gerrymcgovern

gerrymcgovern, 1 hour ago to random

Data centers in Northern Virginia are using “absurd amounts of water”

“The region is the world’s largest data center hub, with over 300 facilities processing almost 70 percent of global digital information, each using as much as 5 million gallons of water per day. And because cooling methods often rely on evaporation, the water does not go back into wastewater systems. “Data centers rank among the top 10 water-consuming industries in the United States”

https://www.planetizen.com/news/2024/05/128903-virginia-data-centers-draining-states-water-supply

gerrymcgovern, 3 hours ago to random

"New figures reveal there have been over 1,200 battery fires in bin lorries and at waste sites in the UK over the past 12 months. The failure to responsibly dispose of waste electrical products is contributing to a huge increase in the number of battery fires in bin lorries and at waste management sites."

https://www.businessgreen.com/news/4206656/vapes-waste-blamed-surge-battery-fires-waste-sites

gerrymcgovern, 3 hours ago to random

The AI Revolution Is Crushing Thousands of Languages

More than half of all websites are in English, yet more than 80 percent of people in the world don’t speak the language.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/04/generative-ai-low-resource-languages/678042/

gerrymcgovern, 3 hours ago to random

It takes lots of coal and charcoal to make silicon

For every 50,000 tons of silicon, there’s 500,000 tons of CO2 produced. If used in a solar panel, the silicon should produce four times as much energy as it took to make it.

“It’s Like Working In A Volcano”: How Silicon Is Made | Extreme Jobs, ABC Australia,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eVsQSn_EWc

Silicon is not green and certainly not clean. Nor is it renewable. We must use it wisely.

gerrymcgovern, 20 hours ago to random

"It’s 2024 and I’m suspicious of “solutions”. Solutions to what? Excess greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that have already seen us breach the 1.5 degree limit set by the Paris Agreement? Ocean acidification that’s bleaching corals en masse? The rampant deforestation and habitat destruction that’s seen half of the world’s wilderness turned into farmland? How about the economic system with its limited prescription of value that converts what is priceless into profit?"

https://www.planetcritical.com/p/dont-talk-to-me-about-solutions

gerrymcgovern, 21 hours ago to random

Canadian Mining Company to Explore in the Ecuadorian Amazon

The mining project is not supported by Indigenous peoples because it will have negative consequences on the Amazon ecosystems.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Canadian-Mining-Company-to-Explore-in-the-Ecuadorian-Amazon-20240508-0009.html

How did we destroy our environment?
Through mining.

How are we going to save our environment?
Through mining!

Ok, Growth Death Culter.

gerrymcgovern, 1 day ago to random

Who is driving the Growth Death Cult train? It's not Big Oil. Big Oil is just the fuel man, feeding the engine. The one who made the engine, the one who's driving growth, the one who is benefiting most from environmental collapse, that's Big Tech.

We must see clearly. The core problem is overconsumption. The killer app of AI is advertising. Data centers are advertising centers. Big Tech is the driver of the overconsumption Growth Death Cult train.

gerrymcgovern, 1 day ago to random

"Despite the best efforts of automakers and companies like Apple, states continue to push forward with popular “right to repair” reforms that make it easier and more affordable for consumers to repair tech they own. While they vary in potency, New York, Oregon, California, Massachusetts, Colorado, Maine, and Minnesota have all now passed some flavor of right to repair reforms."

https://www.techdirt.com/2024/05/08/colorado-passes-its-third-right-to-repair-bill/

gerrymcgovern, 1 day ago to random

"Mining, big agribusiness, and the fossil fuel sectors have unleashed an astronomical spate of attacks on human rights defenders (HRDs) throughout 2023. Crucially, perpetrators linked to companies and projects in these sectors account for the majority of over 600 attacks across the course of the year.

This is according to a new damning report by the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC)."

https://www.thecanary.co/global/world-news/2024/05/07/human-rights-defenders-attacks-2023/

gerrymcgovern, 1 day ago to random

“Of all the metals, the aggregate potential for damage to human and environmental health is the greatest for copper,” a report by The International Institute for Sustainable Development stated. An OECD investigation had similar findings. Copper mining has a long history of “mass destruction” of the environment.

gerrymcgovern, 2 days ago to random

Why do data centers and AI need tax breaks?

