Hacker News

points by jandrewrogers 1 day ago | 0 comments

> "The majority [of water] is used for big agro industries, such as soya, rice, and wood pulping. Now we have Google planning to use enormous quantities of water.”

This is like calling a rubber raft "enormous" after comparing it to an aircraft carrier. Agriculture consumes astronomically more water, often wastefully, for far less valuable purposes. I can't take these objections seriously.

This is just the latest weird moral panic.

[–] jsLavaGoat 1 day ago

I have a hard time complaining about agriculture, which makes food, when everyone is mad about how much food costs, and suggesting we increase the cost of their inputs, even though in some places they are wildly subsidized like the southern sq valley.

10% of California's electricity goes to pumping water around. Or that was the figure not too long ago. And it's being pumped all over, not just to ag.

The reality is, the most wasteful users of water are residential, where a lot is used to ornamental things like lawns.

There's a lot to worry about with AI, but data centers? Now? No one cared when they were being built out for AWS to host 7 gazillion Wordpress pages.

[–] Carrok 1 day ago

> The reality is, the most wasteful users of water are residential, where a lot is used to ornamental things like lawns.

This is very easy to search. Here's an example: https://waterknowledge.colostate.edu/water-management-admini...

Agriculture is 86% for Colorado. All other sources combined pale in comparison.

And agriculture does not simply "make food". They are often growing feed for animals, so they're making food inputs, which will require still further water to become food for humans.

They also often practice flood irrigation, arguably the least efficient method of watering plants.

Finally, due to "use it or lose it" systems, they have to continue using their water or they won't have access to it next season, so they sometimes literally just dump it on the ground where there aren't any plants to keep their quota up so they don't have access to less water next year.

Yes we need food, but there are a lot of ways in which we can grow just as much or more food without using quite so much water.

[–] strbean 1 day ago

A lot of agricultural water use is wildly inefficient, and a lot of that inefficiency is attributable to subsidization of water prices.

[–] chneu 1 day ago

Most of the waste is because water rights are "use it or lose it" which encourages farmers(and ranchers who grow grass in arid environments to feed to cattle) to literally dump water on the ground so they can keep their water rights.

[–] expectsomuch 1 day ago

My hunch is that when it comes to the public's perception of how water is used, it's easy to think water = food. We all instinctively know that plants need water to grow and can't live without it. And we can't live without food.

Data? Not as essential.

However, for those of us who pay attention, we know there is an extreme amount of wastefulness when it comes to how water gets used for agriculture, that is completely unnecessary. (Think growing alfalfa in Arizona, or spray irrigation in hot climates, or or or - the examples are sadly endless.

Hopefully this becomes a good opportunity for us to better pay attention and regulate how water is used in many different instances.

[–] jsLavaGoat 1 day ago

You will never start over and rationalize water like that for ag. And it's an easy and popular target for lots of people who are disconnected to it. Residential use is where the waste is.

[–] profdevloper 1 day ago

Both can be true, but if you subject water pricing to market forces the problem can help correct itself. That won't happen for ag pricing (strong lobby) but would get rid of the relatively minuscule residential wastefulness.

[–] shimman 1 day ago

Why should society let market forces decide how we treat a resource necessary for human life? I would rather trust a democratic society more than I'd ever trust any of these anti-humans that currently lead big tech. These people have shown the open disdain they have towards humanity, we are under no obligation to give them whatever they want if they just pay for it. Money is not the issue for them, they do not like being told no.

Society should, and is, openly reject such disdain and contempt toward humanity.

[–] no-name-here 1 day ago

That's incredibly solvable: subsidize every household with a baseline of essential water, and charge above-market rates for everything else. Set the higher tier's price to fund an annual dividend for every citizen to offset the average food cost difference. Waste would go way down, and practices would shift to water-efficient practices.

[–] rickydroll 19 hours ago

I believe this makes a lot of sense. Hopefully we also have a smart meter one could use to get quick feedback on water use, so homeowners can see how changing their behavior reduces water use in the same way that a smart meter for electricity gives us the same feedback for reducing energy use.

