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I want to understand if we're really comparing apples to apples. What does 'consumption' mean in these contexts? How much of the water returns to the local wate

I want to understand if we're really comparing apples to apples. What does 'consumption' mean in these contexts? How much of the water returns to the local water table vs evaporation vs becomes waste water?

WarmWash 22d ago
Well in agriculture the water "consumed" is returned with a whole bunch of chemical runoff. In datacenters the water "consumed" is returned with a whole bunch of...water.
- etiennebausson 22d ago
  heat, too.
- dgellow 22d ago
  The question is how much is returned to the original source. Given that the water is ~100% evaporated in the case of DCs it’s a genuine and reasonable question to ask
- shimman 22d ago
  No, the water is extremely hot. It takes a massive amount of infrastructure before this water can be "released." Unless you are one of those massive polluters that think discharging extremely hot water into the ground is safe and not something that immediately kills the life it's dumped into.
myrmidon 22d ago
At least ~30% of water is evaporated when you use it in agriculture (that is the whole point; plants typically don't go the the trouble of absorbing water just to pump it back into the ground). Even if you use such an extremely conservative ratio (and assume that all water used in datacenters is 100% evaporated away for cooling) the argument stands.