CMV: The discussion about freshwater usage in data centers is a red herring to distract from even worse issues like infrasound, noise pollution and toxines from gas turbines
I'm noticing a trend where a lot of posts and news segments are disproving that data centers are using too much water, but I never saw the people being affected by data center projects bringing that up as their main issue.
Whenever a protest against a data center project erupts, the corporate media and politicians can just single out the water usage issue, disprove that easily and then automatically dismiss all the other environmental and health concerns that are being brought up.
And it's also an easy message to astroturf. Every time I open this app I see multiple posts with professional diagrams showing that data center project x is only using 1% of the water that the rest of the town uses. You'll never see diagrams showing you how air pollution from data centers isn't as bad as pollution from coal plants or whatever, because people naturally understand that all kinds of pollution will affect them.