gerrymcgovern

gerrymcgovern, 5 months ago to random

Because of the explosive growth of data centers, Dominion Energy utility in Virginia, USA, predicts that in 25 years, its carbon emissions will be 65% higher than it was expecting just two years ago.
https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-data-centers-land-grab-google-meta-openai-amazon-2023-12

gerrymcgovern, 8 months ago to random

If we deleted 90% of the data we have, everything would work better and we'd need 90% less data centers.

After 90 days, the probability of a piece of content being reused is 5%
Data Is the New Oil, and That Makes It an Environmental Hazard, Bill Tolson, Spice Works, 2021
https://www.toolbox.com/tech/big-data/guest-article/data-is-the-new-oil-and-that-makes-it-an-environmental-hazard/

91% of content gets no traffic from Google
https://ahrefs.com/blog/search-traffic-study/

95% of apps are unused after 90 days.
https://andrewchen.com/new-data-shows-why-losing-80-of-your-mobile-users-is-normal-and-that-the-best-apps-do-much-better/

gerrymcgovern, 3 months ago to random

Degrowth is the only hope

Imagine a world where you work three or four days a week. In your free time, you play sports, spend time with loved ones, garden, and engage with local politics. Overnight shipping, advertising, private jets, billionaires and SUVs no longer exist, but health care, education, and clean electricity are free and available to all.

We must massively reduce our energy and material consumption to have any hope of saving our environment.

https://grist.org/looking-forward/the-growing-popularity-of-degrowth/

gerrymcgovern, 6 months ago to random

Are we going to save cat videos or the cats?

Over 50% of Internet traffic is video.

Are we going to save pictures of Nature or Nature?

There are 10 trillion photos stored in the Cloud.

We took more photos last year than we took in the entire 20th Century.

Soon, our data will drink more water than we do.

And 90% of this data is crap. Waste.

We are wasting our environment to create digital waste.

gerrymcgovern, 12 days ago to random

"ChatGPT consumes a lot of energy in the process, up to 25 times more than a Google search. Additionally, a lot of water is also used in cooling for the servers that run all that software. Per conversation of about 20 to 50 queries, half a litre of water evaporates – a small bottle, in other words."

AI is predicted to consume twice as much energy as the whole of France by 2030

Training GPT3, took 1,287 MWh (Megawatt hours) of electricity.

https://www.brusselstimes.com/world-all-news/1042696/chatgpt-consumes-25-times-more-energy-than-google

gerrymcgovern, 9 months ago to random

We have defined the wrong problem.

It's not an energy production problem. It's not about to EV or not EV.

It's an energy and materials consumption problem. We consume vastly too many materials and too much energy and produce vastly too much waste, because we have societies captured by the Growth Death Cult.

The Culture of Growth is the problem.

It is a cultural transition we require to degrowth societies.

gerrymcgovern, 8 months ago to random

Removing The Headphone Jack Is About Planned Obsolescence, Not “Courage”

"In this article, we will uncover the real motive behind removing the headphone jack from mobile phones. Contrary to what companies may say, it’s not about bravery or driving innovation. Instead, it’s all about planned obsolescence – the deliberate act of designing devices to become obsolete and force consumers to upgrade."

https://cellularnews.com/mobile-phone/removing-the-headphone-jack-is-about-planned-obsolescence-not-courage/

gerrymcgovern, 3 months ago to random

"The Nordic states are letting go of values and infrastructure resources that are dear to the welfare state – from shared access to public resources to democratic values and universal access to communication and electricity – while intensifying digitalization and dependencies on Silicon Valley companies."

