Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#161

Post by scrollaway » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 6:32 PM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #154

AlanSE wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been covered again and again in other comments. Thermal power plants dump heat into oceans today. The data center is much more efficient than a counterpart on land. Ocean life and coral reefs are in danger due to temperature rise as a part of climate change. Energy efficiency helps reduce that temperature rise.

And when we make something much more efficient, we just end up making more of them.

If we make more of them, it's because there's a need for it.

There isn't an "increased demand in datacenters" just because datacenters are more efficient. There's still the same demand, but it can now be met more efficiently.

If the process was not as efficient, you would still attempt to meet the demand, except that you're producing more waste (waste heat especially in this case), over a longer period of time.

Waste is waste, reducing it is never a negative.

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#162

Post by scrollaway » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 6:33 PM UTC

ramon wrote: post #140

AlanSE wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been covered again and again in other comments. Thermal power plants dump heat into oceans today. The data center is much more efficient than a counterpart on land. Ocean life and coral reefs are in danger due to temperature rise as a part of climate change. Energy efficiency helps reduce that temperature rise.

No, actually there has been already many studies that there's no turning back on climate change. Even going all electric energy it's not going to do much for climate change, there's no turning back on this aspect at all.

It's not a binary switch.

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#163

Post by outworlder » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 6:33 PM UTC

StavrosK wrote: post #37

NathanKP wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An HVAC system above ground would generate far more heat. The advantage of sinking the data center would appear to be that it can function with passive cooling from the surrounding water only, no HVAC. This means less electricity consumption (meaning less energy generation required, and fewer resulting greenhouse gasses). And HVAC systems create far more waste heat than they do cooling, so this passive cooling will j…

The issue is CO2, though, not heat per se. Yes, the two are correlated, but if you use renewables to power your things, it doesn't really matter how much heat you generate. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

> but if you use renewables to power your things, it doesn't really matter how much heat you generate.

Thermodynamics should really be emphasized in schools. You are getting some amazing responses that are completely ignoring the fact that our renewable energy solutions are not increasing the overall heat in our planet. They are just moving energy around.

The only thing that really matters is how are the emissions going to look like when we are manufacturing renewable energy equipment (either new capacity or replacing faulty ones).

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#164

Post by anigbrowl » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 6:35 PM UTC

codetrotter wrote: post #149

andrewnicolalde wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're in the US like I am, I think it's because the BBC redirects all non-UK visitors to BBC.com, and so when you hit the back button from BBC.com you get sent back to BBC.co.uk which in turn redirects you to BBC.com. It gets on my nerves too.

Could be but I am also seeing a trend where some websites manipulate the navigation history so that when you click the back button in your browser you end up at their home page even if you came to the page you are currently on via some other site. I first saw this on Facebook but I have since seen even sites that I used to respect follow this same pattern. To me this is nothing but another dark pattern.

Wouldn't it be nice to have a browser engineered to protect against that? I'm tired of struggling with dark patterns every day, from URL hijacking to modal dialogs with deliberately broken layouts to scrolljacking.

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#165

Post by gpm » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 6:35 PM UTC

mlyle wrote: post #71

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it doesn't really matter how much heat you generate Doesn’t matter is strong. It won’t in the short term. But as we continue increasing our energy use as a species, the simple thermal problem of waste-heat management will certainly surface.

If you use renewables, you're using heat that is already around on the planet. As long as you don't change planetary albedo, equilibrium temperature is the same. Of course, heating water locally, etc, can cause its own environmental impacts.

This depends on the renewable.

Hydro, wind and waves are probably at that ideal except to the extent that they are tidal energy.

Solar panels... are literally in the business of making the planetary albedo higher, to the extent that they do so they are introducing thermal energy.

Geothermal is in the business of increasing the rate at which heat escapes from underneath the surface, which increases surface temperature.

Tidal energy is in the business of extracting energy from the kinetic energy of the moon, which probably increases the temperature of earth (but it's hard to say to what degree).

Fusion (if it ever becomes practical, and you count is as renewable) is in the business of releasing potential energy trapped in hydrogen atoms, increasing the temperature. This is particularly problematic because fusion would also enable us to increase our energy usage to the point that direct heating becomes a problem at the same scale as CO2 release currently is.

