• Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    I don’t think people mean literally boil the ocean. Just increasing it by few Celsius degrees can be world ending.

    • CeeBee_Eh@lemmy.world
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      56 minutes ago

      If every data centre was passively cooled in the ocean it wouldn’t change temps by even 0.01 degrees. The Sun blasts an entire half of the planet with an absurd amount of energy every day. Energy, which technically originated from the sun, is just converted and being utilized to do work.

    • Otter@lemmy.ca
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      2 hours ago

      That’s true, but I still don’t think we can raise ocean temperatures through direct cooling and renewable sources the way that the greenhouse effect can. Water can absorb a lot of heat energy without changing temperature, and that is why regions close to oceans have a more temperate climate.

      While I don’t have enough knowledge in this field to be making any definitive statements, my logic is as follows:

      • outside of nuclear fission/fusion reactions, heat energy on the earth’s surface comes from either the sun or molten rock in the core
      • that energy is responsible for everything that happens on earth, including wind energy

      So we would need to get energy from off planet, use nuclear fission/fusion, or cover enough of the land area in wind and solar farms in order to redirect the sun’s energy over to the oceans.

      I think the bigger concern, when it comes to heating the ocean, is that manufacturing, construction, and transport related to the data centers still releases a lot of greenhouse gases. Those gases trap the sun’s energy within our atmosphere and that WILL heat up the earth. Way more than direct cooling using ocean water.