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Irrespective of how this number is calculated, whether is blue/green water etc here is some comparison data for context, since I personally think that hearing b
by thevinter 23d ago
Irrespective of how this number is calculated, whether is blue/green water etc here is some comparison data for context, since I personally think that hearing big numbers without any point of reference is pointless.
Annual withdrawals (2015)
- Thermoelectric power: ~48.5 trillion gal
- Irrigation: ~43.1 trillion gal
- Public supply: ~14.2 trillion gal
- Self-supplied industrial: ~5.4 trillion gal
- Aquaculture: ~2.76 trillion gal
- Mining: ~1.46 trillion gal
- Livestock: ~730 billion gal
- Total: ~117.5 trillion gal (322 Bgal/day)
Source: Estimated use of water in the United States in 2015: U.S. Geological Survey Circular - https://doi.org/10.3133/cir1441 https://doi.org/10.3133/cir1441
- paxys 23d agoAlmond farming - ~1.5 trillion gal (1.1 gal per almond)
- shimman 23d agoI value almonds more than LLM slop.
- dgellow 23d agoI hate almonds and agree with you
- Marha01 23d agoI hate almonds and love LLMs.
- letmevoteplease 23d agoI think most of the people who act like this are secretly using ChatGPT like a Republican on Grindr.
- shimman 23d agoYes I use LLMs at work because I'm "highly encouraged" to as a condition to keep my job. All I see is more paying customers finding more bugs and having a worse experience using our products.
- skinfaxi 23d agoYou don't see the issues with your line of thinking? You get to absolve yourself of the responsibilities of your choice because "someone is making you" use it? How can you say you value almonds more than LLM slop when your individual choices don't reflect those values?
- WarmWash 23d agoThey live in a country where you are not allowed to change jobs.
- shimman 23d agoWell let's not shit post so hastily because it's not my company. I don't have dominion over my peers, and I don't have authority to lead initiatives as worker. I do what they say or I get fired. It's pretty simple, this isn't a unique experience for the vast majority of workers either. Also telling people to simply leave is very anti-human + anti-democratic. Workers should have the right to have a say in the company, they are the ones that do the work after all. Telling people to simply leave just favors those with money compared to those without. There's also the whole you know... losing access to healthcare when quitting jobs; also IDK if you've been in a coma the last 3 years but the tech winter is still ongoing, LLM induced mania hasn't resulted in downstream companies hiring more.
- tester756 23d agoHoly shit, so much precious water used just for almond?
- spogbiper 23d agoOnly 0.5 trillion gallons is precious water, the rest is just regular water
- deleted 23d ago[deleted]
- dgellow 23d agoYou have to look at the local level, water isn’t distributed the same way around a country as large as the US. Some regions have no water problems while others have a lot of consumption and competition to get access to it
- mr_roboto 23d agoYeah in a lot of areas water is the opposite of scarce, practically free, and your bill is 98% infrastructure fees.
- zug_zug 23d agoYeah that's fair. I haven't seen a single article doing that though (from either side) and I honestly think that nobody would even trust these companies at this point (Meta et al) to give an honest analysis anyways.
- dgellow 23d agoAgreed, reporting on anything technical like DCs is very surface level. Just some aggregated numbers and a list of grievances or random quotes from someone with conflict of interests
- zug_zug 23d agoGood context, but aren't many of your examples simply putting that water back into the ground? Also, where the water is taken from is the key issue. If this was ocean water nobody would care, but if it's Reston, VA that's a local issue.
- KennyBlanken 23d agoI'm not sure what led you to believe that the water is being put back into the ground "simply" or otherwise but maybe you shouldn't be acting like it's a non-issue when you clearly don't understand the problem. DCs are pumping the water through evaporative cooling towers because the latent heat of vaporizaton means there's a huge amount of heat sucked up in the phase change from liquid to vapor. None of the water is being "put back into the ground" except maybe that used during flushing and other maintenance. "Dry" cooling exists, where there is a closed coolant or refrigerant loop run through radiators, but those require more power, which increases cost and limits how much power can be used for compute (but they also get the say "it makes us use more power, bad for the environment! We're being Green by using evaporative cooling!")
- zug_zug 23d agoNo I'm saying that water used in mining likely goes back into the ground.
- KennyBlanken 23d agoThen maybe you should have said that the first time.
- deleted 23d ago[deleted]
- doikor 23d agoThe water that evaporates during cooling does rain down somewhere else at some point. It isn’t like the water magically disappears. It just gets turned into moisture in the air. Though that can be very far away depriving the local environment or other industry of the water. Extra bad if that water is pumped up ground water.
- everdrive 23d agoI don't hate data centers any less. That's 17B gallons wasted on something I don't care about and actively want less of.
- gos9 22d agowomp womp
- trentor 23d agoHN Thread with a whataboutism comment as top voted? Must be the datacenter water thingy again. It's always a rhyme of the same comment.
