Climate Change

Mitigating climate change requires reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Not emitting more of it is a key part of the effort but taking some out of the atmosphere will also be important. Direct air capture is the process by which this happens.

Modern data centers have been around since the 1990s, but they were largely unknown to most of us over their first 20 years. From about 2010 until just a few years ago, cloud computing and various mobile and software services became commonplace. The number of data centers grew from hundreds to a couple of thousand. The current third era of data centers, running AI training and inference, has exploded the number of centers and, especially, the amount of power they consume. In 2005, data centers consumed 20 GW of power. Last year, that number exceeded 114 GW with an annual growth rate of over 17%.

As climate change intensifies droughts and disrupts rainfall patterns, freshwater supplies are becoming increasingly strained in many parts of the world. As a result, some farmers are turning to treated wastewater to irrigate their crops. While this approach helps conserve water resources, it also raises some concerns. Even after treatment, wastewater can contain trace amounts of various substances, including psychoactive medications used to treat mental health conditions.

CO2 emissions come from a wide variety of sources. How to reduce them is obvious in some cases – such as by driving electric cars – but very difficult in others, such as the emissions from aircraft. Aviation accounts for 3.5 to 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. In the European Union, it is about 4%.

Driverless ride-hailing vehicles – popularly known as robotaxis – are showing up in a growing number of cities. Several of the largest technology companies in the world are leading the charge using their deep pockets both to put vehicles on the streets and influence how they and sometimes their competitors are portrayed in the media.

According to the World Health Organization and UNICEF, 1 in 4 people globally – about 2.1 billion – lack access to safely managed drinking water. The definition of this is water from sources located on premises, free from contamination, and available when needed. Climate change, population growth, conflicts, and humanitarian crises are only putting increasing pressure on the world’s water resources.

There seems to be no limit to the kinds of pollution society creates. One source that doesn’t get all that much attention is factory farm pollution. Factory farms, also known as concentrated animal feeding operations or CAFOs, produce enormous amounts of pollution and federal laws to regulate it are limited in scope and full of loopholes.

Metropolitan areas tend to be significantly warmer than surrounding rural areas because of human activities, infrastructure, and the lack of vegetation. Asphalt, concrete, and dark rooftops absorb sunlight during the day and slowly release it at night. This raises temperatures by 1 to as much as 7 degrees during the day and 2-5 degrees at night. This is known as the urban heat island effect.

The oceans are home to a quarter million species that have been catalogued and undoubtedly a far greater number undocumented, hosting over 80% of global biodiversity. Oceans are the planet’s primary life-support system, producing at least half of its oxygen.

In mid-March, the final turbine blades of Vineyard Wind, the offshore wind farm sited 15 miles south of Nantucket, were installed. Vineyard Wind is the first large-scale offshore wind project in the U.S. The $4.5 billion project features 62 turbines and is capable of providing clean energy to approximately 400,000 homes.