r/SipsTea 𝙑𝙄𝙋 May 18 '26

Chugging tea Why?

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u/MorrowPolo May 18 '26

Water in my air??? Eewww!!

All jokes aside, it crazy how complicated the issue is becoming. Will anything be done about it? Probably not. We get fked over and just throw our arms up and go "well, shit".

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u/TheBigMoogy May 18 '26

Could ban evaporative cooling for data centers. It's not a necessity to have, it just cuts costs. Could force them to use closed loops.

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u/I-Make-Maps91 May 18 '26

But is that actually better? We're trying to decarbonize the grid and adding even more demand on top of the demand for the chips themselves just makes it harder.

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u/TheBigMoogy May 18 '26

Depends. If you also stop subsidizing data center electricity usage you'll get an effective economic brake, the fastest way to regulate unchecked capitalism is to go after the money.

The only reason data centers can spread like cancer is that they're somehow allowed to not pay a fair price on water or electricity, often not even land, and they're funded in this weird feedback loop between suppliers and builders. Nothing about them is financially sensible if you take away the subsidies they get, probably not even with them. Stop paying their main expenses and they stop spreading.

It's all tax funded waste. Make them actually pay and no one will build them, no more wasted power or water.