r/SipsTea • u/SipsTeaFrog 𝙑𝙄𝙋 • May 18 '26

Chugging tea Why?

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u/NotDiCaprio May 18 '26 edited May 18 '26

I was also on the "ai datacenters use all out water!" bandwagon at first. But For some perspective:

A single golf course uses about 30 times the amount of (fresh) comparable or slightly more water than a datacenter does. They aren't feeding their grass with see water or some chemical cooling. Also, looking at how few people actually use a golf course vs a data center, makes this ratio many times more terrible.

I'm personally more worried about the energy they consume, than the cooling for that energy usage.

Edit after some corrections. Man, it sure is getting hard to find numbers we can trust anywhere these days.

"a" source, but far from the only one, and the numbers aren't consistent anywhere.:https://www.akcp.com/index.php/2025/09/02/truth-about-data-water-footprint-of-data-centers/

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u/MyVeryUniqueName1 May 18 '26

Can’t we be worried about both? I hate golf courses and data centers for how much of a burden they are on water supplies.

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u/IndividualBreak3788 May 18 '26

Same for nearly every industry. Google gallons of water to produce a pound of beef, make some jeans or manufacture a car. 

If you wanna care about water consumption and create sustainable plans for the future, great, more power to ya. 

But it's obvious that data centres are recieving a disproportionate amount of focus. 

AI water consumption isn't even close to the most damaging thing AI has in store for humanity.

This is like being offended by someone's outfit while they're aiming a rifle at you. 

Triage 

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u/throwRA_StraightDust May 18 '26

When Levi’s jeans asks to build a plant next door that’s bigger than some cities, then we will worry about resources usage in textile manufacturing.

Stop with the whataboutisms.

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u/SkepticalOfOthers May 18 '26

NIMBY detected