From BLDGBLOG:

Are we saying that the planet may soon become unrecognizable, even uninhabitable, because of runaway climate change, and yet at least it'll have lots of really great archives...? Is this the long-term historical irony of humanism – with its museums and libraries, its institutionalized nostalgia – that all these air conditioned warehouses and rural server farms don't represent the indefinite continuation of the humanist project but, rather, that project's future ecological demise?

Server farms use a tremendous amount of electricity, it's posited that the U.S. will require 12 new power plants just to account for the growth in electric consumption for computer systems and peripheral electronics. Electric is used not only to power the servers (and generate heat) but also to cool them off (since they perform better when not melting down). It seems perverse that we either cannot capture the resulting heat and use it for some beneficial purpose, or get systems to run cooler (or perform more efficiently when running hot). It reminds me of people who drive 10-20 miles out of their way to save a couple of cents per gallon on gas, sure they "saved" money on the gas, but whatever savings they achieved were canceled out by the time spent driving and use of gas on the drive.