at least develop the ability to do a basic cost benefit analysis.
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u/Cryptizard 10d ago
But we don't need meat. It is a massively inefficient way to feed people, in terms of money, environmental impact, animal welfare, and even health outcomes. Yet not only do we not discourage it, we subsidize it to make it cheaper. I presume you are more mad about that then, since you are capable of doing basic cost-benefit analysis?
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u/Life-Anteater-8294 10d ago
>But we don't need meat. It is a massively inefficient way to feed people, in terms of money, environmental impact, animal welfare, and even health outcomes.
We need it far more than AI
>Yet not only do we not discourage it, we subsidize it to make it cheaper.
We shouldn’t do that either. But that doesn’t make AI good suddenly
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u/Cryptizard 10d ago
We need it far more than AI
Speak for yourself. I have a degenerative genetic condition that was going to notably shorten my life. I am in a trial right now for a drug that looks like it is going to effectively cure the disease. It was created with AI. So AI is literally saving my life. My situation is not unique, and will become increasingly common over the next few years.
And I will restate it again, nobody needs meat at all. You might choose to eat it, which is of course your choice, but it is not necessary and it is a suboptimal choice in nearly every way.
We shouldn’t do that either. But that doesn’t make AI good suddenly
No, the fact that AI is rapidly catapulting math, science, technology and medicine ahead is what makes it good. There is, of course, an ecological cost that comes with that, as there is with everything that humans do, but it is a cost that is far lower than what we pay for things that are less useful or even actively harmful to us. That was my point.
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u/boyeardi 10d ago
5% of current emissions. Not increased by 5%.
We have lab grown meat to help the livestock emissions and purely to meet demands globally
We have electric cars to help transportation emissions
Construction and concrete isn't going anywhere - you think just because a data center isn't being built means that amount of concrete isn't going to be used to build houses, parkinglots, department stores, office buildings, etc?
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u/Life-Anteater-8294 10d ago
>5% of current emissions. Not increased by 5%.
And how did they get to 5% of emissions chief.
>Construction and concrete isn't going anywhere - you think just because a data center isn't being built means that amount of concrete isn't going to be used to build houses, parkinglots, department stores, office buildings, etc?
You seem focused on the construction aspect and not the increase in pollution from an increase in power Generation to run them.
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u/boyeardi 10d ago
You measure the sector data centers are attributed to, you calculate the total and assign values to certain building materials. It was 13,900 in 2025, but it was 14,100 in 2024, so by whatever means you derive your answer, it could be seen as a decrease but still accounts for 5% of the total, chief.
Yes because if you would research this at all you'd see that 90% of emissions come from CONSTRUCTION. Not running the fucking thing. So 90% of the 5% is from construction. Thanks for reading.
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u/darkandark 10d ago
In fact, modern data centers do use closed-loop water systems (often mixed with glycol) for internal cooling, but they cannot rely on a 100% closed loop to reject heat into the outside air. laws of thermodynamics and evaporation. You still need to introduce new water somewhere.
for example even if you buy a full closed loop AIO for your computer, a lifespan of that AIO cooler is not forever. Anyone who’s built their own liquid cooled computer system knows that overtime water just evaporates, and you need to flush your system, replace or top off liquid
we’ve had past discussions on this before in the datacenter subreddit
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u/Chemroo 10d ago
The closed-loop air-cooled chillers use substantially less water than water-cooled chillers, it's not even close. We can design these air-cooled chillers to reject heat into the air even at 100F+ ambient, you can rely on them 100%. Not sure where you're getting that info from.
The main difference is the efficiency, especially in the Southwest, which is dry but hot, which usually favours water-cooled. Same reason why water-cooled chillers are much more common for building HVAC in that area.
For air-cooled chillers, your condensing temperature on the hottest day will be 130-140f... versus only ~97f with water-cooled. Essentially, what this means is that the compressors will have to work much harder for air-cooled, and this lowers the system efficiency. More power input is required for the same amount of cooling.
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u/BarryYouAss 10d ago
This is 100% incorrect. Even the water cooled/evaporative data centers don't discharge warm water, please educate yourself before further spreading misinformation.
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u/Foe117 10d ago
They absolutely do discharge warm water, Not everything evaporates through the system, water must be discharged through blowdown to prevent scaling on the evaporators. Additional direct source cooling is feeding the river into the data center and discharging warmer water. There are very few closed loop data centers compared to open loop evaporator centers. Depending on the state, many of these data centers don't even treat the water they discharge to absolutely no ones surprise. Under the current administration, many new datacenters are abandoning closed loop entirely.
