[steev]

But isn't the real issue how these small changes add up over time? Seems kind of like saying "a single car will not put out enough CO2 to impact the atmosphere" but here we are with millions (billions?) of cars that are definitely having an impact on their environment. Granted, we will not have millions of data centers but maybe we have enough that it makes a negative impact. Certainly seems plausible.

I don't know anything about ecology, but my intuition is that all of these things from wind turbines to data centers under water, have an impact on their ecosystems. It wouldn't surprise me if we found out these had a negative (or neutral) impact on their environments.

I guess my point is that it seems naive to simply hand-wave off the possibility that these supposed environmentally friendly technologies actually negatively impact their environment. Whether or not that negative impact is less than the alternative is an interesting question.