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Well, if you compare against one of the known worst offenders you will always look better.
But also, the cattle farms at least produce food. For humans to eat. Like, we need food. We don’t need waifu chatbots.
This is the same argument as “a human baby takes years of nurture and training until it can do task too.” Like, yeah, but that’s a human. The reason we do all this shit.
Per what?
This looks to be the total number of each category. If so, it’s a useless graph. How many L/day are used per single unit. Maybe per farm/datacenter.Edit.
I did the math
3,562 Cattle farms
21,617,069 L/day/ranch5,400 data centers
416,667 L/day/data center45 AI data centers
600,000 L/day/AI data centerThis does not take into consideration the heat produced nor fossil fuels consumed by each.
If water is your only metric, cattle ranches are worse. But this isn’t a good metric for many reasons, since livestock, being food, is a commodity, while data centers are not.
Let’s normalize to technology, ans ignore beef for a moment.
AI data centers consume about 33% more water than non-AI centers.
There is not a situation where this is fine.The other part I don’t see talked about is that evaporative cooling produces water vapour, and water vapour increases greenhouse effects. Normally we don’t worry about water vapour emissions because it tends to fall out as rain or snow a couple of weeks later, but this is continuous usage. Continuous plumes of 600 tonnes of water vapour per AI data centre per day.
I think that’s more of a localized pressure, like how corn sweat makes the Midwest super humid.
whats the source of your data?
The data center, duh.
Water is a distraction. The heat and fossil fueled power consumption is the real problem. They will burn us all alive and we have to sit back and let it happen because the fascists are in power, I guess.
The largest mass of datacenters are still in construction. Using old data to pretend it’s not a problem is just gross.
They’re going to cancel all of them because the bubble is about to collapse. Using future predictions as verified fact is a stupid idea.
Oh boy, here we go again. We had this discussion two weeks ago over on [email protected] (with a cross-post to a vegan community, but please don’t go there and start harassing vegans. It was enough of a shit-show already.), where I wrote way too long of a comment, and the post got deleted afterwards. What a waste. But since it is brought up here again, I’m gonna recycle some of that and make you relive it with me. [Turns out this comment is even longer than my original one. Sorry for that.]
The best source I could find to get a rough idea of what is using how much water (in the USA) was the USGS Estimated Use of Water in the United States in 2015. (yes, there were no AI data centres in 2015, but bear with me, this is gonna be a long ride.)
One of the main problems in discussing this is that there are different kinds of water use, which luckily the USGS publication differentiates - namely “consumptive use” (water that is not available after the process) and, well, “non-consumptive use” (they report it as “reclaimed waste-water”, i.e. water that, possibly after treatment, is immediately returned to rivers or similar for further use).
As the report compares total water use, “thermoelectric” (not sure why they use that term, it’s probably supposed to be “thermal”) power generation is the biggest reported category with 41%, followed by irrigation with 37%. When looking at consumptive use, the share is vastly different - only a fraction of the water used by thermal power generation is evaporated (see page 42), it consumes “only” 4.3 BGal/day, compared to 73 BGal/day for irrigation (page 30). That’s not even in the same ballpark!
[Reveal spoiler to get ahead of people mentioning the categories livestock and irrigation in the publication]
One thing I dislike about the publication, but can’t really blame them for it, is that they separate water use for irrigation and livestock. They put livestock at 1% of water usage, but also explicitly state “The livestock category excludes on-farm domestic use, lawn and garden watering, and irrigation water use.”, meaning it is really mainly the water directly consumed by the animals, which is almost negligible compared to the crops they are fed. This wrongfully gives the impression that animal agriculture only makes up 1% of water usage.
Turns out water use != water use. However I’d argue, that people would rather agree, that the kind of water “consumed” by growing plants is more permanent than water being “consumed” by cooling power plants, where most of the water is put back into the water cycle immediately.
So now we have a rough picture of how much water is used for agriculture, and how much for (thermal) power generation.
My point would be that it is very unlikely, that AI data centres use more water than the power plants that generate their electricity (on average; not all electricity is generated in thermal power plants), especially as thermal power plants generate at least as much heat as electricity, so the power plants already need as much cooling as you’d need if you just turned their electricity into heat (which data centres basically do). But even if the data centres used as much water as all the thermal power plants in the USA, it would still only be a fraction of the water used for irrigation.
Now considering that feeding animals is less efficient in converting farmed area and water to calories for human consumption instead of directly feeding people, and it should be quite obvious, that animal products are responsible for a big portion of easily avoidable water usage (For some fun comparisons: calorie supply by food group - In the USA 72% of calories are provided by plants, the remaining 28% are some form of animal product vs global land use for food production - 80% of agricultural land is estimated to be for livestock, vs 16% for food crops (granted, livestock land includes land for grazing, but even without that, it’s 6 million km^2 for animal feed crops vs 8 million km^2 for crops for human food, so disproportionate to the amount of calories they provide))
And on top of all of that, if it wasn’t already enough - the water usage of animal agriculture hasn’t just recently started to become a problem, it has been a problem for quite some time. In the USA most aquifers are drying up including some very important ones for agriculture - and that was a problem before AI data centres sprung up everywhere
Water consumption of AI is not the main environmental problem, its energy use and especially the source of that energy is way more concerning.
