[Ethee]

Is there a problem with providing other metrics like water? I didn't see that mentioned any where in the article. Not to be snarky, but your response kind of reminds me of this famous tweet: https://x.com/AustingrahamZ1/status/1029385497213366279?lang...

If you want to talk about water you're obviously free to do so, but you were the one to bring it up. Most of the articles I see about water usage in data centers seems to be propaganda as well. That's not to say data centers aren't consuming more water. I'm sure they are. Considering however that agriculture still accounts for over 70% of overall water usage and we're wasting a lot of it growing things like alfalfa in water hungry regions. Last I'd seen the metric data centers were estimated at around 6%. So I'd argue we should probably look at the worst offenders first.

[GuestFAUniverse]

Bringing up alfalfa (which is horrible) is the typical whataboutism: wasting water there doesn't make it right to waste fresh water for basically cat pictures and slop. Sprinkling it with dismissing the water issue with "propaganda" and calling agriculture "worst offenders" (seriously? Nourishment is bad and 6% for data centres is insignificant?)... I don't think I can even remotely agree.

[Ethee]

It's funny to me that you would dismiss my point as a 'whataboutism' when it was an attempt to engage with your point about water, which was itself a whataboutism. I hope the irony isn't lost on you there.

Since you want to conflate nutrition with agriculture I'm happy to meet you there and bring it back to what the article was actually about, emissions. If we compare data center water intake and emissions to just the US beef industry alone, data centers are a very small drop in a very large pond. We're talking on the orders of almost 2000x the water usage and twice the emissions. And that's just beef, we could talk about avocados, bananas, or tons of other actual 'nutrients' that are an effective waste of water. But we like those things, just like we like cat pictures and slop (even though I'm not a fan of your reductionist comparison). I'm not saying you have to like it, but other's do. Just like some people like beef, and others will never touch it.

I'm actually not even disagreeing with you about the rise of data center consumption being something we should be monitoring. You're not wrong about that. But can we at least have an honest conversation about reality and get a little further than what all the headlines say. Maybe instead actually respond to the topic at hand and not make whataboutisms about water.

[ButlerianJihad]

Talk about casting aspersions!