News Google now powering data centers with geothermal energy harvested using oil drilling techniques

[Admin]

A collaboration between Google and geothermal energy innovator Fervo uses modern oil/gas drilling techniques to harness round-the-clock clean geothermal energy.

Google now powering data centers with geothermal energy harvested using oil drilling techniques : Read more

 

[bit_user]

Good. Now start building data centers around dormant supervolcanos, so we can defuse these lurking monsters by sapping away their heat.

Nasa’s ambitious plan to save Earth from a supervolcano

With an eruption brewing, it may be the only way to prevent the extinction of the human race.

www.bbc.com

The eruption of a large supervolcano would have climatic effects on par with an asteroid impact, possibly ushering in a mini ice age. Food production would be severely affected, triggering years of mass starvation. They're an existential threat to modern civilization.

What is a supervolcano? What is a supereruption? | U.S. Geological Survey

The term "supervolcano" implies a volcanic center that has had an eruption of magnitude 8 on the Volcano Explosivity Index (VEI), meaning that at one point in time it erupted more than 1,000 cubic kilometers (240 cubic miles) of material. In the early 2000s, the term “supereruption” began being...

www.usgs.gov

Supervolcano - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

amirite, @Kamen Rider Blade ?

 

[USAFRet]

Good. Now start building data centers around dormant supervolcanos, so we can defuse these lurking monsters by sapping away their heat.

Mosquito on an elephant.

 

[bit_user]

Mosquito on an elephant.

I've read you can drain enough heat, over like 100 years, to probably defuse one. Not with a single tap, but probably a dozen or so.

The key is that you don't need to drain all of its heat, but just enough that it stops weakening the crust.

It's a win-win: nearly free, limitless power and meaningful reduction of a civilization-level risk.

 

[USAFRet]

I've read you can drain enough heat, over like 100 years, to probably defuse one. Not with a single tap, but probably a dozen or so.

The key is that you don't need to drain all of its heat, but just enough that it stops weakening the crust.

It's a win-win: nearly free, limitless power and meaningful reduction of a civilization-level risk.

I didn't see anything in there about "100 years".

 

[bit_user]

I didn't see anything in there about "100 years".

Yeah, it was a different article. I'll post if I can find it.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Good. Now start building data centers around dormant supervolcanos, so we can defuse these lurking monsters by sapping away their heat.

​

Nasa’s ambitious plan to save Earth from a supervolcano

With an eruption brewing, it may be the only way to prevent the extinction of the human race.

www.bbc.com

​

The eruption of a large supervolcano would have climatic effects on par with an asteroid impact, possibly ushering in a mini ice age. Food production would be severely affected, triggering years of mass starvation. They're an existential threat to modern civilization.

​

What is a supervolcano? What is a supereruption? | U.S. Geological Survey

The term "supervolcano" implies a volcanic center that has had an eruption of magnitude 8 on the Volcano Explosivity Index (VEI), meaning that at one point in time it erupted more than 1,000 cubic kilometers (240 cubic miles) of material. In the early 2000s, the term “supereruption” began being...

www.usgs.gov

​

Supervolcano - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

​

amirite, @Kamen Rider Blade ?

The threat is true, but good luck getting Data Centers to willingly move there.

How do you know how many GeoThermal plants are necessary to drain the heat at a region to maintain stability of the crust over time? How do you even validate such claims?

And who's going to pay for this?

 

[USAFRet]

Now start building data centers around dormant supervolcanos, so we can defuse these lurking monsters by sapping away their heat.

Also, where is that "heat" going?

Consider the Earth as a closed ecosystem. Planet and atmosphere.

Sapping the heat from a volcano goes....where?

 

[bit_user]

Also, where is that "heat" going?

The only place it can - up. At least, if there are no large bodies of water nearby...

China begins building underwater data center with performance equal to 6 million PCs — aims to save 122 million KWh of electricity and nearly ten soccer fields of land

Data centers find refuge at the bottom of the ocean.

www.tomshardware.com

Consider the Earth as a closed ecosystem. Planet and atmosphere.

Energy-wise, it's not. Energy enters from the sun, which is why the temperature usually rises during the daytime. Energy is then radiated out into space (at least, the portion which isn't trapped by the greenhouse effect), enabling temperatures to drop at night.

Sapping the heat from a volcano goes....where?

If the volcano erupted, that heat would come out with the magma. I don't really see the problem.

 

[bit_user]

How do you know how many GeoThermal plants are necessary to drain the heat at a region to maintain stability of the crust over time? How do you even validate such claims?

Well, you can estimate the size of the magma plumes using seismographic techniques and via changes in gravity.

I assume we have a pretty good idea how hot the magma is and at what temperature the crust weakens. That should establish a target for the amount of energy that needs to be extracted.

And who's going to pay for this?

