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Comment by ryandvm | Hacker News Reader

Water has an exceptionally high heat capacity, I get it. But using drinking water to cool our servers (in the interest of seeing the very best ads) seems like an exceptionally short-sighted choice for us to make.

If there is a less worthwhile thing for us to be doing with potable water, I can't think of it.

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Economics beats morality. Making it about morality is counter-productive.

Water is a resource with a price, just like land or gasoline.

If Google had a cheaper way to cool their servers, they would.

If we have plenty of cheap water then we should use it to cool the server or for watering lawns or whatever.

If the price of water is too low, then we should raise the price of water so that it's cheaper for Google to use a different way of cooling.

If you make it about Google and cooling servers (and not about the price of water) then you might win a battle but you'll still lose the war because Google is only one of many entities that will eventually deplete water resources if they are not priced properly.

Also, old people have little to no economic use. We should dispose of them.

Looking at everything as a psychopathic economic agent is fun!

That’s a pretty uncharitable reading of parent comment. When things are not correctly priced, these issues will constantly crop up. A simpler thing to do would be to price common resources correctly and rebate those who have special needs (like old people, or the poor, etc.).

We use economics to understand how resources can be exchanged for human benefit. If google had offered 100 billion dollars for this water, none of us would believe it immoral for them to make this transaction because the money could be used for good by the community.

Obviously however, 100 billion dollars is too high a price so the problem becomes not if it is immoral for google to take this water but what price is this water worth such that both google and the community come out ahead.

In the case where the money goes to "the community", then sure, maybe. But are the people selling it doing it for the interests of the community? How is the money used to benefit the community?

I am a Socialist myself, so perhaps that's why I am sceptical of the claim that 100 billion dollars would be enough to offset any kind of moral questions. Is it ethical to accept 100 billion dollars from an exploiter of labour?

Please don't post like this here.

http://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

  Water is a resource with a price, just like
  land or gasoline.

I don't know about South Carolina, but as I understand it in the west of America this isn't the case, as the heaviest water users are subsidised by taxpayers.

For example, in California alfalfa growers pay $70 for an acre-foot of water, while urban users in Los Angeles pay $1,000 per acre-foot. The growers use 34.1 million acre-feet a year, while urban use totals 8.9 million acre-feet a year.

Needless to say, growers get very rich from this and make big political contributions; if they had to pay market rate they'd all be out of business pretty quickly. The political contributions work; voters widely support this baffling state of affairs.

It still has a price. It just happens that the price is artificially low. That's why the comment you quoted said the price should be increased in this case.

California is a big state. Los Angeles is in a desert portion of the state. I have not researched where alfalfa is primarily grown but that is important information. You can see alfalfa test plots on this map are not in desert portions of the state. You can also see how much of the state is not a desert. http://alfalfa.ucdavis.edu/-images/variety_map.gif

Buying in bulk is different than buying just enough to drink. A bottle of water for $5 at a movie for example.

Maybe the price of water in LA primarily covers infrastructure, not water. Their water does come from hundreds of miles away.

Nope. The water is largely coming through the same gross infrastructure. That map is not an accurate guide to regions of the state where arable water is directly available.

Water issues in the west are complicated.

Slightly different products. Water made available to a farmer, as in the farmer is allowed to pump it out of a local river, is different than clean and sanitized water delivered on demand through the tap in your downtown loft kitchen. The bottled water sold to passengers at 30,000 feet over the pacific en route to Japan is also a fundamentally different product. Water pricing is all about time and place, not necessarily volume.

> Economics beats morality. Making it about morality is counter-productive.

Always?

What happens when the market price of a biological necessity exceeds what some people can bid? If business utilization of a resource yields more economic value than the continued existence of some people, is the right choice to let them die?

Sounds horrid, but this is the reality of many poor countries - we literally still have people around the struggling to find enough food to eat. Many of them are from countries with ongoing conflicts/wars, which likely cost more than the the food the people need to be properly nourished.

To clarify - not saying it should be that way, quite the contrary.

