The Claude logo spinning is quite an unsettling thing to see.
monster_truck 1 days ago [-]
I'm just not sure I understand what point they're trying to make.
Honestly, 6500 households of water a day is nothing. Individual cities often write more than this off in a day when rain overwhelms their watershed systems.
Even with perfect watershed recovery our ability to treat, utilize, and transport it back without losses is a far bigger concern. The average age of pipes in the US is approaching 50 years old. I've seen reports project the US will need to invest nearly 1T in the next 15 years to sustain the current system and rate of growth.
Hell, there was a 54 inch water main break in Detroit this winter that flooded ~120 homes. A conservative estimate for a pipe of that size leaking all of its water for 5-6 hours is 20-25,000,000 gallons of water. We're going to be seeing a lot more of that.
Another thing I see overlooked constantly is that many of these DCs are augmented with their own filtration systems which allow them to primarily consume greywater for a net gain.
maxerickson 1 days ago [-]
Municipal water drawn from the Great Lakes is mostly borrowed for a short time. There's energy costs to treating it for potability and then treating the wastewater, but not really a change to how much water is available.
monster_truck 23 hours ago [-]
That completely misses the point, it's a harbinger. This area is seeing it first because it is largely floodplains on top of clay coupled with a decent amount of rain and a consistent freeze-thaw cycle.
Merely building a functioning bypass for a pipe of this size at this depth takes the better part of a year. Replacing it? Out in the suburbs some of the projects to repair pipes from the 40s that leaked and caused sinkholes are still ongoing, they started over 20 years ago.
Osyris 1 days ago [-]
I was under the impression data centers use closed loop cooling.
archon1410 1 days ago [-]
I had the same impression, but apparently not.
> Many data centers rely on evaporative cooling, or “swamp cooling,” where warm air is drawn through wet pads. Data centers typically evaporate about 80% of the water they draw, discharging 20% back to a wastewater treatment facility, according to Shaolei Ren, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Riverside.
OptionOfT 23 hours ago [-]
The refrigerant is closed loop, but the condensers are sprayed with water which are much more efficient at removing heat than a fan + air.
I did some research on additional cost of water + increased efficiency of the condenser, but it's not just that. The water needs to be treated, otherwise it leaves way too much sediment.
matt-p 22 hours ago [-]
AI data centres rarely actually need to resort to using water because they're using DTC and not air cooling, so we're looking at cooling 60 degree Celsius water down to ~40 which you can do compressorless with dry coolers alone. In practice many will use cooling towers instead or aswell but they still don't need to evaporate nearly as much water as a normal low density data centre would per KW.
By the way "spray the condenser" technology is very very rare because it's pretty much worst of both worlds and nowhere near as good or efficient as a cooling tower but much more maintenance than a dry cooler + compressor. Typically for high efficiency modern sites you'd be looking at cooling towers or dry cooler + compressor for water facilities or spray the water directly onto the air (direct or indirect adiabatic) for air based facilities.
To complicate things many (typically city DCs/Colos/ enterprise facilities) are air based facilities that convert to water by using heat exchangers in the datahalls.
ijustlovemath 1 days ago [-]
It's much cheaper just keep pulling in cool water than it is to cool it yourself
bilsbie 1 days ago [-]
Welcome to Gelman amnesia.
nativeit 24 hours ago [-]
I'm not inclined to endorse continued data center construction for much of anything, AI especially, but I was a little curious about how they determined what areas qualify as "high-stress" water conditions? Because they show red squares where I live (near Charlotte, NC) and we are pretty firmly within the normal range of precipitation and water levels. If anything, it's been wetter in the last 10-years than at any point in my lifetime.
grej 23 hours ago [-]
The conflation of AI and use of natural resources / energy use is mostly a political choice and a straw man.
rpmisms 1 days ago [-]
So put datacenters in Tennessee. We have tons of water and hydroelectric power.
Havoc 1 days ago [-]
Surprised there isn't more of a push to align compute with suitable geography frankly.
A lot of stuff doesn't need 10ms latency. Why not move it somewhere that has geothermal, or abundant water, or say an ocean to dump heat into.
Seems like the approach is always to bring the resource to the datacenter instead
Well I guess they should not be building these data centers in areas with no water and high ave Temps. Where they are building having these issues are a surprise to no one.
