Notices by Gerry McGovern (gerrymcgovern@mastodon.green), page 2

Canada has lost over 60% of its flying insects since the 1970s, leaving tree swallows smaller and less successful at breeding
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/science/canada-has-lost-over-60-of-its-flying-insects-since-the-1970s-leaving-tree-swallows-smaller-and-less-successful-at-breeding-scientists-found/articleshow/132176920.cms

Birds: 60% decline in Ireland since 1970s
Wild salmon: 89% decline in Ireland since 1970s
Butterflies: 80% decline in Ireland since 1970s
Butterflies: USA lost 20% of butterflies between 2005 and 2025
Flying insects: 75% decline in Germany in 27 years

"Both Google and Amazon released their sustainability reports this week, and the numbers aren’t pretty. Each company has pledged to zero-out its carbon emissions in the coming years, but AI has made those goals a lot harder to hit. Google’s total carbon emissions are up 25% since last year, Amazon’s are up 16%."

https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/02/a-warning-sign-about-ais-real-cost-courtesy-of-google-and-amazon/

This is a massive environment-destroying crisis caused by Big Tech. What are we going to do?

Irish Wicklow hotel cancels ‘secretive’ Peter Thiel conference

Event hosted by Palantir cofounder was due to be attended by senior Nato commander and Trump administration officials

Even small victories are worth celebrating!

https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2026/07/03/wicklow-hotel-cancels-secretive-peter-thiel-conference/

“Forensically sets out the horrendous hidden costs of—and the exponential damage being inflicted by—the tech billionaires, the AI messiahs, the mining conglomerates and the blood-sucking alpha males who are driving the Gadarene rush towards climate catastrophe.”

Niall Stokes, editor, Hot Press

https://gerrymcgovern.com/books/99th-day/

In 2025, an UN report revealed: "data centres consumed enough water to fill 1.8 million Olympic-sized pools. If the water were redirected to Africa, it would meet the basic domestic needs of more than 600 million people each year. By 2030, the UN report estimates that AI could use as much water as 1.3 billion people."

In 2020, AI basically didn't exist.

So, in 5 years its thirst became as large as that of 600 million people.

How much water will AI demand in 2040?

https://nation.africa/kenya/climate/ai-data-centres-consume-world-s-power-and-water-at-unprecedented-scale-5512862

@CorioPsicologia exactamente.

The hotter it gets, the more water data centers will demand, and they will get priority, particularly over the needs of poor people.

Data's war on people and nature.

I've spent 30 years working with some of the largest organizations in the world on their data and content.

Here's a universal truth.

Most data is slop.

Most data is crap.

At least 90% of data in a typical org should be deleted. Data centers were slop-houses long before slop AI.

Data centers are glorified data dumps and senior management has never, ever cared because it's always been "cheaper" to "solve" the data problem by buying more storage.

We are killing the planet for crap data.

For thousands of years, it has been known that land use change drives climate change. Cut down the forests, things get hotter. Pave the marshes, things get hotter. So, why, today, do we nearly never hear about land use change as a key driver of climate change?

Land use change = capitalism

Overconsumption is the underlying cause of every crisis we face.

We must radically slow down.

In India, some e-waste workers burn wires bare-handed and inhale toxic fumes for $8 a day

The true face of the digital clean and green in the Cloud economy

"Sometimes the extraction is difficult, and I don't have any protective gear — no gloves, no mask. Often, I get burns on my hands as well," e-waste worker Mateen Malik told Al Jazeera. "The chemical residue is also there."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/world/articles/india-e-waste-workers-burn-224400449.html

Digital is dirty

Digital is toxic

Digital is physical

In the USA alone, more than 75 data center build-outs worth $130 billion have been successfully blocked in the first three months of 2026 — bipartisan opposition mounts nationwide over fears of soaring power and water costs

Communities are rising up against data centers all over the world.