- myrmidon 23d agoIf you need to denigrate pure context as "whataboutism", then maybe your core argument is trash? I mean, sure, lets not build datacenters that are 100% evaporation-cooled into each desert-oasis. But if general water availability is your concern, than datacenters are so far down the priority list that any argument involving them is just laughable. And if you are against datacenters, then find a proper argument instead of making environmentalism look stupid.
- trentor 23d agoDatacenter water usage exploded over the last year… “Here, look how much water gets used by everyone flushing their toilets.” I don’t even care about that comparison. They’ll do whatever they’re going to do. But throwing around random numbers about water usage doesn’t make the point you think you’re making. It’s deflection, and nothing more. Not every random datapoint is context just because it uses the same metric. It’s basically: “Frank is 8 years old and still poops his pants. So if he can do it, I can poop my pants too, Mom.”
- wraptile 23d ago> Livestock: ~730 billion gal This is a good illustration how cursed the datacenter topic has become when people go out of their minds on computer cooling while continuing to eat meat which lets be perfectly clear - is mostly for entertainment purposes. I had someone berate me for defending datacenter water use and their last post was literally a cheese burger.
- zug_zug 23d agoWell the thing with the livestock is that you have to give a cow water. Datacenters do not need water. It is just slightly cheaper for them than cooling with electricity. Datacenters should be required by law to pay to build adequate power generation and infrastructure to pay for their consumption, and ideally in a way where it isn't a ghastly eyesore.
- jp191919 23d agoWe do not need meat.
- LaSombra 23d agoWe do not need more datacenters as well.
- zug_zug 23d agoDatacenters have a readily available substitute to water if they just make less profit. I'm not giving up my meat so that datacenters can use it for cooling, if that's what you're suggesting.
- raincole 23d agoSo? Many people are not willing to give up their cloud services either? And there are other kinds of meat that cost less water to produce. I don't think someone who isn't willing to give up beef for chicken is at a higher moral ground than someone who wants cheap tokens.
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- paroneayea 23d agoThe report says that water consumption tripled due to AI datacenters, in 2023! Most of it was on electricity generation to support the datacenters. But that's tripled of water use across all sectors due to datacenter buildout. So no "comparison" to other uses is needed. EDIT: Ah, I did misread it. Sorry!
- jcranmer 23d agoNo, it doesn't. It says that datacenters now use 3× the amount of water they used to use--it's specifically limited to that very, very narrow sector.
- naasking 23d ago> But that's tripled of water use across all sectors due to datacenter buildout. So no "comparison" to other uses is needed. You're saying almond farm water use tripled due to data center buildout? What other meaning of "all sectors" could make sense of this claim? The report clearly says 17 billion while all other sectors are in the trillions.
- patwolf 23d agoNice perspective. So even if all these data centers were built in the desert, it's entirely within the realm of possibility to transport 17B gallons of water, unlike the 43 trillion used for irrigation. Some back-of-the-napkin math: - A truck holds 5000 gallons - It would take 3.5 million trips to transport that much - If each trip was 500 miles roundtrip, that's about 2 billion miles - Trucks travel 140 billion miles each year in the US. That would add less than 2% to the total miles - The trucking industry is about $1 trillion in revenue per year. So 2% of that is $20 billion total to transport 17 billion gallons. Or around $1 per gallon.
- teeray 23d agoThe problem is that these comparisons do not have equal utility. Trying to compare them to AI datacenter consumption is equivalent to justifying a gambling habit on a fixed income because groceries consume plenty of dollars as well.
- thevinter 23d agoIf I can afford to spend 10k$ on groceries every month then surely 10$ in gambling isn't all that bad?
- Marha01 23d ago> The problem is that these comparisons do not have equal utility. That's just your opinion, though. I would prefer a purely vegerarian society with advanced AI that can cure cancer or discover new maths to society with meat and no AI.
- teeray 23d agoYour stated preferences confirms that the listed items are not of equal utility. Clearly you value some over others.
- preg_match 22d agoRight, but the utility goes in the other direction, not the one you’re maybe thinking. Meat is basically optional, you don’t need meat to be healthy or happy. There are vegetarian body builders. Meat has, probably, negative value on most American’s lives, due to its contribution to heart disease. That’s not to say meat isn’t tasty. It is. But from an objective standpoint, the value is ehhh. Arguably, AI has much more value, and for 1/100th the water cost. Hey, that’s pretty good!
- simonw 23d agoUS golf courses hit 531 billion gallons in 2024 (1.63 million acre-feet) https://www.gcsaa.org/who-we-are/media/news-release/2025-news-releases/2025/12/30/golf-courses-reduce-water-usage-by-31-percent-according-to-national-survey https://www.gcsaa.org/who-we-are/media/news-release/2025-new...