As the BBC article I linked says, it'll pay for itself in cheap energy-generation, over time. It requires some up-front investment, but so did Google's geothermal power system described in the Toms article.

 

[USAFRet]

The only place it can - up. At least, if there are no large bodies of water nearby...

​

China begins building underwater data center with performance equal to 6 million PCs — aims to save 122 million KWh of electricity and nearly ten soccer fields of land

Data centers find refuge at the bottom of the ocean.

www.tomshardware.com

​

Energy-wise, it's not. Energy enters from the sun, which is why the temperature usually rises during the daytime. Energy is then radiated out into space (at least, the portion which isn't trapped by the greenhouse effect), enabling temperatures to drop at night.


If the volcano erupted, that heat would come out with the magma. I don't really see the problem.

To significantly impact the heat in this volcano, we'd be pumping significant extra heat into the atmosphere.

Unintended consequences rear their ugly heads.


It is going to blow? Absolutely. Eventually.
With really really bad consequences for us out here.

But us puny humans manually siphoning that off over the next "100 years" may or may not be a good idea. It is not a slam dunk good.

 

[bit_user]

To significantly impact the heat in this volcano, we'd be pumping significant extra heat into the atmosphere.

You've got to power those datacenters somehow. Energy out = energy in. Given a fixed number of data centers, the output is fixed and the only question is where the input comes from.

Most data centers are currently powered via fossil fuels or by nuclear plants, which are also indirectly extracting energy from the ground.

Unintended consequences rear their ugly heads.

Better than the unintended consequences we're suffering from most of the current methods of power-generation.

It is going to blow? Absolutely. Eventually.
With really really bad consequences for us out here.

But us puny humans manually siphoning that off over the next "100 years" may or may not be a good idea. It is not a slam dunk good.

Maybe that's fine for you, but I think we have a duty to future generations to do what we can to avert apocalyptic catastrophes. Most people think that just means asteroids and climate change, but supervolcanos are another such risk.

 

[helper800]

Let me just make this clear @bit_user and @USAFRet, energy is never consumed, only changed from a useful form of energy to a less useful form. 100% of the energy from the sun is radiated back into space, eventually. The earth does not have limitless energy, and will eventually dissipate all of its heat into space.

 

[USAFRet]

Let me just make this clear @bit_user and @USAFRet, energy is never consumed, only changed from a useful form of energy to a less useful form. 100% of the energy from the sun is radiated back into space, eventually. The earth does not have limitless energy, and will eventually dissipate all of its heat into space.

Right.

A campfire and a stick of dynamite may have the same latent energy.

How that energy is released, over what timeline, is the key.

 

[bit_user]

100% of the energy from the sun is radiated back into space, eventually.

Depends on what you mean by "eventually". Obviously, plants use photosynthesis to make sugars, in part from CO2 molecules in the air. That carbon can be sequestered in the ground, where it becomes coal, oil, methane, etc. If we leave it there, then that's usually where it stays (some of it can be released, but that's more the exception than the rule or else there'd be no fossil fuels for us to extract).

The earth does not have limitless energy, and will eventually dissipate all of its heat into space.

Uh, could you be more specific?

 

[helper800]

Depends on what you mean by "eventually". Obviously, plants use photosynthesis to make sugars, in part from CO2 molecules in the air. That carbon can be sequestered in the ground, where it becomes coal, oil, methane, etc. If we leave it there, then that's usually where it stays (except for methane, which sometimes undergoes catastrophic releases and I suppose oil sometimes ooses or gushes out).


Uh, could you be more specific?

Via the laws of thermodynamics. The earth is constantly losing more energy as an output than it is gaining as an input. The earth's molten core will eventually become a solid dead core. Here is a video that largely talks about entropy but does ask the question what we get from the sun, energy, and how much of it is radiated back into space, 100%.

 

[bit_user]

Via the laws of thermodynamics. The earth is constantly losing more energy as an output than it is gaining as an input. The earth's molten core will eventually become a solid dead core.

That's happening on such a long timescale that the statement is effectively irrelevant.

Also, some of the heat source is decay of radioactive elements, meaning that it's cooling slower than you'd expect if it were just releasing latent heat from planetary formation.

 

[helper800]

That's happening on such a long timescale that the statement is effectively irrelevant.

Also, some of the heat source is decay of radioactive elements, meaning that it's cooling slower than you'd expect if it were just releasing latent heat from planetary formation.

What I said is fact and cannot be discarded just because you want it to be. If we start siphoning the earth for energy in such a way you are advocating and it is as effective as you are saying it is, then you would not only be taking heat from the mantle and dissipating it as waste heat into our atmosphere, but also accelerating the cooling of the different layers of earth below the crust. You believe we can cool a supervolcano caldera that is connected to the larger mantle of the earth enough to stop a super volcanoes eventual eruption. This is pure poppycock.

