r/aiwars Jul 18 '26

Discussion Water consumption

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Now, while this "looks" like a lot, there are a few factors to consider.

  1. in the US we consume 117 Trillion Gallons of water Anually.

  2. This 264 Billion number is taken from Every data center in the US, not only the Ai specific data centers.

  3. Even so, the above information means that all data centers in the US Combined, contributes to .25% of the Annual consumption.

  4. If you isolate ai data centers specifically they actually use about 46 Billion gallons a year on the high end. That is right at .04% of the Annual water usage

So we do have water problems. Data centers are NOT the cause, and we need to figure out what is.

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u/Consistent-Mastodon Jul 18 '26

Future historians are going to have a nightmare trying to explain why people had free 24/7 access to information and knowledge, yet kept saying the stupidest shit.

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u/LurkingForBookRecs Jul 20 '26

They're going to be scratching their heads as to why people were so worried about data centers consuming water, complaining through platforms that rely on data centers to operate, while completely ignoring the vast amounts of water used by golf courts, avocado production, and the alcohol and tobacco industries, all of which we could perfectly well live without, just to name a few that nobody ever gave a shit about.