Data center cooling water debate: evaporative cooling hits local basins, not global climate
AryHHAry · x · 2026-09-30
An Indonesian exchange over data center water use: one user claimed cooling impacts are global (Amazon droughts, Indian Ocean floods), but the author pushes back. Evaporative cooling alters the local basin's water balance seasonally, not seasons elsewhere; planetary evaporation flux dwarfs one cooling tower, so local water pipes break first. Treating all impacts as the same erases the key variables: whose water is taken, when it returns, who goes thirsty first. The real constraints are thermodynamics and spatial planning, not planetary averages.
Related event: Indonesian netizen unpacks AI data center water use debate(5 posts)→
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