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Does anyone know what the environmental ramifications are of sinking presumably noisy and hot tubes into the ocean? I've been in server rooms and they aren't e

by gregd 6y ago

Does anyone know what the environmental ramifications are of sinking presumably noisy and hot tubes into the ocean? I've been in server rooms and they aren't exactly quiet. The picture of the racks look to me like standard 1U servers.

chmod775 6y ago
Well, marine life is not going to give a damn about warm tubes. There's plenty of natural heat sources in the ocean way more extreme than that. As for the noise, that can have a negative impact, but it's going to be nothing compared to the noise ships are making: https://www.npr.org/2020/07/20/891854646/whales-get-a-break-as-pandemic-creates-quieter-oceans https://www.npr.org/2020/07/20/891854646/whales-get-a-break-... Whether it's high-pitched or low-pitched noise also makes a huge difference underwater.
- nonesuchluck 6y ago
  They sunk it half a mile offshore and 117 feet deep. Hardly the abyssal zone. Other than hydrothermal vents, what natural heat sources are you thinking of? (and yes, it's a damn shame the oceans are so noisy due to ships and sonar...and you're prob right about heat not being harmful, I'm just curious what you're referring to)
  - chmod775 6y ago
    > Other than hydrothermal vents, what natural heat sources are you thinking of? Mostly the sun, but also warm freshwater rivers (one of the biggest temperature differentials you'll find excluding hydrothermal vents). Areas with a lot of organic material (algae etc.) close to the shore can also get very warm compared to the temperature average. Though I'm not sure about the cause/effect for the latter.
- nothal 6y ago
  I wonder if the heat and noise of even a tenth of the data centers in the world would be still so harmless.
- therealdrag0 6y ago
  Isn’t one of the environmentalist complaints against nuclear is they heat up the water near shore, which changes the ecology? One of these might not be a big deal, but a thousand? Worth questioning.
  - chmod775 6y ago
    >Isn’t one of the environmentalist complaints against nuclear is they heat up the water near shore, which changes the ecology? This is a valid point for small streams, whose ecology can't adapt when the temperature changes mid-stream. For oceans the picture is a bit different though. Suppose we're looking at a cubic kilometer of seawater that has a temperature of 10C. The entire output of a nuclear power plant (single unit, about 1200MW) would heat that water by less than a single degree in a month. The average power consumption (and thus roughly heat generated) of a single server rack is somewhere around 12KW, so you can power about 100.000 of these for that. Microsoft's submarine had only 12 racks. From this one could conclude that even the localized effects are likely to be minimal. Now for perspective: the entire ocean has a water volume of roughly 1.35 billion cubic kilometers. Next to major energy sources like the sun, and even smaller ones like hydrothermal vents and streams of warmer water entering it, your puny server submarine is not going to be noticed. With a nuclear power plant worth of energy you're heating the whole body for just about 1/100.000.000th of a degree per year, assuming the heat wouldn't dissipate out of the water at some point. And really, if you're running your servers outside the water, the heat would dissipate into the ocean at some point too, making it a moot point in the grander scheme of things. So the only area of interest concerning marine life is about 5 meters in every direction from your server tube. I'm willing to bet it'll have way less of an impact than a warm freshwater river discharging into the ocean.
    - steev 6y ago
      But isn't the real issue how these small changes add up over time? Seems kind of like saying "a single car will not put out enough CO2 to impact the atmosphere" but here we are with millions (billions?) of cars that are definitely having an impact on their environment. Granted, we will not have millions of data centers but maybe we have enough that it makes a negative impact. Certainly seems plausible. I don't know anything about ecology, but my intuition is that all of these things from wind turbines to data centers under water, have an impact on their ecosystems. It wouldn't surprise me if we found out these had a negative (or neutral) impact on their environments. I guess my point is that it seems naive to simply hand-wave off the possibility that these supposed environmentally friendly technologies actually negatively impact their environment. Whether or not that negative impact is less than the alternative is an interesting question.
- eklavyaa 6y ago
  sad,the way you have presumed marine life behaviour.
rexpop 6y ago
Unfortunately, there are no oceanographic environmentalists with sufficient clout to have any say, whatsoever, in this unaccountable private endeavor. I doubt the Scottish Environment Protection Agency or UK's Environment Agency were invited to be veto-empowered stakeholders.
tengbretson 6y ago
If you can dump thermal energy into the ocean I suspect there wouldn't be much need for noisy fans.
- thw0rted 6y ago
  I was curious about this. The trick is moving the heat from the components (CPU/GPU/RAM/PSU/storage/etc) to the hull. It's full of nitrogen, but the heat would conduct much better via liquid (heat pipe) than gas (fans). The photos make it look like these are standard server racks, though, so there must be fans pumping the heat away from the components. Right?

