Green Group discussion

You might enjoy the following article.

https://medium.com/@WWF/cities-climat...

Thanks!

The nights are warming rapidly, so the heat of the day does not dissipate and give relief. The NYTimes has produced this graph on cities in USA with daytime and nighttime warming. They remind us that the urban heat island effect and lack of green spaces contribute to cities being warmer.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...

I find the dates on the graph interesting; we can see the cooling after WW2 when all the bombing had thrown dust into the air, and after Mount St Helens erupted in 1980.

Cities are hosting large climate marches.

https://www.ecowatch.com/rise-for-cli...

The British Broadcasting Corporation has been told to be bolder in its coverage of climate change.

https://www.ecowatch.com/bbc-climate-...

There are many aspects to fake news, it can be 100 percent accurate about a fake event that really happened.

California has committed to zero carbon, and is looking to zero energy building codes and clean cars to help.

Dan Gearino tells us:
Getting to Net Zero in California, for Everything

California Gov. Jerry Brown surprised many this week when he signed an executive order that says the state must achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2045.

To reach net zero, all the state’s emissions would be offset by the ability to remove them from the atmosphere, either through natural systems or carbon capture technology.

It’s a bold but necessary goal, if there is hope of limiting global warming to safe levels, and would require a remaking of just about every part of the economy.

Brown announced this at the same event in which he signed a bill requiring the state to get all of its electricity from carbon-free sources by 2045.

By adding the executive order to the ambitious carbon-free electricity bill, California has reached a new level of climate leadership.

The order covers California’s entire economy, the fifth-largest in the world. It sets the one goal—net-zero by 2045—but doesn’t spell out how to get there. Future lawmakers and regulators will have to set those rules, which will need to include sweeping changes to building codes, the vehicle fleet and electricity generation.

A key takeaway: The order is expected to hasten the state’s move toward net-zero buildings.

It was only a few months ago that the California Energy Commission approved new building codes that require rooftop solar on most new buildings starting in 2020. At that time, some advocates said they wanted to see a greater commitment to net-zero buildings, which generate as much or more electricity than they consume.

Now, with Brown’s action, the state’s trajectory is clearer.

While an executive order does not have the force of legislation, several important California climate policies started as executive orders, said Chris Busch, director of research for the clean-energy think tank Energy Innovation.

“This isn’t just words,” he told me. “We have a history of meeting our targets. We are not just putting empty commitments out there. We’re doing this aware of some of the challenges and with a track record of success.”

California is now the largest economy to make a net-zero commitment. (France is the next-largest entity to set such a goal.)

The challenge ahead is a huge one.

“California is committed to doing whatever is necessary to meet the existential threat of climate change,” Brown said at the signing event Monday. “This bill, and others I will sign this week, help us go in that direction. But have no illusions, California and the rest of the world have miles to go before we achieve zero-carbon emissions.”

We were in London for a few days and they have just had their warmest winter day ever recorded. Followed immediately by an even warmer one. Same day last year was blizzard conditions.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-47374936

You could say it is blowing hot and cold. It appears to be chaotic conditions generated by an unstable system that is trying to regain a stable situation. Every burst of super cold air that leaves the polar regions for the lower latitudes is not completely replaced. The warm bursts are drawing from increasing sources of hot air that isn't diminishing any time soon. Going back millions of years, during the last time carbon dioxide levels were higher than today, the average temperatures were a around 7 F degrees hotter than today. The big difference between then and now was the time it supposedly took for those changes to happen. However on a recent PBS program, it was stated that during one of the ice age periods the Neanderthals encountered, the temperatures fell from seasonally warm to consistently freezing levels in only 10 years.

This post is a link to a 'sponsored' page; an ad in other words. This shows how Milan is making progress with sustainability. We can see the Bosco Verticale - tree-clad apartment blocks. Also, other buildings are being built smarter.

https://www.exploreitaly.com/stories/...

Here is the Wikipedia article on the Bosco Verticale and if you just Google images you will see the trees in all stages of development.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosco_V...

Cities are going carless or electric cars only.

https://singularityhub.com/2019/09/22...

https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/3...

