Giving AI the Side-Eye

The talks ended on Sunday, December 1, but the parties were not able to reach a unanimous understanding but did agree to meet again next year. The dispute at the talks was around the limitation of plastic production. Most nations are in favor of both recycling and reducing the amount of plastic that is manufactured. However, as the Guardian reports, some countries, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Russia, wanted to focus only on recycling measures and not cuts to production, causing observers at the conference to label them the “Low Ambition Coalition.”

New plastic manufacturing could double or even triple in 25 years, according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. As listeners to This Week in Water know, much plastic waste ends up in the ocean and breaks down into microplastics, which are now found everywhere, including human blood and breast milk. Recycling efforts have not been successful at alleviating the problem, with over 90 percent of plastic leaching into the environment.

Plastic is also a major greenhouse gas problem. About five percent of the world’s emissions are from its production, use, and disposal, as most is made from fossil fuels, which is expected to cause a growing demand for oil. An analysis by the Center for International Environmental Law said that over 200 lobbyists from the fossil fuel and chemical industries were registered to attend the conference, which is more than delegates from the EU.

Researchers at Reichman University in Israel found that generative AI applications alone could add 1.2 to 5 million metric tons of hazardous trash to the world in just five years, an amount which is about 1,000 times more than all the e-waste that was produced in 2023.

AI uses servers, storage devices, and graphics processing units that handle thousands of calculations. The hardware can last up to five years, but it’s often replaced just as soon as a new version is available.

E-waste consists of cell phones, computers, and many products with electronics. They contain toxins like mercury and lead, which can leach into water and soil when discarded. In 2022, the UN estimated that almost 80 percent of e-waste wound up in landfills or unofficial recycling centers. About five billion mobile phones are discarded each year.

According to Scientific American, each time AI produces an email or an image, much energy is consumed. Creating two images takes as much power as charging up a smartphone. One exchange with ChatGPT can require a bottle of water to cool a server. By 2027, worldwide AI may consume as much electricity as the Netherlands.

To address e-waste pollution, the authors of the study propose raising public awareness of the problem as well as solutions such as extending server lifespans and reusing components. They also suggest using biodegradable products in designs and add that local and national governments should set safety and efficiency standards for e-waste recycling.

The study was published in the journal Nature Computational Science.

Researchers at Macquarie University found that extreme events, both wet and dry, made Seychelles warblers (Acrocephalus sechellensis), medium-sized olive-colored birds with long tails, call it quits. Once on the brink of extinction, with just 26 birds left in the world, the species now has a stable population on Cousin Island after the entire island and surrounding sea was turned into a nature reserve in the late 1960s and early 1970s. There is concern that future extreme conditions could threaten their success.

About 90 percent of bird species are socially monogamous, often cohabitating, raising chicks together, and sharing food.  Warblers tend to stay together for up to 15 years, but, as humans know, relationships can be tough, so some birds do split up, most often from a failure to produce chicks and fledglings, which makes them reconsider their partner. However, sometimes birds divorce for no apparent reason, and according to new research, it might be because they were literally fair-weather friends.

As the researchers explain in The Conversation, after comparing a dataset about the relationship status of all the island birds with rainfall data over 16 years, the researchers found that divorce rates were closely associated with the amount of precipitation in the seven months leading up to and during the breeding season. Breakups spiked both when it was either extremely wet or extremely dry. For example, during a super El Niño in 1997 that caused exceptionally heavy rainfall, many Seychelles warblers divorced. They found more couples also broke up in drought years.

Extreme weather events are increasing with climate change, which affects food availability, habitat, and nesting conditions. The warbler study shows how global warming can destabilize relationships among wildlife and the ecosystems they support.

The study was published in the Journal of Animal Ecology.

Ivor is a six-year-old Cocker Spaniel and Labrador mix, who’s not tracking down bombs or drugs. Rather, he’s been trained to sniff out pathogens damaging and sometimes killing more than 150 plant species in the UK, including larch, important timber trees, in what’s been termed “sudden larch death.” There is no cure for a plant that’s been infected and the pathogen is also a problem in the U.S., especially in California and Oregon, where it causes “sudden oak death” and has killed millions of trees, primarily tanoak and coast live oak.

Ivor is a key player in the UK government’s Plant Biosecurity Strategy to combat pests and diseases, which are spreading rapidly as people and products move around the globe and also as climate change allows pathogens to take hold in new areas. The pooch was able to identify the water mold (oomycete) Phytophthora ramorum in soil, plants, and distilled water in controlled settings and then had a nearly  90 percent success rate finding the pathogen in real environments.

Ivor was initially trained by the Canine Assisted Pest Eradication organization as a water leak detection dog, so it was fitting that he would track down a pathogen that can spread for miles in mist, waterways, and raindrops. The pathogen can also be spread on shoes, tools, and vehicle wheels or by transporting infected plants.

Following the success of the initial trial led by the government's Forest Research organization, the program will expand to train dogs, whom they call “one of nature’s super-computers,” to sniff out destructive insects such as the eight-toothed spruce bark beetle. Using dogs to quickly identify threat locations should help foresters, so they don't waste time barking up the wrong tree.