If business utilization of a resource yields more economic value than the continued existence of some people, is the right choice to let them die?

You mean Turing Pharmaceuticals raising the price of Daraprim to whatever the market will bear? People have issues with that, and for some reason for sixty years the price was closer to what the stuff costs to produce (i.e. USD 15 per dose, not USD 750.

I'd like to know more about the ecosystem the original owners operated in, and why the price was so low for so long.

> Economics beats morality.

I can't tell if you're summarizing the problem or actually making a straight-faced assertion.

I read it as them saying "In practice, economics beats morality (so we'll have to change the economics of the situation if we want to fix this)".

> If the price of water is too low, then we should raise the price of water so that it's cheaper for Google to use a different way of cooling.

Agreed. But we always seem to fail to price-in the externalities for natural resources. Just like carbon dioxide emissions from energy production.

The government could change the economics with a tax on cooling down the servers with water so I believe the morality can beat pure economics.

Even in this case, the business is operating on an economic basis. The state has just adjusted the costs to demand a different economic outcome.

Maybe there is a balance to be found. I think at the moment there is overwhelming interest in proper policy on environment and resources.

There are tons of restrictions like zoning, and nearly any environmental, industrial, safety, labour regulation that sit outside the economic context.

And this is a 100% economic decision. With 1.5 million gpd, they would likely just be shotgunning groundwater through their cooling water system instead of using a closed loop system with chillers, and requisite power bill. Just another example of the tragedy of the commons.

> using drinking water to cool our servers seems like an exceptionally short-sighted choice for us to make.

In that case "us" is Google, in that server farm specifically. The article mentions there exists better alternatives :

> The National Security Agency cools its Fort Meade, Maryland data center with treated wastewater, touted as an environmental boon and cost savings compared to tap water or aquifer pumping.

And drawing water from an aquifer, when we don't even know how fast it's being replenished, seems like a particularly bad idea -- surprisingly so from a company whose headquarters is in California.

There isn't any lack of drinking water in the US other than maybe parts of Nevada. It's mostly used for commercial or agricultural purposes. When there is a shortage the question should be which the least important commercial or agricultural use.

Just using market based pricing would solve it. But western states have a shitty water rights policy that doesn't allow it. Someone growing water intensive crops in an arid region get priority over junior users. It's a bad system.

I mean, it's not like the water is being destroyed, or even rendered undrinkable, it's just being warmed...

Right, but

> The Google aquifer permit application states it will reuse water before eventually discharging it to the sewer system, but the company did not provide details when asked by The Post and Courier.

And 2 paragraphs down

> Groundwater can be returned to the aquifer after use, but some is lost to evaporation and the operation is costly, according to industry sources. There are other alternatives. The National Security Agency cools its Fort Meade, Maryland data center with treated wastewater, touted as an environmental boon and cost savings compared to tap water or aquifer pumping.

So basically Google is going to draw aquifer water, probably reuse it and potentially just flush the water into the the sewer system.

This is why skepticism is warranted whenever politicians and business people bemoan environmental regulations.

Alphabet management bears no cost and gives no shits about contributing to aquifer depletion in South Carolina. Of course the people running South Carolina probably don't either!

I wonder why they don't just pump the heated water back down into the aquifer. That would make it basically an open-loop geothermal heat pump.

This almost certainly has some negative environmental effects.

It's being moved. Drawing down groundwater on a massive scale can have massive and permanent environmental effects. The fact that it still exists somewhere is immaterial.

If there is a less worthwhile thing for us to be doing with potable water, I can't think of it.

China recently is cracking down on golf courses in order to preserve water. I imagine the game of golf is not actually worth the cultural heritage and entertainment it provides if you want to think about the water it uses. At least the Chinese government has concluded this and it's facing a severe potable water shortage issue in the future.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/china-golf-water-land-shortages...

As well... water balloons and water guns? Baths as opposed to showers? The list goes on. Google's ads provide a service the general public finds useful.

Literally shitting in it?

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