Datacentres - when two hospital info storage centres overheated and one was the backup for the other. London.

"Linked to the last point was an insufficient cooling response, both in terms of speed and scale, taken on the day of the incident to mitigate extreme ambient temperatures, the report said.

For example, preparations had been made in advance of July 19 to hose down the condensers at the St Thomas' site. However, problems with a hose connector meant this was delayed and not as effective as it could have been. Later that day, temperatures inside the datacenter were recorded at 50°C (122°F).

There was also a failure to link the environmental risks associated with two closely located datacenters when one provided backup for the other."

People may sometimes leave a child or pet in a car - bad idea with rising temperatures.
This is a story of a child being saved by a team effort when the keys were locked in the car.

https://jalopnik.com/baby-trapped-in-...

"according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, it takes as little as 10 minutes for a car to heat up by 20 degrees. At any rate, it was very hot in that little crossover. To make matters even more dire for those involved, Fox points out that children’s body temperature actually rise three to five times faster than adults."

More datacentres, Google uses water for cooling, cleaning and drinking.


https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/2...
"Google said that it launched a water replenishment program in 2021, and this report marks the first time Google has returned data from that initiative. According to Google, it wants to replenish 120 percent of the freshwater it consumes by 2030. As of 2022, it was restoring just 6 percent of its consumed water, per the report.

"We've had a strong first year of implementation of our water replenishment strategy, and once our 38 contracted projects are fully implemented, their average annual benefit is expected to increase by nearly five times to 1.3 billion gallons per year." a Google spokesperson told The Register.

Some 5.6 billion gallons of water were consumed by the business in 2022, the equivalent of what would be spent to irrigate 37 golf courses in the southwestern US over the course of a year.

"We evaluate and take into account local water stress when deciding where to locate our facilities, how to design them, and how to operate them – from water systems in our offices to cooling systems in our data centers," Google said. The company noted that 82 percent of its freshwater withdrawals came from regions with low water stress, while Google is "actively exploring new partnerships and opportunities" to improve its water usage in water-stressed regions.

Google describes itself as an "AI-first company" in the report, which goes a long way to explaining why its energy and water consumption is jumping so drastically, especially given the AI breakthroughs of the past year."

Here is a description of google's plan on water use.

They say that water cooled uses 10 percent less energy than air cooled. The thing is that that is a lot of water that wouldn't be used to cool down their operation in the first place. Seems more like a financial decision than the best solution.

The water itself is a form of energy. I wonder if they are factoring in the energy contained in the water as being 10 percent less.

The progress in electronics seemed to be as the item progressed through time, new designs resulted in less energy being used. Sometimes also a smaller size. AI seems to be going in the opposite direction. In order to control everything digital it seems like the digital control system is going to get a lot bigger.

It is planned to make everything digitally controlled with a big savings in energy use over the old fashioned way of controlling things. All the electronics from inception, building, using, upgrading, maintenance, disposal, is supposed to save more energy than is used. While the power used can be brought down to zero emission, the rest of the operation from mining to disposal and everything along the way could have very intensive impacts.

One thing to consider is that the average car of pre-emission law times went from a single mechanical system that could be easily repaired and maintained to a very complex dual mechanical and electronic system. A car that is mechanically sound but has a malfunctioning electronic control system can make the car unusable and potentially expensive to fix.

There are still a billion people who have very little invested in the new digital age besides a phone and perhaps a communal tv set.

https://www.greenbiz.com/article/sip-...

Thanks for looking at this, Robert. IT is changing so fast.

More and more, people come to live in cities as climate changing events are making their rural lives untenable. This gives cities an increasing responsibility in protecting residents from the same climate change.
In particular, high temperature combined with high humidity is dangerous as the body cannot cool itself.
Fountains, trees and awnings are useful, as are built wind corridors and large areas for covered seating, for instance converted warehouses make good large-scale restaurants.

This article about the heat and humidity combination, called wet-bulb temperatures, may be distressing.
https://www.rte.ie/news/2023/0809/139...

https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/1...

"The mad dash to secure and deploy AI infrastructure is forcing datacenter operators to reevaluate the way they build and run their facilities.

