GenAI on Earth Day 2024: Overview

It is Earth Day, April 22.  Earth Day 54 since the first in 1970. (Earth Day Quiz below... Visit EarthDay.org or Wikipedia: Earth Day for more.)

Wow. The population was about 3.7b, now more than 8b. But as worldwide life span increases and wealth increases so does lifetime consumption.

We employed our fav GenAIs to chat about it... and to generate some graphics. This is the overview with the prompts: there are two blog posts with GenAI chats: Part 1 and Part 2. Please feel free to run GenAI chats of your own.

GenAI on Earth Day 2024: Part 1

Earth Day, April 22.  See the OVERVIEW. This is Part 1 of 2 of the discussions with GenAI ChatBots.

GenAI on Earth Day 2024: Part 1

Q: What is the theme of Earth Day 2024? … And, generate a graphic that depicts this year’s Earth Day theme.

Q: Create an Earth Day article that incorporates this year's theme and include ways that GenAI might help?

Q: If GenAI were a world leader, what would it say about Earth Day?

#EarthDay #Sustainability #RE100 #ReduceReuseRecycle #RegenerativeDynamicArticle #RefractiveThinker #SustainZine #ScenarioPlans.com #DelphiPlan.com 

You: Create an Earth Day article that incorporates this year's theme and include ways that GenAI might help?

Earth Day 2021 Quiz

Earth Day 2021 Quiz (April 22, 2021)

    Test your knowledge of a few Earth related topics on Earth Day. Note that when you Google some of these topics, you can get rather wide ranges of answers. Make sure you are looking at the US (if that is the target region), rather current information, and rather reliable sources. Or, just wait a day to see what we think the correct answer should be. 

Answers will be forthcoming today or tomorrow.

1.  Plastics. Approximately what % of the US’s plastic gets recycled?

a.  8-10%

b.  14-15%

c.  25-30%

d.  45-50%

2.  Plastics. Approximately what % of the US’s plastic makes its way into lakes, rivers, oceans?

a.  0.5%

b.  1%

c.  3%

d.  5%

3.  Plastic in the environment (on land or in ocean). About how many years does it take to decompose a plastic bottle in the ocean?

a.  Plastic decomposes in about 20 years.

b.  Plastic decomposes in about 50 years.

c.  Plastic decomposes in about 150 years.

d.  Plastic doesn’t really decompose, but let’s go with 450 years.

4.  Plastic in the oceans. Approximately how many years before the plastic in the oceans will exceed the fish? (by weight). 

a.  Too last, plastic already exceeds fish in oceans (by weight).

b.  2030. In 10 years, plastic should exceed fish (by weight).

c.  2050. In 30 years, plastic should exceed fish (by weight).

d.  2100. In 80 years, plastic should exceed fish (by weight).

5.  Manatees in Florida are dying at an unusually high rate recently. What is the primary cause of deaths in 2021?

a.  Boats

b.  Cold

c.  Disease

d.  Starvation

6.  The artic is melting enough that ships can now travel through the Arctic to the North during the summer and avoid the Panama Canal or longer routes? Approximately how long during the summer can ships now navigate through the Arctic?

a) About 4 weeks of thaw sufficient to navigate in the summer.

b) About 8 weeks of thaw sufficient to navigate in the summer.

c)  About 3 months of thaw sufficient to navigate in the summer.

d)  About 365 days a year.

7.  About, what percentage of the US lakes, rivers and streams are polluted (according to US EPA)?  (Polluted, as in no swimming and you should not eat the fish, if there are any.)

a.  4%-5%

b.  10%-15%

c.  25%-30%

d.  40%-45%

8.  Soil. The current “industrial” farming methods deplete the topsoil. No topsoil, little or no farm crops. At the current rate of topsoil depletion, how many years do we have before we “run out” of topsoil? [Ooops.... Things changed... problems with this question... Well, with the answers...]

a.  About 20 years until the world’s topsoil will be effectively depleted.

b.  About 30 years until the world’s topsoil will be effectively depleted.

c.  About 60 years until the world’s topsoil will be effectively depleted.

d.  About 100 years until the world’s topsoil will be effectively depleted.

