> Obviously, you still shouldn't build datacenters in areas that are locally water-stressed as that will add additional burden to the infrastructure.

The problem is that the areas that are locally water-stressed are also the areas where communities are less cohesive (because they ware water-stressed) and have less power to fight back and are therefore the easiest places to build data centers.

This paper goes into what the consumption looks like and even has ideas about how to temper it: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3724499

Just because everyone else came to a much different conclusion than you did doesn't mean no one asked. Maybe you might do well to ask as well, and listen to the answer this time.

This is under the happy assumption that all used water evaporates into a cloud directly above the source region, which rains back directly.

2. “It just gets evaporated” is not a good take either. Fresh versus salt water matter, and their distribution matter a lot too.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3724499

So yeah, I don't think water is a red herring but more like a canary.