In your typical datacenter, cold air is pulled through a rack full of compute, networking, and storage systems. At the back, the heated air is then captured and ejected by the facility's cooling infrastructure.

This paradigm works just fine for 6-10kW racks, but starts to fall apart when you start deploying the kinds of systems used to train AI models like GPT-4. Modern GPU nodes can easily consume an entire rack's worth of power. And this is forcing datacenter operators to make some serious design changes."

Liquid cooling sounds like water though the coolant wasn't listed. A closed system like a car radiator would save a lot of water.

District heating is a closed water system.

New towns and cities are being proposed in the US, in some cases the land is being bought up secretly. There's a snag. Same snag the areas face now. Water.

https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/2...

"Flannery representatives have begun reaching out to local elected officials and leadership at Travis AFB to discuss their plans. Locals also reportedly began receiving text and email polls asking for their thoughts on a ballot initiative to build "a new city with tens of thousands of new homes, a large solar energy farm, orchards with over a million new trees, and over 10,000 acres of new parks and open space."

But there's at least one problem with this idyllic vision: Solano County regularly faces serious droughts and while it's not in one currently, a look at historic conditions (bottom of this page) show that it's been incredibly dry in the region until earlier this year.

According to Moy, the area also has poor transportation infrastructure already clogged by commuters traveling to the Bay Area. Oh, and it is also prone to wildfires. "It seems very pie in the sky," Moy said.
...
"Elon Musk, for example, has been buying up thousands of acres in Bastrop County, Texas, east of Austin, reportedly to build a city to be used for employees at the nearby Tesla Gigafactory and Boring Company facilities. Bastrop County, like Solano, suffers frequent droughts; all of the county is currently in extreme or exceptional drought conditions, and is considered to be incredibly vulnerable to external stressors on human health - like drought and heat. "

The International Day of Clean Air is coming up on 7 September. UNEP has a page showing how we can prepare to educate, inspire, and do something ahead of this day, so we can participate in posting our actions on the day.

Just scroll down the webpage to find a section for individuals, educators, citizen groups; and businesses, policy makers and entire cities. We all need to breathe and clean air starts with us.

https://www.unep.org/interactives/cle...

https://www.ecowatch.com/urban-greens...

"A new project by researchers from the University of Melbourne has found a way to increase insect species numbers in a small urban greenspace by seven times, illustrating the importance of urban greening projects, a press release from the British Ecological Society said.

“The detrimental effects of environmental change on human and non-human diversity are acutely manifested in urban environments,” the authors of the study wrote. “We show how a small greening action quickly led to large positive changes in the richness, demographic dynamics and network structure of a depauperate insect community. An increase in the diversity and complexity of the plant community led to, after only 3 years, a large increase in insect species richness, a greater probability of occurrence of insects within the greenspace and a higher number and diversity of interactions between insects and plant species.”

The study, “Large positive ecological changes of small urban greening actions,” was published in the journal Ecological Solutions and Evidence."

https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wil...

https://phys.org/news/2023-09-urbaniz...

"The study finds that urbanization, along with human-driven climate change, negatively impacts wildlife communities at local scales, reducing species occupancy, richness, and diversity. The impact of urbanization varies among cities but is heavily influenced by regional environmental characteristics, with warmer, less vegetated cities experiencing more severe declines in wildlife diversity.

Mammal identification in camera-trap photos was conducted by trained personnel, including students, faculty, volunteers, and wildlife professionals. While mid-to-large-sized mammal species were well represented, smaller-bodied species were under-represented or not detected at all, which is a typical limitation of camera trapping.

In cities, regional environmental variables substantially influenced local species occupancy and community composition more than the broader regional species richness. Vegetation greenness, temperature, and surrounding urbanization influenced average wildlife occupancy with more negative responses in warmer, less vegetated cities.

Species traits, particularly body size, were seen to play a crucial role in mediating the effects of urbanization on wildlife, although being a carnivore, omnivore, or vegetarian did not have a significant influence."

