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That’s what solar energy does when it hits the ground or the oceans. It turns into heat or evaporated water. The latter is why it rains. Harnessing it and pipi

by api 4mo ago

That’s what solar energy does when it hits the ground or the oceans. It turns into heat or evaporated water. The latter is why it rains. Harnessing it and piping it through extra steps only to end up as heat does nothing to the planet’s heat balance. All human energy use is tiny compared to total global solar flux. Like not even 1%. The data center water issue is a municipal management problem. The problem is that evaporative cooling is cheaper. If data centers are using too much water to the point that it’s causing problems for homes or agriculture, it means they are not being charged enough for that water. Charge them more and they will suddenly shift toward more closed loop cooling.

ajuc 4mo ago
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008EO280001 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008EO28... Waste heat from human energy use is a real problem, it does influence Earth's temperature, minimally for now, but it will only grow. And it will be MUCH harder to solve than global warming.
- api 4mo ago
  If we tame fusion at scale this could become an actual issue in the far future. As it stands we have nothing that can out-scale solar or wind. Fission maybe if we went all in on breeders and stuff but that would not be cost competitive with renewables plus batteries. Breeder cycle fission is complex and expensive. Hopefully if we get really good at fusion we will go LARP The Expanse with it instead of boiling the ocean.
  - ajuc 4mo ago
    It will become an issue in 150-200 years even if we just continue on our current trajectory.
    - api 4mo ago
      Only if exponential growth continues, but population growth is already falling off a cliff and that is the ultimate driver. If population stabilizes or contracts, then the only way this could happen is if per capita energy use continued to increase exponentially to the point that we were radiating enough heat to do this. That seems unlikely. The only scenario I can imagine where per capita energy use goes that high is the "The Expanse LARP" scenario where people are rocketing around on fusion rockets, and that's not on Earth anymore so it doesn't matter. What terrestrial products or services would demand power use per capita across the whole population that high?
      - ajuc 4mo ago
        AI will consume any amout of energy if you have enough demand.
        api 4mo ago
        This assumes the chips don’t get exponentially better. GPUs are actually bad for AI. TPUs too. They’re available and general purpose but what you really want is something like a specialized tensor FPGA that can be loaded with the model. Memory and compute colocated. There is research on this and a huge market but it takes a long time to go from design to prototype to production for something really novel. It’s also very expensive. A lot of people are afraid AI is a big bubble. The more it becomes apparent that financial bubbles or not the tech is here to stay the more people will be comfortable making long term investments in building chips that are really optimal for it. Even general chips get more efficient. Ten years ago my laptop was a lap roaster when I ran a big build on it. Now it’s barely warm and it’s twice as fast with four times the RAM. Of course if there’s infinite demand for AI that won’t matter, but there isn’t infinite demand for anything.
Cthulhu_ 4mo ago
This is the thing I don't get - lots of concerns about water shortages, but for some reason the price of water doesn't go up accordingly. In fact, large consumers of drinking water get a discount. It should be the other way around: consumers and public interest things like hospitals should get preference and low prices for water, corporations should pay more and invest in their own water systems, like collecting rainwater, cleaning surface water (thinking of NL here), or desalinating seawater (and handling the waste responsibly instead of putting it back in the sea).

by api 4mo ago

ajuc 4mo ago

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008EO280001 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008EO28... Waste heat from human energy use is a real problem, it does influence Earth's temperature, minimally for now, but it will only grow. And it will be MUCH harder to solve than global warming.

api 4mo ago
If we tame fusion at scale this could become an actual issue in the far future. As it stands we have nothing that can out-scale solar or wind. Fission maybe if we went all in on breeders and stuff but that would not be cost competitive with renewables plus batteries. Breeder cycle fission is complex and expensive. Hopefully if we get really good at fusion we will go LARP The Expanse with it instead of boiling the ocean.
- ajuc 4mo ago
  It will become an issue in 150-200 years even if we just continue on our current trajectory.
  - api 4mo ago
    Only if exponential growth continues, but population growth is already falling off a cliff and that is the ultimate driver. If population stabilizes or contracts, then the only way this could happen is if per capita energy use continued to increase exponentially to the point that we were radiating enough heat to do this. That seems unlikely. The only scenario I can imagine where per capita energy use goes that high is the "The Expanse LARP" scenario where people are rocketing around on fusion rockets, and that's not on Earth anymore so it doesn't matter. What terrestrial products or services would demand power use per capita across the whole population that high?
    - ajuc 4mo ago
      AI will consume any amout of energy if you have enough demand.
      - api 4mo ago
        This assumes the chips don’t get exponentially better. GPUs are actually bad for AI. TPUs too. They’re available and general purpose but what you really want is something like a specialized tensor FPGA that can be loaded with the model. Memory and compute colocated. There is research on this and a huge market but it takes a long time to go from design to prototype to production for something really novel. It’s also very expensive. A lot of people are afraid AI is a big bubble. The more it becomes apparent that financial bubbles or not the tech is here to stay the more people will be comfortable making long term investments in building chips that are really optimal for it. Even general chips get more efficient. Ten years ago my laptop was a lap roaster when I ran a big build on it. Now it’s barely warm and it’s twice as fast with four times the RAM. Of course if there’s infinite demand for AI that won’t matter, but there isn’t infinite demand for anything.

Cthulhu_ 4mo ago

This is the thing I don't get - lots of concerns about water shortages, but for some reason the price of water doesn't go up accordingly. In fact, large consumers of drinking water get a discount. It should be the other way around: consumers and public interest things like hospitals should get preference and low prices for water, corporations should pay more and invest in their own water systems, like collecting rainwater, cleaning surface water (thinking of NL here), or desalinating seawater (and handling the waste responsibly instead of putting it back in the sea).