This may be true of chopping down forests or mining coal. But we can use nuclear power. And the earth has plenty of water -- does chatgpt need clean drinking water specifically?

[–] frezik@midwest.social 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Datacenters moved to using evaporative cooling to save power. Which it does, but at the cost of water usage.

Using salt water, or anything significantly contaminated like grey water, would mean sediment gets left behind that has to be cleaned up at greater cost. So yes, they generally do compete with drinking water sources.

There's no way nuclear gets built out in less than 10 years.

[–] jsomae@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 months ago

Thank you for explaining that. I didn't understand the need to use drinking water.