3 ms·
The environmental impact of water usage seems way overblown to me. Last year, U.S. data centers consumed 17 billion gallons of water. Which sounds like a lot,
by Legend2440 1y ago
The environmental impact of water usage seems way overblown to me.
Last year, U.S. data centers consumed 17 billion gallons of water. Which sounds like a lot, but the US as a whole uses 300 billion gallons of water every day. Water is not a scarce resource in much of the country.
- foota 1y agoPersonally, I agree. That said, I think it might be worth considering the impact of water usage in local areas that are relatively water constrained.
- Guvante 1y agoTo be clear all talk of water usage has been focusing on local usage which isn't well represented by national numbers.
- abdullahkhalids 1y agoYeah. There are metrics for how water stressed a community is. We know where data centers have been built, and we know how these water metrics have changed over time. The correct metric is something like, what's the probability that the launch of data center in a location results in nearby communities to drop significantly in these water metrics.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- bee_rider 1y agoIt seems like a very minor problem next to the huge super obvious one, electricity use.