The public values of openness, affordability of connection and universal access to infrastructure are under threat by Big Tech.

https://www.helsinki.fi/en/researchgroups/reimagining-public-values-in-algorithmic-futures/whats-new/dismantling-public-values-one-data-center-at-the-time

gerrymcgovern, 5 months ago to random

Tire dust makes up the majority of ocean microplastics and hangs as an invisible mist wherever cars are driven. A traditional petrol / diesel car's four tires will pollute 1 trillion toxic nano particles for every kilometer driven. There are about 1.4 billion cars in the world. Let’s assume they drive and average 20,000 km per year. That means that every year some 28 septillion of these toxic particles pollute air, soil and water. That’s 28,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

gerrymcgovern, 4 months ago to random

Rapid groundwater depletion is widespread around the world, according to 2024 study of 170,000 wells located in over 40 countries. Rates of decline have accelerated in recent decades, with levels falling by 20 inches or more yearly in some locations.
https://theconversation.com/humans-are-depleting-groundwater-worldwide-but-there-are-ways-to-replenish-it-220816

Humanity’s groundwater pumping has altered Earth’s tilt
https://www.science.org/content/article/humanity-s-groundwater-pumping-has-altered-earth-s-tilt

The UN is predicting a 40% shortfall in freshwater resources by 2030.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/31/why-water-is-the-next-net-zero-environmental-target.html

gerrymcgovern, 4 months ago to random

You are much closer to sleeping on the streets than sleeping in the mansion of a billionaire. And the envious desire to sleep in the mansion of the billionaire is what is destroying our environment. We have allowed the greedy and cruel to dominate and their insatiable greed and cruelty will inevitably lead to environmental destruction.
https://gerrymcgovern.com/fairness-and-kindness-are-not-weaknesses/

gerrymcgovern, 5 months ago to random

Electric bikes are displacing four times as much demand for oil as all the world’s electric cars.
https://theconversation.com/the-worlds-280-million-electric-bikes-and-mopeds-are-cutting-demand-for-oil-far-more-than-electric-cars-213870

“I use my e-bike on journeys in my area, including towns 10 and 15 miles away. I am a middle-aged chubster with two very dodgy knees. Some days, I can cycle more easily than I can walk. I live in a very hilly, very windy part of rural Scotland. The e-bike is transformative and brings me great joy.”
Ruth Watson, @kuantancurls

gerrymcgovern, 1 month ago to random

In a city called The Dalles, in Oregon, USA, local people were worried that Google’s water use was soaring. As is so often the case, the city officials, who had given Google hundreds of millions in tax breaks, had no intention of letting anyone know how much water Google was using. It was up to a local paper, The Oregonian, to try and find out. They were forced to bring a case to court. City officials were ordered by Google to claim that Google’s use of scarce pubic water was a “trade secret”.

gerrymcgovern, 8 months ago to random

"Its estimated that spam consumes more than 33 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity every year, the same amount as 2.4 million homes. It also produces the same amount of green house gas(GHG) emissions as 3.1 million passenger cars."
https://www.techbusinessnews.com.au/does-email-spam-affect-the-enviroment/

gerrymcgovern, 10 months ago to random

Excuse me, Mr and Mrs Indigenous.

We're here for the metals

To save our world, I'm sorry, we'll have to destroy yours.

Thank you for sacrificing your family and environment so that our kids can vape and scoot, and we adults can buy 2 ton SUVs and pickups so we can pickup our groceries, 40% of which we're going to throw away.

gerrymcgovern, 10 months ago to random

"Irish households have reduced their demand for electricity by 9% over the past couple of years. In contrast, electricity demand from data centres has soared by 31%. A truly astonishing 18% of Ireland’s electricity now goes to feed over 80 already active data centres. 14 more are already under construction and an additional 40 have received planning permission. A further 12 are awaiting such permission."

https://www.hotpress.com/lifestyle-sports/data-centres-10-things-you-really-should-know-about-these-super-toxic-dumps-22979021

gerrymcgovern, 6 months ago to random

In one generation, we will have extracted, consumed and wasted more materials than in all of previous history, than in all the time humans have been on the planet.

And the rich 10% will have done 50% of this consuming and wasting.

The poorest 50% will have done 10% of this.

We can transition all we want. Our lifestyles are not sustainable.

