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Who else foresees environmental problems with this later down the line? (news.microsoft.com)

submitted 11 months ago by flashgnash@lemm.ee to c/technology@beehaw.org

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Microsoft are looking at putting datacenters under the ocean, which sounds like a really good idea to cool them but I can’t help but think a couple decades from now it’s going to start causing us problems

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[-] RickRussell_CA@beehaw.org 35 points 11 months ago

Everything has to be cooled, it's a question of efficiency. Directly exchanging the heat into cold water is arguably better than expending fossil fuels to generate electricity to pump the heat out of your servers and into the atmosphere. You get multiple losses with current technology: fossil fuel efficiency losses, electric line losses, air conditioning efficiency losses. And the additional electrical generation dumps more CO2.

[-] LongbottomLeaf@lemmy.nz 3 points 11 months ago

Oh no doubt. It makes a great deal of sense.

I'm just curious what the actual heat output is (avg, min, max, in vs out), and what the environmental impact is.

Will there be biofouling because the warm seawater is desirable?

Will it even be viable offshore from places like Miami?

Can it produce too much heat for the local environment? Probably not one, but what about after this scale-up with renewables like the article mentions?

At what scale would it begin to disrupt things like the AMOC?