https://themarkup.org/hello-world/2023/07/08/ai-environmental-equity-its-not-easy-being-green

A few months ago, I spoke with Shaolei Ren, as associate professor of computer science at University of California, Riverside, and his team about their research into the secret water footprint of AI. Recently, Ren and his team studied how AI’s environmental costs are often disproportionately higher in some regions than others, so I spoke with him again to dig into those findings.

His team, which includes UC Riverside Ph.D. candidates Pengfei Li and Jianyi Yang, and Adam Wierman, a professor in the Department of Computing and Mathematical Sciences (CMS) at the California Institute of Technology, looked into a path toward more equitable AI through what they call “geographical load balancing.” Specifically, this approach attempts to “explicitly address AI’s environmental impacts on the most disadvantaged regions.”

Ren and I talked about why it’s not easy being green and what tangible steps cloud service providers and app developers could take to reduce their environmental footprint.

We often talk about the environment in abstract terms, using phrases like "good for the environment", "bad for the environment", "environmental problems", and so on. Obviously there is a place for this, but I think it also serves to abstract what is a very immediate and concrete thing that we interact with each day — our local environment.

So I wanted to ask, how familiar are you all with your local environment?

• Do you recognize (or even identify) different plant and animal species in your area? Do you know which are native and which might be invasive?

• Do you notice changes in your environment throughout the year? Do you know why these changes happen?

• Thinking longer term, if you have lived in one location long enough, have you noticed changes over the years? If so, what?

• Do you know what the most pressing local environmental issues are?

I'm hoping this can be a thread for people to talk about their local environments, but also to share tips on how to be more tuned in to your local nature.

I myself would not say I am very familiar with the flora and fauna of where I live, but I have been trying to get better. I use the app Seek (which is similar to iNaturalist for those who might be familiar, but with better recognition capabilities in my experience) to identify plants around where I live, and I'm slowly trying to get better at recognizing them. The process of stopping to take a photo has really helped me slow down and pay attention to things around me — I notice a lot more garbage, roadkill near the big crossings, etc. In addition, seeing pictures of some of these plants online have made me realize just how water deprived a lot of the ones around me are, which is no doubt an effect of the drought my area has been experiencing. This has lead me to be more intentional with seeking out news regarding water laws and rights and trying to be more tuned in to these issues.

Edit

Some great additional questions from this comment of @skybrian's:

• Do you know where your water comes from?
• Do you know where sewage goes?
• Where is the landfill that your garbage goes to?
• How is recycling done?

Somalia faces worst drought in decades, leading to record number of displacements — Toronto Star

Somalia is facing the worst drought in four decades, devastating floods and more than 30 years of conflict, leading to a record number of displacements this year, with more than a million people fleeing their homes in just 130 days. This brings the total number of internally displaced people to nearly four million, which is close to a quarter of the country’s population. In desperation, some mothers are poisoning their babies with detergent and salty water to trigger illnesses and thus receive free food from health centers. This food, instead of being given to the sick child, is sold to provide for the whole family. Source

I've been idly browsing for a home weather station for a while, hoping to contribute to the local sensor network for a region that's got lots of microclimate variation. I saw this one from Seeed Studio today, and was hoping for some reviews and advice. Seeed Studio devices are known for open source software, and I wouldn't mind playing with writing a tie-in for sprinkler system automation so we're not irrigating when it's about to rain. It wouldn't be situated so far from the house that we'd need to use the LoRaWAN feature, though.

Concurrently, we just had an inch of rain dropped on our house in the space of 15 minutes, with winds that were taking down tree branches. The weather report says "light rain", weather stations a mile away continue to indicate that everything is bone dry with quiet air. This rainstorm breaks a nearly month-long drought. I'm finding it nerve-wracking that climate change makes it impossible to use past local weather as a predictor of what to expect for gardening, home maintenance, and outdoor activities, and local weather reports are so inaccurate. So that's (hopefully) where the weather station might come into play.

That being said, any chat about your local conditions and reporting from your station is welcome.