More information: Jeffrey D. Haight et al, Urbanization, climate and species traits shape mammal communities from local to continental scales, Nature Ecology & Evolution (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41559-023-02166-x

Jiajia Liu, Warming amplifies urbanization effects on mammals, Nature Ecology & Evolution (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41559-023-02164-z

Journal information: Nature Ecology & Evolution

Cities need power during winters and heatwaves, as we've discussed at times, this puts stress on the wider grid.
In Texas, a bitcoin mining outfit has been getting paid better not to mine during heatwaves than it was gaining from making bitcoins all year.
Might be time the civil authorities looked at their priorities for selling power in the first place. The comments shed some light on the practices.

https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/0...

"In a press release yesterday, Riot said it produced 333 Bitcoin at its mining operations in Rockdale, Texas, which would have been worth just shy of $9 million on August 31. All the cash earned from those energy credits, on the other hand, equates to around 1,136 Bitcoin, Riot CEO Jason Les said in the company's monthly update.

"August was a landmark month for Riot in showcasing the benefits of our unique power strategy," Les said. "Riot achieved a new monthly record for Power and Demand Response Credits … which surpassed the total amount of all Credits received in 2022.

"These credits significantly lower Riot's cost to mine Bitcoin and are a key element in making Riot one of the lowest cost producers of Bitcoin in the industry," Les said.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) operates a demand response program that allows big energy consumers, like Riot, to earn power credits for using less of it for operations and selling power back to the grid, as well as additional credit for being enrolled in its demand response programs.

As we reported in August of last year, the company earned $9.5 million in credits during a July 2022 heatwave as well – still far less than it earned in Texas's hottest August on record this year."

Cities are also stacked with devices, all of which are increasingly likely to be part of the IOT or internet of things.
This means they require energy to transmit everything from your precise location to date of birth - while they wash your socks. And this info gets stored, and sorted, and accessed, and sold over and over to data warehouses and advertisers. All requires energy.

https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/0...

"Once more, Euly, Arlo, and Ring were demanding to know Android owners' background location. Which? observed that this is unnecessary in the event that a home security system is triggered and means that users could be tracked even when not using the app. "All permissions are activated by default. Consumers can opt out, but this requires changing the settings and could lead to aspects of the device or app no longer working," it said.

Washing machines are smart now too, apparently, and the things they want to know about their owners have nothing to do with spin cycles. For example, LG and Hoover products don't allow use of their apps without knowing how old you are. LG was the worst for prying, wanting "name, date of birth, email, phone contact book, precise location and phone number," while Hoover demanded "users' contacts and phone numbers on Android devices." For Miele products, precise location tracking is enabled by default and required to use the app.

Which? also took aim at smart TVs, which, while possessing phone-like operating systems themselves and not requiring a phone app to use, also track user behavior to flood their menus with ads. LG, Samsung, and Sony were put on blast for their "accept all" list of trackers, which otherwise requires owners to manually decline access one by one.

"Under the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), companies must be transparent about the data they collect and how it is processed. The data collected must also be relevant and limited to what is necessary for the processing to take place," Which? concluded.

"However, the reasons for taking information are often too broad for consumers to appreciate, with companies claiming 'legitimate interests'. While it all should be listed in a privacy policy, the reality is that when consumers come to click 'accept', unless they closely analyse the fine print, they have little to no idea what will actually happen next with their data.""

Cities generate immense amounts of light at night.

https://www.space.com/light-pollution...

"Given the harmful effects of light pollution, a pair of astronomers has coined a new term to help focus efforts to combat it. Their term, as reported in a brief paper in the preprint database arXiv and a letter to the journal Science, is "noctalgia." In general, it means "sky grief," and it captures the collective pain we are experiencing as we continue to lose access to the night sky.

Thankfully, there is a way to tackle noctalgia, just as there are ways to combat climate change. On the ground, efforts have sprung up across the globe to create dark-sky reserves, where surrounding communities pledge not to encroach with further expansions of light pollution. Still, those are usually in extremely remote and inaccessible regions of the globe, so other efforts have focused on working with community and business leaders to install night-friendly lighting, such as devices that turn off automatically or point only at the ground (or are simply not used at all)."

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/s...