by gregd 6y ago

chmod775 6y ago

Well, marine life is not going to give a damn about warm tubes. There's plenty of natural heat sources in the ocean way more extreme than that. As for the noise, that can have a negative impact, but it's going to be nothing compared to the noise ships are making: https://www.npr.org/2020/07/20/891854646/whales-get-a-break-as-pandemic-creates-quieter-oceans https://www.npr.org/2020/07/20/891854646/whales-get-a-break-... Whether it's high-pitched or low-pitched noise also makes a huge difference underwater.

nonesuchluck 6y ago
They sunk it half a mile offshore and 117 feet deep. Hardly the abyssal zone. Other than hydrothermal vents, what natural heat sources are you thinking of? (and yes, it's a damn shame the oceans are so noisy due to ships and sonar...and you're prob right about heat not being harmful, I'm just curious what you're referring to)
- chmod775 6y ago
  > Other than hydrothermal vents, what natural heat sources are you thinking of? Mostly the sun, but also warm freshwater rivers (one of the biggest temperature differentials you'll find excluding hydrothermal vents). Areas with a lot of organic material (algae etc.) close to the shore can also get very warm compared to the temperature average. Though I'm not sure about the cause/effect for the latter.
nothal 6y ago
I wonder if the heat and noise of even a tenth of the data centers in the world would be still so harmless.
therealdrag0 6y ago
Isn’t one of the environmentalist complaints against nuclear is they heat up the water near shore, which changes the ecology? One of these might not be a big deal, but a thousand? Worth questioning.
- chmod775 6y ago
  >Isn’t one of the environmentalist complaints against nuclear is they heat up the water near shore, which changes the ecology? This is a valid point for small streams, whose ecology can't adapt when the temperature changes mid-stream. For oceans the picture is a bit different though. Suppose we're looking at a cubic kilometer of seawater that has a temperature of 10C. The entire output of a nuclear power plant (single unit, about 1200MW) would heat that water by less than a single degree in a month. The average power consumption (and thus roughly heat generated) of a single server rack is somewhere around 12KW, so you can power about 100.000 of these for that. Microsoft's submarine had only 12 racks. From this one could conclude that even the localized effects are likely to be minimal. Now for perspective: the entire ocean has a water volume of roughly 1.35 billion cubic kilometers. Next to major energy sources like the sun, and even smaller ones like hydrothermal vents and streams of warmer water entering it, your puny server submarine is not going to be noticed. With a nuclear power plant worth of energy you're heating the whole body for just about 1/100.000.000th of a degree per year, assuming the heat wouldn't dissipate out of the water at some point. And really, if you're running your servers outside the water, the heat would dissipate into the ocean at some point too, making it a moot point in the grander scheme of things. So the only area of interest concerning marine life is about 5 meters in every direction from your server tube. I'm willing to bet it'll have way less of an impact than a warm freshwater river discharging into the ocean.
  - steev 6y ago
    But isn't the real issue how these small changes add up over time? Seems kind of like saying "a single car will not put out enough CO2 to impact the atmosphere" but here we are with millions (billions?) of cars that are definitely having an impact on their environment. Granted, we will not have millions of data centers but maybe we have enough that it makes a negative impact. Certainly seems plausible. I don't know anything about ecology, but my intuition is that all of these things from wind turbines to data centers under water, have an impact on their ecosystems. It wouldn't surprise me if we found out these had a negative (or neutral) impact on their environments. I guess my point is that it seems naive to simply hand-wave off the possibility that these supposed environmentally friendly technologies actually negatively impact their environment. Whether or not that negative impact is less than the alternative is an interesting question.
eklavyaa 6y ago
sad,the way you have presumed marine life behaviour.

rexpop 6y ago

Unfortunately, there are no oceanographic environmentalists with sufficient clout to have any say, whatsoever, in this unaccountable private endeavor. I doubt the Scottish Environment Protection Agency or UK's Environment Agency were invited to be veto-empowered stakeholders.

tengbretson 6y ago

If you can dump thermal energy into the ocean I suspect there wouldn't be much need for noisy fans.

thw0rted 6y ago
I was curious about this. The trick is moving the heat from the components (CPU/GPU/RAM/PSU/storage/etc) to the hull. It's full of nitrogen, but the heat would conduct much better via liquid (heat pipe) than gas (fans). The photos make it look like these are standard server racks, though, so there must be fans pumping the heat away from the components. Right?