yetAnotherUser comments on OpenAI says China ran a covert campaign to turn Americans against data centers, but used facts that happen to be true

[–] yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

Typically? Maybe in some arid climates without humidity but try using evaporative cooling during a thunderstorm and you'll find your data center shutting down from overheating.

~~70%~~ A large part of water usage in industrial nations comes from electricity generation. That's where data centers consume most of their water.

Edit: 70% is only true for Canada, globally agriculture consumes more. The US for example has ~40% each for agriculture and power generation.

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[–] wols@lemmy.zip 3 points 3 months ago (1 child)

Could you elaborate on the 70% figure? A quick search returns multiple hits suggesting the 70% number is actually related to agriculture, not electricity production. See e.g. here.

Or did you mean 70% of the water used be data centers?

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[–] yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 3 months ago

Oh, you're right. I used the Wikipedia article as source and it said:

Distribution of this use among sectors was: thermoelectric power generation 66.2%, manufacturing 13.6%, residential 9.0%, agriculture 4.7%, commercial and institutional 2.7%, water treatment and distribution systems 2.3%, mining 1.1%, and oil and gas extraction 0.5%.

Yet the previous sentence said this was about Canada. Whoops.

Though in Europe and North America, where a big chunk of data centers are typically built, agriculture tends to have a lower share with industry (including but not limited to power generation) having a bigger one:

https://ourworldindata.org/water-use-stress

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