Fission (if you count it) is like fusion.

Space based solar (if it ever becomes practical), is increasing the area of the sun captured instead of the albedo, and is directly introducing energy.

Etc

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#166

Post by slrainka » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 6:36 PM UTC

If an underwater Datacenter is established in International waters, do any of the data and privacy laws apply?

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#167

Post by buzzerbetrayed » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 6:36 PM UTC

ramon wrote: post #140

AlanSE wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been covered again and again in other comments. Thermal power plants dump heat into oceans today. The data center is much more efficient than a counterpart on land. Ocean life and coral reefs are in danger due to temperature rise as a part of climate change. Energy efficiency helps reduce that temperature rise.

No, actually there has been already many studies that there's no turning back on climate change. Even going all electric energy it's not going to do much for climate change, there's no turning back on this aspect at all.

After reading GP's comment multiple times, I do not see any place where he mentioned turning back climate change. So whether or not your comment is true, it doesn't seem to contradict anything GP said.

If we wanted to accelerate climate change, we could obviously do so (as proven in the last century). Meaning we have an impact on the acceleration of climate change. Meaning we can make decisions to make that acceleration slower, rather than faster.

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#168

Post by falcolas » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 6:36 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #159

falcolas wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not more relevant, but they are equally relevant. This is adding the ocean as a new layer in the overall heat dissipation stack for datacenter computing; it's impacting a whole new ecosystem that it wasn't before. Thus, we need to be asking these kinds of questions about how this will impact oceanic ecosystems.

It is adding... the question is how much compared to natural systems that add heat to the oceans already (in addition to sunlight, thermal vents, oceanic fissures, underwater volcanoes, etc.) is it significant or is it insignificant?

> is it significant or is it insignificant

Then a study (ideally multiple studies) should be commissioned to find this out. We shouldn't just do it because we can, and because armchair physicists are pretty sure that it's insignificant.

Because, that's what Microsoft (and their partner) did. They did it because they could.

Remember when we, as a global society, believed that CFCs would have an insignificant impact on the environment? I do. Perhaps we should tread a bit more lightly when we're already running into species extinction and global climate change issues.

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#169

Post by outworlder » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 6:37 PM UTC

serjester wrote: post #46

jacquesm wrote: post #10

Why heat the oceans indirectly when you can just place the heatsource directly in them? Much less chance of losing precious ergs. Seriously though, what is the direct ecological impact of doing this at scale, would the local increase in temperature have an immediate effect on the life around it? If so how much of an impact? What about the effect on surface life and life in intermediary layers of the water? After all,…

It takes about 80 watts to heat up a liter of water 1° celsius. Global data centers used about 4.16 x 10^14 watts last year [1]. Let's assume we still have a lot more data centers to build so bump that number up 10,000X. Assuming every watt of energy is actually converted to heat and we moved every data center on earth underwater it'd raise the temperate of the oceans (1.3x 10^21 liters) about 0.01°C. This is a very…

> Assuming every watt of energy is actually converted to heat and we moved every data center on earth underwater it'd raise the temperate of the oceans (1.3x 10^21 liters) about 0.01°C.

Also assuming we have coated the oceans with a perfect thermal insulator. Otherwise this heat would also radiate away, a small fraction going to the atmosphere and a lot of it back into space.

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#170

Post by hinkley » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 6:39 PM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #161

hinkley wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And when we make something much more efficient, we just end up making more of them.

If we make more of them, it's because there's a need for it. There isn't an "increased demand in datacenters" just because datacenters are more efficient. There's still the same demand, but it can now be met more efficiently. If the process was not as efficient, you would still attempt to meet the demand, except that you're producing more waste (waste heat especially in this case), over a longer period of time . Wast…

Nobody needs more data centers, except for people trying to build their empires.

People need services and data centers are how they get them. If data centers are expensive then I invest in efficiency work because 3 FTEs are cheaper than 2 additional data centers. If the centers are cheaper I will just burn watts to solve my problem, and spend those employees on something else.