Riders in the smog

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Zuha Siddiqui, Samriddhi Sakuna and Faisal Mahmud: “…To better understand air quality exposure among gig workers in South Asia, Rest of World gave three gig workers — one each in Lahore, New Delhi, and Dhaka — air quality monitors to wear throughout a regular shift in January. The Atmotube Pro monitors continually tracked their exposure to carcinogenic pollutants — specifically PM1, PM2.5, and PM10 (different sizes of particulate matter), and volatile organic compounds such as benzene and formaldehyde.

The data revealed that all three workers were routinely exposed to hazardous levels of pollutants. For PM2.5, referring to particulates that are 2.5 micrometers in diameter or less — which have been linked to health risks including heart attacks and strokes — all riders were consistently logging exposure levels more than 10 times the World Health Organization’s recommended daily average of 15 micrograms per cubic meter. Manu Sharma, in New Delhi, recorded the highest PM2.5 level of the three riders, hitting 468.3 micrograms per cubic meter around 6 p.m. Lahore was a close second, with Iqbal recording 464.2 micrograms per cubic meter around the same time.

Alongside tracking specific pollutants, the Atmotube Pro gives an overall real-time air quality score (AQS) from 0–100, with zero being the most severely polluted, and 100 being the cleanest. According to Atmo, the company that makes the Atmotube monitors, a reading of 0–20 should be considered a health alert, under which conditions “everyone should avoid all outdoor exertion.” But the three gig workers found their monitors consistently displayed the lowest possible score…(More)”.

Artificial Intelligence: A Threat to Climate Change, Energy Usage and Disinformation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Press Release: “Today, partners in the Climate Action Against Disinformation coalition released a report that maps the risks that artificial intelligence poses to the climate crisis.

Topline points:

  • AI systems require an enormous amount of energy and water, and consumption is expanding quickly. Estimates suggest a doubling in 5-10 years.
  • Generative AI has the potential to turbocharge climate disinformation, including climate change-related deepfakes, ahead of a historic election year where climate policy will be central to the debate. 
  • The current AI policy landscape reveals a concerning lack of regulation on the federal level, with minor progress made at the state level, relying on voluntary, opaque and unenforceable pledges to pause development, or provide safety with its products…(More)”.

Climate change may kill data sovereignty

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Trisha Ray: “Data centres are the linchpin of a nation’s technological progress, serving as the nerve centers that power the information age. The need for robust and reliable data centre infrastructure cuts across the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), serving as an essential foundation for e-government, innovation and entrepreneurship, decent work, and economic growth. It comes as no surprise then that data sovereignty has gained traction over the past decade, particularly in the Global South. However, climate change threatens the very infrastructure that underpins the digital future, and its impact on data centres is a multifaceted challenge, with rising temperatures, extreme weather events, and changing environmental conditions posing significant threats to their reliability and sustainability, even as developing countries begin rolling out ambitious strategies and incentives to attract data centres…(More)”.

People Have a Right to Climate Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Justin S. Mankin: “As a climate scientist documenting the multi-trillion-dollar price tag of the climate disasters shocking economies and destroying lives, I sometimes field requests from strategic consultants, financial investment analysts and reinsurers looking for climate data, analysis and computer code.

Often, they want to chat about my findings or have me draw out the implications for their businesses, like the time a risk analyst from BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, asked me to help with research on what the current El Niño, a cyclical climate pattern, means for financial markets.

These requests make sense: People and companies want to adapt to the climate risks they face from global warming. But these inquiries are also part of the wider commodification of climate science. Venture capitalists are injecting hundreds of millions of dollars into climate intelligence as they build out a rapidly growing business of climate analytics — the data, risk models, tailored analyses and insights people and institutions need to understand and respond to climate risks.

I point companies to our freely available data and code at the Dartmouth Climate Modeling and Impacts Group, which I run, but turn down additional requests for customized assessments. I regard climate information as a public good and fear contributing to a world in which information about the unfolding risks of droughts, floods, wildfires, extreme heat and rising seas are hidden behind paywalls. People and companies who can afford private risk assessments will rent, buy and establish homes and businesses in safer places than the billions of others who can’t, compounding disadvantage and leaving the most vulnerable among us exposed.

Despite this, global consultants, climate and agricultural technology start-ups, insurance companies and major financial firms are all racing to meet the ballooning demand for information about climate dangers and how to prepare for them. While a lot of this information is public, it is often voluminous, technical and not particularly useful for people trying to evaluate their personal exposure. Private risk assessments fill that gap — but at a premium. The climate risk analytics market is expected to grow to more than $4 billion globally by 2027.

I don’t mean to suggest that the private sector should not be involved in furnishing climate information. That’s not realistic. But I worry that an overreliance on the private sector to provide climate adaptation information will hollow out publicly provided climate risk science, and that means we all will pay: the well-off with money, the poor with lives…(More)”.

Creating a Citizen Participation Service and other ideas

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Kathy Peach: “…This paper explains how public participation can improve national policy, long-term decision making and increase democratic legitimacy and trust.

Taking a practical approach it examines how the wide range of tools available for harnessing citizen’s collective intelligence and explores how, and in what circumstances, they can best be used.

Examining how public participation can be embedded in climate policy at a national level, it suggests three models for restructuring central government – a Public Participation Secretariat, new public bodies and at most ambitious, a Citizen Participation Service.