9.  Extinction. Out of about 8 million plant and animal species on earth, approximately how many are in threat of extinction?

a.  100K, 1.2%

b.  300K, 3.7%

c.  500K, 6.2%

d.  1M, 12.5%

10.  Earths. Current estimates are that we significantly overuse the earth’s resources (overshoot the earth’s carrying capacity). We currently need part of another earth to be “sustainable”. But, if the rest of the world consumed at the same rate per person as we do in the US, how many earths do we need?

a.  2 earths (+1)

b.  3 earths (+2)

c.  4 earths (+3)

d.  5 earths (+4)

11.  What is the depth of the oceans? (Plus, water expands when warmed about 0.000214 per +1C for seawater, so how much would sea levels rise based on a +1 degree Centigrade increase in global temperature that transferred throughout the oceans.)

a.  Average ocean depth is 1,000ft (+1C temp increase = +2.6in increase in avg ocean level.)

b.  Average ocean depth is 2,500ft (+1C temp increase = +6.4in increase in avg ocean level.)

c.  Average ocean depth is 1.2 mile (+1C temp increase = +16.3in in increase avg ocean level.)

d.  Average ocean depth is 2.3 miles (+1C temp increase = +31.2in increase in avg ocean level.) 

Microplastics everywhere... Blow'n in the Wind...

Here is an article in ARS Technica about an article in Nature Geoscience (2019) that talks about microplastics in the French The Pyrenees Mountains, a pristine place, except for, well, plastic!

The researchers made extremely controlled efforts to assure that they were not contaminating the samples gathered. But the plastics are coming in on the wind, and coming down (mainly, it seems) in perpetration. 

If microplastics are everywhere, then our impacts on the planet are far more, and far more prevasive than anyone has predicted. The ARS Technica article by Cathleen O'Grady - 4/22/2019, also talks about the significant amount of plastics produced each year that is unaccounted for in landfills, recycling and oceans. 

When you read the original article, remember the whole biomagnification thing. That's where fish each plants and plankton with plastics, Bigger fish eat those fish, and BIGGER animals like sharks, bears and humans, eat the biggest fish. The heavy metals, plastics and more will build up and up as they go up the food chain. And they tend to be retained at the highest order.

Sources: Nature Geoscience, 2019. DOI: 10.1038/s41561-019-0335-5  (About DOIs).

Cleaning up our garbage patch takes a 21 year old

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/06/28/3792829/ocean-clean-up-project-unveiled/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=cptop3&utm_term=1&utm_content=22

Cleaning up our (garbage patch) act is going to take some work.  It takes a 21 year old... see the refs to new studies. 700 pieces of plastic in the ocean for every man woman and child on Earth! And the problem is, that there will never be an end to the plastic until we stop producing it and shipping it off to Sea...

Everyone being simply more aware of the problem, that's actually a good start as well.

Garbage-patch tale as flimsy as a single-use plastic bag - SFGate

Garbage-patch tale as flimsy as a single-use plastic bag - SFGate:

So the GREAT Pacific Garbage Patch is not real... Or maybe not nearly as big as originally expected.

Saunders does a great job of attaching the myth behind the original reports of "the size of Texas" and such.

Great sources of info included.

But now I'm really worried. The amount of plastic floating in the oceans amount to only (right, only) 7,000 to 35,000 Tons. But we know the amount of plastic produced each year, the % that gets recycle, the % that goes into a landfill and the paltry % that gets repurposed. That leaves a LOT of tons of plastic each year that go into the environment. If we estimate the amount that goes out the water systems into the oceans you get a LOT of plastics into the oceans. There's a lot of large pieces but the small stuff is mysteriously missing.

There's bit of a mystery working that is well discussed here at the SFGate with four possible theories by Leslie Baehr. None of them look good. The plastic found represent only about 1% of the plastic pollution in the ocean according to one of the researchers Cózar said. More could be hiding below the surface. 

"Indeed, the quantity of plastic floating in the ocean and its final destination are still unknown," the researchers concluded.

It may take hundreds or thousands of years for plastic to degrade. In the warm ocean with lots of sunlight, maybe only 1 year. See here on degrading and the short artgument as to whether plastics ever really biodegrade (although the degrade to smaller bits of the same).  Here's a nice little biodegadable table by the NH for the National Park Service, talking about 20 years for plastic bags and 450 for plastic bottles to biodegrade.

All that plastic is going somewhere. I was actually happier knowing where it was going... into the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Now we don't know, what we don't know. That's worrisome! 

Wikipedia of the Great_Pacific_garbage_patch and the 
National Geographic on the Pacific Garbage Patch.
Marine Debris at NOAA.
Youtube from Oprah's show where she did an EarthDay on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Several years ago (upload is 2011). Before this new study, obviously.
'via Blog this'

New program at USF examines water bottle usage

New program at USF examines water bottle usage (2.44 min video)

This is a cool/excellent program at USF related to eliminating the water bottles use on campus.

Note the refill stations being used throughout campus.

We all need to get way from the bottled water.

13B plastic bottles per year now. That's a 10 fold increase from 10 years ago.!:-(

Environmental literate.