There are hot thermal vents and underwater volcanoes throughout the oceans. Creatures adapt. The oceans are huge. Yes, if they place them in ecologically fragile environments that would be a problem —the solution is put them offshore where they don’t bother anything.

> Creatures adapt.

You're missing half the saying. Creatures adapt, or die. Given the recent articles about how species extermination is accelerating, it's a valid assumption that as many are dying as are adapting.

Not to mention, oceanic currents are propelled by heat. Changing that balance (whether by man-made resources or natural sources) could change the currents, which would impact coastal weather patterns.

https://e360.yale.edu/features/will_climate_change_jam_the_g...

Far more of earth is covered by oceans than by land. Why are these questions more relevant when building an underwater DC than a ground-level one?

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.

I doubt these would add more heat than a single new volcano does, but I’m all ears. According to research[1] tectonic activity adds about 3 cubic km of magma/lava each year to the oceans (that’s 100 times the annual production by mauna loa.)

[1] http://volcano.oregonstate.edu/book/export/html/138

This sounds a whole lot like the "global warming couldn't possibly be our fault (because: volcanoes) so let's not change anything" line of thinking, just applied to oceans instead of the atmosphere.

In which case, we'll just end up talking past each other, so I'll wish you a good day.

This is only heat. Unless it’s releasing unbeknownst to me greenhouse liquids or gasses, it’s not the same argument.

Sounds like a good ~2050 startup, a company that plugs volcanoes to sell green credits for underwater server farms ;)

Unfortunately for their scheme magma would find a weakness in the crust somewhere...

They're not? People have asked these questions for decades, hence why they're exploring new options....

It's not a poor question, but the phrasing implies that the ones constructing this test datacenter have not thought about this. Given that the engineers in question have spent many months designing and constructing this device, it's extremely unlikely that some random commentor on HN (even one with interests as varied as Jacques) is going to have questions that have not come up yet.

Asking the questions here on HN instead of in a place where the designers are likely to read them makes it seem it's more of a karma grab than a reasonable "I have concerns" type situation that he really wants to do something about. Nor are random HN commenters very likely to have big, fact-backed contributions btw. It's just alarmism under the pretense of innocently asking questions.

I don't go around chasing the scientists that have put this together because they likely have better things to do with their time.

I have no assumptions either way, and if they do happen to frequent HN the chances are actually better to get such questions answered here than anywhere else.

Karma grab? FWIW I offered to hand back in all my karma points because they are utterly meaningless but Dang wouldn't have it so please spare me the nonsense accusations.

HN was still free to write to, contribute and ask questions of last I checked, I don't need you - nor anybody else - to tell me what I can or can not do here, nor do I need you to try to put me in a negative light for trying to understand something better.

FWIW humanity has an extremely well developed skill called problem solving. We can do just about anything in the laboratory. But when scaling up those laboratory experiments we often find out that what we thought was a neg positive ends up being a net negative. Before we sink a few 10's of thousands of data centers onto the continental shelf I'd like to know the ecological impact, even if that has already been studied (which I'm actually not aware of).

See also: plastic, freon, lead (in gasoline) and a whole raft of other things that seemed like a great idea at the time but for which we did not have the long term predictions when they mattered most: at the beginning, mostly because people did not ask the right questions.

Scientists in the beginning of the previous century: "Plastics, they last for ever! yay!" and a hundred years later "Plastics, they last for ever! Oops!".

Anyway, the steady stream of quality answers in this thread proves you more wrong than I ever will but this comment reflects poorly on HN, me, and ultimately, on you.