Finally, it outlines the contours of a flagship participation programme for climate policy covering digital infrastructure, citizen science, participatory budgeting and other proposals…(More)”.

Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities Are Using Satellite Data to Fight Deforestation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Katie Reytar, Jessica Webb and Peter Veit: “Indigenous Peoples and local communities hold some of the most pristine and resource-rich lands in the world — areas highly coveted by mining and logging companies and other profiteers.  Land grabs and other threats are especially severe in places where the government does not recognize communities’ land rights, or where anti-deforestation and other laws are weak or poorly enforced. It’s the reason many Indigenous Peoples and local communities often take land monitoring into their own hands — and some are now using digital tools to do it. 

Freely available satellite imagery and data from sites like Global Forest Watch and LandMark provide near-real-time information that tracks deforestation and land degradation. Indigenous and local communities are increasingly using tools like this to gather evidence that deforestation and degradation are happening on their lands, build their case against illegal activities and take legal action to prevent it from continuing.  

Three examples from Suriname, Indonesia and Peru illustrate a growing trend in fighting land rights violations with data…(More)”.

Climate data can save lives. Most countries can’t access it.

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Zoya Teirstein: “Earth just experienced one of its hottest, and most damaging, periods on record. Heat waves in the United States, Europe, and China; catastrophic flooding in India, Brazil, Hong Kong, and Libya; and outbreaks of malaria, dengue, and other mosquito-borne illnesses across southern Asia claimed tens of thousands of lives. The vast majority of these deaths could have been averted with the right safeguards in place.

The World Meteorological Organization, or WMO, published a report last week that shows just 11 percent of countries have the full arsenal of tools required to save lives as the impacts of climate change — including deadly weather events, infectious diseases, and respiratory illnesses like asthma — become more extreme. The United Nations climate agency predicts that significant natural disasters will hit the planet 560 times per year by the end of this decade. What’s more, countries that lack early warning systems, such as extreme heat alerts, will see eight times more climate-related deaths than countries that are better prepared. By midcentury, some 50 percent of these deaths will take place in Africa, a continent that is responsible for around 4 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions each year…(More)”.

Can Large Language Models Capture Public Opinion about Global Warming? An Empirical Assessment of Algorithmic Fidelity and Bias

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by S. Lee et all: “Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated their potential in social science research by emulating human perceptions and behaviors, a concept referred to as algorithmic fidelity. This study assesses the algorithmic fidelity and bias of LLMs by utilizing two nationally representative climate change surveys. The LLMs were conditioned on demographics and/or psychological covariates to simulate survey responses. The findings indicate that LLMs can effectively capture presidential voting behaviors but encounter challenges in accurately representing global warming perspectives when relevant covariates are not included. GPT-4 exhibits improved performance when conditioned on both demographics and covariates. However, disparities emerge in LLM estimations of the views of certain groups, with LLMs tending to underestimate worry about global warming among Black Americans. While highlighting the potential of LLMs to aid social science research, these results underscore the importance of meticulous conditioning, model selection, survey question format, and bias assessment when employing LLMs for survey simulation. Further investigation into prompt engineering and algorithm auditing is essential to harness the power of LLMs while addressing their inherent limitations…(More)”.

Data collaboration to enable the EU Green Deal

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Justine Gangneux: “In the fight against climate change, local authorities are increasingly turning to cross-sectoral data sharing as a game-changing strategy.

This collaborative approach empowers cities and communities to harness a wealth of data from diverse sources, enabling them to pinpoint emission hotspots, tailor policies for maximum impact, and allocate resources wisely.

Data can also strengthen climate resilience by engaging local communities and facilitating real-time progress tracking…

In recent years, more and more local data initiatives aimed at tackling climate change have emerged, spanning from urban planning to mobility, adaptation and energy management.

Such is the case of Porto’s CityCatalyst – the project put five demonstrators in place to showcase smart cities infrastructure and develop data standards and models, contributing to the efficient and integrated management of urban flows…

In Latvia, Riga is also exploring data solutions such as visualisations, aggregation or analytics, as part of the Positive Energy District strategy.  Driven by the national Energy Efficiency Law, the city is developing a project to monitor energy consumption based on building utility use data (heat, electricity, gas, or water), customer and billing data, and Internet of Things smart metre data from individual buildings…

As these examples show, it is not just public data that holds the key; private sector data, from utilities as energy or water, to telecoms, offers cities valuable insights in their efforts to tackle climate change…(More)”.

Our Planet Powered by AI: How We Use Artificial Intelligence to Create a Sustainable Future for Humanity

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Mark Minevich: “…You’ll learn to create sustainable, effective competitive advantage by introducing previously unheard-of levels of adaptability, resilience, and innovation into your company.

Using real-world case studies from a variety of well-known industry leaders, the author explains the strategic archetypes, technological infrastructures, and cultures of sustainability you’ll need to ensure your firm’s next-level digital transformation takes root. You’ll also discover:

  • How AI can enable new business strategies, models, and ecosystems of innovation and growth
  • How to develop societal impact and powerful organizational benefits with ethical AI implementations that incorporate transparency, fairness, privacy, and reliability
  • What it means to enable all-inclusive artificial intelligence

An engaging and hands-on exploration of how to take your firm to new levels of dynamism and growth, Our Planet Powered by AI will earn a place in the libraries of managers, executives, directors, and other business and technology leaders seeking to distinguish their companies in a new age of astonishing technological advancement and fierce competition….(More)”.