 

[USAFRet]

Competing viewpoints.
1. We can pull out enough heat energy in 100 years, to dissipate the caldera. Eliminating the super volcano in Yellowstone.
2. This will take megayears.
3. We could screw up the process, and accelerate the eventual explosion.

As I said previously, mosquito on an elephant.
Personally, I think #2, with an unhealthy dose of #3.

 

[bit_user]

What I said is fact and cannot be discarded just because you want it to be.

I didn't contradict anything you said. I just said the cooling of the Earth's core is happening so slowly that it's irrelevant to this discussion. Chill out, dude.

If we start siphoning the earth for energy in such a way you are advocating and it is as effective as you are saying it is, then you would not only be taking heat from the mantle and dissipating it as waste heat into our atmosphere, but also accelerating the cooling of the different layers of earth below the crust.

You're missing a sense of scale. There are two limiting factors. The first is how fast we can use the heat. Presumably, datacenter growth will naturally plateau. At some point, I'd expect us to be resource-limited on the materials that go into them.

The second is that there are only 20 known supervolcanos. If it takes something like 100 years to siphon enough heat to halt the magma plume's progression through the crust, then it's not even a rounding error on the total heat energy of the core.

You believe we can cool a supervolcano caldera that is connected to the larger mantle of the earth

Nope, not what I said. Just cool the frontier. There's a thermal gradient keeping most of that heat locked inside, whether we like it or not.

This is pure poppycock.

Bro, it's NASA's plan. Read the article and argue with them. They have geophysicists, I'm not. I'm just saying what I read.

BTW, I believe the "hundred year" figure I read was from a prior plan that's now hard to find because all the hits I'm getting are about NASA's 2017 plan.

 

[bit_user]

Competing viewpoints.

This is actual science. There's actual data and there are correct answers to these questions (how knowable they are and with what confidence, I can't say). This discussion is futile, because it's a discussion about science that's not rooted in fact.

The reason I commented on subject was to pique others' interest and hopefully spur more people to go and read up on the subject, not to get into a pointless "debate".

1. We can pull out enough heat energy in 100 years, to dissipate the caldera. Eliminating the super volcano in Yellowstone.
2. This will take megayears.
3. We could screw up the process, and accelerate the eventual explosion.

All of these questions have been explored elsewhere, that's accessible with a quick web search. Us debating them here is just a waste of time and effort.

As I said previously, mosquito on an elephant.

Right, because you're a working geophysicist and did all the math. I forgot.

 

[USAFRet]

BTW, I believe the "hundred year" figure I read was from a prior plan that's now hard to find because all the hits I'm getting are about NASA's 2017 plan.

Well, that 100 year thing was what I twigged on.

Take that out to several thousand years, and we then have the mosquito.

 

[helper800]

I didn't contradict anything you said. I just said the cooling of the Earth's core is happening so slowly that it's irrelevant to this discussion. Chill out, dude.

I am chill, all I did was state a fact of how things will eventually progress to prove my point. Let me articulate my point and the potential consequences of mass energy extraction of the earth. My point being that if we collectively start sucking the heat out of the earth to fuel our lust for energy and this propagates heavily it will accelerate, to an unknown degree, the cooling of the core, outer core, and mantle which would in turn weaken the magnetism that protects us from the sun, slow the natural processes of continental drift, the new creation of land, and potentially disrupt the oceanic flow of water.

Well, that 100 year thing was what I twigged on.

Take that out to several thousand years, and we then have the mosquito.

The article Bit_User was referencing said such a plant would cost roughly 2.5 billion dollars and, "Although Yellowstone’s magma chamber would not need to be frozen solid to reach the point where it no longer posed a threat, there would be no guarantee that the endeavour would ultimately be successful for at least hundreds and possibly thousands of years."

 

[bit_user]

Take that out to several thousand years, and we then have the mosquito.

You're going by gut instinct. This is an engineering problem not that different than sucking heat out of a CPU. The correct answer is arrived at via math and science - not a gut feel.

I don't understand why people think they need to have a "take" on something objective. Read their plan - not an article about the plan, but the actual documents they published. Do the background research to understand what facts and assumptions they're basing it on, and how those were arrived at.

If you then have questions or think you found holes, probably go and discuss it on a geophysics forum with people who can either explain what you're missing or can validate your skepticism or uncertainty.

 

[USAFRet]

You're going by gut instinct. This is an engineering problem not that different than sucking heat out of a CPU. The correct answer is arrived at via math and science - not a gut feel.

Sigh.
And the ramifications and consequences of pulling out enough energy to nullify that super volcano, in a 100 year timespan?

If the timespan is instead thousands of years, a pile of google servers is pretty irrelevant.

In any case...I'm out.