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Eh, I'd focus on agriculture first. AI is a drop in the bucket compared to what it takes to grow a cow or an almond.
by bobbylarrybobby 1y ago
Eh, I'd focus on agriculture first. AI is a drop in the bucket compared to what it takes to grow a cow or an almond.
- CharlesW 1y agoYep. Agriculture uses roughly 2-4K times more water than the infrastructure that powers data centers. https://www.unesco.org/reports/wwdr/en/2024/s https://www.unesco.org/reports/wwdr/en/2024/s
- Boltgolt 1y agoI'd rate basic necessities like food 4000x more important than data centers too
- mmoskal 1y agoI don't know. I suspect most people rate data centers higher than almond milk...
- wintermutestwin 1y agoOf course! But what about all of the agriculture that gets exported? In CA, it is over half of almonds and ~15% of alfalfa (cattle feed).
- bcrl 1y agoGet rid of the corn subsidies and production will shift to more sustainable crops that don't result in high fructose corn syrup being overused and increasing rates of diabetes and obesity.
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- osigurdson 1y agoIf we could just get rid of these darn living creatures we would use much less water.
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- bb88 1y agoStep 1 is simpler. Get rid of farming in the desert first. This a fight going on in Idaho right now: https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/community/boise/article298714793.html https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/community/boise/ar... https://archive.ph/X9nTS https://archive.ph/X9nTS If you look at a google map of Ada County Idaho, the only viable agriculture land requires watering from the Snake and Boise Rivers. https://maps.app.goo.gl/TFPgA6nG6hMBfPcx5 https://maps.app.goo.gl/TFPgA6nG6hMBfPcx5
- OptionOfT 1y agoI often wonder about this. Is it actually cheaper to farm near water, or farm in a hot climate and import water (e.g. CA & AZ).
- bb88 1y agoThe mountains in California are basically huge water collectors in the form of capturing snow and slowly letting it melt into waterways. And it costs tax payers and farmers $0 dollars for the desalinization and transportation. What's left is the purification and the final distribution (which might be solar powered pumps). So from this article: https://www.8newsnow.com/investigators/farming-family-uses-more-water-than-all-of-las-vegas-valley-report/ https://www.8newsnow.com/investigators/farming-family-uses-m... 1 billion gallons is not unreasonable for a large scale farm. Unless you're doing rail, 8000 gallons is pretty standard for a tanker. So that's 125,000 trips over the course of a year and 500 trips a day maybe? Assuming you had a 1 billion gallon source 100 miles would be somewhere around US$28M burning gas (assuming a tanker marginal cost per mile is $2.27). But water sources might be much more than that from where your farm is in the desert. If it's 1000 miles, it's $280M. At that rate it may be cheaper to use solar power to boil 10 billion gallons of ocean water into steam and let nature do the work to move the water to where you need it.
- rickydroll 1y agoBack in 2017, I went to see the eclipse at Madras, Oregon. If you don't know the area, it's arid. Yet, on the outskirts of Madras, green fields were irrigated by spray every morning. What crop was so valuable that they would use precious water in a near desert? They were growing Kentucky bluegrass for lawn seed. Yeah, stop subsidizing agriculture in arid lands.
- 4ndrewl 1y agoYou can't eat a hyper realistic picture of a dog in a suit.
- smilliken 1y agoWould you concede the point if I produce a photo as proof?