Hacker News Reader

It's not like they are mixing that water with oil and pumping into the aquifer. Water evaporate, turn into clouds, that precipitate into rain that fall on the ground and water bodies, where it can be used again. So what's the problem, with datacenter water usage? Has the water cycle has stopped and I was not informed?

View on HN

Fresh water is finite. Infinite in reuse, but we can only take so much from a river before that river ceases to be. If you have a megabit connection, it doesn't matter that your cloud backups have infinite storage, you are limited by bandwidth.

Water vapor stays aloft for wild, so there's no guarantee it enters the same watershed it was drawn from.

It's also a powerful greenhouse gas, so even though it's removed quickly, raising the rate we produce it results in more insulation.

It's not a finite resource, we need to be judicious and wise in how we allocate it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com