"It really seems like anyone with some renders and a white paper written by someone being gassed up by an overly agreeable AI can get VC funding these days."
If the heat made by the data centers can warm rivers, and those rivers can warm the oceans… Aren’t the data centers already warming the oceans? Which would mean that putting data centers directly in the ocean would definitely warm the oceans?
Temperature is what matters. The same amount of heat out into a river can significantly warm the whole river downstream, but have no detectable effect on the ocean temperature, just because the heat is diluted so much.
Like, dilute a bottle of tequila with two liters of cola, sure you’ll get drunk - but pour that same tequila into a full swimming pool, and you’d never get drunk even if you drink the pool water all day.
You understand rivers largely empty into oceans, right? Your tequila analogy leaves that part out. Eventually, you’re still dumping tequila (heat) into the pool (ocean).
The effects of heat are all due to temperature, which is reduced by dilution.
The alcohol molecules represent heat energy (Joules), and the ABV% represents temperature (Kelvin).
Rivers are small enough to be negatively affected by data center waste heat, but oceans really aren’t. They are being affected by the greenhouse effect though, because that is on a scale of petawatts, a million times the gigawatt scale of all global data centers together.
If the heat made by the data centers can warm rivers, and those rivers can warm the oceans… Aren’t the data centers already warming the oceans? Which would mean that putting data centers directly in the ocean would definitely warm the oceans?
Temperature is what matters. The same amount of heat out into a river can significantly warm the whole river downstream, but have no detectable effect on the ocean temperature, just because the heat is diluted so much.
Like, dilute a bottle of tequila with two liters of cola, sure you’ll get drunk - but pour that same tequila into a full swimming pool, and you’d never get drunk even if you drink the pool water all day.
You understand rivers largely empty into oceans, right? Your tequila analogy leaves that part out. Eventually, you’re still dumping tequila (heat) into the pool (ocean).
The effects of heat are all due to temperature, which is reduced by dilution.
The alcohol molecules represent heat energy (Joules), and the ABV% represents temperature (Kelvin).
Rivers are small enough to be negatively affected by data center waste heat, but oceans really aren’t. They are being affected by the greenhouse effect though, because that is on a scale of petawatts, a million times the gigawatt scale of all global data centers together.
It’s a matter of size. You’ll be dumping the tequila into the pool, but the alcohol percentage of the pool is in all practical sense, still 0.
The size of the pool is of no importance globally. You’re still creating the same amount of heat
The only real difference is that the river heat can get higher because it’s more localised and, therefore, can cause more trouble along the way.
But from the pov of the ocean ? Rounding error