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/more-than-75-data-center-build-outs-worth-usd130-billion-have-been-successfully-blocked-in-the-first-four-months-of-2026-bipartisan-opposition-mounts-nationwide-over-fears-of-soaring-power-and-water-costs

Virginia Tax Revenue Losses to Data Centers Soar to $1.6 Billion for FY25
https://goodjobsfirst.org/virginia-tax-revenue-losses-to-data-centers-soar-to-1-6-billion-for-fy25/

Artificial Jobs: The Illusion of Big Tech’s Data Center Employment Claims
https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/RB_2601_DataCenterJobs.pdf

What Happens When Data Centers Come To Town?
https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/items/3a44f3bc-0a8a-4dd7-87fc-ce43e7032786

Big Tech Promised Jobs. Cities Gave Millions. Where Are the Workers?
https://www.businessinsider.com/data-centers-tax-subsidies-jobs-ohio-2025-5

Michigan legislature extends tax breaks for data center that brought only 2.6% of promised jobs
https://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/news/legislature-extends-tax-breaks-for-data-center-that-brought-only-2-6-of-promised-jobs

@jerclarke Saw it at a Friends of the Earth webinar
https://www.friendsoftheearth.ie/act/no-more-data-centres/

But I've often seen this basic figure for Irish data centers before, although the government did really try and hide the numbers.

"The use of agrochemicals boomed in Guatemala in the 1950s during the so-called Green Revolution, when U.S. interests began to move into the country’s agricultural sector. This introduced more industrialized farming techniques, which included an increase in the use of chemicals. By the 1970s, Roche said, artificial inputs were being strongly linked to issues such as economic dependence, human health, and soil degradation."

https://news.mongabay.com/2026/06/ancient-maya-knowledge-helps-guatemalan-farmers-cut-agrochemical-use/

In Ireland, for 22% of total electricity, data centers provide 3,300 jobs

There are about 2,800,000 employed in Ireland.

For every 1% of Irish electricity, data centers provide 150 jobs

In the rest of the economy, for every 1% of electricity, 35,897 jobs are provided.

Majority of US’s new AI datacenters to be built on drought-hit land

“The AI industry is sprinting as fast as it can to gain market dominance, and the rest of us have to deal with a great increase in water demand in places already in drought,” said Christopher Dalbom, an expert in water resources law at Tulane University.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/08/datacenter-ai-drought-water

The tech bros will burn everything to the ground to be the last man standing over a pile of bones and ashes

#datacenters

Our world is in flames, our soils are collapsing, the very land is drying out.

To the rescue, Big Tech sends giant AI data center fire trucks. They park in poor neighbourhoods and suck up all the water they can get.

But do they put the fire out? No. Their data hoses are blow torches, burning energy, spreading lies and cheap entertainment. Convincing middle-aged mediocre men they are on the hero's journey.

We don't have to accept this

We can still resist

In Asia, the Indigenous people say they are "replanting the rain" when they are planting trees because they know--as we have forgotten--that forests are weather, that life is weather.

"40% of weather is caused by local variable."

"Plants, weather and climate are critically linked."

The study of rain has been dominated by physicists. But rain has a huge amount of biology to it.

Dr. Elizabeth Heilman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q82W83cgxo

"The climate issue swallowed the environmental movement."
Brett KenCairn

CO2 Tunnel Vision

https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/222-brett-kencairn

One third of the excess CO2 in the atmosphere is not from burning fossil fuels. It's from burning soils. It's from desertification.

Land use change is climate change

https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/222-brett-kencairn

Imagine something that in 2020 didn't really exist but has so exploded onto our environment that in 2030 it will demand the water of 1.3 billion people and the electricity of 2 billion.

In a time when we have a global historic severe drought and when our civilization is about to collapse due to over-consumption of energy.

This is AI.

This is Big Tech

These are the tech bros. Here to burn it all down for greed and ambition.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/06/1167658