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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72" style='word-wrap:break-word'><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>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. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>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.)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>spike<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></body></html>