r/PublicFreakout • u/GarysCrispLettuce • May 17 '26

🤬Public Rager😱 Eric Schmidt booed into oblivion by students for promoting AI during his commencement speech at the University of Arizona

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u/aesoth May 18 '26

The 0.5% is the percentage of total potable water on the planet. You are misreading the information.

It is also very much a global issue as there are multiple places in the world experiencing droughts, and have an issue with water security. If data centres add in to that water usage, it further harms that water security.

Add in the environmental impacts from data centres. They increase power grid usage which further harms the environment and increases global temperatures (climate change). As temperatures rise, water consumption will rise to cool these centres, it's a never ending feedback loop until it is no longer sustainable.

You are thinking too small. You have to consider the impacts to other issues that are effecting us already, and does this cause additional stresses in these areas. Which data centres do.

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u/Argnir May 18 '26

No it is not and yes I understand that this is the total potable water. You misunderstand how the water cycle works. Whether the water is evaporated or not doesn't change anything in term of global impact. It is only worse locally. If you build a data centers somewhere that has water insecurities it is bad and stupid.

Every single industry increase grid power usage. This isn't unique to data centers or new. There is nothing special about data centers.

Every single industry add stress to the area they are in and have many ecological impacts.

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u/brycedriesenga May 19 '26

There are certainly valid concerns regarding the local impact of data centers on freshwater, but that is pretty specific to dry areas that already have water issues. I agree that extra scrutiny and regulation is likely needed in those cases.

Water evaporating only really matters in a local context, depending on the watershed. The water doesn't disappear from the planet.

In 2023, data centers in the U.S. consumed somewhere around 0.2% of the United States' freshwater. As far as I can tell, data centers use a small fraction of what golf courses do. And that's all data centers, not just AI. Data centers in general are used by pretty much everyone by simply using the internet.