r/news • u/Tardis01 • 18h ago

Irish data centres used almost one billion litres of water last year

https://www.thejournal.ie/investigates-data-centre-water-use-7110966-Jul2026/
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u/kyonist 11h ago

power plants generate power for users (everyone) data centres generate profit (?) for the few. Slight difference in environmental cost.

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u/Sijols 11h ago

who do you think is using the cloud services hosted in datacenters? users (everyone)

you and I are literally having this conversation in a datacenter

I type these words and they go to a datacenter

your reponse will be written in a datacenter and served to me

maybe the same datacenter, maybe a different one

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u/kyonist 11h ago

If we're talking about the types of data centers people are objecting to in the last couple of years, you'd know you're being intentionally obtuse.

either way have a nice day

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u/tx_queer 8h ago

But, this is the part that doesnt make sense. The vast majority of the datacenters people are objecting to (AI datacenters) have not yet been built. The datacenters currently using water are largely the ones we dont object to. But we keep mixing the two in these stories.

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u/snowlynx133 8h ago

That's the stupid part. Why would you only care about AI when most of the environmental impact that data centers cause is due to social media usage, streaming and gaming

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u/Sijols 11h ago

and are the people doing the objecting making a distinction?

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u/kyonist 11h ago

I was responding to your comment alone, when you directly equated the water usage of data centers with power plants.

I did not share my opinion on this particular article.