Case in point, Microsoft’s water use shot up from 6.4 million cubic meters in 2022 to 7.8 in 2023, in large part due to the “construction of more data centers.”

By way of comparison, the California almond industry uses 3.5 billion cubic meters of water per year. Describing datacenters as using “astronomical amounts of water” is a plain and simple lie.

Moreover, datacenters can be cooled with water that’s not suitable for most other uses. Google’s Finland datacenter is cooled with seawater, for example.

Their refusal to admit the problem will be the doom of us all.

Wasn’t it the combination of a very dry year, lightning, and the Santa Ana winds?

I mean sure, putting out large fires is tricky, but we understand the cause of them pretty well… Fuel + oxygen + heat = fire

That’s not a political thing, that’s a physics thing. All the dei in the world won’t spark a fire, extreme heat will, like a lightning strike (or a teenager with a tent, some wood and no brains).

Oh… I misread the headline and though it said “explosion of data center.” I was like "wow how did they not know a data center exploded that started the fire?? There must be some people working there…