alt Hacker News> 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.
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Mmm most datacenters i went to were in the middle of nowhere, sharing land with farms (and oil/gas mining)
> But on the other hand; yes, it would also help enormously if people ate less meat.
At first you had me, but then I realised it's not true if the price is building more data centres! That was just a trick to make the climate worse! Grr /s
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.
> causing a strain on local resources
By “strain on local resources” are you just stating the fact that they use resources? Or are you trying to imply that it causes problems for those resources?
Companies don’t just buy land, connect to water and power, and then the utilities get caught off guard when the water system is suddenly strained by water going somewhere. There are processes for approving this before connection.
If a new project is causing a “strain on resources” then the utility planners have failed that community.