Wait till you find out about... : funny

[–] usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 12 points 3 days ago (4 children)

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

[–] stopdropandprole@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

great graphs and summary. ty for sharing

[–] bennieandthez@lemmygrad.ml -1 points 3 days ago (2 children)

the water used on farming does not disappear into a vacuum tho, it's literally recycled into the environment one way or another.

[–] Kumikommunism@hexbear.net 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

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.

[–] usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

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

https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1064&context=wffdocs

[–] o1011o@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Missing context: Humans have the best health outcomes on a plant based diet and it takes nearly 10 times more water to get an equivalent amount of calories out of animal sources compared to plants.

You should care about environmental costs in general, not just when it's a convenient data point for hating on AI. I mean, you should hate on generative AI, it's garbage, but don't stop there. Animal agriculture is an environmental disaster of outlandish proportions and it's easy (with a tiny bit of education) to eat plants instead of animals and stop being a part of the problem.

It would be hypocritical to advocate against AI but also give them your money 3 times a day, wouldn't it?

[–] Inucune@lemmy.world -1 points 3 days ago (2 children)

So we should only preserve plants and let any animal not related to food production fight for it's existence. Gg no re

[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 days ago

let any animal not related to food production fight for it’s existence.

How is this different from what we're doing right now?

[–] usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml -1 points 3 days ago

Not who are replying to, but I've got some good news, moving to plant-based diets is also better for wild animals too

Livestock farmers often claim that their grazing systems “mimic nature”. If so, the mimicry is a crude caricature. A review of evidence from over 100 studies found that when livestock are removed from the land, the abundance and diversity of almost all groups of wild animals increases

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/16/most-damaging-farm-products-organic-pasture-fed-beef-lamb

And not only that but fewer crops are needed for animal feed so less disruption overall from that end too

If everyone shifted to a plant-based diet we would reduce global land use for agriculture by 75%. This large reduction of agricultural land use would be possible thanks to a reduction in land used for grazing and a smaller need for land to grow crops.

https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets

[–] booscience@beehaw.org 5 points 3 days ago

Yeah, Lauren, call me when farms are using 90% of our sunlight up and then the sun tries to charge me three to five times my grocery bill to get enough vitamin D not to die from seasonal depression or vitamin deficiencies.

[–] dan69@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago

Wait till they find out how of their body is made up of.

[–] mathemachristian@hexbear.net 2 points 3 days ago

Anyone have good alfalfa recipes?

[–] Luisp@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

99% of that waste are cows

[–] Artisian@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

That's actually too generous. A large amount of water goes to corn, which we turn ~~primarily~~much of into corn ethanol to burn in our cars.

[–] usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Corn is about evenly split between ethanol and animal feed in the US. That's also based on USDA numbers that under count the amount going to animal feed by excluding exports and excluding more indirect ways corn go to animal feed

Today’s corn crop is mainly used for biofuels (roughly 40 percent of U.S. corn is used for ethanol) and as animal feed (roughly 36 percent of U.S. corn. [...] Only a tiny fraction of the national corn crop is directly used for food for Americans, much of that for high-fructose corn syrup.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/time-to-rethink-corn/

[–] Artisian@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

Corrected! Thank you.

[–] bennieandthez@lemmygrad.ml -2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

also water used in agriculture is literally recycled into the environment meanwhile it's eternally captured by a data center cooling system, if not contaminated with chemicals too.

[–] usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Not that datacenters are great, but agriculture should not be glossed over like that. The place the water goes for agriculture 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

https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1064&context=wffdocs

"meanwhile it’s eternally captured by a data"

The closed-water loop systems are that concerning water-usage wise at all. They don't use as much water. It's the open-loop ones with evaporation tower that use much more water. Those also go into the air and flow somewhere else, same as it is with agriculture

"if not contaminated with chemicals too"

Runoff with pollution from datacenters is more of an issue from construction from my understanding rather than the cooling (not that this isn't an issue!)

It's worth noting that agriculture has continuous problems with runoff. Fertilizer and manure runoff is a massive concern from agriculture, often a massive one for local water quality. For instance, one region in NZ needs a 12x reduction in the dairy industry nearby just to meet safe drinking water standards

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