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Comment by meindnoch | Hacker News Reader

You realize the cooling system in a data center is a closed loop that circulates a fixed volume of water, right?

Your kidneys are filtering 200 liters of blood per day. OMG, where's all that blood coming from?!

Many data centers use evaporative cooling, since it's much cheaper than closed loop. This requires a constant input of water.

Yes and just like our bodies, that closed loop is cooled by a rack of evaporators on the roof.

The blood comes from liquids I ingest (and some food and air). If I don't drink, I'll die quite quickly.

That isn't a closed loop exactly although there is a complex system connecting my digestive/urinary tract with my bladder etc.

If this is true, why have I heard about data centers demolishing local water supplies? Is this incorrect?

Its a thing that cannot be generalized. However, many datacenters use evaporative cooling. Especially when the DC is built in a region with relatively warm outside temperatures, it‘s basically the only viable way to get rid of all that heat.

It seems weird then that they are not locating data centers around northern rust belt areas where the industrial land use would not be an issue and rivers/lakes are plentiful (being the main reason those cities and industry developed there in the first place).

Apparently, you don't urinate like the rest of us; humans are not a closed loop. Neither are most data center cooling facilities, but I think it's pretty clear that level of fact is wasted here.

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