We must embrace Degrowth

gerrymcgovern, 4 months ago to random

The Green Transition will massively deepen the biodiversity crisis because it requires an explosion of mining in wilderness areas and in the deep seas. The Green Transition is killing the life it’s claiming to be saving.

In Australia, 144 species of mammals, frogs, plants and birds were added to the national threatened species in 2023. That was five times more than the yearly average and double the previous record year set in 2009.
https://www.smh.com.au/environment/conservation/australia-threatened-species-2024-20240123-p5ezbw.html

gerrymcgovern, 7 months ago to random

"Mountaintop removal for lithium to go into electric vehicle batteries is ecocide, just like mountaintop removal for coal mining is. I visited the site of yet another planned open pit lithium mine that is threatening the Great Basin — this time, in the state of Oregon. This site, about 15 miles north of Thacker Pass, is vital habitat for the Lahontan cutthroat trout, sage grouse, and countless other species — and it would be completely destroyed if the mine is built."

https://maxwilbert.substack.com/p/how-much-land-must-be-sacrificed?publication_id=555107&post_id=137557756&isFreemail=true&r=3g47a

gerrymcgovern, 4 months ago to random

Web design has rarely taken the environment into account. Over the last decade, webpages have become ten times bigger, and up to 80% of the weight of a particular webpage can be waste—content and code that is not required for the page to function. I asked Web design guru, co-founder of Smashing Magazine, and all-round nice person, Vitaly Friedman, what his opinion on all this Web bloat and environmental waste was.
https://gerrymcgovern.com/vitaly-friedman-chat-cleaner-web-design-for-a-better-environment/

gerrymcgovern, 9 months ago to random

Data is exploding and Moore's Law is dying.

That's means that by 2035 we could see 20-times more data centers than we have today.

We are fast heading towards a data crisis, as if we didn't have enough crises to deal with. But every single crisis has the same root cause: overconsumption.

"Data center industry grew up in a world where computer chips were always growing in power and coming down in cost. But that world has passed away."

Meaning, lots more data centers.

https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/design/what-does-end-moores-law-mean-data-center-industry

gerrymcgovern, 2 months ago to random

Some 2 billion tyres are made a year. 78% of microplastics in the ocean come from tyres. Car tyres are made from around 24% synthetic rubber. This “chemical cocktail” of 400 chemicals includes heavy metals like copper, lead and zinc. A reduction of tyre wear particles is as important as reducing exhaust emissions.
Toxic tyre dust: This source of microplastic pollution could be the worst of all, Euronews Green, 2024
https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/10/02/toxic-tyre-dust-this-source-of-microplastic-pollution-could-be-the-worst-of-all

gerrymcgovern, 1 month ago to random

Asked if a restaurant could serve cheese nibbled on by a rodent, the Microsoft / New York City government official AI chatbot replied:

“Yes, you can still serve the cheese to customers if it has rat bites,” before adding that it was important to assess the “the extent of the damage caused by the rat” and to “inform customers about the situation.”

AI is spewing out this sort of surreal garbage all over the world right now. AI is a monumental grift.

https://apnews.com/article/new-york-city-chatbot-misinformation-6ebc71db5b770b9969c906a7ee4fae21

gerrymcgovern, 4 months ago to random

People who commute by bike have:

• a 52% lower risk of death from heart disease;
• a 46% lower risk of developing heart disease;
• a 40% lower risk of death from cancer
• a 45% lower risk of developing cancer
  Association between active commuting and incident cardiovascular disease, cancer, and mortality: prospective cohort study
  https://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j1456

gerrymcgovern, 4 months ago to random

"Going electric does not solve our problems, it only deepens them. We’ve known for a long time that our GDP addiction and capitalist economic model are incompatible with life on Earth. Scientists kept saying that for decades, yet very little happened."

Not only does electrification "not help — it worsens the situation, and yet we keep heading towards a disaster."

We don't have an energy production problem.
We have an energy consumption problem.
We consume too much.

https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/12/26/we-cant-save-the-world-with-electric-cars