[ExI] benefits of climate change

[spike at rainier66.com]

Damn.  Seems like every time I get too busy, I get an idea storm, and have
no time to mess with them.  Consider this short post a reminder for later.

 

There is a concern I keep seeing about AI data centers guzzling the
available groundwater for cooling, but desalination doesn't take as much
energy as one might think.  As I recall it is about 0.7 calories per gram if
we go with reverse osmosis, less if we can tolerate some remaining dissolved
solids.

 

In the states, wind generally blows west to east.  So if we put our data
centers out west close enough to pipe in water from the sea but far enough
east to escape California taxes (such as on the Nevada side of the
stateline) then a prole could generate power in Nevada using nuclear or
coal, filter seawater for cooling, catalyze and scrub the exhaust if coal,
dump the water into the atmosphere, where it will be a net environmental
benefit.  Each gram of seawater requires 0.7 calories to filter to fresh and
carries away 540 calories of waste heat.

 

The even better part of the deal is that all that water goes up where it may
form clouds where it blocks some of the scorching sun and subsequently falls
back as rain on the thirsty desert, perhaps resulting in massive
super-blooms and greening.  

 

If scaled up sufficiently, that whole process could cause climate change,
but it looks like the beneficial kind of change (assuming one is not a
tarantula or a rattlesnake.)

 

spike

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