Microsoft is looking at nuclear powered datacentres. This would be for AI.

https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/2...
"Microsoft is hiring a "Principal Program Manager Nuclear Technology" to oversee its efforts to power datacenters with nuclear reactors.

A job ad spells out that whoever gets the job "will be responsible for maturing and implementing a global Small Modular Reactor (SMR) and microreactor energy strategy."

"This senior position is tasked with leading the technical assessment for the integration of SMR and microreactors to power the datacenters that the Microsoft Cloud and AI reside on," the ad continues."

Industry's ultimate idea of green, emission free renewable energy. If it was fusion it would be clean, but its fission, which still needs to clean up its act from previous events before it goes on to the next round of construction via share holder investments. The eventual waste from the nuclear power plant is the emission that needs to be considered as part of the whole package.

The ever-expanding global population is also seeing a shift to city living, and with it, a rise in people moving in to the middle class. Here is a new data viz on how many in each continent will join the middle class during 2024. All these people will expect to be able to have a home, a car, a TV, a phone or two, nice clothes, meat or other protein for meals, and educate their children. That's a lot of demands on resources. And a lot of city building.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/113-...

"World Data Lab expects 113 million people to join the global middle class in 2024, with the vast majority coming from Asia."

No mention of how many people will be forced out of the middle class, for instance by retirement, debt, job closures or downwardly mobile employment opportunities. I happen to be reading:
Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century

More on datacentres. The one running the social media platform is just the start. Another stores all the data scraped about the users, matches it up with other data from other platforms, warehouses the package and sells it to literally anyone.

This article looks at data brokers. I have not checked the details, but many university books have been warning of this process for several years. Tighter laws in the EU and Norway particularly, would restrict some of this activity.
All this invades and erodes people's privacy, and all uses energy.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90310803/...

"The registry is an expansive, alphabet soup of companies, from lesser-known organizations that help landlords research potential tenants or deliver marketing leads to insurance companies, to the quiet giants of data. Those include big names in people search, like Spokeo, ZoomInfo, White Pages, PeopleSmart, Intelius, PeopleFinders, and the numerous other websites they operate; credit reporting, like Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion; and advertising and marketing, like Acxiom, Oracle, Innovis, and KBM. Some companies also specialize in “risk mitigation,” which can include credit reporting but also background checks and other identity verification services.
Still, these 121 entities represent just a fraction of the broader data economy: The Vermont law only covers third-party data firms–those trafficking in the data of people with whom they have no relationship–as opposed to “first-party” data holders like Amazon, Facebook, or Google, which collect their own enormous piles"

https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/0...

"The UK government is stumping up £36 million ($41.4 million) to help support a green energy project that aims to use waste heat from a datacenter to keep nearby homes warm.

According to the newly formed Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), the scheme will be located in the boroughs of Hammersmith and Fulham and Brent and Ealing to the west of central London, and will connect 10,000 new homes to nearby datacenters to use waste energy for heating.

The project is being developed by the Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation (OPDC), and will also connect 250,000 m2 of commercial space to the same heat network.

However, this being the UK government, many details of the plans are sketchy, and it is not clear if it will involve heat being supplied by existing datacenters or new builds that may form part of the development, for example.

Described as a "low carbon housing estate of the future," the idea is that waste energy from these datacenters will be used to provide heating and hot water for the new homes, DESNZ said."

I presume someone has given thought to what will happen if said data centres stop being used.

India burns dirty coal and the farmers burn stubble fields.

https://phys.org/news/2023-11-fans-fo...

"The smog-choked Indian capital was ranked as the planet's most polluted major city on Monday, but the love of the game trumped health worries for fans at the cricket World Cup.

Both Bangladesh and Sri Lanka had cancelled training sessions ahead of their match in New Delhi worried at health impacts, but players took to the pitch without facemasks—and barely a handful of the thousands of fans in the stadium took precautions either.
...
"New Delhi is blanketed in acrid smog every autumn, primarily blamed on stubble burning by farmers in the neighboring regions.

The average city resident could die nearly 12 years earlier due to air pollution, according to an August report by the University of Chicago's Energy Policy Institute."