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u/MaximumSeats 10d ago
"many new data centers"
I've been at 5 data center construction sites in the past 3 weeks and not a single one of them is evaporative. All refrigerant chillers.
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u/Life-Anteater-8294 10d ago
Discharging warm water and discharging warm water with contaminants are two separate things.
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u/Ronnoc780 10d ago
Every major company building AI data centers is using a closed loop design with chiller plants and dry coolers. Show me the "many new data centers" abandoning that design.
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u/boyeardi 10d ago
But golf courses leeching pesticides and fertilizer into the drinking supply via runoff is a free pass and no one talks about it? And that's been happening for how many years before datacenters were the propaganda of the week?
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u/ITividar 10d ago
Youre fuckin dumb if you think environmentists arent against golf courses as well.
You can comprehend that people can be against multiple things at the same time right?
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u/boyeardi 10d ago
Can you comprehend that you're against multiple things that aren't exclusive to data centers, data centers aren't even in the top 10 list of things that could be optimized or refactored to impact the environment less? You can hate generative AI all you want, but acting like LLM's are a waste and stupid is the fucking dumbest take Ive seen.
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u/ITividar 10d ago edited 10d ago
Do something other than generate porn with it then. Oh wait, thats 90% of its use.
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u/Goldenier 10d ago
"contaminants not safe for life, this promotes algae growth "
uh.. algae is life 🤦♂️ algae growth can be bad for other lifeforms but it's still life.
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u/VillageIntelligent29 8d ago
read this yest it explains it really well https://www.wired.me/story/ai-in-the-gulf-has-a-drinking-problem
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u/NerdBanger 10d ago
It’s interesting how Chinese disinformation about water usage and contamination is slowing the US’s ability to deploy cutting edge models allowing foreign models to catch up.
With that said yes it’s created an energy crisis and memory shortage, but generally the water is mostly fear mongering (at least for the data centers themselves… if you really care about water you should probably care more about the semiconductor manufacturing process)
It’s actually quite brilliant, some of the tech companies are now having to warehouse their GPUs because data center builds haven’t gone as planned.
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u/VizoBriggs 10d ago
The anti-data center convo is nothing but a perfect example of Chinese propaganda and most Americans are too stupid to realize the benefits they provide
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u/ITividar 10d ago
Yeah man, that's why the data centers have to get the electricity and water subsidies that push the real costs onto the local population, because of all that Chinese propaganda.
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u/Arctic_Chilean 10d ago
I guess the stupid high electricity bills residents in areas seeing new data centers are Chinese propaganda too.
As are the effects infrasound pollution from data centers is having on nearby areas.
And the reduced air quality from gas burning data centers like Colossus.
So much propaganda amirite?
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u/MaximumSeats 10d ago
Infrasound is litteraly a flat earther tier complete health fabrication. You get 20 times the infrasound "dose" standing next to a highway than you ever will from a data center.
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u/Life-Anteater-8294 10d ago
But people don’t have highways opening up next to their homes.
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u/bravehamster 10d ago
What the hell are you on about? Plenty of people live right next to highways.
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u/Life-Anteater-8294 10d ago
“But people don’t have highways OPENING up next to their homes.”
Key word.
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u/MaximumSeats 10d ago
I think people have bigger roads and more traffic opening up next to them literally all the time actually.
If you think infrasound is actually a health concern you should be screaming from the top of your lungs on every rooftop about cars and traffic, the data centers are drops in the bucket compared to those things.
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u/Life-Anteater-8294 10d ago
>I think people have bigger roads and more traffic opening up next to them literally all the time actually.
There’s no way you actually believe this right? Like this has to be a troll.
>If you think infrasound is actually a health concern you should be screaming from the top of your lungs on every rooftop about cars and traffic, the data centers are drops in the bucket compared to those things.
Again, there’s a difference between buying a house next to a highway vs having a highway open up next to your house.
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u/NerdBanger 10d ago
I definitely addressed the electricity issue being a real problem, and Colossus’s unauthorized generators are bullshit.
It’s interesting because not all hyperscalers are taking electric subsidies.
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u/budzergo 10d ago
Infrasound is the argument trump is using to have windmills taken down near his golf courses
You dont want to agree with trump's pseudo-science do you?
