Hi there everyone,
Let me start this by saying that this is an honest question. I figure nobody would be better suited to answer my question than a group laser-focused on the negatives of the technology.
I see these types of memes a lot and see statistics of gallons consumed in a lot of articles I read. What I don’t understand though is where the water goes that it can’t be reclaimed or naturally return from a gas to a liquid.
As a kid(long ago), I was taught of the cycle of rain and the conversion between gases and liquid. It’s my understanding that when a liquid is used to cool something, it also follows the same conversion process as it cools.
Could someone explain to me what’s going on in this process where the 264 billion gallons of water used in the meme do not return to a liquid state?
I would appreciate any insight into the process that seems to defy this cycle that I am missing. Like I said prior, my knowledge of this process ended in middle school science class so I’m confident that I’m missing something.
Thanks for your time!
Yeah I don’t like how water usage is coined as “usage”, as if it’s removed and never to be seen on the face of the Earth again. For AI centers using evaporative cooling, it evaporates. So yes it enters the atmosphere and the water cycle again. This is an issue where we already drink the river dry such as LA or the Colorado river basin. For closed loop cycles, it charges once and basically that’s it. There are always some losses due to leaks, maintenance, etc, so you may hear them say ‘it uses less than a golf course’. Let the downvotes commence!
A good chunk of the issue is the water is taken from freshwater reserves which do not get replenished by rain/snow as fast as they are drained. Most of that rain ends up in the oceans and becomes non-potable water.
That being said, data centers are still dwarfed in fresh water consumption by agriculture. Kyle Hill did a video a month or so back comparing consumption rates of fresh water from tech vs food - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wx7ToT0G0qo
But water for food makes sense…maybe they grow crops in wrong zones needing more water than normal. But its still food.