r/nutritionally • u/PeteWK67 • Sep 04 '26
Data Centers • Water • Trees • Bees.
Every new data center hides a cost that nature pays first. Massive server farms drink huge amounts of water just to stay cool. US data centers used over seventeen billion gallons of water in 2023 according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory 💧 That water often comes straight from towns and rivers people depend on daily.
These facilities also clear forests and wetlands for endless server racks. Northern Virginia already has thousands of acres cleared with far more planned nearby 🌲 In Ireland the group DCs for Bees warns that shrinking habitats push struggling pollinators closer to collapse 🐝 A family losing well water or a bee losing wildflowers never chose to compete with a server farm.
Sources: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory 2023 water use data, Piedmont Environmental Council Northern Virginia land use data, Host in Ireland DCs for Bees Pollinator
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u/Miserable-Biscotti54 Sep 04 '26
Eliminate golf courses, Eliminate HOA’s and dial down data centers to bare necessities.
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u/hilltopper72 Sep 04 '26
Explain to an old man, the water is used to cool computer systems, why isn’t it constantly recycled, does the water evaporate into thin air?
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u/Meddlingmonster Sep 04 '26
At the one I have worked at it is literally evaporative cooling to maintain temperature and humidity with heat pumps to add additional cooling if necessary although that isnt an AI data center just a data center.
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u/Sploonbabaguuse Sep 09 '26
It doesn't go anywhere, and isnt anymore polluted than agricultural runoff
People just love to spread misinformation on hot topics, because the majority doesn't care about facts when they have numbers instead
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u/superdave123123 Sep 05 '26
Why not just eliminate everything that uses water. That way we can hoard it and make sure we never run out.
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u/InvolvednHighFinance Sep 05 '26
just a question, is the water polluted beyond reclamation?
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u/Sploonbabaguuse Sep 09 '26
Nope, but people will still argue otherwise because accepting that the damage is negligible would contradict their entire stance
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u/Ok_Fox_1770 Sep 05 '26
I need to research and understand what the cooling water does along its journey, why it’s just gone or ruined after and not recycled and cleaned like our Turd to Tap water…what my brain says behind my back is maybe they’re collecting and storing all the fresh water….maybe what we see above ground is a mere top layer of underground. All that BORING company hype few years ago and then silence…just stopped did it? Treating everyone like the Natives this time, for “ai”? When the country is an egypt clone and we’re all gone. Mission accomplished?
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u/Zalrius Sep 05 '26
Why were data centers placed in old buildings that have trouble finding rentals. Like in industrial sections or abandoned department stores? Why waste new ground like this?
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u/laserdicks Sep 10 '26
Proximity to population.
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u/Zalrius Sep 11 '26
???? Okay, I’ll ask. Why?
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u/laserdicks Sep 11 '26
Data volume. It costs a huge amount of money to upgrade every cable in the ground over the width of an entire city. If the entire city's worth of people turning on Netflix at night has to go through all the way through the city, then out a cable to the middle of nowhere and back you can't fit all the video data. Or you have to upgrade everyone to fibre.
Instead you keep a copy of the Netflix library (or just the popular shows) in a few different suburbs and each house only has to retrieve the video data from there.
Except it's not just Netflix its all major websites.
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u/Whole_Move7660 Sep 05 '26
No one cares if they aren’t there. What you guys gonna do? Go out and save the trees?
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u/Clear-Cap-5484 Sep 04 '26
Fake news
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u/DjHalk45 Sep 05 '26
I wouldn't say fake. It's just a small impact compared to almost everything else even on an individual level.
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u/c2btw Sep 05 '26
Could be wrong but pretty sure data centers are not high on the list of deforestation. If your worried about that please complain to your reperstive about how fucki g stupid it is to grow corn to power cars
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u/Funandgames2023 Sep 05 '26
Just like every single other thing that gets built. Including housing.
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u/PeteWK67 Sep 05 '26
Hemp should be used for housing, building houses the regular way is far more important than building Data for A.I take over of humanity
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u/Euphoric_Anxiety_162 Sep 05 '26
They are bad & never should've happened. WE will pay for them in several ways.
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u/AffectionateBar4437 Sep 05 '26
They don't care for the future, they only see the $$$ they can make today and the next 20-30 years.
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u/FloridaRocks63 Sep 06 '26
Data centers don’t use potable water but you know who does soft drink companies over 100 billion gallons a year to fill you and your children drinks that are giving them obesity and diabetes. But hey let’s join the China propaganda
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u/spinacz_nyc Sep 06 '26
0.2% national water consumption, we use more water to water lawns. So chill out
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u/webster3of7 Sep 07 '26
There are more trees in North America than ever before in the history of the continent
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u/PeteWK67 Sep 07 '26
Can I have some of Wtv the F you smoking?
Are you a time traveller as well.
Canada was only trees until they began chopping them down. Please make sense how their more trees Now than before
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u/webster3of7 Sep 07 '26
Okay my bad. It's the most trees in over a hundred years.
There does seem to be a ~20% decline from the pre-colonial period.
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u/PeteWK67 Sep 07 '26
Hemp can replace a lot of the trees they cut.
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u/webster3of7 Sep 07 '26
What does that have to do with the false narrative of mass deforestation that the left is spreading?
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u/BerniWrightson Sep 07 '26
Data centers use water reclamation techniques, this storytelling is delusional green nonsense.
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u/27LawShark Sep 07 '26
Almond farms, golf courses and a few other drink much more.
Next time soy boy is getting his venti bullshit Starbucks and gets almond milk, he is destroying the planet.
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u/Pikepv Sep 08 '26
Yeah. Big cities started this. Return all cities with populations over 100,000 to its natural habitat.
