AndrewI got sucked into running the numbers on that "delete emails to save water" thing. Best estimates I can find are that live datacentre storage in the UK has a median water usage of ~80ml/GB/year. So a terabyte of cloud storage consumes 80 litres a year.
Network losses from leaks are on the order of 10-15,000 litres per person per year.
Glad we can see the culprit is definitely old forwarded cat photos.
Schrödinger's Prat@generalising@mastodon.flooey.org
It's like being told to switch all your devices off at night so that a private jet can travel another 35 ft.
just Naomi 🏳️⚧️
@generalising@mastodon.flooey.org It would be interesting to find out how much of the leaked water finds its way back into aquifers.
AndrewIf you cut your daily shower by half a second you'll save enough water for a few hundred GB of ongoing storage. Buying one less t-shirt a year saves 20 TB worth of water. Not having a garden sprinkler in the summer is pushing towards the water usage of a whole PB of drives.
There are things we do with lower water impact than "file emails", but it's hard to imagine what they are.
Pete / Syllopsium@Almandine@tech.lgbt @generalising@mastodon.flooey.org Given there are only 11 principal aquifers in the UK, my guess is sqrt(naff all), and because it's an aquifer it will take some time for water to filter down.
Most water is going to come from reservoirs.
I suppose the real question is just where the leaks are, and the cost and time to fix them. If you want to fix water shortages quickly is the priority new reservoirs or fixing leaks? Although obviously it should be a case of AND.
Andrew@syllopsium@peoplemaking.games @Almandine@tech.lgbt I have to confess every time people talk about of water shortages in the UK I think of Nye Bevan - "This island is made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organizing genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish at the same time."
just Naomi 🏳️⚧️@generalising@mastodon.flooey.org @syllopsium@peoplemaking.games Many years ago, my father (RAF) was stationed in Malta. The drinking water was produced from seawater by reverse osmosis. It tasted vile, although the tech used will have improved no end since then! Rather charmingly, the island's press had misheard the name of the process when it went live - and told them the water was made drinkable by Rivers of Moses.
just Naomi 🏳️⚧️@generalising@mastodon.flooey.org @syllopsium@peoplemaking.games Many years ago, my father (RAF) was stationed in Malta. The drinking water was produced from seawater by reverse osmosis. It tasted vile, although the tech used will have improved no end since then! Rather charmingly, the island's press had misheard the name of the process when it went live - and told them the water was made drinkable by Rivers of Moses.