From Rod D. Martin on X:

US golf courses use 531 billion gallons of water per year. That’s down from 759 billion gallons per year in 2005 and is 0.5% of total annual water withdrawals in this country. And somehow, the country manages to not look like the Sahara Desert.

Meanwhile, data centers – the things actually powering the future instead of your uncle’s 18th hole mulligan – use somewhere between 17 and 70 billion gallons annually. That’s 0.017% to 0.070% of total withdrawals.

Or, for the math-challenged among us, roughly 3-14% of what the golf courses are using.

Sure, plopping a massive data center in the middle of nowhere without proper planning and infrastructure can stress local water systems. That’s called “basic engineering,” folks, not some apocalyptic thirst apocalypse.

But these lurid headlines screaming that AI is going to suck the rivers dry and leave us fighting over the last drop like Mad Max at a Buc-ee’s? Read the whole post.