by dborzov | 2025-08-26 22:20:36+00:00
Since it's over 3 hours total, here are the specific examples of "ecological costs" from this podcast:

* Data centers consume a lot of water. The example they start with is Google's data center in Dalles, Oregon, which used 355 million gallons of water in 2021. This amounted to 29% of all water consumed in the city (they did not bother to mention that the city's population is only 15K though).

* In 2023, hyperscale data centers used 66 billion liters of water in the U.S.: 3x the volume from ten years ago!

* They quote estimates that ChatGPT consumes 500 mL of water for every 10-50 user prompts (or 10-50 mL per prompt, which again sounds less dramatic).

* In Ireland, data centers collectively draw "over 20% of national electricity," which outstrips the total energy usage of all urban homes in the country.

* In Cerrillos, Chile, local residents blocked Google's plans to build a data center after discovering the scale of water use it would require (169 liters per second and its a drought-stricken area or something).

* The power consumption of data centers is enormous and places a very high load on energy grids worldwide. No specific numbers mentioned though.

My impression is that this is a clear example of a politically-biased podcast with an alarmist and accusatory tone, where none of the facts presented are particularly damning in the grand scheme of things.

In data centers with large water consumption, most of the water (90%) is used for evaporative cooling (letting hot water turn into vapor to carry away the heat), with the remaining 10% going to humidification systems (maintaining 40-60% humidity inside to prevent static electricity buildup, basically evaporation as well).

Let's take a moment to recognize what a dream "ecological cost" evaporating water is compared to old-time industries and the real environmental problems people have had to deal with. Old-timers in Cleveland can tell you how, until the 1970s (before the first serious ecological protection enforcement), the Cuyahoga River running through the city would CATCH FIRE and BURN Bible-style because of all the unprocessed, oil-based waste being dumped by plants and factories along its course. It is an unfortunate reality that many key industrial processes of our civilization dissolve dangerous and toxic compounds with water.

Also, the cost of evaporation cooling is not fundamental to data centers. You can change things around with some known engineering solutions and the costs for it would not be a deal breaker. For example, in Belgium, they built a two-loop water cooling system that can use industrial waste water (or even seawater in principle).

If you absolutely must, you can also build a fully closed-circuit liquid cooling system (think big fridge). The thing is that some water drawn from municipal system in a little city in the middle of nowhere isn't a problem.

As for high power consumption and "climate change impact," none of this is specific to data centers.

(And, this whole mindset about climate change in this podcast is just so 2010s. No, energy consumption is not inherently bad and sinful. No, the math of solving climate change with consuming less, putting on a sweater and saving does not work. A society that does not prioritize building for plentiful, cheap, (and yes,clean) energy is doomed to stagnate and wither economically. I see even most leftist people change their mind about this over the last few years, tired of never-ending green washing. If only political orthodoxies were able to change with the times...).