Thread

1. stingraycharles · 1790769649 · focus · HN ↗

   Playing the devil’s advocate: don’t “freedom of information” laws mostly apply to government agencies? If so, why would a private company provide this information?

   I personally believe at the very least the water usage is heavily overblown compared to the agriculture industry. Elecricity is a different issue, and governments should consider reporting requirements or something like that.

   Being angry with datacenter providers is not the solution. And they also need to be built somewhere, and that place is probably best where electricity is abundant and/or cheap.

   1. n4r9 · 1790771200 · focus · HN ↗

      > the water usage is heavily overblown compared to the agriculture industry

      Data centers tend to concentrate their water usage within urban areas, causing a strain on local resources. The value of their output is much less tangible. Their water consumption scales up around tenfold if you consider the indirect usage from generating the electricity.

      But on the other hand; yes, it would also help enormously if people ate less meat.

      1. kemotep · 1790772079 · focus · HN ↗

         Essentially, telling people to go vegan and get rid of their golf courses is going to piss them off, hence the reaction people have to being told that datacenters are more important than their comfort.

         1. bayindirh · 1790772637 · focus · HN ↗

            It's not black and white as it looks.

            I'm personally willing to change my life to help the planet and nature in general to the point it doesn't affect my wellbeing (as in health and safety). For me, personally, the problem is not changing per se, but people finding no amount of change enough, always moving the goalposts with "but, what if" clauses.

            The problem with datacenter water use is the state of the water leaving the data center. Agriculture and meat industry can reuse the water multiple times from cleaner to dirtier processes and return it to the nature with reasonable processing.

            The additives used by datacenters in some cases can't be filtered or processed out practically or in economically viable ways, so the water returns back as unusable, esp. if they get water from a body of water and return it with added chemicals the process gets very damaging.

            1. Dylan16807 · 1790774352 · focus · HN ↗

               Additives like what?

               We're talking about water that's released in general use, right? I would expect a closed cooling loop to have some biocides but have almost none of that leave the system.

               And one datacenter had a weird bacteria that one time.

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