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The Fjord-Cooled Data Center
1sockchuck writes "A new data center project in Norway plans to use a fjord-powered cooling system, drawing cold water from an adjacent fjord to cool data halls. The fjord provides a ready supply of water at 8 degrees C (46 degrees F), eliminating the need for an energy-hungry chiller. The Green Mountain Data Center joins a small but growing number of data centers are slashing their cooling costs by using the environment as their chiller, tapping nearby lakes, wells and even the Baltic Sea."
You're grouping environmentalists all in to one bucket. It doesn't work that way.
I am an avid environmentalist. According to you, I don't support Nuclear power in my backyard. Yet, I actually support it. Newer technologies mitigate a lot of the safety concerns and we can figure out better ways to store waste and even better technologies that yield less waste.
As for the transport of electricity I think there already is an excellent method. Aluminum Gallium power sources produce hydrogen from water and all you would need to do is ship them back to a Nuclear power plant where it would be vastly more efficient to remove the Oxygen to recondition the power source.
That's a pretty progressive idea.
I am not against the whole cooling from the fjord idea, but you would have to be a complete idiot not to realize that an environmental impact study would need to be conducted if the hot water was being put right back in the fjord. Of course they don't have to do that at all. They can just use passive heat exchangers with the surrounding air instead. Better yet, use the heat for surrounding buildings, offices, etc. or even convert it back into energy. So many more options than just dumping it back in the fjord.
There is a difference between "screaming hysteria" and "gee what happens when we raise the water temperatures around the datacenter a couple degrees?".
Economically competitive is just a cop out. What it really means, is that you have a limited commitment towards change. In my personal view, which has had heated debates, we are fucked already. Leave economics out of it and make the hard decisions now. That does mean start building as many nuclear reactors as possible right now because they are the most immediate solution to massive amounts of power generation that can be used immediately for heating, cooling, industry, etc.
Short term pain == Long term gain. Problem is nobody wants to sacrifice and any environmentalist that proposes serious sacrifice is labeled a hypocrite (appropriate in some situations) or just plain crazy.
As for off the grid people, all you can really do in the end is control your own actions and voice your opinions and ideas cogently and passionately and hope it helps. Those people you are denigrating are doing the sacrificing because it is what they can do. I sacrifice as much as possible, and writing on a laptop does not make me a hypocrite.
P.S - It's not so black and white when you label people. I propose extreme austerity measures but also very aggressive and progressive changes.
Oh, it's your standard straw man extreme environmentalist. It's pretty popular to refer to them these days, but it's extraordinarily rare to observe them in the wild. I'm sure they do exist somewhere, but I've never met one personally.
They remind me of white crows -- rare and not typical of the species.
I wonder if someone would calculate how much power/heat would be needed to raise the temperature enough to affect it.
I would be more worried about the marine life being affected more than the heat generated.
And speaking of marine life, remember how environmentalists were worried about such things as salmon and dams?
Remember how environmentalists are worried about eroding soil and hurricanes?
You know what... look at the history of what "environmentalists" have saved us from, and then come back and say something.
If it wasnt for them, we would be drinking firewater(literal firewater), sucking in coal ash, and dealing with randomly placed toxins.