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This article makes several disingenuous statements to paint an entirely false, emotion provoking narrative. First: Google is not "consuming" water any more tha

This article makes several disingenuous statements to paint an entirely false, emotion provoking narrative. First: Google is not "consuming" water any more than a water wheel or dam turbine "consumes" water as it passes by in a river. This is an objectively absurd framing. Second: Even if the water were consumed, which it isn't, 25% of a town of 16k is not a significant amount of consumption. Third: This article talks about drought, which is absolutely irrelevant because the water isn't being consumed. The article can't directly say that google is culpable for water shortages, because they aren't, but it tries very hard to create this implication in the mind of lazy readers.

GauntletWizard 4y ago
A lot of the water is consumed, because The Dalles makes heavy use of evaporative cooling. But this is a data enter that powers most of Google's west-coast operations; it was like #3 by number of cores in my day (though it's been eclipsed since then, and I think there's several that are several times it's size). Cooling datacenters takes a lot of power and water, but a trivial amount compared to... Any heavy industry. Get me numbers compared to say Intel's Albuquerque fab, and then we'll talk.
bunabhucan 4y ago
"Water vapor rises above the cooling towers in The Dalles data center in Oregon. These plumes of water vapor create a quiet mist at dusk." https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/locations/the-dalles/ https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/locations/the-dalle... They are using evaporative cooling so the water isn't flowing downstream or going back into an aquifer or whatever. How is that not consumption?
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CGamesPlay 4y ago
Where's he water that passes through the facility go? Does it go into the fresh water reservoir for the city, or the sewer, or into a river? If it isn't going directly to the city's residents in some fashion without needing to be treated, I think it's pretty reasonable to say "consumed". To say it more succinctly: the water you flush down the toilet in your house is, in fact, "consumed".
- cronix 4y ago
  But not consumed in the sense it's gone. It's then cleaned, and reconsumed, and then cleaned and ...
- throwaway09223 4y ago
  It goes back into the river, of course.
  - shagie 4y ago
    It uses evaporative cooling. https://thatoregonlife.com/2021/09/google-to-expand-data-center-and-water-consumption-in-the-dalles-oregon/ https://thatoregonlife.com/2021/09/google-to-expand-data-cen... Note the picture: The water vapor mist from Data Center cooling towers at night https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/locations/the-dalles/ https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/locations/the-dalle... > Water vapor rises above the cooling towers in The Dalles data center in Oregon. These plumes of water vapor create a quiet mist at dusk. That is water that isn't being released back to the river, or reservoir, or aquifer (from which it came). -- edit another source, though a bit old: https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/10/01/google-discloses-energy-usage-data-cont https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/10/01/goog... > Data center cooling is usually the area where the greatest savings can be realized. That's true for Google, which describes its use of evaporative cooling techniques, and provides a diagram of the workings of one of the cooling towers at its data center in The Dalles, Oregon. Still, the evaporative cooling towers are the things that are there and take water from the ground and turn it into steam, released into the air.
    - throwaway09223 4y ago
      Yeah, it looks like some (most?) water is evaporated -- but a significant portion is also returned to the river. I saw elsewhere that google "consumes" around 4x as much water for hydroelectric power generation as they use for cooling. Hydroelectric will return essentially all the water back to the source.
      - 4y ago
petee 4y ago
Heres a link to Google's own water report calling it "consumption", linked in the article https://www.gstatic.com/gumdrop/sustainability/2022-us-data-center-water.pdf https://www.gstatic.com/gumdrop/sustainability/2022-us-data-...
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GauntletWizard 4y ago

A lot of the water is consumed, because The Dalles makes heavy use of evaporative cooling. But this is a data enter that powers most of Google's west-coast operations; it was like #3 by number of cores in my day (though it's been eclipsed since then, and I think there's several that are several times it's size). Cooling datacenters takes a lot of power and water, but a trivial amount compared to... Any heavy industry. Get me numbers compared to say Intel's Albuquerque fab, and then we'll talk.

bunabhucan 4y ago

"Water vapor rises above the cooling towers in The Dalles data center in Oregon. These plumes of water vapor create a quiet mist at dusk." https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/locations/the-dalles/ https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/locations/the-dalle... They are using evaporative cooling so the water isn't flowing downstream or going back into an aquifer or whatever. How is that not consumption?

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CGamesPlay 4y ago

Where's he water that passes through the facility go? Does it go into the fresh water reservoir for the city, or the sewer, or into a river? If it isn't going directly to the city's residents in some fashion without needing to be treated, I think it's pretty reasonable to say "consumed". To say it more succinctly: the water you flush down the toilet in your house is, in fact, "consumed".

cronix 4y ago
But not consumed in the sense it's gone. It's then cleaned, and reconsumed, and then cleaned and ...
throwaway09223 4y ago
It goes back into the river, of course.
- shagie 4y ago
  It uses evaporative cooling. https://thatoregonlife.com/2021/09/google-to-expand-data-center-and-water-consumption-in-the-dalles-oregon/ https://thatoregonlife.com/2021/09/google-to-expand-data-cen... Note the picture: The water vapor mist from Data Center cooling towers at night https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/locations/the-dalles/ https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/locations/the-dalle... > Water vapor rises above the cooling towers in The Dalles data center in Oregon. These plumes of water vapor create a quiet mist at dusk. That is water that isn't being released back to the river, or reservoir, or aquifer (from which it came). -- edit another source, though a bit old: https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/10/01/google-discloses-energy-usage-data-cont https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/10/01/goog... > Data center cooling is usually the area where the greatest savings can be realized. That's true for Google, which describes its use of evaporative cooling techniques, and provides a diagram of the workings of one of the cooling towers at its data center in The Dalles, Oregon. Still, the evaporative cooling towers are the things that are there and take water from the ground and turn it into steam, released into the air.
  - throwaway09223 4y ago
    Yeah, it looks like some (most?) water is evaporated -- but a significant portion is also returned to the river. I saw elsewhere that google "consumes" around 4x as much water for hydroelectric power generation as they use for cooling. Hydroelectric will return essentially all the water back to the source.
    - 4y ago

petee 4y ago

Heres a link to Google's own water report calling it "consumption", linked in the article https://www.gstatic.com/gumdrop/sustainability/2022-us-data-center-water.pdf https://www.gstatic.com/gumdrop/sustainability/2022-us-data-...

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