Current datacenters are much more concerning environmentally for their electricity usage. The previous 20 years before the current LLM boom, their electrical usage was more or less flat. In the US, it’s now estimated to go from 5% of the US electrical demand to 15% in the next few years and is delaying fossil fuel plant closures
The water usage is concerning in some local situations (often more so from pollution from poor construction) for various data centers, but agriculture and especially animal agriculture really does dominate water usage in water scarce areas and is enormously wasteful with water. For instance, in the American West, it’s mostly all going to animal feed where plants for human consumption use significantly less
This is not to say it’s good that it’s using this water. Just that we really should actually also be very much concerned about the agricultural impact because it’s horribly inefficient. Producing animal products is massively inefficient
It’s around 15% exported in the American west and 4% nation wide. That’s not nothing, but it’s mostly for domestic consumption, the headlines about it are kind of misleading by making it sound like a majority
Alfalfa is the third largest economic product in the US, but only 4% is exported annually. In the western states, however, which are high producers close to shipping ports to major export markets like China, Saudi Arabia and Japan, about 15% is exported each year
And that place is not where we want / need the water to go. I.e into the plants moved elsewhere and into the air carried away. It depletes these waterways
Correspondingly, our hydrologic modelling reveals that cattle-feed irrigation is the leading driver of flow depletion in one-third of all western US sub-watersheds; cattle-feed irrigation accounts for an average of 75% of all consumptive use in these 369 sub-watersheds. During drought years (that is, the driest 10% of years), more than one-quarter of all rivers in the western US are depleted by more than 75% during summer months (Fig. 2 and Supplementary Fig. 2) and cattle-feed irrigation is the largest water use in more than half of these heavily depleted rivers
Current datacenters are much more concerning environmentally for their electricity usage. The previous 20 years before the current LLM boom, their electrical usage was more or less flat. In the US, it’s now estimated to go from 5% of the US electrical demand to 15% in the next few years and is delaying fossil fuel plant closures
The water usage is concerning in some local situations (often more so from pollution from poor construction) for various data centers, but agriculture and especially animal agriculture really does dominate water usage in water scarce areas and is enormously wasteful with water. For instance, in the American West, it’s mostly all going to animal feed where plants for human consumption use significantly less
https://archive.is/GnPy9
This is not to say it’s good that it’s using this water. Just that we really should actually also be very much concerned about the agricultural impact because it’s horribly inefficient. Producing animal products is massively inefficient
great graphs and summary. ty for sharing
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It’s around 15% exported in the American west and 4% nation wide. That’s not nothing, but it’s mostly for domestic consumption, the headlines about it are kind of misleading by making it sound like a majority
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/25/california-water-drought-scarce-saudi-arabia
the water used on farming does not disappear into a vacuum tho, it’s literally recycled into the environment one way or another.
You do not understand water use in farming. Which is fine, go read. But don’t comment on it until you do.
Modern farming uses way too much water in very bad ways.
And that place is not where we want / need the water to go. I.e into the plants moved elsewhere and into the air carried away. It depletes these waterways
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1064&context=wffdocs