Between them, Google and Amazon consumed about 13.4 billion gallons of water last year… running the two largest cloud businesses on earth.
America's golf courses get through that much in roughly nine days.
You’ve probably seen people harping on about how ChatGPT is killing the planet… and while people parroting an incorrect fact often does no harm… it’s starting to hurt our portfolios.
Pew Research has asked Americans the same question about AI for five years running.
In 2021, 37% said the spread of AI in daily life made them more concerned than excited.
By last summer that was 50%.
And only 10% said they were more excited than concerned.
Ask the same people to weigh risks against benefits and 57% call the societal risks high, while 25% say the same of the benefits.
And this Anti-AI bent has crossed over from dinner table conversation into how stocks get priced.
Watch what actually got rewarded and punished
Alphabet reported a strong quarter and sold off… Meta grew its ad business at double digits and fell 8%… Microsoft went into Wednesday down roughly 20% for the year…
When a market reacts that differently to that similar a set of facts, it isn't running a calculation. It's running a mood.
Which brings me back to the water…
Google's own 2026 environmental report put its 2025 water consumption at 10.9 billion gallons. Amazon disclosed 2.5 billion gallons for the same year, its first ever water disclosure.
Meanwhile American golf courses use somewhere north of 500 billion gallons a year, and irrigated US agriculture consumes on the order of 73 billion gallons a day.
Data centers work out to something like 0.2% of total US water use.
So the industry supposedly draining the country's reservoirs uses a low single-digit percentage of what golf uses, and a rounding error against farming.
Then there's a fact that got almost no coverage at all…
Amazon added data centers in 2025 and its water withdrawals at the sites it owns and operates went down 2%. It now reports 0.12 litres of water per kilowatt-hour… and runs 26 facilities entirely on reclaimed water… with another 130 in the pipeline.
Meaning the engineering is moving faster than the outrage.
Now the parts the bulls leave out, because you should hear these too.
All of which points to the belief I want you to take away...
A large number presented without a denominator is an argument dressed up as a fact.
"13.4 billion gallons" is shock and awe designed to make you feel something…
"0.2% of US water use" is there to help you think…
And if you’re going to survive this whiplash… you gotta start running filters over every AI headline you read.
And remember… public sentiment is not cash flow…
Stocks can trade on public sentiment for a while… but ultimately the numbers on the balance sheet are all that matter…
Oliver