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| CaptainExplosion said: And what about harvesting water from the sea and filtering it for data center cooling? It would lower the strain on freshwater sources and combat rising sea levels. |
I don't know if that's commonly done around the world, but it's definitely a thing in at least the Google data center located in Hamina, Finland (one of thte the data centers mentioned by HoloDust earlier). Sounds like there might be some challenges with that approach, and it probably works best in cooler regions, but it definitely seems to be a viable solution at least under suitable circumstances.
Of course using sea water for cooling probably requires the data center to be located near the coast.
Oh, and dumping warm water back into a cooler area might have some undesirable effects. It's probably a very local thing, but again, pick your poison, I guess.