Not only "the average city resident could die nearly 12 years earlier due to air pollution" but everyone's life expectancy is taking a dive due to climate change which triggers changes in everything from weather, biological, financial, agricultural, commercial, industrial, everything we do. The climate is the fountainhead of everything, it makes the internet of everything a simple toy for infants.

I understand that scientists and researchers have to stick to the facts that they are studying, but by using a title that limits who is affected, it could seem like less people are affected. It is a proper style of writing, framing the facts, but perhaps the rules are meant to put things in their best light, not in the best light.

There was a quote from The Conversation saying that in another way.

https://www.rte.ie/news/2023/1110/141...

"Mr Kerry also hailed recent talks with China, while offering few details, and called upcoming climate talks in the UAE "absolutely critical".

Speaking in Singapore, the former US chief diplomat said it was now "irresponsible to be funding or building a coal-fired power plant anywhere in the world".

"There's no such thing as clean coal. It's not about to happen," Mr Kerry told the Bloomberg New Economy Forum."

Depending on imported wood pellets for heat in a city is dangerous. And probably not sustainable.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/09...

"A financial crisis has enveloped Enviva, the Maryland-based company that’s been harvesting large swaths of forest in the Southeast United States to make wood pellets for electricity production in the United Kingdom and Europe.

Enviva calls itself the world’s largest producer of biomass wood pellets, and in recent years it’s faced a cross-Atlantic campaign attempting to debunk the company’s claims of environmental sustainability. It has 10 pellet manufacturing plants in six states: North Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia, where local residents and environmental groups have raised ecological and environmental justice concerns from logging practices and emissions from pellet production.

The company has active plans for two more pellet plants, one in Alabama and the other in Mississippi. But the future of the company is now in doubt, by its own admission.

Enviva’s stock price, which has been falling all year from a high of $51 in January, sank to under a $1 a share on Thursday after a new interim chief executive officer delivered a sobering third-quarter earnings call that raised questions about the company’s viability, blaming unfavorable wood pellet pricing, problems at a plant in Virginia, higher interest expenses and other factors."

Enviva’s financial problems shed light on biomass energy flaws.

Woodchip pellet companies are propped up by billions of dollars in tax credits and incentives from the United Kingdom and European Union. While Europe is reconsidering the wisdom of these practices, the US is considering expanding more incentives to the wood pellet industry using clean energy tax credits, which in itself doesn't benefit the public or physically reduce pollution.

The manufacturing of wood pellets is literally a dirty business. Quite often the factories are in low income areas which is a common industrial practice.

These dirty facilities release huge amounts of air pollution, dust, and fine particulates that can cause asthma and respiratory illnesses in nearby communities.

Legal action on behalf of the communities resulted in Enviva being required to install anti pollution equipment which actually works. This raised the costs of their operation, as it will for any company that is required to have a thoroughly clean footprint in the area they are working in.

As in all green efforts, when the bottom line is making money, the decisions made are flawed because all the costs are not properly computed or even included.

When the biomass industry uses previously used material that is literally garbage and is able to be cleanly processed, it works.

Keywords are garbage and clean.

According to Columbia Climate school, considering all biomass, regardless of its source, as carbon neutral could lead to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions globally, as well as increase the risk of large-scale deforestation of the world's largest forests.

Apparently for most biomass it is not economically feasible to burn it more than 100 miles from where it is produced. And yet it is being shipped around the world.

Large scale deforestation is part of the problem because the timber industry is constantly including more and more trees as being eligible for biomass. This is based on the idea that trees have a maximum payday value which is based on condition, such as age being over 25 years or the tree trunks are bent. Short term monetary gain, those are real losses. Using long term ecological reasoning, those are non existent reasons for cutting down trees. Those two positions are incompatible.

Pros and Cons of Biomass Fuel
https://www.edp.com/en/edp-yes/energy... allows the timber industryes-and-disadvantages-alternative-source#:~:text=Pellets%2C%20chips%20and%20straw%20(biomass,they%20can%20become%20non%2Drenewable.

Financial
https://www.southernenvironment.org/n...

Timber Industry Tree Classification Methods
https://twosidesna.org/US/dispelling-...

A new dataviz using 2023 figures, showing where datacentres are located around the world and how much they store.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/t...

