Using water to cool a data center is absolutely not equivalent to using it for farming. Once you irrigate a field, that water is gone. But if water is cooling something, then it can be collected and used again. Of course, that requires a city or county to have a water reclamation program.
Likewise, if you water a lawn, that water is gone. But if you flush water down a toilet or a shower drain, the water is potentially reusable. Just needs to be cleaned.
Waste water can also be used for cooling. I believe that's how the Palo Verde nuclear plant outside of Phoenix is cooled.
"it can be collected" is far different from "is collected".
If the data center uses evaporative cooling then most of the water vapor leaves that water basin. While some of that irrigation water goes into the ground and stays in the water basin for a longer time.
Likewise, if you water a lawn - and assuming you are not so daft as to do it when the sun is high - the most of the water will go into the ground, reaching eventually the acquifer or a waterway, for eventual downstream reuse.
This is why cities in dry climates, or places facing a drought, will have restrictions like "No outdoor watering between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m."
This doesn't seem true to me, in the sense that anything is truly "gone". The water doesn't cease to exist or is converted to anything other than water. It just moves.
Right. The water isn't gone from the universe, certainly. But it's gone from the city/county water system. You've then got to wait for it to come back via the natural water cycle. Whereas it's a lot more efficient to keep as much water as possible in the human system and just keep cleaning and reusing it.
I'm sure any wealth tax would only apply to wealth above a certain amount. For instance, inheritance tax only applies to $15mil and above. Likewise, when you sell a house the first $500K (I believe) in capital gains from the sale is tax free.
I don't think people with savings of $15mil and above (assuming that would be the cutoff) are in danger of going bankrupt in 20 yrs from a 1% wealth tax. Assuming your 3% return, they'd be earning $450,000 a year that wouldn't be touched by the wealth tax.
The underlying problem is that the number of representatives hasn't increased in about 100 years (not counting addition of Alaska and Hawaii). Increase the number of reps, as was regularly done up until early 20th century, and a lot of this gerrymandering nonsense will disappear. Of course, the powers that be don't want to do this because it would make the system more fair and democratic.
The idea of rent suggests that you're paying a use fee to an owner. But if you live in a house that you own, and therefore lose the potential rental income, who are you paying that use fee to? Is the loss of potential income really the same as rent? Because in that case almost every choice/action in life involves a potential loss of income. There's probably always something more profitable one could have done with time/money.
> Is the loss of potential income really the same as rent?
yes it is. The term is called cost of capital, and sometimes imputed rent. But it's not an "expense" per se like it is when you pay liquid cash to somebody for use of a capital good.
Yup! Most people won't even entertain this idea though.
I grew up ranching, hunting, farming, etc in the US west so I've seen this first hand. I went to an ag college as well. So, very familiar with this.
Cows are really, really bad for the environment. It's an incredibly inefficient way of producing calories.
We use massive amounts of land to grow relatively little food, in regards to beef. We deforest massive amounts of land to grow little food.
Cows do not belong in the American continents. They're not native. They make habitat/ecological issues way worse.
The record breaking fire year Oregon had in 2024? Cows contributed by eating native grasses which encourages invasive grass growth. Invasive grasses spread into monocultures and burn very hot. Cows also destroy riperian habitat which acts as a natural fire break.
US taxpayers also subsidize ranching on public lands in the form of suuuuper cheap grazing rights. Think hundreds of millions of dollars every year. Then we have more wildfires, more animal extinctions, etc so ranchers can let their cows loose.
We decimate local animals/predators because they are inconvenient for cows(think wolves and bears) which decimates the ecosystem. Look at Yellowstone and the mountain of evidence which shows predators are crucial for a functioning American ecosystem.
Then we have the issue of water rights which is "use it or lose it" so we have farmers growing grass in the arid US West. Where does a lot of that grass go? Overseas and into cows.
Then there's the methane problem.
Then there's the ethics problem.
Then there's the unhealthy diet problem which costs taxpayers billions in preventable illness.
Also, urban populations and rural populations have a symbiotic relationship. Someone has to process and transport all of that harvested crop/livestock. Is Fresno the thriving metropolis (snert) it is today without the farming of the Central Valley? Are the ports of Oakland and LA nearly as busy if they aren't shipping out all of that agricultural product?
I believe the royal society for the protection of birds studied whether cats are a threat to bird populations and concluded that they really aren't. Obviously cats do kill birds, but overwhelmingly the major threat to birds is habitat loss caused by humans. Also, cats kill rodents, which indirectly helps birds because rodents are a big threat to bird populations, because rats take eggs from their nests. In fact, cats preferentially kill rodents. Something like 90% of their diet will typically be rodents. Birds, for them, are only opportunity kills. In other words, cats are an easy scapegoat because they quite visibly do kill birds, but humans (as is usually the case) are the true underlying problem.
It really depends on the region. Island populations are disproportionately at higher risk to eradication by cat due to the difficulty or impossibility in replenishing the population from outside/neighboring populations.
Biblical scholar Bart Ehrman argues that there are many versions of Christianity, and there always have been since its inception. What you are representing as the "core teaching of Christianity" is the version that was primarily articulated by Paul, and that became the orthodox version due to its eventual adoption as the religion of the Roman Empire. But even at the time of Paul there were rival interpretations. There were the Gnostics, the group led by James in Jerusalem, and even those who insisted one had to adopt Judaism to follow Jesus. And significantly, Jesus himself probably wouldn't have recognized the interpretation of Paul.
And looking beyond early Christianity, one can pick any period of Christianity's history and find numerous rival doctrines.
Likewise, if you water a lawn, that water is gone. But if you flush water down a toilet or a shower drain, the water is potentially reusable. Just needs to be cleaned.
Waste water can also be used for cooling. I believe that's how the Palo Verde nuclear plant outside of Phoenix is cooled.
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