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 the water used in evaporative cooling on the data canter roofs does later condense as rain somewhere again, but the issue is that it will be far away from the location by then, so that's no relief for the local water network that is taxed by the demand.
To tack onto this; For recondensing the water you also need a cold area, if you've got a heat source such as thousands of computers worth of cooling towers and hundreds of diesel/gas turbine generators running in one spot, you've got a recipe for a hot, humid patch of atmosphere in the area surrounding the datacenter which can hold a lot of water and take it away fron the area.
Do this enough times in one country and it creates a heat dome of hot humid air made of their drinking water, combine that with global rising temperatures and any human or animal body in the area becomes physically incapable of shedding any heat because the outside temperature and humidity prevents their sweat from evaporating.