The thing is that yes, we should not use AI for all the reasons that have been mentioned numerous times, but if you focus on environmental problems, then the best thing you can do is stop eating animal products. Heck, it doesn’t even cost anything. On the contrary, it would be cheaper. It doesn’t even require new technologies! Going vegan is degrowth in action.
That being said, I’ll still condemn you if you use AI, even if you are vegan.
[Bonus round - golf course water usage]
You still don’t have enough? In the now-deleted post there was also a discussion about water usage of golf courses compared to data centres. The USGA estimates golf course water usage at roughly 2 BGal/day. An insane amount, when thinking about it, but tiny compared to agriculture.
That doesn’t seem likely. And the pollution done to said water will be much different.
27 million litres that did not have to be used to generate CSAM and shitty essays.
Your argument is basically “AI is good because the beef industry is worse.” Fucking moronic. Get the fuck out of here bootlicker.
Sadly you will die with the rest of us when the cascading environmental collapse gets even worse because of AI being powered by obscene amounts of fossil fuels. Fuck you, bootlicker.
I don’t eat beef dumb fuck. I’m not the problem here. I looked at the verified data, and all you have is the word “bootlicker”.
Seeth harder pls, it amuses us. 😘
Im going to steal that
Without an as-of date, there’s no way I’d trust it. AI data centers are pretty new so it wouldn’t need to go very far back for it to be negligible.
Even if the graph is true, it’s misleading . Whatever water beef is using hasn’t really changed, but AI data Centers are a recent significant change much more likely to affect me. Depending on what you’re trying to show that is probably the wrong type of graph
I do share the fear of exponential data centre growth, but if data centres reach the amount of water consumed by animal agriculture, we’re seriously fucked.
Whatever water beef is using hasn’t really changed
It might not have changed much per kg, but overall meat consumption is up by a lot over the last few decades. So yes, it is a problem, not only because of its water use.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-meat-consumption-by-type-kilograms-per-year
but AI data Centers are a recent significant change much more likely to affect me.
Just because you don’t see the damage that is already in progress, does not mean that it doesn’t affect you. Agriculture is in the process of drying up the aquifers in the USA, and that has been a problem since before AI
The world is indeed consuming more meat but I was understanding this as a us-centric story and beef consumption has actually been trending down. We still eat too much meat but at least are choosing chicken over beef
Yes.
AI data centers are disruptive from the context. They’ve been built haphazardly and quickly. Evaporative coolers, gas turbines, big lots in urban areas; all this is done because they literally cannot wait 6 more months to construct things properly.
It’s billionaire FOMO.
So they end up spewing gas into neighborhoods or running water dry not because of sheer volume, but because they just plopped the data centers down with zero mindfulness, nor any time for infrastructure to adapt.
…But.
On the whole, their water use is minuscule.
So is their energy use compared to, say, metal foundry industries.
Or emissions compared to concrete or ranching industries. Or shipping.
Not that it makes those industries unproblematic.
And I’m counting the hardware construction here, too. Fabs are intense, the datacenter supply chain is long, but the scale really isn’t that big. Just as an example, literally every Nvidia and AMD AI GPU comes from just one complex in Taiwan. The memory comes from three. And the other components on the PCB are pretty modest too.
How do you think that compares to, say, every steel foundry on the planet? And all the coal they ingest?
And the notion that “AI” will somehow require a fraction of all human economic output is propaganda from Sam Altman to trick people into giving him money.
It’s a lie.
It’s a lie for many nested reasons. We cannot possibly use that much “AI,” and even if we did, we shouldn’t, and even if we somehow do anyway, it’s getting exponentially less intensive to run. Not more expensive. It’s all just nonsense out of his mouth, and for some reason he doesn’t get called out for it.
I’m not trying to excuse the buildout, to be clear.
But I think the resources need to be put into perspective.
I hate this kind of reasoning.
“Let’s ignore this big problem because there are other bigger problems”
The same people say shit like: “Why are you sad? There are so many people who have it even worse than you!”
All this makes us do nothing until the “smaller” problems become so big that the damage is done and then those people will say “Well, we are in too deep. It it what it is. Can’t change it now 🤡”
There’s a comet colliding with earth? Pff, the Andromeda Galaxy will collide with our galaxy, too!!!1
OP is an AI booster, check their profile.
This is an attempt to disregard the damage that’s done by slop generators, comparing it to most inefficient food source.
Hope you have a terrible day, op.
Its post history is all over the place. To me it looks like an AI bot account.
Yes. I’m vegan and anti-AI.
The numbers for data centers are likely a lot higher than this. It should include consumption for creating the building and hardware but I have a hard time believing that this is included in that number. Let alone the amount used for electricity generation.
- you can eat a cow. you cannot eat an llm.
- we should eat less cows.
- we should feed cows grass, not corn
- fuck elon musk. he promised to build a water treatment plant in memphis to cool grok and then ‘paused’ the planning. not the construction, the planning.
