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Google redacted it's water and electricity usage for its data center in Lincoln Nebraska
(www.1011now.com)
this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2026
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There's a subgroup on Lemmy that will absolutely melt down if you mention data center water usage. And I can't help but think "The Water Hoax" rhetoric churning through the LessWrong community has played a major role.
However you square it, though, you can't help but consider something like this peculiar.
I don't buy it for a second that these things dont use massive amounts of water. And Google hiding it just proves that
I think I need to go visit this community and post this there
Incredible, I didn’t think I could hate anyone involved here any more, and yet.
If you attack the electricity and carbon sides of data centers, you might at least be able to divert some of the money tied up in AI towards the construction of renewable energy. Those are also stronger arguments than the water usage argument. Arguing from your most defensible position(s) is generally ideal.
The energy usage is off the charts. I've spent time in data centres (a long time ago) and none of them at the time had massive water usage so I believe it's only a very wasteful subset that are being dicks.
On the flip side, data centres are taking up a fifth of all electricity usage in the whole country where I live and fucking our carbon targets so people are pissed about it.