I was with you until the water use. You're misinformed. There were at one point at least several data centers set to use evaporative cooling on well water.

Notably since all the controversy many data centers are very loud about being closed loop and with significant consideration given to other local impacts as well.

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SXX 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yep. I was personally misinformed the same way at some point. Never expected evaporative cooling to be so popular, but it is.

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himinlomax 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It's possible for a datacenter to use scarce well water irresponsibly.

They don't have to, and the vast majority don't.

The lie and moral panic is that all datacenters necessarily waste precious drinking water; it's patently false and used by agitators to push, unwittingly or not, a Chinese Communist Party agenda.

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8note 7 hours ago | parent [-]

> a Chinese Communist Party agenda

is it actually? it feels more like US propaganda that we have to let our oligarchs run roughshod over us because of what we imagine the big bad CCP might want.

i dont think the CCP cares whether there's data centers in rural america.

Regulation that requires closed loop cooling seems simple enough, same with lots of the other problems people have with data centers:

* sound and infrasound under x DB

* no air quality change

* must pay to build out electrical infrastructure

etc

its not to the CCPs benefit or loss to make sure the data centers are built well if they get built

	▲	himinlomax 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> i dont think the CCP cares whether there's data centers in rural america. They certainly care that the US loses the race for AI.