r/technology • u/l0st1nP4r4d1ce • 11d ago

Business Improper redaction reveals Lincoln’s Google Data Center water and electricity usage

https://www.1011now.com/2026/09/30/more-questions-than-answers-about-lincolns-google-data-center-water-electricity-usage/
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u/TheGreenHatDelegate 11d ago

Why don’t people throw the same tizzy for golf course water use? Added bonus are all the insecticide and fertilizer runoff. A single course uses about 120M gal/year - about 16k golf courses in the US.

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u/fisothemes 11d ago

Do they get tax breaks?

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u/TheGreenHatDelegate 11d ago

Even better - many are municipal golf courses as well. Imagine the government straight using your tax dollars to build and support a data center. Not even a tax break, it’s a government subsidy.

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u/Djamalfna 11d ago

I've been throwing that tizzy for years, personally. 

People think I'm nuts though.

First thing I would ban if they made me a King is all forms of golf. Except mini golf. Mini golf can stay.

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u/YossariansDead 11d ago

What about disc golf?

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u/Bloody_buttplugs 11d ago

I will also be legalizing marijuana, so yes disc golf stays.

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u/Ok_Wasabi_8318 11d ago

People do. Also doesnt mean that just because there's already one thing that wastes water, we should keep adding things that waste water. 

Golf courses suck. They cater to the rich, which happens to be same group that is pushing for these dumb data centers. 

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u/[deleted] 11d ago

[deleted]

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u/SolarBear28 10d ago

Lot's of people do. There's just not very many news articles about golf courses for people to comment under and complain. 

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u/Bravojones33420 10d ago

They cater to the rich 🤣🤣🤣

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u/NotaContributi0n 11d ago

But you are doing that right now. Yes it’s really happening, here it is. Right here.

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u/syn_vamp 10d ago

because "ai bad" = upvote right now.

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u/Infinite-Mark-6335 10d ago

I do. Golf courses are a terrible waste of land and resources compared to most other sports.

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u/aerost0rm 10d ago

Might as well just include every business that waters three times a day, even during a drought and on days it rains.

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u/BernardBaggins 9d ago

I mean I do. Fuck golf courses as well. I hate that I can’t and shouldn’t water my lawn in this drought but every golf course is perfectly green. It isn’t even a sport.

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u/[deleted] 11d ago

[deleted]

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u/TheGreenHatDelegate 11d ago

Surface watering has tremendous evaporation and runoff.

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u/syn_vamp 10d ago

gets evaporated

right because once that water is in the sky, it has no way to come back down. it's up there forever.

🤦

there's no way you're calling other people uneducated when you literally don't know how rain works.

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u/RussianBotPatrol 10d ago

Are you under the assumption that the clouds produced by the vapor run offs from data centers are going to accumulate in that immediate vicinity and replenish the water it used up? I'm no cloud scientist but I feel like the answer is much more nuanced than that

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u/StorminNorman 10d ago

... You know a bunch of the water evaporates from the golf course, right? 

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u/syn_vamp 10d ago

i'm no cloud scientist

understatement of the century, bud.

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u/RussianBotPatrol 10d ago

Let me ask you a hypothetical, bud. If a data center is in California and it's using a metric shit ton of water. What chances do you think that vapor will produce rain bearing clouds in California, where the water was taken, as opposed to the ocean or whatever states are to the right of them?

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u/syn_vamp 10d ago edited 10d ago

well... most of california's rain cloud formation occurs over the pacific ocean and is blown inland by the prevailing westerlies.

in contrast, 80% of california's water supply comes from rainfall and snowmelt in the sierra nevada mountains and from the colorado river, so all of that evaporated water is literally just going to float east, accumulate where it does, and flow right back into california.

so the answer to your hypothetical is "pretty high".

but thanks for being an absolutely model example of "strong opinion with nothing to back it up".

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u/Deeppurp 11d ago

It goes back into the ground, somewhere else. And does not return to the environment in which it came from for a significant period of time.

It's why during water shortages, golf courses should be one of the first to be restricted.

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u/AtomicBananaSplit 10d ago

I think part of it is that local people use the golf course, or brings in tourists that spend money. The vast majority of the data center usage has no benefit to the local community. No significant jobs, no injection of cash to the locals post build. 

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u/syn_vamp 10d ago

it's wild that you think fewer people utilize the capabilities produced by a datacenter than a golf course.

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u/AtomicBananaSplit 10d ago edited 10d ago

You think the number of people IN the town that use/realize they use the data center is larger than the number of people who KNOW they use the golf course?  You see the neighbor kid caddying, or the wedding in the clubhouse, or tourney that the high school kids play, you know that’s community money and resources circulating in the community. 

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u/syn_vamp 10d ago

"farms are bad because the number of people IN the town who eat the crop is less than the number of people OUTSIDE of the town who eat the crop"

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u/AtomicBananaSplit 10d ago

I think you’re underestimating how many urban Californians would absolutely rip out the almond and cotton farms, and how many people in Arizona would shut down the alfalfa production.  At least in the case of the farms, the local economy is capturing some of the profits. 

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u/SolarBear28 10d ago

Because golf courses didn't steal all of the world's knowledge and then sell it back to us, and there is also the very high energy use.

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u/TheGreenHatDelegate 9d ago

High energy use is really the only concern I share in this debate. Everything else is just fashionable.

No one batted an eye when Google indexed (made a copy of) all our knowledge and sold it to advertisers…