Something I realized during the utterly-moronic AI water usage “debate” is that a lot of progressive degrowther types believe that when water is used somewhere, it literally disappears. Like, they think it poofs into hydrogen and oxygen or just evacuates the universe altogether.

And…dang. I have no words for whatever is going on there. But here’s some anyway: Water is nearly infinitely-renewable. No, this doesn’t solve the problems of cities like Tehran or a lot of India. Though those are in fact soluble (see what I did there) problems. Other than water that is de-molecularized in a few industrial processes and relatively-rare chemical reactions, there is as much fresh water on planet earth now as there was when humans evolved. Yes, of course, how we use it matters. And we could do a lot better at that.

However, when I realized that very many prog types believe that when water runs through a data center loop for 30 seconds it is somehow annihilated and vanishes from the universe forever, I was both disappointed and agog.