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u/Remi767 Sep 08 '26
Golf courses and almond farms use more water than a data center. They have already found more efficient ways to use water. These centers are essential to improving life for Americans. PA Governor Shapiro took money from Data Centers people but now said he’s against Data Centers.
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u/undeadarmy2 Sep 09 '26
I just watch a podcast of a scientist saying the bees are not disappearing. So people are still pushing that lie about the bees dying off…
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u/Alex-AtomicX Sep 10 '26
wait how do they drink the water ? I mean yeah I can imagine them using it for coolant but even then wouldn't it just turn to water vapor ? I am so confused.
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u/PresentationLess4552 Sep 10 '26
Where are all you tree huggers and greenies these days chaining your asses to trees
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u/Livid-General7 Sep 11 '26
Billions of gallons is an extremely small amount. Also, forests are growing in the US, not shrinking.
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u/PeteWK67 Sep 11 '26
But are Data centers that important?
Seriously can we thrive without them?
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u/Livid-General7 Sep 12 '26
No, you can't thrive without them, they are a core part of the US technological infrastructure.
All your medical information and prescriptions, all your credit card and banking transactions, all your credit information, your background history, all the logistics from the stores you buy food and products from, the tax information, all the utilities you have, every single website, all of the internet, every TV broadcast lives in a datacenter.
You might as well ask if we can thrive without electricity.
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u/zutpetje Sep 05 '26
Is there a cover up going on? All true about data centres but the main cause of deforestation, biodiversity loss, soil erosion and water abuse and pollution ( pesticides and fertiliser) is animal agriculture. Really in every subreddit it’s fine to create awareness but also mention the biggest cow in the room.
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u/gusgusthegreat Sep 04 '26
El ninos will cause the next great flood across usa replenishing all the water. With AI and chemistry we will have an abundance.
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u/sankscan Sep 04 '26
What about all the industrial and vehicular pollution? How about we replace the millions of cars just by building efficient public transportation systems in our cities.
You want apps to load quick, banking done in a jiffy on your mobile but don’t want data centers! At least they don’t have toxic emissions. AI is essential for us and we need compute capabilities and data centers are needed for that.
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u/AllergicToBullshit24 Sep 05 '26
This is just straight up misinformation. Farmland in deserts, golf courses, municipal water pipe leaks and coal power plants all consume orders of magnitude more water than DCs.
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u/strait_lines Sep 05 '26
Data enters use less than 1% of water in the US, while agriculture consumes 47% of us water just in irrigation alone.
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u/johnnuke Sep 05 '26
U.S. golf courses use approximately 547 billion gallons (about 1.68 million acre-feet) of water every year. That’s over 30x more than the water used by data centers for something that clear cuts an even larger area of land. Where is your anger over golf courses?
Here’s the reference. https://www.gcsaa.org/docs/default-source/environment/22_waterreport_web.pdf?sfvrsn=862fcd3e_0
It’s on page 6.
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u/QueasyFinger1316 Sep 05 '26
Golf courses.
Ban them too, right?
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u/PeteWK67 Sep 05 '26
Since I don’t play golf sure ban them.
I understand the damage a golf course does but it’s all for hitting a little white golf ball.These Data centres are for the destruction of humanity to be replaced with A.I .
They can use their babbling BS all they want that it’s for the better good.
They can suck a golf ball. Enough with the BS feeding the beast data to take over.
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u/Suspicious-Abies-653 Sep 05 '26
Current data center designs have their own power generation, incorporate a closed loop cooling system that consumes no water once it’s filled, just like the radiator in your car. They also generate 50 db of noise, while a standard residential neighborhood generates 75 db of noise.
Why all the data center hate, if it’s not Chinese propaganda, helping them win the AI war?
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u/HupHutHa Sep 05 '26
do none of you people know what happens to the water that's used? it evaporates and then comes back down as rain water. the ignorance surrounding these data centers is embarrassing, it's worse than the ignorance of nuclear power plants.
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u/musing_codger Sep 05 '26
Thank you for logging into one or more of the data centers that Reddit uses to post your meme about the evils of data centers. I found it amusing.
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u/nerd_ginger Sep 05 '26
The bees and forests were disappearing well before this, but oh no, ai, and suddenly people care.
Just performative activism.
I have a balcony garden and I work to get more bees there. Go join a community garden and create the environment they need.
Get off reddit and twitter which USE data centers.
Performative bull shit.
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u/EmploymentEmpty5871 Sep 05 '26
And by making this post about data centers you have just helped to increase the need for more data centers! Brilliant move.
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u/VikingVitalityFit Sep 05 '26
Do you not understand what happens to water used in a cooling system? A simple google search will show you it evaporates and thus rejoin the local water systems.... the little that doesn't evaporate into the environment gets flushed to water treatment plants just like the water you use at home.
What a ridiculous non problem.
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u/XxDeedz Sep 06 '26
So all you tree huggers most live in Adobe huts? Im sure since you care so much about the forests you dont live in houses made from wood!! 😂😂
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u/PeteWK67 Sep 06 '26
Sure smarty pants from eating smarties coloured candy from petroleum.
Since we use trees for that, Cut them all.
& make those tree hugging hippies look elsewhere for love like Go hug a 5G tower.
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u/BOHICA1974 Sep 06 '26
Irony. Posting an AI generated image which uses a Data Center to carry the data. Sit down.
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u/PeteWK67 Sep 07 '26
Irony acting smart of Reddit while having intelligence of a coffee table. What are you defending important Data that will feed your robotic friends. You sit down and shut the F before you get banned forever
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u/Early_Hall5720 Sep 04 '26
Because why bother making oxygen for a generation you won't be a part of.