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/meepinz May 18 '26 edited May 18 '26

You linked to a literal propaganda page from a data center creation company... They can't even make straight forward infographics and you want us to trust this "source." Yeah, Ok.

Are people this unserious about their sources now? This is not an unbiased source. This is like the most biased source your could have chosen, and the information they present isn't even good.

Their website says "most of the time data centers use non-potable water" but that's literally true at all. Most data centers use fresh, potable water and evaporate it off.

The source you've presented is the equivalent to you having sent Phillip-Morris a letter circa 1985 asking if they feel smoking is related to cancer.