There are areas with lots of land, water and much lower ave air temps in the US and some have empty buildings that can be retrofitted for use as data centers. But no, lets build in places that allow the company treat their employees as slaves.
ashoeafoot 23 hours ago [-]
why not built near the ocean and use saltwater or brackwater as coolant?
when you get older and get past the "it was posted on the internet and therefore must be addressed rationally" thing then you might get by with "it's bloomberg" and get on with your day. don't let all these rumour mongering media companies waste your time
bobbylarrybobby 1 days ago [-]
Eh, I'd focus on agriculture first. AI is a drop in the bucket compared to what it takes to grow a cow or an almond.
bb88 1 days ago [-]
Step 1 is simpler. Get rid of farming in the desert first.
Back in 2017, I went to see the eclipse at Madras, Oregon. If you don't know the area, it's arid. Yet, on the outskirts of Madras, green fields were irrigated by spray every morning.
What crop was so valuable that they would use precious water in a near desert? They were growing Kentucky bluegrass for lawn seed.
Yeah, stop subsidizing agriculture in arid lands.
OptionOfT 23 hours ago [-]
I often wonder about this. Is it actually cheaper to farm near water, or farm in a hot climate and import water (e.g. CA & AZ).
4ndrewl 1 days ago [-]
You can't eat a hyper realistic picture of a dog in a suit.
smilliken 24 hours ago [-]
Would you concede the point if I produce a photo as proof?
I'd rate basic necessities like food 4000x more important than data centers too
mmoskal 1 days ago [-]
I don't know. I suspect most people rate data centers higher than almond milk...
wintermutestwin 1 days ago [-]
Of course! But what about all of the agriculture that gets exported? In CA, it is over half of almonds and ~15% of alfalfa (cattle feed).
bcrl 22 hours ago [-]
Get rid of the corn subsidies and production will shift to more sustainable crops that don't result in high fructose corn syrup being overused and increasing rates of diabetes and obesity.
1 days ago [-]
1 days ago [-]
osigurdson 1 days ago [-]
If we could just get rid of these darn living creatures we would use much less water.
anthk 1 days ago [-]
That's what I'd love Markov bullshit generators make these crawlers implode with metacircular nonsense. That and Gzip bombs.
roschdal 1 days ago [-]
Artificial Intelligence is for people without enough natural intelligence.
bilsbie 1 days ago [-]
I’m hugely pro conservation, clean air and water, etc.
But modern environmentalism is a religion and this is how it works. Any human advancement needs a narrative on how it hurts the planet.
healsdata 1 days ago [-]
Have you considered you have cause-and-effect backwards? Any human advancement hurts the planet and then the burden is on environmentalists to bring awareness?
Why would a for-profit not hurt the environment for more profit if it isn't illegal and won't get them sued (for more than they profited)? There's a rich history of them doing exactly that. Similarly, governments have done horrific environmental damage and it was up to environmentalists to create the awareness to make it stop.
I honestly don't know how you can look at a world with record numbers of wildfires, communities fighting over water supplies, and for-profit companies say that water beyond subsistence levels isn't a human right and think "oh yeah, environmentalists are looking for a reason why this water-consuming thing is bad".
Especially when the same technology could be powered in a way that doesn't pollute as much and cooled in a way that doesn't consume as much water -- if only the environment was more important than shareholders.
bilsbie 10 hours ago [-]
Like I said I’m on your team and extremely pro environment. I just see media alarmism in this issue and think there are more important things to focus on.
but I’m willing to ask:
what’s your data on how water is being used improperly on these data centers? And what is the documented harm? Are plants and animals downstream of a data center dying from lack of water?
Also keep in mind the funny thing about water alarmism is that even after water is used it stays in earths water cycle. Watering crops returns to aquifers. Evaporated water rains down somewhere else. It’a not like oil we used once and it’s gone.
healsdata 1 hours ago [-]
You commented on an article that contains data and said it was alarmist. From my perspective, that means you're not even open to hearing data because you've already decided. If you had problems with the data provided, you would have refuted it instead of resorting to ad hominem attacks.
josu 1 days ago [-]
We already went through this with crypto mining; the oceans didn't boil, the world didn't end.
bb88 1 days ago [-]
Etherium also went to proof of stake. Apparently it's going swimmingly.
add-sub-mul-div 1 days ago [-]
Tell me more about your impression of the timescale that climate change would progress at.
mschuster91 1 days ago [-]
Yeah because the crypto world underwent a bunch of disastrous rug-pulls and large scale scandals that scared people off. And frankly I'm happy about this, the moment I started (and I'm not joking here) taxi drivers and hairdressers talking about NFTs I was pretty certain (and hopeful) that the bubble was about to burst.
