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> Of course you could argue that the lower cost of this cooling method will create a larger demand for cheaper servers/data storage, which increases net harm, for which I have no answer.

That argument doensn't apply here: demand isn't currently being constrained by us being affraid of the environmental impact of datacenters.

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Sure it does. If the costs of these datacenter operations were extremely high (say, by a factor of 100), you bet we'd have lower bitrate for Youtube, fewer GB allowances on Office 365, Dropbox, Gmail, etc.

Conversely, if it became literally free to operate, you can imagine we'd have a higher demand for data, storage, etc.

It's like how center pivot irrigation reduced the water usage rate per acre but increased demand for water usage in various areas because costs were lowered as well.

edit: nevermind I can't read

You don't believe demand isn't being constrained in the way I described? So you believe that people are looking at cats on facebook, and stop because they're worried about the environmental impact of facebook's datacenters? You're joking...

FWIW, your local FB datacenter is likely powered by 100% renewable energy :)

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