It gets heated and then it’s unusable because the point of it is to cool things off. Some of it you can cool down and use again, by evaporation, but then you lose the amount that evaporated. When it goes back into the atmosphere it becomes polluted and you have to spend more energy cleaning it before it can be used by humans. Entropy always increases, the question is how fast you want it to increase.
Entropy always increases in closed systems. Because of the Sun, the Earth is not a closed system. If Earth were a pure entropy game, there would be no life. Also the atmosphere can’t hold infinite amount of water - that’s why it rains sometimes. So “using” fresh water is only a problem in regions where it doesn’t rain much and/or where the water has to be prepared/cleaned im the first place (which would probably make it too expensive to cool data centers in the first place) - if the water was from a natural fresh water source than just heating it is actually not a water issue - but it will contribute to global warming, but then again the argument shouldn’t be about water but about that data centers contribute to global warming.
So the amount of water is pretty much constant. And because of the huge amount of energy the Earth gets from the sun, there is plenty of opportunities for clean energy that can (and is be used) to reverse entropy. All living things reverse entropy all the time. So the issue is not using the water but the unclean energy sources that lead to global warming.
Just because water is cheap doesn’t mean it’s plentiful. We under-price water, as evidenced by the massive profiteering off of public water. These prices are inelastic and don’t respond to supply perfectly.
Also life can absolutely exist in a game of entropy. You’re pulling semantics with the closed system thing. If you want, then make the closed system be the whole solar system. It doesn’t affect my argument.
Using fresh water causes energy to be spent, that’s the whole point. Yes you can recover drinkable water from anything if you spend enough energy to do it, including the ocean, but we can’t do that as a primary means of getting water. Eventually it is a snake eating its own head with the amount of energy spent to obtain more energy.
Life can’t exist in a high entropy environment. Of course you can declare the entire solar system a closed system but because of the sun our solar system will be in an extremely low entropy state on average for a couple of billion years. Once the sun “dies” and the temperature averages out in our solar system there will be no life.
And yes it’s (almost) always an energy argument that’s why the water argument is not a good one. But not everything is an energy argument. Take He and H2 for example if you let that into the air it will eventually escape our atmosphere because of solar winds and is truly wasted/lost - but that’s not true for water. You can’t really waste water in a sense that we will have less water im the future (unless you split it into hydrogen and oxygen and let the hydrogen escape).
No one said anything about a high entropy environment. Entropy is a tool for thinking about this stuff, and it extends beyond thermodynamics as entropy is an information theory concept too. The more fragmented things become, the harder they are to work with. When you use energy (or water) for an industrial use it creates fragmentation and makes that water harder to use (especially for a different use case, drinking). You can’t just pump it back into the aquifer. This is a directional thing, not about high or low in absolute numbers.
It gets heated and then it’s unusable because the point of it is to cool things off. Some of it you can cool down and use again, by evaporation, but then you lose the amount that evaporated. When it goes back into the atmosphere it becomes polluted and you have to spend more energy cleaning it before it can be used by humans. Entropy always increases, the question is how fast you want it to increase.
Entropy always increases in closed systems. Because of the Sun, the Earth is not a closed system. If Earth were a pure entropy game, there would be no life. Also the atmosphere can’t hold infinite amount of water - that’s why it rains sometimes. So “using” fresh water is only a problem in regions where it doesn’t rain much and/or where the water has to be prepared/cleaned im the first place (which would probably make it too expensive to cool data centers in the first place) - if the water was from a natural fresh water source than just heating it is actually not a water issue - but it will contribute to global warming, but then again the argument shouldn’t be about water but about that data centers contribute to global warming.
So the amount of water is pretty much constant. And because of the huge amount of energy the Earth gets from the sun, there is plenty of opportunities for clean energy that can (and is be used) to reverse entropy. All living things reverse entropy all the time. So the issue is not using the water but the unclean energy sources that lead to global warming.
Just because water is cheap doesn’t mean it’s plentiful. We under-price water, as evidenced by the massive profiteering off of public water. These prices are inelastic and don’t respond to supply perfectly.
Also life can absolutely exist in a game of entropy. You’re pulling semantics with the closed system thing. If you want, then make the closed system be the whole solar system. It doesn’t affect my argument.
Using fresh water causes energy to be spent, that’s the whole point. Yes you can recover drinkable water from anything if you spend enough energy to do it, including the ocean, but we can’t do that as a primary means of getting water. Eventually it is a snake eating its own head with the amount of energy spent to obtain more energy.
Life can’t exist in a high entropy environment. Of course you can declare the entire solar system a closed system but because of the sun our solar system will be in an extremely low entropy state on average for a couple of billion years. Once the sun “dies” and the temperature averages out in our solar system there will be no life.
And yes it’s (almost) always an energy argument that’s why the water argument is not a good one. But not everything is an energy argument. Take He and H2 for example if you let that into the air it will eventually escape our atmosphere because of solar winds and is truly wasted/lost - but that’s not true for water. You can’t really waste water in a sense that we will have less water im the future (unless you split it into hydrogen and oxygen and let the hydrogen escape).
No one said anything about a high entropy environment. Entropy is a tool for thinking about this stuff, and it extends beyond thermodynamics as entropy is an information theory concept too. The more fragmented things become, the harder they are to work with. When you use energy (or water) for an industrial use it creates fragmentation and makes that water harder to use (especially for a different use case, drinking). You can’t just pump it back into the aquifer. This is a directional thing, not about high or low in absolute numbers.