5 ms·

Amazon says its datacenters used about 2.5B gallons of water last year

18 points by tcp_handshaker 4mo ago

paytonjjones 4mo ago
There are a lot of dumb political discourses but this is one of the dumbest in years. It's puzzling to me how water got latched onto instead of, say, energy or rare earths.
- verdverm 4mo ago
  It's more tangible for people, if they would give up golf or eat less red meat, it crusade about those activities, they could do more for mother earth
- quotemstr 4mo ago
  It's astroturfed, as is most memetic outrage that makes no logical sense
  - yallpendantools 4mo ago
    TFA: > Making matters worse, many datacenters now in the pipeline in the US are slated for areas already experiencing drought, according to analysis by The Guardian newspaper. If it's astroturfed it's only because the people complaining don't have enough water to grow natural grass on their lawn. FTFY.
- troyvit 4mo ago
  Is this a yes-and kind of thing or a no-but? I'm asking because maybe water serves as a good indicator for the other resource consumption issues around data-centers. Most of the water issues are are directly related to the energy and rare-earth issues you're talking about. This paper covers the scope of energy, consumption, and downstream water usage for servers: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3724499 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3724499 So yeah, I don't think water is a red herring but more like a canary.
- TitaRusell 4mo ago
  It's almost as if there are some very powerful forces that want to discredit political dissent.
- al_borland 4mo ago
  It’s all of these things. People want water for humans, not technology of questionable utility. They also don’t want their power bill going up due to dramatically increased demand from the data centers.
jrflo 4mo ago
What drives me nuts about this whole water consumption discourse, is no one ever asks what happens to the water when it's used- it gets evaporated! It re-enters the water cycle as pure water! It's not like it's getting destroyed or turned into some unusable sludge, it'll just rain back down again in a few weeks. Obviously, you still shouldn't build datacenters in areas that are locally water-stressed as that will add additional burden to the infrastructure.
- cyanydeez 4mo ago
  yeah, why dont the dehydrated cattle and starving children appreciate the global hydrologic cycle
- paulddraper 4mo ago
  1. The discourse is indeed idiotic. Data centers use less water than the (usually agriculture) purposes that land has already been zoned for. 2. “It just gets evaporated” is not a good take either. Fresh versus salt water matter, and their distribution matter a lot too.
- eventualcomp 4mo ago
  The fact that a datacenter is evaporating X gallons of water in a period implies that a datacenter is ingesting X gallons of water (if less, the datacenter dries out, if more the datacenter floods) - meaning X gallons are now locked out of the water cycle. Meaning it rains back down and gets slurped back up. This is under the happy assumption that all used water evaporates into a cloud directly above the source region, which rains back directly.
  - avmich 4mo ago
    How much water is contained inside the datacenter at any given moment? That's how much water is taken from circulation by this datacenter. Is it enough to worry?
    - eventualcomp 4mo ago
      There is also buffer for clean water required - Y gallons on-hand at the datacenter. You can see the other replies in this parent comment demonstrating the tight ongoing humidity requirements, and how clean water is sprayed onto the actual hardware to cool it off, and more. Evidently this can't be done by setting up a giant funnel above the datacenter to collect rainwater. Given those considerations I expect Y to be pretty large.
h4kunamata 4mo ago
And yet the population have to ration it because there is no enough water. This math isn't "mathing".
MisterMower 4mo ago
People have difficulty visualizing large volumes of water. A square mile filled up to one foot with water is 208,544,914 gallons. 2.5 billion gallons of water would fill up this same square mile to only 12 feet. It’s the size of tiny lake. For context, Lake Meade has about 250 square miles of surface area and an average depth of 180 feet. The reservoir my city of half a million people gets its water from is 15 square miles and 20 feet deep. 2.5 billion gallons is maybe 5% of our reservoir’s total volume. This headline is textbook fearmongering. They are intentionally misrepresenting the magnitude of water usage to make you fear data centers. There are plenty of reasons to be wary of them, but water usage is not one of them. The authors of this article are either assuming you’re to dumb to do simple volume conversions or worse, too stupid to do them themselves. I suspect the latter since they use inconsistent units throughout the article. Liters per kWh, cubic meters, gallons, etc. You don’t hate journalists enough.

