2 ms·
Surely all uses of water are part of the closed-loop water cycle? Other than launching it into space for astronauts to drink, and using it in permanent reaction
by michaelt 1y ago
Surely all uses of water are part of the closed-loop water cycle? Other than launching it into space for astronauts to drink, and using it in permanent reactions like concrete hydration?
Drinking water, spraying it on crops, using it to clean a car, or using it to flush a toilet all end up with the water evaporating, or making its way to the ocean and evaporating from there.
Ultimately, if a river provides a certain number of acre-feet of fresh water, evaporating it to cool a data centre uses it just as much as to evaporating it to grow alfalfa in a desert, except perhaps more usefully.
- gpm 1y agoFresh water isn't meaningfully a closed loop. We are draining fresh water aquifers, causing the land above them to sink downwards eliminating the voids where fresh water was stored, and moving the formerly fresh water into the ocean where it is no longer drinkable, usable for growing crops, or for most industrial purposes. We do get new fresh water at a reasonable pace thanks to rain - but in many parts of the world we are using it faster than that, and not just depleting the stored volume of fresh water but destroying the storage "containers" themselves.