"Today, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp vetoed HB 1192, which would have put a two-year pause on a state tax break for data centers. The bill would have also created a study committee to allow the state to better plan for the influx of data centers and large amounts of power they require. Testimony presented during floor debate showed that the tax break for data centers was only returning 24 cents for every dollar lost."

https://www.sierraclub.org/georgia/blog/2024/05/press-release-response-gov-kemp-s-veto-hb-1192-pause-tax-breaks-data-centers

gerrymcgovern, 2 days ago to random

"As logging and mining threaten the Amazon, Peru's lawmakers are rolling back anti-deforestation laws in defiance of global climate accords."
https://www.context.news/nature/what-does-perus-forest-law-mean-for-the-environment

The frenzy of AI and the Greed Transition is being felt most in the last refuges of Nature, the last refuges of biodiversity. The Global North is now on a righteous march of extinction and genocide, as it self-congratulates itself on its wonderful innovation and progress.

gerrymcgovern, 2 days ago to random

Mining the Grand Canyon

Arizona lawmakers argue that the monument's creation under the Antiquities Act affects revenue and local economies, pushing for uranium mining.

Hopi, Havasupai, and Navajo Nation have intervened in the lawsuit, emphasizing their sovereign interests and ancestral connection to the land.

Conservation groups back the tribes, highlighting the monument's significance for wildlife migration, cultural heritage, and food and medicine resources.

https://www.ehn.org/arizona-tribes-oppose-uranium-mining-in-grand-canyon-area-2668175089.html

gerrymcgovern, 2 days ago to random

"The Yuturi Warmi, an Ecuadorian patrol group, has vowed to protect their community's land in the Amazon Rainforest from the pollution of extractive industries – and their efforts appear to be working. Along the Jatunyacu River, which later joins the Amazon River in the Napo Province, Elsa Cerda, a 43-year-old indigenous Kichwa woman, brews guayusa leaves – a native plant from the rainforest – in a pot."

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240503-the-indigenous-women-fighting-mining-in-ecuadors-amazon

gerrymcgovern, 2 days ago to random

"Degrowth, on the other hand, must keep an eye on the hands of the clock. For now, it is a collection of untested ideas but it cannot continue to be a cloistered wing of academia. Urgency drives the world view of degrowth. Transcendentalists saw anti-materialism as a necessary tool to achieve personal enlightenment – we now view simple living in the context of climate anxiety. Simple living can no longer be merely a matter of personal choice."

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2024-05-07/is-degrowth-an-academic-field-or-a-mass-movement-taking-degrowth-to-the-people/

gerrymcgovern, 2 days ago to random

Junkyard computing

For specific workloads, clusters of repurposed phones are cheaper and more carbon efficient than traditional servers.

More broadly, scavenging unwanted equipment shows excellent potential for building economic and carbon-efficient
systems, especially when renewable energy is plentiful.

Junkyard Computing: Repurposing Discarded Smartphones to Minimize Carbon, Jennifer Switzer, Gabriel Marcano, Ryan Kastner, Pat Pannuto, ACM, 2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3575693.3575710

paninid, 3 days ago to random

The #InformationWars precede the #WaterWars.
https://mastodon.green/@gerrymcgovern/112399989793545485

gerrymcgovern, 3 days ago to random

"Google is one of the largest and most profitable multinational corporations in the world. It wants to draw perhaps up to a million gallons of water daily from our city to cool their behemoth complex. I say perhaps because we don’t really know because they haven’t made public their plans. And they want to do this during a historic drought. A drought over three and a half years old which the Department of Natural Resources has labeled the longest in Iowa since the 1950s."
https://www.thegazette.com/letters-to-the-editor/first-google-wanted-a-tax-break-now-they-want-our-water/

gerrymcgovern, 3 days ago to random

E-waste contains over 1,000 different chemical toxicants. You think these chemicals are properly certified, tested and controlled? Think again. “Even in the US, the country that tracks the largest number of pollutant releases, fewer than 1% of all chemicals tested and found toxic are tracked,” scientist Josh Lepawsky told me. In south east Asia, water carries the toxins from the e-waste dumps far and wide. Lead, copper, cadmium, chromium, nickel and manganese seep into the rice crops.

gerrymcgovern, 4 days ago to random

"We’re creating content at a mind-boggling pace and scale: 54,000 photos are taken every second, and this year we’re estimated to create around 120 zettabytes of data. By 2035, data creation is predicted to exceed 2,000 zettabytes. Printing out just one zettabyte would require paper from 20 trillion trees (except we only have 3.5 trillion trees on Earth), or would fill more than 212 billion standard DVDs."

https://thespinoff.co.nz/science/06-05-2024/the-climate-cost-of-your-digital-life

gerrymcgovern, 4 days ago to random

The Paradox of the Nordic "Green" Transition

“The per person emissions in Norway were incredibly high. With this data set we can confirm that from a Norwegian perspective we have a lot of work to do, because we are third in the world when it comes to emissions per person from domestic [flight] emissions.”

https://norwegianscitechnews.com/2024/04/big-data-reveals-true-climate-impact-of-worldwide-air-travel/

Per capita, Norway is 3rd worst in world for domestic flight pollution. It is 1st worst in world for e-waste. Norway has also voted to mine and destroy the deep seas.