[rafram]

> 2.5 billion gallons of water worldwide last year, or about 5% of the amount metro Seattle consumes annually

That doesn't seem like that much, really. The Seattle metro area isn't huge; that consumption is only 0.7% of New York's, and Amazon runs the largest network of data centers in the world.

[chasebank]

Another data point.

California pistachios consume about 500–600 billion gallons of water per year.

[tomcam]

Because of this I always fix a piercing gaze on any pistachio that crosses my path

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

The pistachio meme

How that data point is interpreted may depend on whether the reader or someone they know likes pistachios or not

It might also depend on how the person views farmers versus how they view Silicon Valley companies

And so on

It's not intrinsically clear how a reader is going to interpret that data point without knowing something about the reader

Will they opine that water use for some purpose is "worth it" or "not worth it"

What do they think of pistachios

What do they think of "AI"

People might be OK with water use for pistachios but not for "AI"

The _amount_ of water use may not be the differentiator. The differentiator might be the _purpose_ of the water use

Food versus computers

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

The comments in this thread are hilarioisly nonsensical

All the way up to the top comment that refers to a "water usage argument"

Whats the argument

Its an article reporting Amazon's data center water usage. It does not express an opinion on that number. It discusses so-called "tech" companies' reluctance to release water usage numbers

2.5B gallons. Its a number not an argument

Facts are not arguments

Why the secrecy around these numbers

Why the defensiveness in HN replies

[jason_oster]

Your argument is something along the lines of:

1. People dislike X, so a small amount of water being used for X is bad.

2. People like Y, so a large amount of water being used for Y is good.

You can't draw any conclusions from this, apart that people dislike some things and like other things.

The argument establishes no relation to water usage. That makes the argument against AI "an ethical one because of water usage" just a trope.

[mattcantstop]

I've always found this a weird comparison. There is no more important use of water than providing food. I love tech and earn my living from it, but the importance of food cannot be overstated.

[simonw]

There are a whole lot of foods that are incredibly wasteful if you truly care about water consumption.

Saying "if it's edible then it doesn't matter how much water it uses, it's justified" isn't a good position to take.

[ch4s3]

I think the criticism here is that they're pumping that water in from the Colorado river based on a pricing schema that makes it artificially cheap t grow water intensive crops in a very arid region. If the pricing were modernized and rationalized those pistachios would be grown somewhere that has more rain fall. Moreover a lot of that water is transported with the pistachios out of the watershed so it creates 2nd order problems.

You could also argue that Amazon data centers are crucial commercial infrastructure that used for a lot of logistics necessary to move food around.

[TheSoftwareGuy]

Its not a bad comparison because pistachios are a cash crop, not a staple crop. That is to say, pistachios aren't grown to keep people fed, they are grown for economic profit

[ApolloFortyNine]

Almonds use more water for the same calories of nutrition compared to a grain, somewhere from 4-8x more depending on the source.

Plus California was/is in a drought for years, that's why people bring up the almonds example.

[lbriner]

pistachios is not the same thing as "food" it is just a small percentage of it. "Food" is important, pistachios not so much.

[Robdel12]

You find growing an incredibly water heavy crop in a place that doesn’t have the water supply to do so a weird comparison? And it’s not even a food that’s needed, so you can’t stand on that either.

[stetrain]

And some foods are a lot more water efficient than others to produce.

[nh23423fefe]

Hyperbolic people help me ignore their fake concerns.

[pb7]

You don't need pistachios. General compute is a few orders of magnitude more important to humanity's livelihood than pistachios.

[goda90]

With any water use, I'd say it's important to examine how the water gets back into the system. Does it return to the same source or end up elsewhere? Does it return clean, treated, or polluted? If it evaporates, where is that vapor most likely to end up?

A lot of ways people use water can actually end up back in the source area after treatment. That should be considered differently than water evaporated in a desert that rarely receives rains.