This article gave me existential dead - more than the normal background existential dread. Using the ocean as a heatsink sounds great, but we are already warming the oceans. Yes, they’re big - but they’re not infinite. We’ve figured out how to get “free” energy from space with solar. Now we really need to figure out how to dissipate the excess heat we produce with that energy back into space, or use all of it. Someone really needs to figure out how to turn heat back into electricity - without boiling water to spin turbines.
Someone really needs to figure out how to turn heat back into electricity - without boiling water to spin turbines.
Second law of thermodynamics moment.
Don’t worry about it bro. We passed the point of no (practical) return 40 years ago. Climate collapse and extinction is inevitable.
Microsoft already trialled this in Scotland, except it was powered by prototype tidal which was also being tested at that site.
One of the other things Microsoft tested was running the server room in a pure nitrogen atmosphere. Apparently this was very beneficial as it reduced the failure rate of components - you can’t have a spark without oxygen. That was actually the main advantage taken away from the test, with a view to maybe adopting that for datacentres on land (I doubt this though, the level of protection you’d need for workers makes it cost-prohibitive).
Cold is better managed by being somewhere cold - which is why they’re all busy building tons of datacentres in Nordic countries.