There are a lot of dumb political discourses but this is one of the dumbest in years. It's puzzling to me how water got latched onto instead of, say, energy or rare earths.

verdverm 4mo ago
It's more tangible for people, if they would give up golf or eat less red meat, it crusade about those activities, they could do more for mother earth
quotemstr 4mo ago
It's astroturfed, as is most memetic outrage that makes no logical sense
- yallpendantools 4mo ago
  TFA: > Making matters worse, many datacenters now in the pipeline in the US are slated for areas already experiencing drought, according to analysis by The Guardian newspaper. If it's astroturfed it's only because the people complaining don't have enough water to grow natural grass on their lawn. FTFY.
troyvit 4mo ago
Is this a yes-and kind of thing or a no-but? I'm asking because maybe water serves as a good indicator for the other resource consumption issues around data-centers. Most of the water issues are are directly related to the energy and rare-earth issues you're talking about. This paper covers the scope of energy, consumption, and downstream water usage for servers: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3724499 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3724499 So yeah, I don't think water is a red herring but more like a canary.
TitaRusell 4mo ago
It's almost as if there are some very powerful forces that want to discredit political dissent.
al_borland 4mo ago
It’s all of these things. People want water for humans, not technology of questionable utility. They also don’t want their power bill going up due to dramatically increased demand from the data centers.

jrflo 4mo ago

What drives me nuts about this whole water consumption discourse, is no one ever asks what happens to the water when it's used- it gets evaporated! It re-enters the water cycle as pure water! It's not like it's getting destroyed or turned into some unusable sludge, it'll just rain back down again in a few weeks. Obviously, you still shouldn't build datacenters in areas that are locally water-stressed as that will add additional burden to the infrastructure.

cyanydeez 4mo ago
yeah, why dont the dehydrated cattle and starving children appreciate the global hydrologic cycle
paulddraper 4mo ago
1. The discourse is indeed idiotic. Data centers use less water than the (usually agriculture) purposes that land has already been zoned for. 2. “It just gets evaporated” is not a good take either. Fresh versus salt water matter, and their distribution matter a lot too.
eventualcomp 4mo ago
The fact that a datacenter is evaporating X gallons of water in a period implies that a datacenter is ingesting X gallons of water (if less, the datacenter dries out, if more the datacenter floods) - meaning X gallons are now locked out of the water cycle. Meaning it rains back down and gets slurped back up. This is under the happy assumption that all used water evaporates into a cloud directly above the source region, which rains back directly.
- avmich 4mo ago
  How much water is contained inside the datacenter at any given moment? That's how much water is taken from circulation by this datacenter. Is it enough to worry?
  - eventualcomp 4mo ago
    There is also buffer for clean water required - Y gallons on-hand at the datacenter. You can see the other replies in this parent comment demonstrating the tight ongoing humidity requirements, and how clean water is sprayed onto the actual hardware to cool it off, and more. Evidently this can't be done by setting up a giant funnel above the datacenter to collect rainwater. Given those considerations I expect Y to be pretty large.

h4kunamata 4mo ago

And yet the population have to ration it because there is no enough water. This math isn't "mathing".

MisterMower 4mo ago

People have difficulty visualizing large volumes of water. A square mile filled up to one foot with water is 208,544,914 gallons. 2.5 billion gallons of water would fill up this same square mile to only 12 feet. It’s the size of tiny lake. For context, Lake Meade has about 250 square miles of surface area and an average depth of 180 feet. The reservoir my city of half a million people gets its water from is 15 square miles and 20 feet deep. 2.5 billion gallons is maybe 5% of our reservoir’s total volume. This headline is textbook fearmongering. They are intentionally misrepresenting the magnitude of water usage to make you fear data centers. There are plenty of reasons to be wary of them, but water usage is not one of them. The authors of this article are either assuming you’re to dumb to do simple volume conversions or worse, too stupid to do them themselves. I suspect the latter since they use inconsistent units throughout the article. Liters per kWh, cubic meters, gallons, etc. You don’t hate journalists enough.