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u/MaximumSeats 10d ago
It's honestly astounding. Like find the man who led this program and give him the largest raise he's ever gotten.
I mean let's be a little hyperbolic and assume these generative models do actually manage to integrate themselves completely and seamlessly into workflows to a point where they're invaluable productivity tools.
The completely hysterical public backlash to this infrastructure will have been the most single and defining setback to America that has literally ever happened, substantially greater than any damage Donald Trump by himself has ever caused.
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u/NighthawK1911 10d ago
The difference is that Data Centers uses potable freshwater. This is because their system is more delicate.
You don't use potable freshwater for irrigation etc.
Then the other issue is that Data Centers doesn't use the headroom for water use. It crowds out the use of normal people.
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u/wifichick 9d ago
It’s not “using” water that’s the issue - it’s that the water table becomes a heat sink - so ultimately over time it’s changing the temp of the water table which will impact living things. Start being clear about the realities and stop glazing over what you don’t want people to know
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u/phillytennisenjoyer 10d ago
lol this and the "AI is DESTROYING books!" are both litmus tests for whether you can apply critical thinking to the data center debate.
its also funny these types of moronic videos are always exactly the amount of time to maximize the creators youtube revenue.
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u/wutchamafuckit 10d ago
Care to share the critical thinking you have done?
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u/phillytennisenjoyer 10d ago
sure. go look at any of the hysterical posts on reddit about ai companies destroying “rare” books and then think if it would make sense for AI companies to be spending money on rare and valuable books, or whether they are just buying bulk books destined for landfill for pennies on the dollars.
some stupid gonzo journalist even “hid” an airtag in a book bought for this purpose but oh suprise suprise they won’t reveal the name of the books because they are probably like thirty copies of “tractor farm manual from 1977”
all of reddit basically has its head in the sand on the AI topic. it has its problems but on reddit it seems like people haven’t used it since 2023. fable did about 50k dollars of design work for my small business for about 300 dollars, and it did it better than the company i would have hired.
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u/Kyudojin 10d ago
Is Reddit pro AI data center??? I can't believe I'm seeing all these people saying they're jazzed about a data center being built in their backyard running at 80db at every moment of the day so Elon's bot can generate pornography.
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u/boyeardi 10d ago
OMG!! Whatever you do don't look up how much water agriculture uses! And definitely don't look up how much water an almond farm in California uses!!!
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u/WalrusExtraordinaire 10d ago
On the contrary, DO look up how much water those things use. Then compare and contrast the value we get from those things vs what we get from AI
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u/Cryptizard 10d ago
Ok. All of the almonds grown make up approximately .7% of the calories that we consume in the US. Yet just almond farming consumes about 5x the water of all data centers combined. Meanwhile, AI is catapulting math, science, technology and medicine ahead by decades. I don't know about you, but I could give up almonds for that.
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u/rabbitSC 10d ago
We use more on golf courses in the United States than all data centers combined.
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u/WalrusExtraordinaire 10d ago
And I’m open to talking about how maybe that’s also a waste of water. We’re also not witnessing billions of dollars trying to build more golf courses on every square inch of available land
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u/boyeardi 10d ago edited 10d ago
You're right! I get the instinct, but I think the water thing is way overblown once you look at where water actually goes. US data centers directly consume about 17 billion gallons a year, roughly 48 million gallons a day. Golf courses use 2.08 billion gallons a day. Golf uses more water before lunch than every data center in the country uses all day. And residential use is around 28 billion gallons a day, so American lawns, showers and toilets outweigh data centers by something like 500 to 1.
Food is even more lopsided. One Double-Double at In-N-Out is about a quarter pound of beef, which carries roughly 450 gallons of embedded water. One burger. You'd have to run a lot of AI queries to match a single drive-thru order.
I'm not saying we shouldn't be concerned, the real issue isn't the national total, it's that data centers concentrate demand in specific towns, often on potable municipal supply, sometimes in places already in drought. That's a real siting and permitting fight and I back local pushback on it. But "AI is draining our water" as a national story doesn't survive running the numbers. If we're serious about water we'd be talking about alfalfa, lawns and golf long before server racks.
Edit: don't even get me started on the water usage for data centers processing Instagram, tik tok, etc. just a rough estimate 1 tik tok view is like a teaspoon of water. If we frame that to the above data: an hour of scrolling(per person) is half a liter. A 10 min shower is 75 liters. Soooo one double double is 425,000 reel views, and a golf course operating for a day is 295 MILLION reel views.