- pleas do not use grok.
- you should plant a garden.
I’ve seen hundreds of sexy cows and only one or two good-looking data centers.
That sentence does not read well, regardless the intent I put to it.
I am at loss if I should commend you or be horrified. If not both.
“Fuck one cow, and you’re a cow fucker. Fuck one datacenter? You’re a hero.”
“Burn a cow, you’re a monster. Burn a datacenter, become the monster monsters fear.”
- I beg to differ
chomps down on a piping hot gpu
Crunchy, yet delicious.
Hey! That’s my brain!
Talk about crunching numbers amirite?
grooooan :p
plant a garden
Yes! My family has one and we have to give away zucchinis now, there’s no way to process them. If you’re concerned about water use, research what plants naturally thrive in the climate in your area. Check if a well can be dug so you don’t need to use expensive and treated tap water.
ok so check it - we started shredding the overflow squash and cooking it down into tomatoes to make a great pasta sauce.
also zucchini bread is awesome.
We’ve tried all kinds of recipes and now have an extremely high-zucchini diet and so do the chickens, yet the freezer keeps filling up. The plants are in overdrive this year. Luckily my parents work in the town and their colleagues gladly take the extras.
do you have a magic trick for battling the squash vine borers?
Rain barrels are a really good solution to water needs for home gardens, and usually pretty inexpensive.
I got a couple of flavouring barrels from a food plant I worked at, an adapter to hook them to my downspouts, and a submersible pump that lives inside powered by a solar battery. They’re sealed so no issues with mosquitoes, and the pump feeds a garden hose so I’m not carrying buckets around. I basically never use tap water in my garden at all.
Be sure to look up local laws before getting a rain barrel. For some reason some cities have laws against them.
yeah the plants really love the un-chlorinated in floridated water.
6 - a native species garden
Milk cows need corn, alfalfa, and grass, because they need the extra nutrients, since they’re, y’know, raising a baby.
And before anyone goes off on me about how we shouldn’t have dairy cows, y’all can pry cheese and ice cream out of my cold, dead fingers.
No, cows do not need alfalfa or corn. They evolved to eat grass. They need grass. The rest is from intensive farming practices, partly because the USA has a culture where beef is better if the cow was so overfed that the muscle tissue is riddled with fat (it’s called marbling) and partly because you can raise cattle’s weight and therefore selling price more quickly if they’re overfed. This drives more profits at the expense of the cows’ health from eating food that they struggle with, giving them recurrent stomach issues and bacterial infections. They then solve that problem by routinely giving them low dose antibiotics, which is the perfect breeding ground for antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria, causing serious problems for human health - we’re rapidly running out of antibiotics of last resort.
There are plenty of countries that raise their cows in large fields instead of in barns, eating natural grass that grows purely from rain that falls from the sky, but it’s less profitable and needs protecting from American imported beef which is cheaper and more fatty.
The methane is a global problem with beef and dairy, though. Cows release a lot of greenhouse gasses however healthily or naturally they’re fed.
Yes, they do, it’s for PROTEIN so the cow can make enough fatty milk that it’s good for the calf and for butter, and so the cow stays healthy in the process. Do you have any idea how much extra protein and fat a pregnant and nursing female of any mammalian species needs in order to stay healthy?
Even the local dairy farms around me, that keep their cows on grass as much as they can, supplement feed.
Here’s an actual farmer talking about it if you want to hear from someone in the industry.
For more cow related content, here’s him on how the beef cattle industry are largely a bunch of whiny bastards who want to have their cake and eat it too, if you want to have something that is actually worth getting mad about.
An addendum, just for funsies: him talking about the silliest chicken myth he’s ever heard (and he’s heard a lot).
Yes, they do, it’s for PROTEIN
You clearly have no idea that grass contains protein.
You’re wrong, and instead of finding out whether cows are typically fed on grass alone, yes alone, in the uk and Ireland (but not America where they do it the cow-hurting fat and bacteria ridden way), your source is some American blogger?!
It does, just not enough to keep a pregnant cow healthy. And he blogs, yes, but he’s also a farmer, in case you missed that part. My source is also the farmers around me who keep their cows on grass as much as possible.
Why do you think farmers can’t blog, just curious?
Yes, they do, it’s for PROTEIN
You clearly have no idea that grass contains protein.
It does, just not enough to keep a pregnant cow healthy.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. You’re spouting such a bunch of crap. Cows don’t need anything except grass, and that’s how they’ve been in the UK for centuries and centuries. They evolved eating grass. Grass is their natural diet.
Maize isn’t even indigenous to the UK, only really got going in the 20th century and yet cows have been living in the UK and cultivated for dairy and meat since before the industrial revolution! You didn’t even bother to look anything up, you just have the american perverse cow-damaging position as explained to you by what authoritative source? One blogger!
Why do you think farmers can’t blog, just curious?
Holy straw man, batman!
One US blogger’s ignorance can’t wipe out thousands and thousands of years of happy grass-eating cows without intestinal problems. Even when they’re pregnant! Duh.
