• SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Same with water usage. Everybody has to reduce water, not wash cars while industry and agriculture who use like ¾ of the water don’t do anything

      • thunderfist@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Juts search for “AI water consumption” or “data center water consumption”. I’ll agree that “we could be using this to wash our cars” is a silly argument, but water shortages affect between 2 and 3 billion people every year (https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/imminent-risk-global-water-crisis-warns-un-world-water-development-report-2023). We could be doing more with this water than cloud computing and AI.

        • stonehopper@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Wait a sec, how do they consume water for cooling, i thought it’s in a closed loop as its purpose is only transferring heat

          • thunderfist@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Some facilities is do this. They’re not 100% efficient, so some is lost to evaporation, some must be dumped because it has too much mineral content (and too much conductivity) to go back through the cooling system. Reusing is only about 50% efficient (according to Google’s numbers).

          • scutiger@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            On a standard PC, you can easily have a loop because the radiator is big enough to exhause all that heat. But when your computer or cluster puts out multiple thousands of watts of heat, eventually you need to get rid of tge hot water and replace it with cold water. And when it gets even hotter, you need a steady stream of cold water that immediately gets dumped.

          • Krauerking@lemy.lol
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            6 months ago

            Half a liter per kilowatt hour. That’s the average water use

            It’s like the idea of recycling plastics with water.
            Not all of it is reusable to the same degree. A good portion of water has to be evaporated off to cool down the exterior towers plus water isn’t really infinitely usable in these loops. It gets gross or full of materials.

            Another thing that people need to remember is generating electricity uses the water here as we literally don’t use many methods that don’t involve water, we are not on a green grid and neither are these huge data centers for the most part. We boil it for the electricity then have to use additional to clean the system after.

          • psud@aussie.zone
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            6 months ago

            If you live in a low humidity area you can cool with an evaporative cooler cheaper than with air con. Evaporative coolers consume quite a bit of water

          • nickwitha_k (he/him)@lemmy.sdf.org
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            6 months ago

            Not really. Look at California agriculture. You’ve got immense and unsustainable amounts of water going to almonds, pistachios, and other cash crops (not to mention animal feed for the Saudis) with voracious demand for more water, despite it causing damage to the water sources.

            • psud@aussie.zone
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              6 months ago

              The big problem crop for water in California is almonds.

              The big problem crop for water in Australia is cotton.

              The big problem crop for water anywhere is not beef

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        The US massively overproduces food. We absolutely can afford to not water some of those crops.

        • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
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          6 months ago

          The US massively overuses cars. You can absolutely afford to not wash your car.

            • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
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              6 months ago

              You can just… not wash your car. It literally doesn’t matter. If water rationing is in effect, washing your car should be the least of your concerns.

              • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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                6 months ago

                I don’t care about washing my car. I care that they’re moderating our car washing while allowing foreign businessmen to use as much water as they want on hay that gets exported. And that could be fine if they were doing it in the Mid West. No, they’re doing it in Phoenix, Arizona. A region that knows it’s counting down to a zero day.

                So while I’m not washing my car, they shouldn’t be watering those crops.

              • nBodyProblem@lemmy.world
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                6 months ago

                Not washing cars results in long term damage to the car. If you have a 200k mile shitbox with peeling clear coat, sure, you don’t need to wash it because it probably won’t matter.

                If you have something nice with good paint, washing is an important maintenance item

              • UltraGiGaGigantic@lemm.ee
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                6 months ago

                If you don’t wash your car and you’ll get corrosion from the salt on the road. If you live where it snows of course.

                • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
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                  6 months ago

                  This person is talking about being from the desert, so yeah, no sympathy here. The Fremen could figure out that water shouldn’t be wasted when it’s scarce.

          • TheKMAP@lemmynsfw.com
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            6 months ago

            If the cars are overused that means they require more maintenance, not less. I want walkable places but that’s not the argument to make lol

          • psud@aussie.zone
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            6 months ago

            If you wash a car it uses less fuel. Dirt makes cars less aerodynamic.

        • Wooki@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          lol fresh food is like all public health and wellbeing is non existent unless its been heavily industrialised to make as much money out of it as possible.

          • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Farmers’markets exist but in many cases they’re more expensive than buying at the grocery store. At any rate we already pay Ag corps to leave land fallow so the West and Mid West doesn’t get over farmed again. Telling them to water only 95 percent of their cash crops shouldn’t be a problem.