alt Hacker NewsPeople keep comparing datacenter water use to agricultural water use, and it doesn't make sense to me. I can't tell if it's a bad-faith comparison or if people really know that little about how water is used in these industries.
The vast majority of agricultural water use is either tapped directly from groundwater, drawn directly from surface sources, or rain. The vast majority of datacenter water use is processed water from a municipal water utility. In other words, it is meaningless to compare the two, because only one is competing with residential use, and so only one is worth caring about.
That's not to detract from serious concerns about e.g. overutilization of the Colorado River, or the idiotic practice of irrigating deserts, but it is to say that comparing datacenters to agriculture makes very little sense.
Replies
Bringing up agriculture is definitely a bad faith attack.
People need to eat, it's non negotiable. We do not need data centres.
It doesn't make sense to me either, but in a different way...
We need the food, we'll die without food, telling people to eat less of whatever food, so a few "tech bros" can build a new datacenter is outright evil.
edit: considering this is HN and the downvotes, people here prefer datacenters over food