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

submitted 1 year ago by flashgnash@lemm.ee to c/technology@lemmy.world

9 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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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[–] d3Xt3r@lemmy.world 53 points 1 year ago

Microsoft are looking at putting datacenters under the ocean

Um, no they're not. That article you linked is from 2018, and the experiment concluded in 2020. They pulled the data center out, and concluded that whilst the experiment was successful, several challenges still remain (such as around repairs and maintenance, physical security and energy supply reliability), so they haven't toyed around with the idea since then.

Basically, Microsoft have no plans at all currently to put data centers under the ocean - unless you've got some insider knowledge.

[–] mawkishdave@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The amount of heat we would put in the ocean from this would be like pouring a cup of hot water into one of the great lakes. This isn't a issue and would be better for the environment as we are not using all these power hungry ways to cool them.

[–] Munkisquisher@lemmy.nz 4 points 1 year ago

True, this is putting less heat into the atmosphere than running air conditioners to move the heat outside before radiating it away.

[–] Cameli_Hostis@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Arthur C. Clarke wrote a sequel to the sequel to the sequel of 2001 (called 3001) where Frank Poole is rescued a thousand years after been lost in orbit around Jupiter/Saturn. By then global warming isn't caused by carbon dioxide or methane or even water vapor. It's from 1,000+ years of waste heat generated by each human that's ever lived. Even with 100% clean energy, everything still creates heat, and it has to go somewhere.

[–] phx@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago

everything still creates heat, and it has to go somewhere.

But it does. Heat does radiate into space, just not necessarily enough to overcome what's trapped in the atmosphere. If we cut out other sources then generations of humans would be negligible.

[–] FaceDeer@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What specific environmental problems are you foreseeing? I looked through the article and nothing seems troublesome to me.

[–] ewe@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yeah, this seems really smart to me, as long as you can avoid the obvious problems with it being submerged in fucking corrosive as shit saltwater. Makes way more sense than using A/C since the ocean is a giant heatsink.

I am guessing OP is worried about either these things being a driver of why the oceans are heating up (not the blanket of CO2 around Earth in the atmosphere from decades of fossil fuel powered binging) or the ocean being too hot to effectively cool these things, which also doesn't seem plausible outside of very specific locations/depths.

I think this would be better than doing it on land, however I also think that it'll be costly and need to be over-engineered to survive the environment and not worth it in the end (as MS has apparently come to the same determination).

[–] drdabbles@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

It wasn't better. This idea was already done, and Microsoft isn't moving forward after these experiments.

[–] enu@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

They were talking about this years ago and I haven't heard anything on it in a while. Is it still even a project they're working on? Also, what would be the environmental problems with this? I remember reading at one point about submarine power cables potentially causing issues with marine animals because of EMF, but I don't think that was any kind of conclusive study.