We finally reached critical mass on seeing money as an arbitrary construct, so now we're converting it into real, physics-based heat. Entropy at its finest.
I've been saying roughly the same thing about cryptocurrencies (just a good way to waste fuckhuge amounts of resources on digital tulips to enable crime) but it never seems to stop anyone from plowing ahead on being stupid.
Water is one I really don't get, if anyone would be willing to explain it to me. Is it because of manufacturing? We already have these manufacturing plants, it's not like more are being started, that process takes years to decades. Hell intel couldn't even finish the few they were working on. Because of concrete for datacenters? I'm sure developing countries are using significantly more of that to build houses, so much so that it completely eclipses the one-to-two datacenters you might see built in the next 5 years in your area. Power generation? That water goes straight back to the atmosphere.. water cycle, even on the open loops, water becomes steam which becomes rain..
And the water is being pumped out of aquifers that aren't being refilled. That water took thousands if not millions of years to get there. Once gone, the aquifers collapse and cannot be replaced as the space once taken up by the water is now just ground.
The issue is that they need fresh water for evaporative cooling.
Much of the world experiences fresh water scarcity, so it's not the best ethics to divert this resource from people in need to tech of uncertain value.
Check out the impact xAI is having on environment and health in Memphis if you want to go further down the rabbit hole.
Maybe people shouldn't be building data centers in deserts. In the city of Toronto the Deep Lake Water Cooling System uses water taken from Lake Ontario used for drinking water to cool a number of buildings. Most notably 151 Front Street West which houses the data centers routing most of the Internet in Ontario.