Honestly, 6500 households of water a day is nothing. Individual cities often write more than this off in a day when rain overwhelms their watershed systems.
Even with perfect watershed recovery our ability to treat, utilize, and transport it back without losses is a far bigger concern. The average age of pipes in the US is approaching 50 years old. I've seen reports project the US will need to invest nearly 1T in the next 15 years to sustain the current system and rate of growth.
Hell, there was a 54 inch water main break in Detroit this winter that flooded ~120 homes. A conservative estimate for a pipe of that size leaking all of its water for 5-6 hours is 20-25,000,000 gallons of water. We're going to be seeing a lot more of that.
Another thing I see overlooked constantly is that many of these DCs are augmented with their own filtration systems which allow them to primarily consume greywater for a net gain.
Merely building a functioning bypass for a pipe of this size at this depth takes the better part of a year. Replacing it? Out in the suburbs some of the projects to repair pipes from the 40s that leaked and caused sinkholes are still ongoing, they started over 20 years ago.
> Many data centers rely on evaporative cooling, or “swamp cooling,” where warm air is drawn through wet pads. Data centers typically evaporate about 80% of the water they draw, discharging 20% back to a wastewater treatment facility, according to Shaolei Ren, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Riverside.
I did some research on additional cost of water + increased efficiency of the condenser, but it's not just that. The water needs to be treated, otherwise it leaves way too much sediment.
By the way "spray the condenser" technology is very very rare because it's pretty much worst of both worlds and nowhere near as good or efficient as a cooling tower but much more maintenance than a dry cooler + compressor. Typically for high efficiency modern sites you'd be looking at cooling towers or dry cooler + compressor for water facilities or spray the water directly onto the air (direct or indirect adiabatic) for air based facilities.
To complicate things many (typically city DCs/Colos/ enterprise facilities) are air based facilities that convert to water by using heat exchangers in the datahalls.
A lot of stuff doesn't need 10ms latency. Why not move it somewhere that has geothermal, or abundant water, or say an ocean to dump heat into.
Seems like the approach is always to bring the resource to the datacenter instead
There are areas with lots of land, water and much lower ave air temps in the US and some have empty buildings that can be retrofitted for use as data centers. But no, lets build in places that allow the company treat their employees as slaves.
This a fight going on in Idaho right now:
https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/community/boise/ar...
https://archive.ph/X9nTS
If you look at a google map of Ada County Idaho, the only viable agriculture land requires watering from the Snake and Boise Rivers.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/TFPgA6nG6hMBfPcx5
What crop was so valuable that they would use precious water in a near desert? They were growing Kentucky bluegrass for lawn seed.
Yeah, stop subsidizing agriculture in arid lands.
But modern environmentalism is a religion and this is how it works. Any human advancement needs a narrative on how it hurts the planet.
Why would a for-profit not hurt the environment for more profit if it isn't illegal and won't get them sued (for more than they profited)? There's a rich history of them doing exactly that. Similarly, governments have done horrific environmental damage and it was up to environmentalists to create the awareness to make it stop.
I honestly don't know how you can look at a world with record numbers of wildfires, communities fighting over water supplies, and for-profit companies say that water beyond subsistence levels isn't a human right and think "oh yeah, environmentalists are looking for a reason why this water-consuming thing is bad".
Especially when the same technology could be powered in a way that doesn't pollute as much and cooled in a way that doesn't consume as much water -- if only the environment was more important than shareholders.
what’s your data on how water is being used improperly on these data centers? And what is the documented harm? Are plants and animals downstream of a data center dying from lack of water?
Also keep in mind the funny thing about water alarmism is that even after water is used it stays in earths water cycle. Watering crops returns to aquifers. Evaporated water rains down somewhere else. It’a not like oil we used once and it’s gone.