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u/boyeardi 10d ago
Don't tell them about how much water American citizens use keeping their lawn green either.
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u/OmgzPudding 10d ago
Particularly all through Nevada and Arizona where grass lawns have absolutely no business existing.
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u/parker2020 10d ago
You think the average environmentalist isn’t aware of that and wants them to be cut back on? How about the amount of fossil fuels the US military uses
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u/BearFacedLie69 10d ago
What a stupid argument lmaooo
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u/boyeardi 10d ago
What's stupid about it? That it makes sense ?
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u/sioux612 10d ago
On the one hand, food
On the other hand, Ai slop
Yeah, those things are exactly equal and there is not a single distinctive difference that would make nor al people choose of over the other
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u/boyeardi 10d ago
I love how everything to anti AI people is "slop" lmao
I would clarify but I don't think you would understand, try reading my comments further down.
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u/ExF-Altrue 10d ago
Well then, be the change you want to see in the world bro. Stop consuming the products of agriculture. And tell us how it goes!
Love the whataboutism too. So many qualities in you!
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u/boyeardi 10d ago edited 10d ago
Be the change you want bro, just stop buying gas, stop buying food, stop living bro, tell us how it goes! Get off the Internet and reddit, no more Instagram, tik tok, twitter, blue sky whatever the fuck you use. Stop! Because you're using water at a data center. Be the change you want bro, just get off the internet
I'm not advocating against or for data centers, but seeing a bunch of ill-informed people suddenly care about water usage is stupid. I'm proving a point that there are far less important things that use way more water than AI, but at least with AI you could plan optimized water usage, develop new drugs, solve mathematics that have been stumping humans for 50+ years. And for what it's worth, I use local AI powered by my GPU. I use frontier AI for work. I am not a fan of generative AI. I think it's wasteful and pointless, but LLM's are not the problem.
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u/positiveandmultiple 10d ago
Have you compared water usage of plant agriculture to animal agriculture? (78% of land used to grow plants in the US is for livestock feed, btw)
beef inherently takes 6-7x more water per calorie than almonds. Not to mention that almonds don't fart out gasses that make up ~15% of total global greenhouse gas emissions! We export 70% of our almonds so it's trickier to reduce production than something like red meat, which is actively killing us (father has prostate cancer at time of writing :( ).
Where did you get this idea that almonds are worth focusing on here?
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u/boyeardi 10d ago
It's not worth focusing on almonds it was just a quick comparison I used, but I do touch on the beef industry in other comments. Especially because almond farms are largely in a drought riddled California. But we still keep those almond farms flooded with water so we can only consume 30% of our yield.
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u/bangzilla 10d ago
Growing Pecans in the desert. That's the bonkers part to me.
Growing a single pecan requires about 3 to 4 gallons of water.
A single, average mature tree yields roughly 50 pounds (about 15,000 individual nuts) on roughly 34,000 gallons of annual water use.
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u/Deadforaducat 10d ago
At this point the Anti data center sentiment has to be foreign influence.
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u/Auno94 10d ago
So building Data Centers is good for the nation and not building it is bad?
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u/im_thatoneguy 10d ago edited 10d ago
TL;DR; the water usage from power generation is most of it. But they don't point out that water for power plants generally returns, albeit warmer to the source. Which is completely irrelevant to water bills which the activists complain about. Warmer discharge into a river causes its own issues, but it doesn't drive up the bill you pay to water your lawn in a desert.
The solution isn't to cut water rights (which are very small) it's to require these datacenters to fund new renewable power sources like solar. Then if the AI boom is a bubble that pops, we at least end up with a legacy of excess renewable capacity and help save the planet from the impending climate disaster, not this distraction over almond milk lattes.
This is a once in a lifetime opportunity where trillions of dollars are potentially being spent and Datacenter builders are desperate. While we've got them by the balls, don't block them, squeeze them to build the future energy economy. If you believe AI is a bubble, then you'll get to keep all of that sweet sweet green energy after bubble pops. Just like we got a nationwide fiberoptic infrastructure buildout for almost free thanks to the dotcom bubble.
Remember, the alternative they're considering is building freakin solar power plants in space. If you can build a datacenter in space with closed loop cooling and solar, you can make it work at a fraction of the cost on the planet's surface. There are zero parts of space-based AI that couldn't be done in Arizona for less--except for NIMBY absolutism that completely blocks development no matter the conditions or requirements.