Even without the economic incentive, I've turned off the lawn irrigation installed by previous owners, use soaker or drip irrigation in my berry and vegetable gardens, and water ornamental plants only when they're really in distress during our summertime droughts. It's amazing how soil can go from moist and wonderful in the spring to desiccated powder in a summer drought.

Coming soon, we'll be replacing the front yards with creeping thyme and maybe wild strawberries. I do need to see if wild strawberries, though, are a groundhog buffet. I hate those little fuckers.

[–] profdevloper 1 day ago

I'm specifically talking about local elected governments managing a municipal resource that needs to respond to market supply and demand realities over the course of time where availability of said resource fluctuates. These municipalities are run by democratically elected representatives that should be acting in the best interests of their constituents -- and if not they can be replaced.

[–] chneu 1 day ago

A couple of farms use more water than all residential in California.

The waste is NOT residential.

[–] jvanderbot 1 day ago

Almost. In a zero-sum world, where "Big" and "Tech" only combine into "evil", any use of a resource by big tech is intolerable. You can't get there from water use statistics, you have to assume zero sum, and you have to assume improper use.

[–] threecheese 1 day ago

You aren't wrong, but this AI thing which we're trying to give people:

1. is something that many intensely don't want, and many with valid reasons; 2. will inarguably consume some of a resource which we all need, which is already becoming more scarce globally; 3. is in many cases contributing negatively to actual or perceived quality of life via DC noise and pollution; 4. threatens the livelihood of millions in the near term, even if it will improve outcomes over time; 5. is inextricably tied to and will substantially benefit a wealthy cohort, who is already seen as exerting undue control over populations governments ; 6. present potential systemic societal risk, yet is moving forward at breakneck speed; 7. has apparent total US government support, despite complaints about all the above, in a political environment which is frankly frightening, and where that government is exercising little restraint against - and collecting more sensitive data than ever about - citizens who protest against policy.

None of us should be surprised about this reaction.

[–] meander_water 1 day ago

> for far less valuable purposes

You think AI is more valuable than food? Finding this really hard to compute

[–] jandrewrogers 1 day ago

The amount of water being discussed is utterly inconsequential to the food supply. 10s of trillions of liters of water are wasted growing subsidized corn alcohol in the US alone. Natural resources can be used for more than one thing without creating any issues.

By your reasoning everyone should stop bathing so that we don't starve to death.

[–] meander_water 1 day ago

Well if you read the article

> According to its own projections, the data center Google wanted to build in Cerrillos was poised to use 169 liters of water every single second. In just one day, the data center would consume as much water as all 80,000 residents of Cerrillos use for drinking in a year. To make matters worse, it wanted to draw that water from an underground aquifer that had been under a decree that restricted how much water could be removed since 2005.

[–] lioeters 1 day ago

> moral panic

I can't take these objections seriously.

[–] dburkland 1 day ago

Amen.

[–] Analemma_ 1 day ago

> I can't take these objections seriously.

Well, once there are enough of these objections, you are forced to take them seriously whether you "can" or not, because they have the power to stop the party into which so much capital and valuations are tied up.

Or to put it another way, I can't take vaccine objectors seriously, but now there are enough of them that I don't have any choice. For better or worse, that's how democracy works.

[–] bbor 1 day ago

This is just another sense of "take X seriously" :). In this context we're assessing the truth of political arguments, not assessing whether those arguments relate to consequential political events.

[–] Analemma_ 1 day ago

The thing is, in a democracy (actually in any form of government, but especially a democracy) I don't think you can cleanly separate those two things. When a sufficiently-large segment of the public decides X is a problem, then X is a problem, period. Even if X is objectively, truthfully, not a problem. And you can sit back and be satisfied that you have proven X is not a problem, but who cares? Your proof does not by itself affect the material state of the world one bit, where X will continue to be a problem.