Probably also get discounted electric rates.

"China's efforts to reduce air pollution have prevented 46,000 suicide deaths in the country over just five years, the researchers estimate."

https://phys.org/news/2024-02-air-qua...

More information: Peng Zhang et al, Estimating the role of air quality improvements in the decline of suicide rates in China, Nature Sustainability (2024).
https://www.nature.com/articles/s4189...
Provided by University of California - Santa Barbara


The above link had to be placed direct from the Nature page. I think the new cookie policy banners might be confusing the posting of a link from Phys.Org.

It could be possible to trace the growth of climate changing events along with the growth of the global money supply. Money is fueling all the efforts to make money by selling products.

Each dollar spent represents the expenditure of energy. The bulk of the money spent is spent on things that add heat energy and add waste products to the global energy flow which has to be handled. A straight tax on every dollar handled could go a long way towards reversing climate change and making the economy more proactive in creating a healthier environment for everyone.

If the tax was a very small amount, it would be affordable for those on limited incomes and at the same time, would also work for large expenditures by the sum obtained by adding up the small amount from every dollar handled.

People who buy secondhand products would suffer too under that system. Some would argue that the good had already been taxed, and those buying secondhand should not suffer the same as those buying new off the production line.

https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/2...

"Water supply is seen as a growing risk factor for the chip industry with consumption rising by up to ten percent each year, and many of the biggest producers already operating in areas prone to water scarcity.

A new report from market intelligence outfit S&P Global highlights what it sees as the expanding credit risks for chipmakers, and potential cost increases for buyers, as a result of greater stress on water supplies likely to arise from climate change.

The water consumption of semiconductor companies is on the increase, it notes, both absolutely and on a per-unit basis as production processes become more advanced. At the same time, changes in weather patterns are making water availability unpredictable, with more extreme weather, droughts and less frequent rainfall.

Semiconductor manufacturing already consumes as much water as Hong Kong, a city of 7.5 million people, the report claims.

Taking Taiwan's TSMC as an example, which accounted for 58 percent of the entire global semiconductor wafer market in Q3, 2023, the S&P report says the chipmaker's water consumption per unit grew by more than 35 percent in 2015 following the introduction of its 16nm process nodes.

Fabrication plants use ultrapure water to rinse the wafers between each process step, and more advanced production processes have more of these steps requiring more water. The volume of wafer shipments is also likely to increase in future, following a decline last year due to slowing demand for chips.

TSMC's demand for water at its Taiwan factories could double from the 2022 level by 2030, S&P Global estimates, and the report warns that if the company misjudges its water supply management, the result could see it miss production forecasts for 2030 by up to ten percent.

This would likely push up the price of chips because of the shortfall, while the company would have to pass on extra costs to its customers of potentially higher water tariffs and the expense of using tanker trucks when facing a severe drought, S&P Global reckons."

https://www.spglobal.com/ratings/en/r...

Not valuing the water used for manufacturing or agricultural purposes properly is the problem. Products are underpriced to make them seem to be profitable so that they will appear to be something to invest in. It doesn't matter if it is almond trees or computer chips.

Once the deep underground water is brought to the surface a whole series of events start to unfold. None of that is figured into the price of the finished product.

Companies are claiming that they are practicing sustainable policies. Upon closer examination it can be seen that each company is connected to other companies that help the "sustainable" company obtain materials and to distribute and use the products. These other companies are not using sustainable practices.

Individual companies can claim to be sustainable but in reality they are part of a system that is not sustainable by any means possible.

By not connecting the dots anything can be made to look like a good deal. That was how the US market sold contaminated baby food for years. Each company that supplied a material that was used to make baby food could supply evidence that the amount of contaminants in the product was below the maximum allowable amount. The problem was very simple, when you added up the individual minimum value contaminants of each item used to make the final baby food product, the sum total of all the contaminants in the finished product was greater than the allowable amount in the single final product.

The same logic is used throughout the manufacturing industry to achieve goals of sustainability, which doesn't exist except in the minds of people. Claims of sustainability is simply an advertising gimmick to get more sales of a product. Reading the claims is not the same as researching what is actually happening.

