Always used to amaze me as a kid I had to pay 20p to inflate my bike tyre from, air.

Boggled my mind since I had a hand pump.

Which is why I mentioned limiting it to data centers as an option

Raining over the ocean where it is no longer in the stores of freshwater these systems are pulling from

Yeah they do, it has absolutely become the norm and has been for several years. It may not be the norm among Lemmy users, but general public absolutely do use cloud storage for especially pictures.

straight up not feasible

It's very feasible to create the law, collect the fine, and raise the price on energy sources or industrial process that require the cooling.

It's a formality, you could do it in an afternoon. Costs a bit of ink and a piece of paper.

"But then it gets more expensive!" and "This might push corporations out of the city/country." is the consequence the people / the government / the country have to have the balls to endure, if they want to stand by things like "having enough water" or "living on earth in the 22nd century".

If the free market is something you believe in, you should love this, because it makes water a more scarce resource and the market will be able to find another optimal solution to that new scarcity problem.

So this doesn't sound like a big deal after all. Maybe just stop pulling water from those "stores of freshwater" for cooling purposes and get your own from the ocean.

Corrosion issues, marine life clogging, too expensive, etcetc.

They could heat many houses or fill many heat reservoirs instead.

Depending on local climate, season and proximity to cities or industrial customers, this is often done, but you'll still have to dump lots of heat in the summer when space heating is off

Show me how do you want to dissipate 10GWt inland without evaporative cooling towers, i'll wait

Necessity is the mother of invention, life uh finds a way.

More heat reservoirs.

Yeah, let them figure it out. It's their problem after all. If it's more expensive, then let them increase prices for their "data serving" activities. If it's too expensive for some people, they might reconsider their usage of said services which in turn might be equivalent of "deleting old files or emails". Instead of asking people deleting files right now before those in charge even tried to fix the problems they created.

Ideally yes, but realistically, fuck the commoners, give money.

If evaporative cooling is the only solution then the market will adjust to the new cost by moving power generation towards the coasts or just increase the price, if there are other solutions they’ll become the economically more viable. Either way more water is conserved and you can always balance the cost benefit by adjusting the fine/tax to find a good balance.

Most people only have a smartphone and maybe a tablet, and don't have personal PC or laptop. Android and iOS automatically upload stuff to the cloud (at least photos).

best recent example is the evolution of plastic free straws.... took 3 years to innovate, would have never ever happened without the pressure.

and dann the first versions of soggy paper sucked so hard.

I'll also wear blue clothing to have the same impact

Well, deleting stuff causes a load of processing that wouldn't have otherwise happened... So I guess I should have some coal barbecues?

To be fair, those automated air pumps require upkeep (e.g. compressors fail after awhile and aren't always super cheap to replace when factoring the cost of the part and labor to fix). So that's what your money was paying for, not the air itself. But, I agree it is a bit ridiculous.

As a side note, I highly recommend those portable air compressors that can plug into your car's aux port. Super convenient in the winter time when your tires' air pressure drops.

I never heard so much bs in a single article. Those files and emails are stored on cold storage, and is using zero water. I guess it's a good thing to remove old files and empty your trash bin, both in real life as well as digital.

But this article makes no sense at all. Just one query to an AI will use so much more energy and water in comparison with your old email in cold storage. It's a joke.

Ps. By removing your files now, and checking the contents, you are actually moving the files from cold storage to hot. Meaning the server will load the data into memory etc. Which will actually makes this drought worse, not better.