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!
I found this video from Hank Green interesting, it might give you the answers you're looking for. Also, as bad as AI's water consumption might sound, corn. Corn is the real problem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_c6MWk7PQc
Imagine what it'd be like if we had never believed the lie that our best friend hemp is a demon called marijuana, a century ago.
Oh wow. Someone downvoted that. ... Someone yet to read up (at least) about what (famous prohibitionist) Harry J Anslinger and (his uncle the timber and newspaper baron) Randolf William Hearst did?
Jup, honest reaction here. Data centers are not the core of the problem. That drought would have hit anyways. You lost entire lakes over the last decade and did not change anything to address that. Over farming and substitution of the wrong crops and very weird water rights due to that, leading to over watering etc.
There's been warnings about the depletion of the huge aquifers under the US for years, decades even, for similar reasons. Taking it out far faster than it can possibly replenish itself. Data centers are just yet another input doing the same thing.
The ridiculousness of it is some of the populated areas in the west coast, surviving where large cities shouldn't be able to thanks to pumping so much water to them. That is going to break badly. Also good examples of the water rights stuff that's built up over the years. Climate Town had a good video on that mess once, it's crazy.