We are using the principal value of the Natural World, not the value of the interest generated by the existence of the Natural World to fund our activities. To make the situation whole again, the immediate reinvestment of what is used is 3 times what is being used. Replanting 1 tree or growing 1 fish to be returned to the wild for every 3 taken is not sustainable. We have to return 3 fish, or plant 3 trees for every one taken, and not harvest them for a very long time. That is 300 percent reinvested not 30 percent.

As far as trees go, replanted trees should be left in the ground until they die, than they could be harvested. Even then, the dead trees are part of the replenishing of the world's ecosystem, which creates its own set of problems.

https://www.designlife-cycle.com/nvid...

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/kids-h...

Living off capital is not sustainable.

As we've remarked previously, cities are sinking. Sea level rise and extraction of ground fresh water can cause further issues to heavy, often coastal, cities.

Here is a dataviz on which cities are sinking the fastest. No surprise, they are among the most heavily populated ones. 30 of the top 44 are in Asia.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/v...

Sounds like a sinking ship. Doesn't matter how clean your cabin is. Cities are sinking everywhere. Big industrialized countries, including the newly industrialized like Brazil, India, and China who claim they shouldn't have to bear any responsibility for other countries water problems, such as low lying islands and coastal countries, are sinking themselves.

The entire US east coast is sinking taking all the coastal cities with it, including some very big ones, like New York City, Boston, Atlanta, dozens of big cities, plus thousands of other cities and towns.

Out on the west coast and the midwest, cities are sinking from over pumping groundwater and over building in geologically weak areas.

Found an article entitled: Water Cities: Can We Climate-Proof the Coast?
Very informative and lengthy article about everything that was done wrong for coastal development. It's the blueprint for coastal development everywhere. It ends with no real ideas on how to do anything to correct the problem, probably because it can't be fixed. It does say the Dutch learned to live with water by always thinking about water when building or rebuilding.

The Netherlands is not exempt from rising waters and sinking land, but they are the most prepared for it. The problem is that the greatly increased rainfall amounts in shorter time periods has thrown everyone's preparations out the window because the threat comes from instant flooding inside the outwardly protected areas. Even a mountain top can become a flood zone in a few hours now.

These are physical changes and in some places there won't be any way to easily rebuild what was there. The entire infrastructure including buildings would have to be either rebuilt in a completely new fashion or moved to a higher, dryer location. Either of those solutions would cost a great deal of money and hardship. Right now for smaller subsections in larger developments, its either rebuild if you can or walk away which is happening quite frequently now. Parts of New Orleans have never been rebuilt since Katrina, 19 years ago.

At the end of the day, it can be seen that the human first ideology is not prepared to handle the consequences of its actions, never mind admitting to the problems it has created in the first place.

https://www.scseagrant.org/water-citi...

https://news.mongabay.com/2023/03/sea...

I've seen on news from developing countries, that many small farmers are giving up due to floods, droughts, etc. and just going to a city to look for work and housing. So these big, sinking cities are swelling and less food is available for the inhabitants.
Many thousands of people then try migrating for a better life to a better off country. Where they end up in a big city with no food or work, and they may have no legal right to stay. But they have nothing to return to.
From start to finish this is a population explosion problem.

When 8 billion people are involved every move becomes critical no matter how insignificant it seems.

And now there is this, How a Solar Revolution in Farming Is Depleting World’s Groundwater

"An innovation that initially looked capable of reducing fossil-fuel consumption while also helping farmers prosper is rapidly turning into an environmental time bomb."

Solar engine is providing what amounts to unlimited energy to a lot of poor people who need water to grow their crops. When only a few people are doing something it doesn't matter much. Once a lot of people start doing the same thing unintended consequences arise, from harmless to not good at all.

In one region in India there are 100,000 farmers pumping water to irrigate 1 million acres. When the free pumps can no longer pump the water because the water level has fallen too far down below ground level it has to be replaced with a more powerful pump with a bigger solar cell power unit. The more powerful pump is not free so the poor farmer has to spend money they don't have or they move on and rich farmers move in with expensive pumps.

https://e360.yale.edu/features/solar-...